Page 73 of Into the West

“I’m not sure,” the hertasi said. “But it will be somewhere safe and nearby, with plenty to eat.”

I really am getting awfully warm. I want lighter clothing now! The recollection of how warm it had been in the Red Forest provoked a sudden rush of unease.

The hertasi was unwinding himself from a tangle of scarves and coats. “You might want to take your warmer things off. We’re behind the Veil here, and we have a spell that is keeping the earth nice and cozy so the grass can grow, and none of you will need fires except for cooking. Fire is all very well, but I wouldn’t want it in one of those barges with me, especially not when I was asleep. You could so easily be trapped in there if something took flame!”

He has a point. They were terribly careful with fire, but all it took was a spark or an ember in the wrong place . . .

“Anyway, would you like to go back to your barge and sleep?” Jelavan continued. “It’s down and in place now. You look tired.” Jelavan hissed with his mouth open, which she had learned by this point was the hertasi equivalent of giggling one’s head off.

As she shifted her sheepskin coat in her arms, she had to admit that the gentle warmth, like a particularly nice spring day, was making her drowsy all over again. She wanted to look around, but the light was still dim, she was afraid she would get in the way of the Hawkbrothers and their helpers that were moving all the barges in to form an orderly arrangement, and she was feeling just a bit stupid with lack of sleep.

“I probably should,” she admitted reluctantly. Not even the sight of barges floating through the air, water still draining off from their time in the river, was able to compete with the thought of her bed—and how comfortable and cozy it was going to be, without the need to tend the fire in the stove.

“Your barges are right there at the start of that row,” Jelavan said, pointing with a claw at the rearmost rank. “I’m assigned to all of you in your group as your guide, so when you wake up again and have something to eat, just ask for me.” Somehow, Delia knew that the hertasi didn’t mean to ask someone; he meant, ask the air. If Jelavan was in earshot he’d hear, and appear.

“Gesten, Jelavan. Thank you very much,” she told the lizard with great sincerity, and stumbled through the knee-high grass to where the barges were, with Buttercup, Tight Squeeze, Dandylion, Manta, and the other horses from their string happily tearing up giant mouthfuls of the fresh, tender stuff. There were more towing animals tethered here as well. Evidently these Hawkbrothers were keeping the towing beasts with the barges they towed until someone told them what they wanted to do with the beasts.

The covers over the mage-lights in the ceiling of the barge had been slid back, except in the rear compartment where the bunks were. This time as she readied herself to go to sleep, she peeled off her clothing, wrapped up her smalls in the towel, and threw on her sleeping things before she climbed into her bunk. She fell asleep to the sound of one of the horses tearing up and chewing grass outside her window. Her open window, so she could get a fresh, warm, grass-scented breeze in her face.

She didn’t sleep for long—by the sun it was probably not quite mid-morning—but it had been one of the most refreshing passages of sleep she’d ever had. She’d forgotten what it was like to not feel the motion of the barge, and although there were people who liked the way the barges swayed, she didn’t. Especially not when she was just falling asleep, and someone in the barge would move and interrupt the rhythmic rocking.

Based on the balmy air caressing her, when she slid out of her bunk again (being very careful not to wake Alberdina) she put on much lighter clothing and left her coat behind. When she walked out onto the foredeck, there were barges as far as she could see. It was an astonishing sight. They had worked much faster than she had ever dreamed they could.

The barges had been neatly arranged in groups, with room for an outdoor kitchen in each group. Sai was already well into getting his kitchen set up—most especially the oven for his baking. She jumped down and hurried to help him.

“Ah, bless you, Delia,” he said, as she handed him a flat brick before he could reach for it. “Our mages are mostly helping the Hawkbrother mages moving barges. It’s going very well! I want my kitchen, though. I never feel quite right without my kitchen.”

“Where did you get the bricks?” she asked him, because these were not the kind of fire-bricks that had been loaded into the supply barges. These were a different color, and clearly had been used to make ovens before, by the scorch marks.

“Those little lizards brought them to me,” he said, and chortled. “Seems they’ve heard of my bread!”

“You see? I told you your bread was legendary,” Hakkon called out as he approached; it looked as if he must have been helping place barges himself, or doing some other manual work, because he was shirtless and there was a sheen of sweat over his muscles. He handed Sai a little woven grass bag, and Delia another. “I brought you two breakfasts. Your first breakfast, Delia. This will be Sai’s second.”

