10. Now Salt
NOW: SALT
After the caravan was announced at the next tenth-day service, the entire settlement was in an uproar.
Mass efforts to preserve foods like jerky and pickled vegetables were underway as well as the consolidation of households and belongings.
Gerard and Starling, acting as representatives of army and church, were allotting silver and gold for properties and possessions.
Most settlement folk had never left Sheridan, let alone had any experience with war.
People were frantic. Thane and his men were overrun with the machinations of planning a caravan.
Most of the people in Sheridan were taking the allotments from Perpatane and signing on as chastened penitents with the church to leave for Skow, the City of the Tower.
New wagons were being constructed to accommodate the drove of people who chose to leave.
At my farm, we still spoke of it as an idea, not an actuality.
“I’m not going anywhere Gerard goes,” Ilsit proclaimed, flinging a potato skin into a bucket between her knees.
“It is a good thing,” Jade said in agreement, “that these folk leave us to their penitent’s way. I’d rather stay in Nyossa than brave a Perpatanian city.”
Ilsit said something foul about Perpatane, and Jade gave a nod.
Despite the hot day, the two of them sat on stools in the yard skinning potatoes while Fox hummed to herself, sitting on the ground, twisting ferns piled in her apron into a wreath to hang over our door for protection.
It was an old tradition Magda had taught me. I wished it had worked.
I looked at them through the kitchen window, tired and enjoying a temporarily empty house even though their voices filtered inside. Daisy wove around my feet, likely hoping for scraps of the jerky I was chewing.
“Fine,” I said and threw her a piece.
I added cheese and bread to my meager lunch and made my way outside.
“I’m to town,” I said to them, passing them on my way to the stable. “I’ve comfrey oil to deliver, and then I will see Tessa. Need anything?”
“Gossip,” said Ilsit, looking up. “Tell us if there are any new names on the penitents’ list. I want to know who else I can say ‘good riddance’ to.”
Jade gave a diminutive snort and tried to hide her amusement.
Ilsit tossed one of her potato peels into Jade’s bucket. “Gods, my aim is good.”
Fox was making one of her soundless laughing exhales.
“Of course,” I said, leading Zara outside the gate.
Jade looked up. “You don’t think Tessa will go, do you?”
“Why in hell would she?” asked Ilsit, clearly in denial of the direction Tessa leaned.
“Adelaide is in the City of the Tower,” Jade answered.
The four of us looked at each other.
“Well, you’ve gone and named it,” I said. “It is not out of the question. I think she might go to Skow to see Adelaide and then maybe travel to Eccleston. It was her home.”
Ilsit glared into her bucket.
I do not want to lose her, Fox signed.
I blinked at her, our little signal of yes when we were serious.
Then I mounted my old mare and made for town.
I put Zara at the hitching post and made my few rounds, a quick visit to people’s homes who, while they might not want to openly patronize the forager woman, still needed what I could provide.
My head was down as I was always trying for an unnoticeable presence.
I knocked on Tessa’s door, but she was not at home.
I made my way back to the hitching post, a humble walk amongst the clusters of Perpatanian soldiers, unsure of what they did or where they went and leery of drawing their attention.
Before I could reach the town square, I was interrupted.
“Madam,” said an unknown voice.
When I looked up, I saw the one-eyed man standing in my path.
His hood was drawn up as it had been in the tavern, but at this proximity, I could properly estimate his age at perhaps six or seven winters my junior.
Up close, I could better make out the tattoos that crawled up the sides of his neck and curled around his ears and cheeks.
They were twin god snakes, just like the one inked on my right arm.
“Sir,” I said, nodding and making to step around him. I was confused at my reaction to him. He was not a Perpatanian and posed no threat to me. But my heart beat faster. Something about spotting him sitting alone that night in The Pale Horse had unnerved me.
“I’d have a word,” he said, his step matching mine so that he was firmly in my way.
I stared into his light-green eye, the other obscured by that leather strap.
He was taller than most men, lean rather than broad, though the arms and chest I could see through the hooded jerkin and tunic he wore were those of a man who was no stranger to manual labor.
His waist and hips were slender, sporting an elaborately woven belt with a short sword in a scabbard on each side.
His legs were long, clad in fitted leather breeches tucked into boots.
But his apparel was brown and simply made, unlike the more intricate Perpatanians’.
Again, I wondered where he hailed from.
One of his hands held that same slim booklet I had seen him with in the tavern. His other rested on one sword’s pommel. His stance, though he had put himself in front of me twice, was so casual, as if he would not mind if I told him no.
