Waiting to Begin, part 2
Jun. 23rd, 2010 11:42 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tamcranverPart 1
Kitty opened her eyes. Light was filtering through the leafy roof of her lean-to. She was warm, but stiff from sleeping curled under her small roof, and she slid out from under it to stand up and stretch.
It looked like a bright, clear morning. A bit cold, but least the wind wasn’t blowing. She must have been exhausted the previous night, because dawn had obviously passed her by hours before. A pity, since her goal for the day was to find her way back to the Queen’s Road and maybe, if the Giver’s luck was with her, to make it to some kind of village or town before nightfall. It would probably be a long walk, so she had no time to waste.
She sighed and gathered her few possessions from the lean-to before pausing to look at it one last time. It was built against a thick tree. The tree was dark with age and moss and close enough to a thin tree with pale, papery bark that their roots intertwined. Kitty tried to impress the image upon her mind, in case she found herself in need of shelter again in the near future. The little make-shift shack had served her well—she couldn’t remember the last time she’d had a night of sleep so deep and satisfying.
It didn’t take long to find the little overgrown side road again—even without a path, in the daylight, it was easy enough to see where the forest ended, and the smudge of hedges and trees lining the road was visible from a long way away. Kitty knelt by the stream to fill her waterskin one more time when she heard, of all things, voices, coming from the side road.
“Fuck a duck,” a man’s voice said. “Where are we?”
“This is the last time I listen to your directions,” another man said. “Well fucking done, Brett. You can explain to Morrissey why we’ve gotten the caravan lost again.”
“Piss on that,” said a third man. “I can see the main road from here—we’ll just cut across that field.”
Kitty’s first instinct was to shout out to them, to tell them she was here. Having gone for days without seeing another human soul, she longed just to talk to someone. But the noise of horses’ hooves and weapons clanking brought her back to her senses. This wasn’t just a party of farmers on their way to market, this sounded like an army. Maybe not even the Queen’s. Some of the men had Eastern accents; for all she knew, they could be a band of brigands. Even if they weren’t, it would probably be a stupid mistake to reveal herself to who-knows-what kind of strange men. No, what she had to do was to follow them—surely they weren’t just wandering around aimlessly. They were obviously on their way to somewhere, and wherever it was, it probably had people, maybe people who could offer Kitty a job or a place to sleep.
Quietly, she stood and drew nearer to the road. At first, she took care with each step to be as silent as possible, but the men were chatting and shouting at each other so loudly that it seemed pointless to worry about being heard over them.
They were a strange bunch. Some of them spoke the same way as the peasants who farmed around the Order; some had Eastern or Southern accents; some spoke in unfamiliar tongues. The ones near the front were loud and free in their speech, but as Kitty, who walked quite slowly compared with the horsemen, fell behind, the men near the middle spoke more rarely and when they did, they seemed more restrained and respectful. Near the very back rode a small knot of women in a wagon, commenting on the narrowness of the road and wondering aloud if the caravan was headed in the right direction. Kitty was surprised at that. She’d certainly never heard that the Queen’s Army took women, and knowing Mother Phyllis, if women actually could enlist in the Army, she probably would have heard a dozen dull sermons about it. Perhaps brigands accepted women among their ranks, although Kitty couldn’t imagine what woman would ever ride with the kind of brigands who had attacked the Order. Not one with any self-respect, that was certain.
Despite their horses, the party’s pace wasn’t so quick that Kitty couldn’t keep them in view or hearing range. Her stomach growled so loud, she was afraid that they would hear it, but nobody seemed to notice her as she trailed them across the plains. At least she had a full waterskin today, and somehow, even though she wasn’t a part of their little army, just being around people made her feel less lonely, more whole. Perhaps she wasn’t as suited to a life of lone adventuring as she had thought.
Night saw the band of brigands or mercenaries or soldiers, whoever they might be, settled by a little creek, its quick waters already pushing aside the ice of winter and flowing loudly over the rocks. Kitty envied them their tents and fires as the sun went down. Most of all, she envied their food. She hoped they reached a town soon.
Settling down behind a tree, she gathered her cloak around her and tried not to think about hot food, pies fresh from the oven and pots of bubbling stew. It was quite difficult, with the sounds of laughing and eating going on in the camp behind her.
“Hey.”
The voice, a young and female one, sounded far too close to Kitty—too close for her to move away without being noticed. She huddled in on herself, trying to make sure all of her was hidden by the tree.
“Hey, you. Behind the tree.”
Kitty’s breath caught in her throat.
“Don’t worry—I’m not going to hurt you.” The voice sounded amused. “I just thought, since you’ve been following us all day, maybe you’d like to introduce yourself.” There was another long pause before the voice added, “I’m Cassadee.”
Kitty let herself be afraid for a moment before mentally shaking herself. What kind of woman would let herself be scared of a friendly young girl? The kind who hid herself away in a nunnery so as not to have to deal with anyone but the prim and well-born and religious, and Kitty wasn’t that kind of woman. She stood up, her joints stiff with cold, and turned to face the other woman. “I’m Kitty.”
“Nice to meet you, Kitty,” said Cassadee with a smile. She was dark-haired and freckled with cheerful features—not at all intimidating, really. “Where are you headed?”
Kitty shrugged. “Nowhere in particular,” she said honestly. “I’d like to get to a town or village to find a job, though.”
Cassadee made a noise with pursed lips that sounded like “mmhmm,” nodding as if she knew Kitty’s plans better than Kitty herself did. “Got any money?”