“I’ve been working hard, I deserve a second breakfast!” Sai replied. “I took my turn with the barges—glories! The amount of power that Heartstone feeds to a mage is enough to set your hair on fire! But now I want to get us properly settled so we can attend to the business of building a city with houses and gardens. The sooner that happens, the sooner we can start having lives again!”

Did we ever really have lives of our own with the threat of the Emperor looming over us all the time?

“I’m pretty certain everyone here agrees with you, Sai,” Hakkon replied. He opened his grass bag, and Delia and Sai opened theirs. Inside was what looked like a large bun, except it hadn’t been baked, and was a creamy white in color, with a shiny skin.

Sai sniffed at it approvingly. “Steamed buns! I’ve heard of those, never got the chance to try them!”

“Talk to the hertasi. They do all the cooking around here, and they’ll probably teach you. I’m told they live in tunnels under this place. The Hawkbrothers call it a ‘Vale,’ even though it isn’t in a valley. There’s a kind of shield over this entire area that keeps it nice; it keeps the winter out, at any rate. What falls as snow outside falls as rain in here when it passes the shield.” Hakkon bit into his bun and Delia saw there was some sort of reddish-brown filling inside it. She took a bite herself. It was a paste, a little sweet, very pleasant. “I’m going to miss that Veil when they go,” Hakkon continued.

“Hello, friends! And the Veil will remain for a while.” Jelavan trotted up to them, looking very dapper in an outfit of linen and leather that somehow suited him completely rather than making him look like a scaly pet that some child had stuffed into clothing. Good heavens, it’s designed for a hertasi and nothing else. “We want to make sure you have all the advantages you can while you settle here. Now, I’ve been sent to bring you to a meeting, Master Sai, and you two if you want to come as well. Otherwise, feel free to look around—”

“Oh, I’m here to move our horses,” Hakkon replied. “But Delia, you should go. Tell me everything you can when you get back! See you, Jelavan!”

The hertasi beamed his irresistibly cute grin and heartily waved to Hakkon, sighed happily, then made a welcoming gesture to the ground beside him. “Come, Lady Delia,” Jelavan said politely. “We don’t want to keep your elders waiting!”

So, although she hadn’t had any intention of being involved with this “meeting,” Delia found herself following the little lizard as he trotted toward a path among the trees. Every once in a while, soft thap-thap-thapping of hertasi feet would build up behind her and a hertasi would sprint by in a dead run. These hertasi are hilarious! They have three speeds—slow stroll, steady march, or sprint, and nothing in between!

I’m going to wake up at any moment and find myself back on the freezing river, while Kordas and his Council argue about whether we should push on or stay where we are. But while I’m dreaming—I’m going to enjoy this.

Never in a hundred thousand years would I have thought that I would be best friends with a lizard, Delia thought with bemusement, as she looked down at the top of Jelavan’s head. It was amazing and kind of funny how they had fallen into friendship, as if they had known each other all their lives. She’d never had a friend like this; Sai was a surrogate father, Briada was a mentor, Jonaton was an eccentric big brother, but none of them were just friends. Her sister? Well, Isla was old enough they hadn’t really had anything in common before she married Kordas, and afterward, that just put more distance between them. Jelavan was a friend who always seemed to know what was going on, and how to explain it to her. She’d been accustomed to servants of all sorts back in the Duchy, but Jelavan was too fun to think of as a servant; he didn’t come across as a dreary, duty-first type, he was a cheery, everything-gets-done type. Like her scouting team, come to think of it.

It was only two days until the Midwinter Festival. The Valdemarans had been overjoyed to discover the Hawkbrothers of k’Vesla celebrated Midwinter too, and both peoples were determined to celebrate it together. Kordas was in complete agreement. After all they had been through, they needed a celebration!

Delia and Jelavan had been assigned to work on decorations. So now they were busy putting up strings of inedible red berries, pine cones that had been bleached and somehow gilded, and beautiful stars, tervardi (beautiful creatures that were humanoid birds) and dyheli woven out of gilded grass. As mages moved along the paths and the tunnels underground, they left tiny mage-lights no bigger than a fireflies behind them. All of this was in their spare time, of course, but now that they were no longer on the move, there was more of that than there had been before.