And of course I would be dead—as I should be for my betrayal. No one lied to the Komizar.

Yet that’s exactly what I’d be doing when I told him she had the gift. She might be able to fool the others—Griz and Finch were from the old hill villages where spirits and the unseeable were still believed—but the Komizar wasn’t a believer in magical thinking.

Unless he saw visible proof of the gift, he’d find her presence useless. She would have to up her game. Still, I was sure the Komizar would forgive me this one lapse in making the decision to bring her back instead of killing her. He knew of my beginnings and the role the unseeable had played in my life. He also understood the ways of so many Vendans who still believed. He could twist it to his purpose.

I rubbed my chest, feeling the scars anew now that she had seen them, thinking how they must look to someone like her. Maybe they just completed the image of an animal. I was afraid that was all I was to her now.

CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE

It was only midday, but I sensed we were getting close to something, and it made me nervous. Finch had been whistling nonstop, and Eben kept riding ahead, then circling back. Maybe they were invigorated by the change in weather. It was considerably cooler, and the soaking rain last night had pelted away a layer of filth from all of us.

Malich was his usual glum self, only changing his expression to shoot me occasional suggestive glances, but Griz began humming. My hands tightened on my reins. Griz never hummed. It was too soon to be arriving in Venda. I couldn’t have lost track of that many days.

Eben came galloping back again. “Le fe esa! Te iche!” he shouted multiple times.

I didn’t try to hide my alarm. “He sees a camp?” I said.

Kaden looked at me strangely. “What did you say?”

“What camp is Eben talking about?”

“How did you know? He spoke in Vendan.”

I didn’t want him to know how much Vendan I had picked up, but camp was one of the first words I had learned. “Griz grumbles iche every night when he’s ready to stop for the day,” I explained. “Eben’s enthusiasm told me the rest.” Kaden still didn’t answer my question, which only made me more nervous. Were we entering a barbarian camp? Would I now be surrounded by hundreds of Vendans?

“We’ll be stopping ahead for several days. There’s some good meadowland, and it will give the horses a chance to replenish and rest. We’re not the only ones who’ve lost weight, and we still have a long way to go.”

“What kind of camp?” I asked.

“We’re almost there. You’ll see.”

I didn’t want to see. I wanted to know. Now. I forced myself to think of the upside of any kind of camp. Besides being out of the blistering heat, the next biggest blessing would be to get off the back of this dragon horse for a few days. Sitting on something besides this stone-hard saddle was a pleasure I had imagined more than once. And maybe we’d even get to eat more than one meal a day. A real meal. Not a bony, half-cooked rodent that tasted like a stinking shoe. I had forgotten what a full stomach felt like. It was true, we had all lost weight, not just the horses. I could feel my trousers riding down around my hips, slipping lower each day with no belt to hike them up.

Maybe I’d even steal a private moment to study the books I had taken from the Scholar. They were stowed in the bottom of my saddlebag, and I still wanted to know why they were important enough for him to have wanted me dead.

Eben circled around again with a wide grin. “I see the wolves!”

Wolves? My fantasies of the camp vanished, but I kicked my horse and galloped ahead with Eben. There were two ways to approach the inevitable—being dragged to meet your fate or taking the offensive. Whoever I was about to meet, I couldn’t let them see my fear. I’d had to learn that early in court life. They’ll eat you alive if you do, Regan had told me. Even my mother made an art of sternly confronting the cabinet, but with the gentlest of tongue. I just hadn’t mastered the gentle part yet.

Eben laughed to have me galloping at his side, as if we were playing a great game. He’s just a child, I thought again, but if he wasn’t afraid of wolves, neither would I be, even though my heart told me otherwise.

“It’s right past these trees,” he called to me. The steep mountains around us had opened up a bit wider, and the forest stepped back to leave room for a wide meadow and a slow river that curled through it. We rounded the thick copse, and Eben galloped faster, but I pulled back on the reins and stopped. My stomach turned over. What was I seeing? I blinked. Red, orange, yellow, purple, blue, all nested in a sea of green quivering in the breeze. Walls of tapestry, ribbons fluttering in the wind, gently steaming kettles, a patchwork of bright color. Terravin. The bright colors of Terravin.

The breeze that ruffled the grass, skipped across meadow, and rattled the aspen swirled around to touch my face. Here. It roosted warm and sure in my gut.

Kaden pulled up alongside me. “It’s a vagabond camp.”

I had never seen one, but I’d heard of the elaborate colorful wagons they called carvachis, their tents made of tapestries, carpets, and whatever pieces of fabric caught their fancy, the chimes that hung from their wagons made from bits of colored glass, their horse’s beaded manes, their bright clothing trimmed with pounded copper and silver, their mysterious ways that had no laws or borders.

“It’s beautiful,” I whispered.

“I thought you might appreciate it. Lia.”