Unfortunately, the Order of Order didn’t really believe in paying for things, and they really didn’t believe in letting the sisters on the lower rung of the hierarchy do any of the little purchasing they did. “A few coins,” said Kitty, thinking of the handful of silver pieces she’d managed to save in the pouch stuffed in the waist of her underskirt. “Not much.”
Cassadee nodded knowingly again. “Got any food?”
Kitty’s stomach growled in response, and Cassadee’s smile grew.
“Guess that answers that question,” she said. “Well, that tears it. Come on, Kitty. I’ll trade you—you tell me your story, I get Patti to serve you up some bread and butter and soup.”
“Wait,” said Kitty, torn between an overwhelming desire to eat a decent meal for once and wariness about joining a group of strangers. “They won’t mind? I mean—who--”
“Eh,” Cassadee said dismissively with a shrug, “if you’re just staying for the night, Morrissey doesn’t need to hear about it, and if you’re staying longer, well, we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.”
That didn’t exactly reassure Kitty, or explain who this group of armed men and their little cluster of women were, but the prospect of warmth and food and company made another night sleeping under trees even less appealing than it had been already, so Kitty gave Cassadee her politest smile and said, “All right. If you don’t mind sharing your food, I’d be happy to join you. I don’t have much of a story, though.”
Cassadee gave her a quick grin. “Oh,” she said, “I don’t believe that for a second.” She reached out to grab Kitty’s hand and pulled her into the orange circle of light cast by the camp’s fires.
They deftly avoided the loud, boisterous circles of men as Cassadee dragged Kitty to a small fire, around which sat half a dozen women. They looked up at Kitty and Cassadee’s arrival, and the oldest one, a tough-looking woman with wispy gray hair, said, “I see you brought a guest.”
Whether the woman was pleased or displeased, her tone gave nothing away, and Kitty fought the urge to pull her hand out of Cassadee’s and run. It wouldn’t do her any good now, anyway. “My name is Kitty,” she said.
“What are you following us for, Kitty?” asked the gray-haired woman archly.
Before Kitty could answer, Cassadee rolled her eyes and stepped forward. “For pity’s sake, Patti, she’s not a brigand! She’s just lost and looking for town so she can get a job.”
Patti looked at Kitty appraisingly, and something she saw made the expression in her eyes soften. “Well, then,” she said. “I suppose you’d better sit.”
So she sat. The other women introduced themselves one by one: Patti, the gray-haired one, was clearly their leader, judging by the way the others deferred to her; Jenny was big-eyed, with a toothy smile and a jumpy manner; Tanya was wild-haired and serene-faced; Norah was solemn and quiet; Thao had a frank smile and a mobile face, and her hands moved as she talked; Swati was unsmiling and looked profoundly unimpressed. They were from different places, no two of them were the same age, but they all talked with the confidence of women profoundly at home in themselves, who knew what was going on and what they wanted.
Kitty told them her story, with some of the more damning parts left out. She told them about her family, about being sent to live in the nunnery as a girl, about deciding that she wasn’t meant to live between the walls of a cloister. When she was done, Patti settled back in her seat and stared. “Doesn’t sound to me like you’d do well in a town,” she said. “Only work there is maid’s work.”
Kitty privately agreed, but she said, “I can do maid’s work.”
“Can you?” asked Swati skeptically.
She nodded. “I can cook a little, and I’m good at sewing—all kinds—and I can clean just about anything.” Being a merchant’s daughter in a nunnery for the young ladies of the nobility wasn’t good for much, but it did teach you a lot about mending and embroidery and peeling potatoes.
Patti rested her elbow on her knee and her chin in her hand and looked thoughtfully at Kitty. “Hmm.”
“Well?” asked Cassadee expectantly.
Patti frowned. “Well what?”
“Can’t we take her on? At least until we hit Kor?”
Kitty felt protests bubble in her throat. She hadn’t come to them to beg for a job, she’d only come because Cassadee had invited her, and besides, she wasn’t at all sure she wanted to be a…whatever it was Patti and the other women were. Camp followers for an army of some kind, with who knows what kind of duties?
“I don’t do the hiring,” said Patti.
“Oh, come on,” Cassadee said, rolling her eyes. “Morrissey doesn’t bother himself with us, so long as his laundry gets done. Everyone knows that.”
“Wait,” Kitty objected. “I don’t need—well, I mean, I do need a job, but that doesn’t mean I’m asking you for one.”
Jenny twitched her shoulder in an amused little shrug and asked, “You think you can get a better one somewhere else?”
“I don’t even know what you do,” Kitty said honestly.
Patti sighed loudly. “Girls today. All right, Kitty, I’ll tell you what the job is, and if you want it, I’ll see what I can do. That sound fair?”
Kitty nodded cautiously.
“The men here? They’re soldiers for hire. They do a little bit of fighting on the frontier, but mostly, rich merchants and folk like that hire them as guards. Now, even the toughest soldiers got to eat and change their clothes every now and then, and that’s what they pay us for—cook them meals, do the washing, and if someone gets hurt, we do a bit of nursing. I know what folks think, but whoring ain’t part of the job unless you want it to be. Any of the men gives one of us any trouble, you come to me and I sort ‘em out, or you go to them.”
She jerked a thumb over to a nearby campfire, and Kitty craned her neck to make out the shadowed figures sitting around it. There were four of them, one tall and skinny, one shorter and broad, and two shorter still and of middling build. “Who?” she asked. “The big ones?”
