Page 64 of Into the West

Delia’s jaw dropped. She didn’t know much about Mind-magic, but really, nobody did. In the eyes of the Empire, it was a very inferior set of Talents, so the Emperor had not even bothered with collecting people who possessed it. She had never, ever heard that there was any reliable way of triggering it.

“Can you do it with any other kind of Mind-magic?” she stammered.

Endars shrugged. “Never tried,” he admitted. “But when Kordas ordered that everyone with Mindspeech be identified, so when the Dolls leave us we’ll have a reliable form of talking across distances, I told the Healers that if they found people with the potential, I’d talk to them and find out if they wanted that potential to become a reality.”

“You didn’t just trigger them and put them on a list?” Briada asked incredulously. “That’s how the Emperor would have—” And then she stopped. “But we’re not the Empire, are we.”

“Exactly,” Endars said. “And may we never be. Something like this—something that needs careful training to use, something that they might not want in their lives—I’m giving people a choice. And I don’t do it unless we have someone who knows how to handle the Gift available to help them train.”

“And Kordas wants it to stay that way,” Sai added. “We spoke privately recently, and he spoke from his heart. He said he never wants anyone, as he put it, ‘used up, pushed out, or abandoned.’”

Briada glanced over at her cousin. He snickered.

“We’re the Fair Baron’s men now. Told you we weren’t playing by Imperial rules anymore,” he said smugly.

She shook her head. “Well, fuck me, we certainly aren’t.”

There were fat snowflakes in the air as Ivar appeared in the distance, coming from between two low hills. Delia’s heart sank, because it wasn’t even midmorning yet, and it was much too soon for him to be returning to the barges. What new horrible thing has he found that we need to deal with? was her first thought, as she signaled to Briada that she wanted to stop the baton drill and shaded her eyes with her hand, trying to see his face.

He doesn’t look worried.

In fact, he looks cheerful!

Surely he hadn’t found a place for them all to live out here? The landscape had not been promising: no sign of dwellings, or much of anything else. The rocks were twisted, when they came across outcroppings. Some were six barge-lengths tall, and all in layers that either formed skyward spirals, or had peeled off and smashed to bits. Some even stuck out of the river randomly. Furlong after furlong of scrub grass and brush fanned out in unexplained geometry behind the thin screening of trees lining the riverbank. Most of those were willows, but even they had odd colorations like sky-blue trunks or orange-spotted branches and roots. Enormous stacked fungi were hosts to what she hoped were only ant colonies. She was no expert, but despite the strangeness, and hopefully with a lack of toxins and monsters, this could be fine country for goats, possibly for sheep, and wintering. But without a mage to encourage grass growing it would not be good for cattle or horses, and at least to her eyes it didn’t look like good farmland, either.

“Amethyst,” Ivar said as soon as he was in range for easy talk. “Please tell Kordas and the rest that we’re going to have to consider whether or not we are going to stop for the winter now, and I think I have found a good place to do so.”

“It is done, Ivar,” Amethyst replied, and paused, shaking her head. Because the Doll was only cloth, stuffing, and fabric, there was nothing to melt the snowflakes that fell on her, and every so often she would shake her head vigorously to get them off her “hair.” “Kordas says to proceed to this place you have found, then report in practical detail. They will catch up. The lead of the convoy is less than a day behind us, because the convoy sections went through the forest so quickly.”

“I’ve found a good mooring spot that will hold all of the barges of the entire flotilla, if we stack them tightly with noses to the bank and build a heavy jetty just upstream. That many boats will cause noticeable drag on the current and nothing good will come of that, so a current-break would be vital or we’d be chasing down boats every day,” he said, and turned Manta around. He didn’t urge her into anything faster than a walk, however, and kept Manta shoulder to shoulder with Tight Squeeze, Buttercup, and Alberdina’s horse, Dandylion. “Sai!” he called, and Sai popped out of the door in the front of the lead barge.

“Did you find us another man-eating forest?” Sai asked. Delia shivered, and told herself that it was because of the cold. It wasn’t. Sai joked about something that could have taken her Kordas away.

“No, but I found a good place for all of us to moor up for the winter if Kordas wants to do that,” Ivar replied. “It’s the best I’ve found so far. It’s not ideal, but I think we can make it work.” Ivar turned his head a little sideways and looked up at the sky, which was gray from horizon to horizon. “In my opinion, we need to pick a spot, and soon.”

He wasn’t the only one with that opinion. Every morning for the last three, they’d had to break ice away from the barges before they left, and the lead barge—a fore-barge, to be more precise, because it was built to break the way for flatnosed barges with its pointed prow—now had a sharpened iron blade affixed to the prow to break through ice forming on the river. It wasn’t very sharp—you’d have had to work hard to cut yourself on it—but winter was definitely here, and it was only going to get colder and travel more difficult. They’d had it very easy, weather-wise, so far. It would not be a good idea to be moving during a blizzard.

“Well, we should make sure to get a good spot,” said Sai, and laughed. “Only the best spot for the Old Men!”

“The most comfortable place in the land, central to everywhere!” Endars chimed in.

“The Great Old Farts in their Fortress of Comfort!” Ivar added.

Delia surmised that what they would actually do was figure out how much of the bank would be taken up by all the barges in the entire convoy nestled side by side, moored to the bank, and stop only when they had passed that point. The barge with the rest of the Old Men would be in the lead of the convoy, so finally the Six Old Men would be reunited.

Well, Ivar will have us stop. He’s the one in charge of where and when we stop.

“Actually, I do have a good spot,” the scout told him, with half a smile. “There’s trees enough to cut the wind—trees as we know them, that is, despite having white bark—and a place that would make a good firepit, and even a spot for an earthen oven.”

“You just want something besides soup,” the old man chided, waggling a finger at him.

“Don’t you?” Ivar countered.

Sai didn’t answer, he just popped back into the barge where it was warm.

Wordlessly, Briada jerked her head at the door at the prow, and Delia nodded. She took both batons, and followed Briada inside.

It really was not too bad in here, with the soup filling the air with a pleasant herbal aroma—unfortunately, it smelled better than it tasted, but that was hardly Sai’s fault. He was doling out herbs and spices with great care, because once they were gone, there was no way to replace them. No one dared waste any.