“Now, you wanted to ask me something?” Batasil said, sitting across from us in the nest of pillows and silks. The incredible lace veil it wore pinned behind its ears draped over its shoulders as it leaned toward us.
Ledin put the tea cup aside and rested its hands on its knees. “A few towns back we picked up an orphan, ke Batasil. It Turned today.”
“Let me guess,” Batasil said. “Anadi.”
Ledin nodded, and Batasil’s ears drooped. “I’d hoped to be wrong….”
“But you knew we would hardly be coming to you about a Turning eperu,” Ledin said. “And had it Turned emodo, we would have left it here to await our return, and escorted it to a better town ourselves. But an anadi…” Ledin shook its head. “We can’t wait. She needs a place now. We were hoping you could take her back with you, make sure she was traded into a good House.”
“You cannot do this yourselves?” Batasil looked surprised. “You would trust me to do this?”
“We are heading to the northwest,” Ledin said.
“What’s northwest?”
“We don’t know. That’s why we’re going.”
Batasil blinked a few times, then laughed. “Oh, ke Ledin. You were always a risk-taker. Living on the edge of profitability. I think you like to be hungry!”
“We are eperu, ke Batasil. We can go hungry. Thodi cannot.” Ledin tapped its knees nervously. “We will not be back this way for half a year. Will you take her for us? Please, ke eperu.”
“Of course!” Batasil seemed surprised. “Do you even have to ask? I could no more leave an anadi to privation than I could allow a baby to suffer. I will make sure she is taken care of.”
“Thank you,” Ledin said, letting out a breath.
Batasil shook its head. “Nothing. It is nothing. Now go, enjoy my food and wine. Leave your troubles for the evening, and bring me the female tomorrow before you go.”
We left the wagon, but neither of us had the spirit for a party. The Trinity had made the eperu so that we needed no true sleep … but I wished for that brief oblivion that evening, if only to keep from wondering what would have happened had I become anadi on my final Turning at second puberty. Would I have comported myself as well as Thodi?
I counted stars, and thought not.
* * * *
In the morning, we escorted a sullen Thodi to Batasil’s caravan. Batasil stood waiting for us, more conservatively attired in only half the jewelry it had been wearing the evening before, the long-cloth at its hips a gauzy thing of lace and beads and gossamer. I did not doubt that this wealthy eperu, so accustomed to traveling through high circles, could find Thodi a home where she might sleep in a pile of shell if she so desired.
As Ledin and Batasil talked, I turned to Thodi. “Why don’t you leave us messages?” I asked.
“Messages?” Thodi said. She held her arms crossed at her chest.
“You know our trade route. If you want, you can have a courier keep news of you for us at one of the het.”
“Would that make you feel better?” Thodi asked, and I couldn’t decide whether she was bitter or honestly inquiring.
“I would like to hear from you,” I said. My ears canted back. “I will miss you, ba Thodi.”
“Ke Thodi, now,” she said. “I am an adult.” She lifted her chin. “Goodbye, Ekanoi.”
She turned from me and strode away, head still high.
I sought some sign that Thodi did not blame us for our actions, but she never looked back at me. When I swallowed, I was surprised to taste bitter tears. Furtively, I licked my fangs clean and waited for Ledin to finish talking with Batasil.
Ledin and I walked to our wagons, where the eperu were harnessing the beasts and making preparations for our grand venture.
“I’m sorry, Ekanoi.”
I glanced at Ledin. “It’s not your fault.”
“I know. But I grieve with you anyway. The life of an anadi is difficult to accept when you have been anything else. Even emodo have more freedom.”
I resisted the urge to look over my shoulder. “Did … did we do the right thing?”
“We did the necessary thing.” Ledin’s mouth nearly made a smile. “Whether that’s right or not … I don’t know.”
It left me for its wagon, and I went to mine: empty now of all of Thodi’s things. I sat on the driver’s bench and pressed my hand to my mouth to keep from weeping.
