There was a brief pause during which we all looked away from each other as Jade stared into the fire. Kent, the magistrate, was her brother.
“And then we carry on without their... bothering us so much,” she finished. “I mean it is a dangerous plan, but maybe we could weather this war hidden on the farm?”
“That,” Ilsit said, pointing her smoking pipe at Jade. “I like that.”
Me too, signed Fox, setting the bucket down and joining us to sit at the table.I don’t want to leave.
Daisy leapt into her lap from the floor.
“You forget,” I said gently. “Sheridan won’t be abandoned.It will be a place for Perpatane to marshal their troops. They may even occupy the farm.”
Daisy burrowed into Fox’s lap, then let out a whimper muffled by her snout buried into the crook of Fox’s elbow.
“That’s a vote for staying,” Ilsit said, swinging her pipe at the fox.
Tessa shook her head. “I feel the same. I don’t want to go to Perpatane, but we could go to Eccleston. Thane says they have been given hefty sums of coin to rebuild. And not from Perpatane. From their own mining families.”
“That’s interesting,” I said.
“Yes. They say they are grateful for Perpatane’s protection, but there is a rumor going around that the Council of Ten—all members of which are still nowhere to be found, mind you—requiredfor trade agreements to be broken because Perpatane paid them in gold to do so, so as to invite a war with Tintar. And the mining families, which are all the wealthiest powers in Eccleston, really and truly, are mad their government messed with their affairs.”
“Doesn’t matter if it’s a country run by citizens’ vote or by a king,” Ilsit proclaimed. “All leaders are corrupt.”
“And King Pollux wants the whole of this world,” Tessa tacked on.
“So they seek to return to their state of a citizen-run government, free of monarchal influence, by funding their own reconstruction,” I mused.
“Yes!” Tessa said. “Perpatane still tries to buy them, but they are stillthem. Eccleston’s gods are industry and science. That would be a good place to retreat to. Even though it has been sacked, they will rebuild. And I know people there. I could find us work and lodging.”
I frowned. I heard the wisdom in her words, but I needed the wilderness near me. Descriptions of the size and grandness of that city-state had always impressed me—but to consider it as a place to live, to make a life? I thought on every word I had ever heard about the dry, scrubby landscapes of the mining territories that surroundedthe city. That was not a wilderness to me but a wasteland, with treasures beneath the ground rather than above it.
Ilsit was shaking her head. “It’s a nice idea, Tessa, but it is a gamble.”
“As is staying here!” Tessa shot back, and they were off on another not-quite-fight where they smiled at each other before dismantling each other’s points.
Jade turned to me and asked for my thoughts, but I could not answer her. I was watching Fox shift Daisy’s now slumbering body to one side to hold her with one arm so she could lift the other and sign to me.
Either scares me.
“I know,” I said to her.
10
NOW: SALT
After the caravan was announced at the next tenth-day service, the entire settlement was in an uproar. Mass efforts to preserve foods like jerky and pickled vegetables were underway as well as the consolidation of households and belongings. Gerard and Starling, acting as representatives of army and church, were allotting silver and gold for properties and possessions. Most settlement folk had never left Sheridan, let alone had any experience with war. People were frantic. Thane and his men were overrun with the machinations of planning a caravan. Most of the people in Sheridan were taking the allotments from Perpatane and signing on as chastened penitents with the church to leave for Skow, the City of the Tower. New wagons were being constructed to accommodate the drove of people who chose to leave.
At my farm, we still spoke of it as an idea, not an actuality.
“I’m not going anywhere Gerard goes,” Ilsit proclaimed, flinging a potato skin into a bucket between her knees.
“It is a good thing,” Jade said in agreement, “that these folk leave us to their penitent’s way. I’d rather stay in Nyossa than brave a Perpatanian city.”
Ilsit said something foul about Perpatane, and Jade gave a nod.
Despite the hot day, the two of them sat on stools in the yard skinning potatoes while Fox hummed to herself, sitting on the ground, twisting ferns piled in her apron into a wreath to hang over our door for protection.
It was an old tradition Magda had taught me. I wished it had worked.
