DANCING AROUND

“I would kill for a long soak in a hot bath,” Karigan said the next morning over porridge. She had undone her braid for the first time in days and spent a good amount of time trying to work a comb through her hair, only to have to rebraid it again so it would fit neatly beneath Tam Ryder’s cap. She had caught Cade sneaking glances at her as she worked on it. He’d got that look on his face, the intense one.

“I’m not sure a scruffy servant boy like Tam Ryder is supposed to be the bathing type,” Cade replied.

“Hmph. Harley Dace could stand a good washing, too. And a shave.”

Cade fingered his beard growth. “Part of my disguise.”

She reached across the table and stroked his chin. “Prickly. It does kind of suit you.”

He opened his mouth as if to protest, then shut it. She chuckled. She was feeling much more herself. No blurred vision, no headache, no weakness, and she was fully awake. However, she still had to pretend sickness when they left the bunkhouse, she leaning against Cade, and he holding her closer than ever. He had stashed the satchel with her uniform in it in the secret compartment of the wagon soon after she woke up. She had fallen asleep right on top of it.

For the first time, Karigan felt well enough to sit up front with Cade on the bench while he drove the mules, Luke jogging ahead on Gallant, as usual. Raven signaled his disapproval of this change with whinnies. Luke rode back to check on the stallion, then urged Gallant up beside them.

“What’s wrong with him?” Karigan asked.

“At a guess, I’d say he’s jealous,” Luke replied.

“Jealous? Of what?”

“Cade, here.” Luke smiled and urged Gallant ahead.

Cade and Karigan exchanged glances, both hastily looking away.

There was no sign announcing they had entered the outer reaches of the Capital, except having to pass through yet another checkpoint. Something changed in the air, however, and Karigan realized there were no tall chimneys spewing smoke. It smelled cleaner. There were no signs of industry as there had been elsewhere. They passed through neighborhoods of tiny whitewashed houses. The grass looked greener, the trees taller and fuller, farm fields neat and filled with crops.

Ditches, irrigation ditches, she thought, angled off from the canal, reflecting clouds.

Cade, who observed her interest, said, “Workers who serve the important people of the Capital live in its outer districts. That’s what I’ve heard, anyway.”

It made sense to Karigan, after all she had learned about this world, that the elite would wish to remain segregated from the laboring classes. It did look, however, like these servants lived better than those packed into the cities and the grim little villages they’d passed through.

They rode in companionable silence. Karigan watched boats chug by on the canal and studied the foot and wagon traffic they met on the road. This had been L’Petrie Province once, but she did not recognize it—maybe some landforms in the distance looked the same, but overall it was as though the land had been remade, and she might as well have been traveling in a different country altogether. She supposed that really, she was.

She tried not to think about what had happened to her home, the G’ladheon estate. It must no longer exist, certainly not in a form she would recognize.

“You seem a little sad,” Cade said.

“The Capital is basically the province I grew up in,” she replied.

“Ah. Not much like you remember it then.”

She shook her head. It was not, she reflected, as much a shock as having seen the ruin of Sacor City for the first time. Between that experience and the map of the Capital she’d taken from the professor’s atlas, she’d been expecting change. She was not shocked, but it was still painful.

Their travel that day was uneventful, and when they stopped for the night, the grounds of the roadside inn Luke chose were better-kept than the others they had stayed at, with trimmed hedgerows and colorful flowerbeds. When Karigan and Cade received their bunkhouse assignment from Luke, they made their way to the building where they’d be spending the night. Even the bunkhouses, where lowly servants stayed, had window boxes full of flowers, the siding looking like it had received a fresh whitewashing.

Once they stepped inside, however, they discovered the bunkhouse was not unoccupied. A man snored away on one of the beds, and two burly, tough-looking drovers sat at the table playing cards. Karigan and Cade stared. The card players stared back. A fourth man suddenly emerged from the privy, entirely unclothed and hairy enough to be mistaken for a bear. Karigan bit her lip to suppress a gasp of laughter.

Cade slowly backed her out of the bunkhouse. “There must be some mistake,” he told her. “Wait here, and I’ll be right back.”

Karigan sat on a bench outside the bunkhouse. From the outside, it had looked so promising and pleasant, a fine respite for the two of them. What would they do now? Would they have to find another inn? She couldn’t stay in the bunkhouse with those other men—she’d be found out. Even worse was imagining not being alone with Cade.

Soon, Luke, Cade, and a short man she took to be the innkeeper trooped out of the main building.

“. . . highly contagious,” Luke was saying. “I have paid you good money to reserve the entire bunkhouse.”

Karigan slumped in a sickly manner in an effort to corroborate Luke’s words.

“Yes, Mr. Mayforte,” the innkeeper said, “but it would be some trouble to remove those drovers. I know them. They are a tough lot.” He paused as if thinking the matter over. “There might be another possibility.”