19
Ilna walked out of the millhouse carrying two bundles, neither of them very large, on a short staff which she balanced on her shoulder as she locked the door. The door and latch were more recent by nearly a millennium than the stone fabric of the building, but they were sturdy pieces in their own right.
Katchin the Miller was in the street in front of the inn, talking with Benlo. Liane os-Benlo stood with her back to the men. Her eyes were lifted as though she were scrutinizing the pattern of cirrus clouds to the north, making silently clear to the world that speaking to her would be an undesired intrusion.
Two of Benlo's guards were present; while they weren't precisely relaxed, nothing in their bearing suggested that they expected a sudden danger to appear. Their four fellows were with Reise in the courtyard, adjusting the packs and saddles of the animals.
A number of villagers watched nearby, but for the most part the varied excitement of the past week had jaded Barca's Hamlet to the point that a drover leaving town with a flock was no longer enough to draw folk away from their normal occupations. Mistress Kirruri noticed Ilna locking her door and nudged her neighbor; the two of them whispered, viewing Ilna out of the corner of their eyes.
The men didn't pay any attention to Ilna as she walked toward them. Katchin was describing his plan to turn Barca's Hamlet into a port rivaling Carcosa. It was an utterly ludicrous notion even if he found a backer with unlimited wealth: storms across the Inner Sea almost invariably came from due east, making east-coast ports impossible to enter if they provided real shelter in bad weather.
Benlo "listened" with a fixed expression. His mind was clearly on matters that had nothing to do with Katchin; grim matters, if Ilna was any judge of a man's face.
Cashel and Garric were bringing the flock down from the corral in a slow line. The tail of it, where Garric gently chivied the complaining ewes, was still visible on the slope. Cashel at the head hadn't yet appeared around the bend at the hamlet's north end.
"Good day, Uncle Katchin!" Ilna said, loudly enough to break into even the miller's self-absorbed monologue. "Since you're my nearest relative remaining in the hamlet, I'm giving you this for safekeeping."
She held out the four-pin key. When Katchin goggled at her, she took his hand firmly in hers, turned it palm-up, and pressed the key into it.
"In case of emergency, of course," she went on, holding him with her eyes. "I don't expect to find mine and my brother's goods ransacked in our absence."
"What are you talking about, girl?" Katchin said in growing amazement. "Where would you go? You've never left the borough and you couldn't afford to if you wanted to!"
Ilna untied a corner of one bundle. Within the linen cover was a panel of wool in black, white, and subtly patterned gray shades. "I'm carrying the wall hanging I've just finished to market in Carcosa," she said. "It'll fetch three times as much there as a peddler who comes to Barca's Hamlet would pay me."
She glanced toward the north end of the street. The flock wasn't in sight yet but she could hear Cashel calling to the sheep, conditioning them to obey his voice on the road.
"I've never been able to do this before because I had to stay home and take care of my brother," she said. She'd lowered her voice when she had the undivided attention of everyone nearby, but her each syllable still rang like a hammer blow. She looked at Liane as she continued, "Boys have absolutely no sense. No sense at all."
Liane turned to meet Ilna's gaze with one of cool appraisal. She raised an eyebrow minusculely but said nothing.
"These are unsettled times," Benlo said with a frown. His tone became oily. "I don't think a pretty young girl like you should pick this as her first time to leave home."
"I'm aware that the times are unsettled," Ilna said with a cold disdain that anyone in Barca's Hamlet would have warned would be her reaction to being patronized by a man. "I saw the lich myself, as you may remember. But I rather think that the problems may leave as suddenly as the strangers who brought them here."
Katchin moaned in embarrassment, though he'd heard worse from his niece's tongue, and with less justification in his opinion.
Benlo colored. "I had nothing to do with the lich," he said in a husky voice. He turned as if to look up the street. "Are those boys here with the sheep yet?"
"You're welcome to travel along with us to Carcosa, mistress," Liane said unexpectedly. "You'll be safe in our company. But have you given thought as to how you'll return to your little home here?"
The women looked at one another. "It's very kind of you to be concerned, mistress," Ilna said. "I assure you that someone like me who's been raised without your advantages has to think about all aspects of her own welfare—and the welfare of friends who may not have any sense at all."
She smiled. In her mind she visualized Liane bound with a series of complex knots, screaming as she turned over a slow fire.