“Who are you?” I asked instead of answering him. I sorely wanted to know. I had spotted him two weeks prior and he had been in my thoughts, enough for me to be annoyed with myself and to wonder what he, a foreigner, was doing in Sheridan.
His mouth, a wry slash of a thing, quirked up at one corner. “I knew you would be a direct kind of woman. And I will be direct with you. Have you signed on to be a penitent?”
“You’re not being direct. You did not answer my question.”
“You seek my name?” There was a softness in his manner that confused me.
“I don’t know who you are,” I replied. “Why would I tell you my business, stranger? You’re not from these parts and you do not seem Perpatanian, for they deem tattoos as ungodly.” I tried to temper my words, which I had wanted to spit at him, with some measure of patience so as to hide my nerves.
“My god doesn’t care about the flesh,” he said, his smirk expanding. “I would imagine yours does not either.”
“What makes you say that?”
“I have seen you in warm weather. You too are marked like me.”
I balked. “So you know who I am, but I do not know you. Rather unfair, I think. Again I say to you, tell me who you are.”
“I am a man concerned there is no midwife on this caravan. Only two Perpatanian physicians who think all women’s troubles are beneath them.”
“What man concerns himself with womanly troubles? I only practice midwifery on occasion. And how do you know that?”
He put his hood halfway back on his head.
He paused, his hand holding it in place while he assessed me and then, as if making a decision, he pushed it all the way back to rest at his neck.
“I am Vyggian, but I have not lived on the island in a long time. The lord’s son has hired me and my three companions to act as scouts for this caravan. ”
This intrigued me. Hundreds of Perpatanian soldiers would be traveling with us. What did Thane need with four other scouts? But I said, “What need does a scout have for a midwife?”
“It is as I say,” he responded. “A third of the people traveling are womenfolk, and there is not one midwife amongst the lot. Is a man not allowed concern for women? Is that such a rare idea to you people of Sheridan?”
I laughed suddenly. “You do not know the church of Rodwin, do you?”
The tattooed man glanced around. “You should come.”
I shook my head. “I’m the last woman in these parts to own property, but they won’t pay me what I am owed for my land. What is in it for me?”
“You do not worry about Tintar?”
“Who are you?” I burst out. “Sir, I do not know you. You have not given me a name, only your country of origin. Should I call you ‘salt man’ then?”
He nodded. “I grew up in the shallows. Even worked in them. I have a house there. So, yes. I am content with being your salt man.”
Vyggia was best known for its expansive salt shallows, easy-to-wade-in stretches of shoals rich with the export. Men labored all day collecting Vyggian seawater and boiling it on the shoreline, reducing it to the finest salt in the known world.
“Salt man,” I said, “get out of my way.”
“You do not worry for the women on this journey? It does not give you pause to know they may have need of you, that they may suffer?”
I stared at him and said nothing.
“Do you want for the protection of a man? Is that it?” he asked.
“And what if it was?” He was a mystery, and I decided to only answer his questions with questions.
“Then I would offer you my services,” the stranger said, stepping closer to me. “I am swift with a knife, handy with my fists, and even better at avoiding a skirmish with my words. I would willingly pledge you my protection.”
“You don’t even know me.”
He opened his mouth as if to speak but remained silent.
“If I agree will I be given a name, defender of women?” I taunted. “How noble of you, Vyggian, to worry about the women of Sheridan. You should be lauded for your magnanimous nature, truly.”
He gave me a smile. “Sarcasm suits you,” he said, almost more to himself than to me. “Yes, lady, I will give you my name if you sign the list.”
“I am a ‘lady’ now?”
That light eye traveled up and down the length of me slowly.
I felt a ridiculous flip in my belly. This man was younger than me and, despite his missing eye, good-looking.
Surely he did not see me the way a man sees a woman?
Yes, I had noticed him notice me when I had spotted him that night, but I had assumed that was his response to my gaze seeking him out.
I dismissed this idea and went on speaking.
“I’m not going to Perpatane. I’d rather die.”
His face closed then, like a window shuttered. It bore no expression, only a mask of mild indifference. He blinked, like a wildcat watching prey from a tree. “And you will, madam. Should Tintar march inward again, as they did on Eccleston, you will die.”
“What do you care?” I fired. “I repeat. You don’t know me.”
His eyelid lowered. And then he smiled. “I don’t. I don’t care at all.” And he stepped to one side, his gaze lifting above my head, and strode past me.