Catrin shrugged again. “His family buys malachite from our copper mine. To make jewelry. As is their trade. That is all I knew before… before the invasion. That and his name which, preposterously, I did not like.”
“Which is?” asked Mischa.
“George.”
Mischa gave a snicker. “Well, I would imagine your wedding rings will be nice.”
“I hope to never wear them,” responded Catrin, warming to Mischa’s variety of honest humor. “Well, not from him. If I survive this, I want to choose my husband.”
“That is the least thing you can ask for in life,” Mischa agreed. “Especially, once you have gone through this miserable undertaking. If she must have a man, at least this godsdamned world should let a woman choose him.”
I would not have thought them likely allies. Mischa was sensual and sarcastic, proud of her flouting of traditional womanhood and nurturing a lifelong working-class disdain for the wealthy, despite refusing to work with her siblings at her family’s brewery and undergoing training to be a scribe skilled at translation. Catrin, with her sophisticated beauty and lack of worldly experience, would have been someone Mischa would either have disregarded or used for a joke.
“The trees are not close anymore,” said Quinn. “We have to be leaving Nyossa.”
“Do any of you know what is on the other side?”
“Tintar, Edie,” answered Mischa, as if I was a child.
“Yes, I know what lies on the other side of the forest. I just wonder at the terrain.”
“River will know,” said Quinn, “better than I, but my guess is their agrarian backcountry. Agriculture is not an export for them. All of their growth is sold within their borders. And I have not a clue what it will look like, but they are a vast country and their citizenry legion. There are mouths to feed. Farming lands would be my guess.”
“And after that, Pikestully?” guessed Catrin.
“I would have to think that is the destination,” said Quinn. “They are soldiers, after all, and that is where their army marshals.”
“Other capital cities make me nervous,” said Mischa. “It is extra foreign to a traveler, even more so than outlying country or border villages.”
“That is ridiculous,” I said, engaging in a little of our banter, even if I agreed.
She made a patient face at me, as if I was a pest that she happened to love.
A longer look passed between me and my irascible friend, who was truly as kin. Both of us wanted to crumble under the heaviness of the afternoon, our banter a poor crutch. What would we do about Helena?
“Yes, they must be taking us to the capital,” said Quinn, her eyes roving over the figures of men in bedrolls. “To Pikestully and to the Shark King.”
14. Hagstone
The last night in Nyossa, I slept little, my mind on my oldest friend, perplexed as to what I could do about what had happened. I resigned myself to that thought being childish. There is no undoing incidents of that nature, the breaches in decency and trust amongst people. It weighed on me because I loved her, but it also weighed on me because I, reluctant to take on another worry, had dismissed Maureen’s fears. Though I slept sparsely, when I had, I had dreamt bizarrely of white and soot-colored pebbles stacking themselves, higher and higher. Normally, I slept on my back, but I had been turning to one side to alleviate the tenderness in my spine from riding all day. In the morning, a light-colored pebble sat on the blue and green moss in front of me as I blinked awake, a finger’s length from the tip of my nose. It was flat and round with a naturally occurring hole that was just off of the center. Somewhere, in my mind, I remembered that these were called hagstones, sometimes adderstones. They were purported to heal snakebites and channel magic. I pocketed it in my scribe’s dress.
Gently, so as not to alert the men, who were mostly up and moving about the camp, I made my way over to Mischa, stepping around the dozing women and crouching next to her, I shook her awake.
Groggy, she sat up and ornery with me, said, “What, Edie?” And then, as if remembering, she grabbed at my hand. “Helena?”
“Asleep.” I was at a loss for what to say. “I think we need to ascertain whether or not she will need a tonic.”
Now thoroughly awake, she said, “Oh my gods.”
“I know. I did not think of it until I woke.”
“What can we even give her? Does this place even have what she would need? What does she need,dogbane and stoneseed? I’m not a healer. Are any of us? Does this wilderness they’ve taken us to even have physicians?”
“She should have bathed afterwards, but of course, we were not thinking of that.”
“Do you think she could quicken? At her age?” Mischa had the decency to look a little discomfited at her mention of both Helena’s and my number of winters.
“She could. Women have children past their fortieth. All the time.”