But the beasts wanted harnessing, and I still needed to snap the sails back to make shade against the morning sun. I did my chores and fell into line behind Ledin’s wagon as we made our way out of Het Ikoped and into the unknown.
* * * *
Het Ikoped presented the same face to us when we unhitched our wagons there in the early spring, but I saw something different in it anyway. I saw how small it was, this collection of brick and stone houses erected against a vast sky. I saw the broken road leading southeast from its edge as a paved walkway to civilization, and Jokka, and places crowded with the familiar.
I saw that we had changed, and the world had not, and that was good.
No exotic goods clustered our wagons. On our journey we’d discovered rocks and thin slopes, and on the horizon autumn copper and scarlet suggesting hills, perhaps even a forest. We hadn’t reached it before we ran out of supplies. We’d skinned the animals we’d eaten and saved their pelts, and we’d collected a few bundles of shiny rocks—nothing stunningly valuable, save to the eperu who’d seen their origins.
We would have done it again, even knowing we would have so little at its end.
I finished watering my pack animals and jogged to Ledin’s wagon.
“Well,” it said, standing on the bench and breathing in the familiar air. “Shall we see what grain prices are like today?”
I laughed. “We should be trying to purchase useful cargo, Ledin. Not spending shell on dreams. It’s time for prudence.”
Ledin sighed. “Prudence. What fun.”
“No, but necessary.”
It hopped down beside me. “Let’s go find a drink before we turn entirely to prudence, friend.”
I glanced around Het Ikoped again, thought of how small it was, and shook my head. “So tiny. Maybe a drink will make it seem big again.”
“Unlikely, but worth trying.”
I chuckled.
We walked toward the wayfarer’s house, talking quietly, intent only on ourselves—probably why the male almost knocked us over.
“Pardon me!” he said. “You are with the caravan, ke Ledin’s caravan?”
We glanced at one another. Ledin said, “I’m Ledin. May I help you, ke emodo?”
“Ah, yes. I have been waiting to discharge a message to your caravan’s members.” He opened a bag and withdrew a large package. “This is yours. Will you mark my token?”
Ledin rummaged in its pouch, and the two went through the transaction process.
“Thank you. Be well!”
We watched him go, and Ledin handed me the package: soft leather, dyed a dark blue. “What do you suppose?”
“I don’t know,” Ledin said. “But let’s go gather the others and find out.”
Ten minutes later, the eperu of the caravan crowded around our fire pit as Ledin opened the package. It withdrew a piece of parchment, bleached pale, so fabulously expensive as to draw gasps of astonishment from the others. Then three stone boxes, each three hands tall.
Ledin’s eyes widened. “Void and Brightness,” it whispered.
I looked. The paper’s surface gleamed, colored chalks fixed with a layer of gum. The vibrant rendering depicted an anadi … Thodi, her skin gleaming with soft tans and lavender, dark hair mussed over her face. She stood with her hips thrust back and her chest forward, one arm lifted above her head, and she was beautiful.
Ledin traced the words beneath the image, and read aloud for the eperu of the caravan who could not. “To Ledin and Ekanoi and all the eperu of the caravan. I told Batasil to give you everything. Please bring back something pretty from the wild for me. Thodi Pazaña-eperu, Het Makali.”
Ledin opened the first box and almost dropped it. I grabbed Ledin’s wrists to steady them, for I’d seen the gleam of the box’s contents. Shells, hundreds of them, each as large as my thumb. The second box held the same.
“Trinity!” one of the eperu said, holding the second box reverently. “How much money must Batasil have charged for Thodi’s contract?”
“Whatever it was, it must have been astronomical for this to be left after Batasil’s commission,” Ledin said.
“And she left it all to us,” I said softly.
Ledin gingerly set the first box on the ground and opened the final box. In it another piece of parchment rested atop a set of gleaming jewels. The parchment read: “This is for Ekanoi.”