Thao snorted, and the rest of the women smiled. “You could do that,” Norah said. “They’re kind enough, even if they hardly ever make sense. But no, we usually go to the women there. Lindsey and Jessicka.”
Kitty felt a jolt of something in her chest and peered more closely at the smaller figures around the fire. If she narrowed her eyes enough, she thought she could make out dark hair and the faintest suggestions of curves. “Who….?”
“Not a peep out of you,” said Patti sternly. “It’s an odd thing, nobody’ll deny it, but those two fight just like the men do. Get paid for it, too. And they don’t think much of any of the men around here pushing themselves on us. Hard to even think of the shit they must have taken over the years, but they’re a blessing for us, so I won’t hear a word said against them around this fire.”
“I wouldn’t….” Kitty could barely find the air to breathe. Women warriors. Professionals. She could never have even dreamed of such a thing at the Order, but there they were, not a stone’s throw away, sitting around a fire and laughing with the men. If they could do it, surely she could—well, that was stupid. She didn’t know the first thing about fighting, not really—a little luck did not a warrior make. But maybe, if they were willing to teach her…. “I’ll take it.”
“You’ll take what?” Patti asked.
“The job. If you’re offering it to me.”
“You don’t even want to know what it pays?” Jenny’s eyebrows were almost at her hairline, she’d raised them so much, but the tilt to her lips still looked amused.
“Any money’s better than no money, right?”
“That’s true enough,” said Patti wryly. “All right, girl. I’ll give you a go. You got a bedroll?”
“No,” said Kitty. And then, because there was no reason in the world not to be polite to a woman who had just given her a job, she added, “No, ma’am.”
Patti smiled briefly before frowning again. “And no money, either. Hmm. Can’t have you just lying on the ground.” She chewed on her lower lip for a moment before saying to Cassadee, “You brought her here—she can bunk with you for the night. Tomorrow I’ll see about getting her some gear.” Turning again to Kitty, she asked, “You got anything you can trade? I can get you a good deal, but it won’t cost nothing, and you’re better off not being indebted to anyone.”
Kitty wracked her brains for a moment—the cloak wasn’t worth anything, and besides, she needed it; same with her knife; and who’d want an old nun’s habit? But then it hit her, and she reached into her dress to pull out the silver charm of the Giver’s Path that hung around her neck. “Here,” she said, pulling it over her head to hand it to Patti.
Patti took one look at it before shoving it back at Kitty, putting her hand around Kitty’s to wrap her fingers around the charm. “No. No, girl, you hold onto that. You never know what you’ll run into out here.”
“What, you mean like fairies or werewolves?” Kitty laughed without really meaning to. “I don’t believe in those stories.”
“What do you mean you don’t believe in them?” Swati asked with narrowed eyes. “What’s to believe or not?”
“Well….” Kitty paused. “They’re all in Fairyland now, aren’t they? And I thought they’d mostly died out, anyway.” Something niggling pulled at her memory for a moment, but she brushed it aside. How many times had the Sisters told her that superstitions were a weakness? And now certainly wasn’t a time to be weak.
Swati snorted. “Died out. Well, you’re not long for this world, Sister.” She brushed past Kitty, out of the circle of women and over to a fire surrounded by a handful of drunken men, singing loudly and out of tune.
Baffled, Kitty looked questioningly at Patti.
Patti’s expression was stern, the lines around her mouth pronounced and her brows drawn together. “She’s in a pissy mood, no doubt about it,” she said, “but she’s right to warn you. I’m not saying we run into fairies or centaurs or the like every day---I know plenty of folks who’ve gone their whole lives without seeing one—but especially when the work takes us near the border….” She closed her eyes briefly, and a slight tremor seemed to shake her. “Better safe than sorry, is all I say.”
The other women murmured in agreement.
Kitty assented meekly, too tired to argue and not at all sure she wanted to, anyway. Cassadee led her to a little tent not too far from the fire, bidding farewell and goodnight to the other women as she did.
“Sorry I don’t have an extra bedroll,” she said, tossing Kitty a blanket.
“That’s all right,” said Kitty wearily. “It’ll still be better than anyplace I’ve slept in a while.”
Cassadee flashed her a quick grin. “You’ll like it here, I know you will,” she said. “I could tell the second I looked at you that you were our sort.”
Kitty spread the blanket on the ground and looked at Cassadee. “Your sort?” She wasn’t sure she could see much of a similarity.
“Our sort,” Cassadee said firmly. “You know. The sort who don’t sit around at home and marry the first boy we fuck. The kind who like a bit of adventure.” She settled down on her bedroll and looked up at Kitty. “Girls like us. You know.” She said ‘us’ like an intimate secret between herself and Kitty, and even in the dark, her teeth shone white in her broad smile.
Kitty felt herself flushing. She’d never really felt like anyone’s sort before, but the way Cassadee said it, warm and inviting, she thought maybe she could be Cassadee’s kind of girl.
In the morning, Patti brought her a patched little tent, an old soft bedroll, and a handful of copper discs. “Here,” she said. “Bit of advance pay—just be sure you earn it.”
And she did. Oh, did she. There were something like sixty men (plus Lindsey and Jessicka, she reminded herself) in the little army, and all of them were terribly hard on their clothing. The men took care of their own gear, for the most part, but the cart horses and their gear was the women’s province, along with the gear of the army’s boss, Morrissey. And cooking enough food, literally, to feed an army, was a lot more work when you didn’t have a kitchen or a stone-fisted booming-voiced nun whose job was to spend the day overseeing the cooking.
