“You got my pants wet,” I complained as I pulled on my shirt. The waistband was soaked.
Pol didn’t respond.
I was still pulling my overshirt over my head as I thumped down the stairs to the taproom, where breakfast and the others were waiting. The magus and his apprentices were smiling at their food. I threw myself onto the end of the bench and ignored them.
After I had eaten one bowl of oatmeal, I combed my fingers through my hair to get it into some sort of order. Tearing a few knots apart in the process, I divided it into three clumps and wound the clumps over one another to make a short braid. Holding the end of the braid in one hand, I looked around the taproom for inspiration. Over my shoulder I saw a young woman at the bar. I smiled at her and circled one finger around the tip of the braid to show what I needed. When she smiled at me and waved one hand to show that she understood, I turned back to the table to meet the ferocious glare of Useless the Elder, whose name I remembered was Ambiades. I didn’t know what had irritated him, so I directed my puzzled look on my oatmeal bowl.
A few minutes later the girl from the bar arrived with more breakfast for everyone and a piece of twine to tie off my hair. As she went away, she looked over at Useless the Elder and sniffed in contempt, so I had an explanation for the ferocious glare. No friend had I made there, but I wasn’t with this group to make friends, and besides, he sneered too much. I’ve found that people who sneer are almost always sneering at me.
The magus, Pol, and the younger Useless, Sophos, were studiously eating their breakfasts.
“She seems like a nice girl,” I said, and got an angry look from Ambiades and his master. The magus couldn’t have been rebuffed by the barkeep, so I assumed that he didn’t want me baiting his apprentice.
“Very friendly,” I added for good measure before I dug into my second large bowl of oatmeal. It was a little bit gloppy, but there was butter and honey on top. There was a bowl of yogurt nearby, and I ate that as well. Sophos had a smaller bowl, and when the magus wasn’t looking, I slipped it out from under his lifted spoon and switched it for my empty one. He looked startled, and Ambiades stifled a derisive laugh, but neither of them complained to the magus. There was another large bowl that held oranges in the middle of the table, and I was reaching for those when I noticed the magus’s glare.
“I’m hungry,” I said defensively, and took three. Two went into the pockets of the overshirt, and the third I peeled and was eating when the landlady arrived.
She came to ask us if we wanted a lunch packed, but she stopped in surprise when she saw me.
I gave her my best boyish grin. “I clean up nicely, don’t I?” I said.
She smiled back. “Yes, you do. Where did you get so dirty?”
“Prison,” I said.
“Ah,” she said. People went to prison all the time. “I expect you’re glad to get out.”
“Yes, ma’am, especially because the food is so good.”
She laughed and turned back to the magus, who was looking grim. “Was there anything else that you needed, sir?”
“No, we’ll stop in Evisa for lunch, thank you.”
Everyone went to pack up the horses except the magus and me. The two of us remained at the table until Pol sent Sophos in to tell us that everything was ready. There was a mounting block in the courtyard, so I was able to get onto my horse myself, although Pol held its head and Sophos held the stirrup for me and offered advice.
“You don’t have to slither on that way,” he said. “She isn’t going to move out from underneath you.”
“She might,” I replied sourly.
As we rode our horses out of the courtyard, the landlady stepped out of the inn’s front door with a napkin-wrapped bundle in her hand. She reached up to stop my horse with one hand, which was pretty fearless of her, but she seemed to think it was nothing out of the ordinary.
“A little something to eat while you’re riding. It’s a long way to Evisa.” She handed the bundle up to me and added as she did so, “My youngest is down in the prison.”
“Oh,” I said, not surprised. They probably hadn’t bribed the tax collector enough. “Don’t worry too much,” I said as the magus dragged my horse away. “It’s not so bad.” I forgot myself enough to give her a real smile but replaced it with a grin when I saw her face brighten in response.
“What a lie that was,” I added under my breath as we left the inn behind. The road curved away between rows of olive trees. As soon as we were well out of sight, the magus pulled up his horse and mine as well.
He leaned across his saddle and smacked me on the head, then pulled away the bundle of lunch, which I had hung on a convenient buckle of the saddle.
“Hey!” I yelled in outrage. “That was for me!”
“I don’t need you chatting up every barkeep between here and the mountains.”
“I didn’t say a word to the barkeep,” I pointed out in an aggrieved tone as I rubbed the spot on my head where his heavy seal ring had hit. “Not a word. And I was only being polite to the landlady.”
The magus lifted his hand to hit me again, but I leaned out of reach. “You can keep your civility,” he snapped, “to yourself. You don’t talk to anyone, do you understand?”
“So, so, so. Do I get my lunch back?”
No, I didn’t. Magus said we would have it later. I sulked for the next hour. I looked at my saddle and ignored the passing scenery—I’d seen onions before—until we rode by a field being harvested. The sweet, tangy smell woke my stomach. I sat up straight and looked around. “Hey,” I called to the magus, “I’m hungry.”
He ignored me, but I decided against prolonged sulking. It wasn’t going to get me an early lunch, and my neck was sore, from bending over the saddle. I dug one of the oranges out of my pocket and began to peel it, dropping the rinds on the road. Outside the city I had felt like a bug caught out in the center of a tablecloth. Now the world was closing back in in a comforting way. The road rose slowly and dropped into an occasional hollow as we climbed the hills that led up to the mountains patiently waiting ahead of us. The fields were smaller, and they were surrounded by olive trees, which grew where other crops wouldn’t. Individual orchards were blending together into an undifferentiated forest of silver and gray. I wondered how the owners knew when their land stopped and someone else’s began.
On my left Sophos asked, “Was it really not so bad?”
“Was what?”
“Prison.”
I remembered my comment to the landlady. I watched Sophos for a minute, riding comfortably on the back of his well-bred mare.
“That prison,” I said with heartfelt sincerity, “was absolutely the most awful thing that has happened to me in my entire life.”
I could tell by the way he looked at me that he thought my life must have been filled with one awful thing after another.
“Oh,” he said, and pressed his horse a little faster, in order to widen the space between us.
Pol continued to ride behind me. I looked over my shoulder at him and got a stony glare. I ate my orange and listened to the conversation between the magus, Sophos, and Ambiades. He was asking them questions. He wanted Sophos to tell him the classification of a eucalyptus tree. Sophos went on about this and that and whether it was fruit-bearing. Most of what he said I couldn’t hear, but he seemed to have gotten it right because the magus told him he was pleased. Ambiades had more trouble with the olive tree, and the magus was not pleased. Ambiades shifted his horse a little farther away from the magus, and I gathered that cuffs to the head with that seal ring were not uncommon. The magus asked Sophos for the correct answer, and Sophos gave it, obviously embarrassed for Ambiades’s sake.