Rosethorn sent Evvy to a nearby stream to fill their teapot and soup pot. The girl returned to tell Briar, “You know that beggar fellow? He’s soaking his feet in the stream. He stinks. I got the water upstream from him.”
Briar and Rosethorn looked at each other. “You could put him downwind,” Briar suggested.
“Go get him,” she growled. “And keep him away from our chickens.”
“Oh, no, no, young fellow, thank you, no,” the beggar said when Briar made his offer. “I won’t bother anyone here.”
“You won’t bother us. It won’t be easy to see in the dark, and you’re off on your own. We’re making soup.” Briar used the voice he called his “best wheedle.” He could get things out of Rosethorn with that voice. “My mother can do very good things with soup. There will be ham in it.”
The beggar, it seemed, was made of sterner stuff. “I know what I smell like.” His lisping, slightly husky voice was gentle in the growing shadows. “I will be fine. Kanzan shower blessings on you and those kind women you travel with.”
Briar returned to Rosethorn, shaking his head.
The night passed quietly. When they woke, Briar returned to the stream for the morning’s tea water. The beggar was gone. A bowl that looked just like one of their own sat under his tree, freshly cleaned. Briar carried it back with the pot full of water.
“I took him a little soup after you went to bed,” Rosethorn said. “That’s all.”
Guards in imperial colors left the caravansary with the rest of the travelers that morning. Those who had camped outside were already lined up at the bridge, waiting for them to unlock the tall gates. Briar, Rosethorn, and Evvy were near the end of that line with a pushy merchant behind them. They waited as the guards looked through many wagons before they finally unlocked the gates and people began to stream through.
“What were you looking for?” Briar asked one guard as he was about to ride onto the bridge.
“Escaped prisoner,” the man said, and yawned. “As if he’d come this way.”
“Gods pity him when the imperial torturers get him,” the merchant in front of Rosethorn said bitterly.
Everyone murmured agreement. Then they rode onto the bridge, where the thunder of the river below drowned out the sound of their crossing.
THE GORGE OF THE SNOW SERPENT RIVER
Company continued to thin as people scattered to other roads. The land now was steep and hilly, with terrace farms on the slopes. Beyond them were mountains. By the map, Briar saw they were in a kind of funnel that would take them into the Snow Serpent Pass. Evvy would have no cause to complain after that. They would be traveling down a gorge through the Drimbakang Lho, the highest mountains in the world.
Briar kept a keen eye on the people around them, knowing that Evvy was too busy looking at the stones beside the road. The others were commoners by and large: an occasional priest on donkey-back, merchants on mules or horses followed by servants, peddlers, farmers, and the occasional beggar. Two days after they had crossed the bridge, Briar saw the man he had come to think of as their beggar again. They overtook him around mid-morning, when a large wedding party left the road to cross the river. The beggar was seated by the road, digging a stone out of the wrappings on his feet. Successful, he rose and hobbled off, leaning on his tall staff.
“He moves fast for someone with a bad back,” Rosethorn murmured.
“Maybe he’s used to it,” Briar suggested.
Suddenly she stiffened. “Look at his neck.”
The rags the beggar wore for scarves had come undone. The morning’s stiff breeze blew them onto the hillside. He was struggling to climb after them when Evvy galloped uphill to grab the flyaway rags. She had learned some riding tricks in their two years of travel, and she loved to show off.
Like Rosethorn, Briar was staring. The beggar’s neck was as dirty as the rest of him. What his dirt could not cover was the shackle gall around his throat, the kind of scar that would come from years of wearing a metal collar.
As Evvy rode over to the beggar with his neck scarves, Rosethorn murmured, “Without the pack he carries …”
Briar replied, “Could the long hair be a wig? It’s a good one.”
“The rags on his feet and hands could be as much to cover scars from his chains as to keep him warm,” Rosethorn added. “But the blind eye?”
“Oh, that’s easy,” Briar told her. “This beggar we knew, back when I was with the Thief Lord, he would take the white lining of eggshells. He’d cut pieces of it to the right size, then punch a hole in them with a pin to see out of. It made me go all over goose bumps to watch him put them in his eyes, but he made money. It’s the beggars that have something wrong with them that get the coin.”
“Let’s invite this one to supper,” Rosethorn suggested.
“Let’s. I’d like to know what he’s doing out here.”
Briar kept an eye on the beggar all that day as they progressed along the road. There were no inspections. It seemed that those who were hunting for the emperor’s missing captive did not think he would be heading west.
Yet again they camped outside a caravansary. The beggar was the only other person there to use the well and fire pits set up in the shelter of the wall. Briar started supper and Evvy saw to the animals while Rosethorn went in search of him. By the time Briar had a thick, hearty soup bubbling over the fire, Rosethorn returned triumphant, the beggar in her wake.