Kitty lost track of how far they traveled—they were already well past the point where she could recognize her surroundings, and she’d never spent so much time riding in a wagon that she could calculate how far it could take her in a day. “Where are we going?” she asked Cassadee when they paused briefly to water the horses.
“Kor,” she said. “With spring coming, the merchants’ll be gathering there, getting ready to take their stuff to Par or Briopia or Kolfa. They’re the sort who’re usually looking for guards.”
“Kor,” Kitty breathed to herself. Her father had been there many times; she’d used to sit on his lap when she was a little girl and beg him for a present from the big city and a story about the people and places he’d seen. Those days were long behind her, but the yearning to see the city for herself one day wasn’t.
Cassadee caught her whisper and laughed. “I was just like you, last year,” she said. “Never seen the city. Well, not that one, anyway.”
“And how was it?”
Cassadee paused to think about it. “Big,” she said. “More people than you can even imagine! Other than that….” She shrugged. “Of course, we didn’t go to any of the nice parts, the Opor palace or the Gardens or any of that. But the part I saw was just like any town you go to, but with more people and bigger buildings.”
What a dissatisfying answer. Kitty sighed in disappointment and directed her attention back to Tanya, who was driving the cart. It didn’t look too difficult, and Kitty thought that she herself could try her hand at it with a little practice.
The day stretched on in monotony and soreness and pricked fingers—though Kitty had done a lot of sewing in the Order, she’d never had to do it while sitting on a moving cart. Still, though, it was a thousand times better than the Order. There was no silence here, no piously averted eyes and primly stern faces. Everyone laughed and shouted and farted and talked as loudly as they liked, the women and the men, and though a few of the women seemed to be a bit dubious of Kitty still, and a few men had given her unpleasant leers as they passed her their torn clothing, Cassadee and Tanya, whose cart Kitty had been sharing all day, were nothing but friendly and warm.
They stuck to the main road. It was hard to tell whether the road was straight or not, because at various points the dark smudge of woods to the east seemed miles away, only to seem ready to grow out onto the road a few hours later. A number of the men, and Tanya as well, made the sign of the Giver’s Path over their hearts whenever the woods grew close. When Kitty asked Cassadee about it, the girl grimaced and said, “Folks say that a long time ago—before there even was a Fairyland, back when they just walked around among normal folk—a lot of them lived in these woods. They’re all in Fairyland now, of course but still….” She gave Kitty a smile tinged with embarrassment and nerves. “I’ll be glad when the road swings east.”
Kitty took a look at the woods, looming darkly only a stone’s throw from the road, and said without even thinking about it, “The East Fork’ll take us to Kor more quickly—we should hit in just a couple of miles.”
“More quickly?” said Tanya with a sharp look. “How do you figure?”
Kitty didn’t even know why she was talking. What in Giver’s Goodness did she know about roads, anyway? Nothing more than anyone who’d ever looked at a map, and probably a lot less than every man and woman here. But something half-remembered struck her, and she said, “A Queen’s Messenger brought courtesies to the Order a few months back. He said the West Road was under repairs. Something about flooding in the autumn carrying stones from the road away.”
Tanya raised an eyebrow. “Where?”
Kitty cast her mind back and closed her eyes, trying to remember the skinny messenger with the wild hair and the too-tight clothing. Where had he said he had ridden from? “Around Ridgemont?”
“You don’t say,” said Tanya with a frown. “And us wintering in Briopia….” She jerked her head in Cassadee’s direction. “Cass. We picked up a few Southern fellows a month or so back, right? D’you remember which ones they were?”
“Sure,” said Cassadee, looking a bit surprised. Kitty couldn’t blame her; Tanya’s tone had picked up a wholly unexpected note of urgency.
“Well, go and find them, girl! See if Kitty here’s right about the road down south being damaged.” Tanya turned her head to Kitty and said, “Those merchants won’t wait for us—if they’ve all found guards before we even get there, we’re shit out of luck.”
Kitty had never imagined that camp followers could have that much influence on which road a roving band of mercenaries took, so she was as surprised as she was strangely flattered that, when the East Fork appeared in the road, they took it. On the other hand, this particular band didn’t seem to have a particularly good sense of direction, and if Tanya had convinced Patti, Kitty could easily see Patti convincing anyone to go her way.
Night fell rapidly that evening, the sky fading from red to black in what felt like a matter of only a few minutes. They pitched camp in a surprisingly efficient fashion for such a ragtag band—well, all except for Kitty, who needed help from Cassadee and Thao to set up her tent. Neither of them gave her grief about it, but Kitty was embarrassed nonetheless, and vowed to master the art of pitching tents as quickly as possible.
Supper that evening was less awkward, now that Kitty was no longer a stranger. Even Swati had to admit that she had pulled her weight, for a newcomer, and Jenny and Norah both complimented her on suggesting the route change. (As it happened, their Southern recruits, while not exactly the most observant young men, had confirmed that the roads south of Ridgemont were under repair.)
After supper, they had gone around the fire and sung. Kitty didn’t know most of their songs, but she could work out the choruses easily enough, and the feeling of shouting out the last line of “Jack the Baker” with the other women made her heart quiver with more than the vibrations of her voice. She was someone’s sort, now. She was part of something.
She slept well that night.
Part 3
Kitty opened her eyes. Light was filtering through the leafy roof of her lean-to. She was warm, but stiff from sleeping curled under her small roof, and she slid out from under it to stand up and stretch.
It looked like a bright, clear morning. A bit cold, but least the wind wasn’t blowing. She must have been exhausted the previous night, because dawn had obviously passed her by hours before. A pity, since her goal for the day was to find her way back to the Queen’s Road and maybe, if the Giver’s luck was with her, to make it to some kind of village or town before nightfall. It would probably be a long walk, so she had no time to waste.
She sighed and gathered her few possessions from the lean-to before pausing to look at it one last time. It was built against a thick tree. The tree was dark with age and moss and close enough to a thin tree with pale, papery bark that their roots intertwined. Kitty tried to impress the image upon her mind, in case she found herself in need of shelter again in the near future. The little make-shift shack had served her well—she couldn’t remember the last time she’d had a night of sleep so deep and satisfying.
It didn’t take long to find the little overgrown side road again—even without a path, in the daylight, it was easy enough to see where the forest ended, and the smudge of hedges and trees lining the road was visible from a long way away. Kitty knelt by the stream to fill her waterskin one more time when she heard, of all things, voices, coming from the side road.
“Fuck a duck,” a man’s voice said. “Where are we?”
“This is the last time I listen to your directions,” another man said. “Well fucking done, Brett. You can explain to Morrissey why we’ve gotten the caravan lost again.”
“Piss on that,” said a third man. “I can see the main road from here—we’ll just cut across that field.”
Kitty’s first instinct was to shout out to them, to tell them she was here. Having gone for days without seeing another human soul, she longed just to talk to someone. But the noise of horses’ hooves and weapons clanking brought her back to her senses. This wasn’t just a party of farmers on their way to market, this sounded like an army. Maybe not even the Queen’s. Some of the men had Eastern accents; for all she knew, they could be a band of brigands. Even if they weren’t, it would probably be a stupid mistake to reveal herself to who-knows-what kind of strange men. No, what she had to do was to follow them—surely they weren’t just wandering around aimlessly. They were obviously on their way to somewhere, and wherever it was, it probably had people, maybe people who could offer Kitty a job or a place to sleep.
Quietly, she stood and drew nearer to the road. At first, she took care with each step to be as silent as possible, but the men were chatting and shouting at each other so loudly that it seemed pointless to worry about being heard over them.
They were a strange bunch. Some of them spoke the same way as the peasants who farmed around the Order; some had Eastern or Southern accents; some spoke in unfamiliar tongues. The ones near the front were loud and free in their speech, but as Kitty, who walked quite slowly compared with the horsemen, fell behind, the men near the middle spoke more rarely and when they did, they seemed more restrained and respectful. Near the very back rode a small knot of women in a wagon, commenting on the narrowness of the road and wondering aloud if the caravan was headed in the right direction. Kitty was surprised at that. She’d certainly never heard that the Queen’s Army took women, and knowing Mother Phyllis, if women actually could enlist in the Army, she probably would have heard a dozen dull sermons about it. Perhaps brigands accepted women among their ranks, although Kitty couldn’t imagine what woman would ever ride with the kind of brigands who had attacked the Order. Not one with any self-respect, that was certain.
Despite their horses, the party’s pace wasn’t so quick that Kitty couldn’t keep them in view or hearing range. Her stomach growled so loud, she was afraid that they would hear it, but nobody seemed to notice her as she trailed them across the plains. At least she had a full waterskin today, and somehow, even though she wasn’t a part of their little army, just being around people made her feel less lonely, more whole. Perhaps she wasn’t as suited to a life of lone adventuring as she had thought.
Night saw the band of brigands or mercenaries or soldiers, whoever they might be, settled by a little creek, its quick waters already pushing aside the ice of winter and flowing loudly over the rocks. Kitty envied them their tents and fires as the sun went down. Most of all, she envied their food. She hoped they reached a town soon.
Settling down behind a tree, she gathered her cloak around her and tried not to think about hot food, pies fresh from the oven and pots of bubbling stew. It was quite difficult, with the sounds of laughing and eating going on in the camp behind her.
“Hey.”
The voice, a young and female one, sounded far too close to Kitty—too close for her to move away without being noticed. She huddled in on herself, trying to make sure all of her was hidden by the tree.
“Hey, you. Behind the tree.”
Kitty’s breath caught in her throat.
“Don’t worry—I’m not going to hurt you.” The voice sounded amused. “I just thought, since you’ve been following us all day, maybe you’d like to introduce yourself.” There was another long pause before the voice added, “I’m Cassadee.”
Kitty let herself be afraid for a moment before mentally shaking herself. What kind of woman would let herself be scared of a friendly young girl? The kind who hid herself away in a nunnery so as not to have to deal with anyone but the prim and well-born and religious, and Kitty wasn’t that kind of woman. She stood up, her joints stiff with cold, and turned to face the other woman. “I’m Kitty.”
“Nice to meet you, Kitty,” said Cassadee with a smile. She was dark-haired and freckled with cheerful features—not at all intimidating, really. “Where are you headed?”
Kitty shrugged. “Nowhere in particular,” she said honestly. “I’d like to get to a town or village to find a job, though.”
Cassadee made a noise with pursed lips that sounded like “mmhmm,” nodding as if she knew Kitty’s plans better than Kitty herself did. “Got any money?”
Unfortunately, the Order of Order didn’t really believe in paying for things, and they really didn’t believe in letting the sisters on the lower rung of the hierarchy do any of the little purchasing they did. “A few coins,” said Kitty, thinking of the handful of silver pieces she’d managed to save in the pouch stuffed in the waist of her underskirt. “Not much.”
Cassadee nodded knowingly again. “Got any food?”
Kitty’s stomach growled in response, and Cassadee’s smile grew.
“Guess that answers that question,” she said. “Well, that tears it. Come on, Kitty. I’ll trade you—you tell me your story, I get Patti to serve you up some bread and butter and soup.”
“Wait,” said Kitty, torn between an overwhelming desire to eat a decent meal for once and wariness about joining a group of strangers. “They won’t mind? I mean—who--”
“Eh,” Cassadee said dismissively with a shrug, “if you’re just staying for the night, Morrissey doesn’t need to hear about it, and if you’re staying longer, well, we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.”
That didn’t exactly reassure Kitty, or explain who this group of armed men and their little cluster of women were, but the prospect of warmth and food and company made another night sleeping under trees even less appealing than it had been already, so Kitty gave Cassadee her politest smile and said, “All right. If you don’t mind sharing your food, I’d be happy to join you. I don’t have much of a story, though.”
Cassadee gave her a quick grin. “Oh,” she said, “I don’t believe that for a second.” She reached out to grab Kitty’s hand and pulled her into the orange circle of light cast by the camp’s fires.
They deftly avoided the loud, boisterous circles of men as Cassadee dragged Kitty to a small fire, around which sat half a dozen women. They looked up at Kitty and Cassadee’s arrival, and the oldest one, a tough-looking woman with wispy gray hair, said, “I see you brought a guest.”
Whether the woman was pleased or displeased, her tone gave nothing away, and Kitty fought the urge to pull her hand out of Cassadee’s and run. It wouldn’t do her any good now, anyway. “My name is Kitty,” she said.
“What are you following us for, Kitty?” asked the gray-haired woman archly.
Before Kitty could answer, Cassadee rolled her eyes and stepped forward. “For pity’s sake, Patti, she’s not a brigand! She’s just lost and looking for town so she can get a job.”
Patti looked at Kitty appraisingly, and something she saw made the expression in her eyes soften. “Well, then,” she said. “I suppose you’d better sit.”
So she sat. The other women introduced themselves one by one: Patti, the gray-haired one, was clearly their leader, judging by the way the others deferred to her; Jenny was big-eyed, with a toothy smile and a jumpy manner; Tanya was wild-haired and serene-faced; Norah was solemn and quiet; Thao had a frank smile and a mobile face, and her hands moved as she talked; Swati was unsmiling and looked profoundly unimpressed. They were from different places, no two of them were the same age, but they all talked with the confidence of women profoundly at home in themselves, who knew what was going on and what they wanted.
Kitty told them her story, with some of the more damning parts left out. She told them about her family, about being sent to live in the nunnery as a girl, about deciding that she wasn’t meant to live between the walls of a cloister. When she was done, Patti settled back in her seat and stared. “Doesn’t sound to me like you’d do well in a town,” she said. “Only work there is maid’s work.”
Kitty privately agreed, but she said, “I can do maid’s work.”
“Can you?” asked Swati skeptically.
She nodded. “I can cook a little, and I’m good at sewing—all kinds—and I can clean just about anything.” Being a merchant’s daughter in a nunnery for the young ladies of the nobility wasn’t good for much, but it did teach you a lot about mending and embroidery and peeling potatoes.
Patti rested her elbow on her knee and her chin in her hand and looked thoughtfully at Kitty. “Hmm.”
“Well?” asked Cassadee expectantly.
Patti frowned. “Well what?”
“Can’t we take her on? At least until we hit Kor?”
Kitty felt protests bubble in her throat. She hadn’t come to them to beg for a job, she’d only come because Cassadee had invited her, and besides, she wasn’t at all sure she wanted to be a…whatever it was Patti and the other women were. Camp followers for an army of some kind, with who knows what kind of duties?
“I don’t do the hiring,” said Patti.
“Oh, come on,” Cassadee said, rolling her eyes. “Morrissey doesn’t bother himself with us, so long as his laundry gets done. Everyone knows that.”
“Wait,” Kitty objected. “I don’t need—well, I mean, I do need a job, but that doesn’t mean I’m asking you for one.”
Jenny twitched her shoulder in an amused little shrug and asked, “You think you can get a better one somewhere else?”
“I don’t even know what you do,” Kitty said honestly.
Patti sighed loudly. “Girls today. All right, Kitty, I’ll tell you what the job is, and if you want it, I’ll see what I can do. That sound fair?”
Kitty nodded cautiously.
“The men here? They’re soldiers for hire. They do a little bit of fighting on the frontier, but mostly, rich merchants and folk like that hire them as guards. Now, even the toughest soldiers got to eat and change their clothes every now and then, and that’s what they pay us for—cook them meals, do the washing, and if someone gets hurt, we do a bit of nursing. I know what folks think, but whoring ain’t part of the job unless you want it to be. Any of the men gives one of us any trouble, you come to me and I sort ‘em out, or you go to them.”
She jerked a thumb over to a nearby campfire, and Kitty craned her neck to make out the shadowed figures sitting around it. There were four of them, one tall and skinny, one shorter and broad, and two shorter still and of middling build. “Who?” she asked. “The big ones?”
Thao snorted, and the rest of the women smiled. “You could do that,” Norah said. “They’re kind enough, even if they hardly ever make sense. But no, we usually go to the women there. Lindsey and Jessicka.”
Kitty felt a jolt of something in her chest and peered more closely at the smaller figures around the fire. If she narrowed her eyes enough, she thought she could make out dark hair and the faintest suggestions of curves. “Who….?”
“Not a peep out of you,” said Patti sternly. “It’s an odd thing, nobody’ll deny it, but those two fight just like the men do. Get paid for it, too. And they don’t think much of any of the men around here pushing themselves on us. Hard to even think of the shit they must have taken over the years, but they’re a blessing for us, so I won’t hear a word said against them around this fire.”
“I wouldn’t….” Kitty could barely find the air to breathe. Women warriors. Professionals. She could never have even dreamed of such a thing at the Order, but there they were, not a stone’s throw away, sitting around a fire and laughing with the men. If they could do it, surely she could—well, that was stupid. She didn’t know the first thing about fighting, not really—a little luck did not a warrior make. But maybe, if they were willing to teach her…. “I’ll take it.”
“You’ll take what?” Patti asked.
“The job. If you’re offering it to me.”
“You don’t even want to know what it pays?” Jenny’s eyebrows were almost at her hairline, she’d raised them so much, but the tilt to her lips still looked amused.
“Any money’s better than no money, right?”
“That’s true enough,” said Patti wryly. “All right, girl. I’ll give you a go. You got a bedroll?”
“No,” said Kitty. And then, because there was no reason in the world not to be polite to a woman who had just given her a job, she added, “No, ma’am.”
Patti smiled briefly before frowning again. “And no money, either. Hmm. Can’t have you just lying on the ground.” She chewed on her lower lip for a moment before saying to Cassadee, “You brought her here—she can bunk with you for the night. Tomorrow I’ll see about getting her some gear.” Turning again to Kitty, she asked, “You got anything you can trade? I can get you a good deal, but it won’t cost nothing, and you’re better off not being indebted to anyone.”
Kitty wracked her brains for a moment—the cloak wasn’t worth anything, and besides, she needed it; same with her knife; and who’d want an old nun’s habit? But then it hit her, and she reached into her dress to pull out the silver charm of the Giver’s Path that hung around her neck. “Here,” she said, pulling it over her head to hand it to Patti.
Patti took one look at it before shoving it back at Kitty, putting her hand around Kitty’s to wrap her fingers around the charm. “No. No, girl, you hold onto that. You never know what you’ll run into out here.”
“What, you mean like fairies or werewolves?” Kitty laughed without really meaning to. “I don’t believe in those stories.”
“What do you mean you don’t believe in them?” Swati asked with narrowed eyes. “What’s to believe or not?”
“Well….” Kitty paused. “They’re all in Fairyland now, aren’t they? And I thought they’d mostly died out, anyway.” Something niggling pulled at her memory for a moment, but she brushed it aside. How many times had the Sisters told her that superstitions were a weakness? And now certainly wasn’t a time to be weak.
Swati snorted. “Died out. Well, you’re not long for this world, Sister.” She brushed past Kitty, out of the circle of women and over to a fire surrounded by a handful of drunken men, singing loudly and out of tune.
Baffled, Kitty looked questioningly at Patti.
Patti’s expression was stern, the lines around her mouth pronounced and her brows drawn together. “She’s in a pissy mood, no doubt about it,” she said, “but she’s right to warn you. I’m not saying we run into fairies or centaurs or the like every day---I know plenty of folks who’ve gone their whole lives without seeing one—but especially when the work takes us near the border….” She closed her eyes briefly, and a slight tremor seemed to shake her. “Better safe than sorry, is all I say.”
The other women murmured in agreement.
Kitty assented meekly, too tired to argue and not at all sure she wanted to, anyway. Cassadee led her to a little tent not too far from the fire, bidding farewell and goodnight to the other women as she did.
“Sorry I don’t have an extra bedroll,” she said, tossing Kitty a blanket.
“That’s all right,” said Kitty wearily. “It’ll still be better than anyplace I’ve slept in a while.”
Cassadee flashed her a quick grin. “You’ll like it here, I know you will,” she said. “I could tell the second I looked at you that you were our sort.”
Kitty spread the blanket on the ground and looked at Cassadee. “Your sort?” She wasn’t sure she could see much of a similarity.
“Our sort,” Cassadee said firmly. “You know. The sort who don’t sit around at home and marry the first boy we fuck. The kind who like a bit of adventure.” She settled down on her bedroll and looked up at Kitty. “Girls like us. You know.” She said ‘us’ like an intimate secret between herself and Kitty, and even in the dark, her teeth shone white in her broad smile.
Kitty felt herself flushing. She’d never really felt like anyone’s sort before, but the way Cassadee said it, warm and inviting, she thought maybe she could be Cassadee’s kind of girl.
In the morning, Patti brought her a patched little tent, an old soft bedroll, and a handful of copper discs. “Here,” she said. “Bit of advance pay—just be sure you earn it.”
And she did. Oh, did she. There were something like sixty men (plus Lindsey and Jessicka, she reminded herself) in the little army, and all of them were terribly hard on their clothing. The men took care of their own gear, for the most part, but the cart horses and their gear was the women’s province, along with the gear of the army’s boss, Morrissey. And cooking enough food, literally, to feed an army, was a lot more work when you didn’t have a kitchen or a stone-fisted booming-voiced nun whose job was to spend the day overseeing the cooking.
Kitty lost track of how far they traveled—they were already well past the point where she could recognize her surroundings, and she’d never spent so much time riding in a wagon that she could calculate how far it could take her in a day. “Where are we going?” she asked Cassadee when they paused briefly to water the horses.
“Kor,” she said. “With spring coming, the merchants’ll be gathering there, getting ready to take their stuff to Par or Briopia or Kolfa. They’re the sort who’re usually looking for guards.”
“Kor,” Kitty breathed to herself. Her father had been there many times; she’d used to sit on his lap when she was a little girl and beg him for a present from the big city and a story about the people and places he’d seen. Those days were long behind her, but the yearning to see the city for herself one day wasn’t.
Cassadee caught her whisper and laughed. “I was just like you, last year,” she said. “Never seen the city. Well, not that one, anyway.”
“And how was it?”
Cassadee paused to think about it. “Big,” she said. “More people than you can even imagine! Other than that….” She shrugged. “Of course, we didn’t go to any of the nice parts, the Opor palace or the Gardens or any of that. But the part I saw was just like any town you go to, but with more people and bigger buildings.”
What a dissatisfying answer. Kitty sighed in disappointment and directed her attention back to Tanya, who was driving the cart. It didn’t look too difficult, and Kitty thought that she herself could try her hand at it with a little practice.
The day stretched on in monotony and soreness and pricked fingers—though Kitty had done a lot of sewing in the Order, she’d never had to do it while sitting on a moving cart. Still, though, it was a thousand times better than the Order. There was no silence here, no piously averted eyes and primly stern faces. Everyone laughed and shouted and farted and talked as loudly as they liked, the women and the men, and though a few of the women seemed to be a bit dubious of Kitty still, and a few men had given her unpleasant leers as they passed her their torn clothing, Cassadee and Tanya, whose cart Kitty had been sharing all day, were nothing but friendly and warm.
They stuck to the main road. It was hard to tell whether the road was straight or not, because at various points the dark smudge of woods to the east seemed miles away, only to seem ready to grow out onto the road a few hours later. A number of the men, and Tanya as well, made the sign of the Giver’s Path over their hearts whenever the woods grew close. When Kitty asked Cassadee about it, the girl grimaced and said, “Folks say that a long time ago—before there even was a Fairyland, back when they just walked around among normal folk—a lot of them lived in these woods. They’re all in Fairyland now, of course but still….” She gave Kitty a smile tinged with embarrassment and nerves. “I’ll be glad when the road swings east.”
Kitty took a look at the woods, looming darkly only a stone’s throw from the road, and said without even thinking about it, “The East Fork’ll take us to Kor more quickly—we should hit in just a couple of miles.”
“More quickly?” said Tanya with a sharp look. “How do you figure?”
Kitty didn’t even know why she was talking. What in Giver’s Goodness did she know about roads, anyway? Nothing more than anyone who’d ever looked at a map, and probably a lot less than every man and woman here. But something half-remembered struck her, and she said, “A Queen’s Messenger brought courtesies to the Order a few months back. He said the West Road was under repairs. Something about flooding in the autumn carrying stones from the road away.”
Tanya raised an eyebrow. “Where?”
Kitty cast her mind back and closed her eyes, trying to remember the skinny messenger with the wild hair and the too-tight clothing. Where had he said he had ridden from? “Around Ridgemont?”
“You don’t say,” said Tanya with a frown. “And us wintering in Briopia….” She jerked her head in Cassadee’s direction. “Cass. We picked up a few Southern fellows a month or so back, right? D’you remember which ones they were?”
“Sure,” said Cassadee, looking a bit surprised. Kitty couldn’t blame her; Tanya’s tone had picked up a wholly unexpected note of urgency.
“Well, go and find them, girl! See if Kitty here’s right about the road down south being damaged.” Tanya turned her head to Kitty and said, “Those merchants won’t wait for us—if they’ve all found guards before we even get there, we’re shit out of luck.”
Kitty had never imagined that camp followers could have that much influence on which road a roving band of mercenaries took, so she was as surprised as she was strangely flattered that, when the East Fork appeared in the road, they took it. On the other hand, this particular band didn’t seem to have a particularly good sense of direction, and if Tanya had convinced Patti, Kitty could easily see Patti convincing anyone to go her way.
Night fell rapidly that evening, the sky fading from red to black in what felt like a matter of only a few minutes. They pitched camp in a surprisingly efficient fashion for such a ragtag band—well, all except for Kitty, who needed help from Cassadee and Thao to set up her tent. Neither of them gave her grief about it, but Kitty was embarrassed nonetheless, and vowed to master the art of pitching tents as quickly as possible.
Supper that evening was less awkward, now that Kitty was no longer a stranger. Even Swati had to admit that she had pulled her weight, for a newcomer, and Jenny and Norah both complimented her on suggesting the route change. (As it happened, their Southern recruits, while not exactly the most observant young men, had confirmed that the roads south of Ridgemont were under repair.)
After supper, they had gone around the fire and sung. Kitty didn’t know most of their songs, but she could work out the choruses easily enough, and the feeling of shouting out the last line of “Jack the Baker” with the other women made her heart quiver with more than the vibrations of her voice. She was someone’s sort, now. She was part of something.
She slept well that night.
Part 3