All the rivers run into the sea, yet the sea is not full.
—Ecclesiastes 1:7
There just isn't any pleasing some people. The trick is to stop trying.
—Walter Slovotsky
Ellegon dropped them off before dawn, near the Orduin just north of Findarel, a small riverfront village less than a day's ride from Elleport and the Cirric. They were too close to the dock area to risk a light, so it took longer than usual to unload their gear from the dragon's back, and then get Kirah, little Dorann and Kennen aboard again.
The dwarf didn't like any of it, and while they were unloading he stood by, explaining to all and sundry how much he didn't like it.
He loathed riding on dragonback, he abhorred the idea of Kirah going to Biemestren, he found idiotic the idea of Doria Andrea going to Biemestren, he thought the idea that he was going to Biemestren was detestable—
Why not just tell him to shut up or you won't take him to Biemestren?
*Because I wouldn't mean it,* the dragon said, *and I don't like making phony threats. If I don't take Kennen to Biemestren I would have to leave him with you. Either that, or abandon him. Abandoning him would not sit well with King Maherralen, and I'd prefer not to be met with a hail of bolts the next time I stop off in Endell. So I'll just bear up bravely under the weight of the irritation.*
And be a fine, fine example to me, Jason thought.
—and Kennen very particularly was not fond of the idea of Jane going off into who-knew-what kind of trouble with a bunch of spindly humans, and he loathed the fact that the saddles were rigged for these oversized excuses for persons, and he was angry that the lap-belt chafed him, and he thought it was absolutely ridiculous that it was taking so long to get everybody and everything unloaded and then get the three of them reloaded, and—
*Shut up, Kennen.*
The dwarf took a long look at the dragon and started complaining again.
—and it was incredibly stupid that Kethol couldn't work any faster than that, how the—
*Shut up or I'll roast you,* the dragon said, slightly parting his reptilian jaws, letting just a whisper of flame escape from between his teeth.
The dwarf shut up.
Oh. I didn't think of that. I should have said, "Try threatening to burn him."
*Sarcasm ill becomes you.* There was a distant, draconic chuckle that held the sharpness that meant it was only for Jason.
But, finally, Jane's mother, Kirah, and her sister Doria Andrea were strapped back into their places on the dragon's back, and so was the dwarf. All of the goods for Jason and the company had been unloaded, while both the Slovotsky family possessions and the trade goods destined for Biemestren were safely lashed into place.
They were done. It was none too early, either; the blackness of the eastern sky was turning into dim darkness, threatening to brighten into a new day, and the dragon had to be away.
Jane's mother called down a last urging to be careful, her voice carefully balanced between her own fear for her older daughter's safety and the need to continue to reassure her younger daughter that there was nothing to worry about, and wasn't the ride on Ellegon's back fun? And wasn't it just wonderful that they were going to get to do it again now!
*Three tendays,* Ellegon said. *On Pefret. I'll be there; I hope you are. Preferably all of you, and our three friends.*
"Preferably." Just keep things quiet.
Ellegon shrugged. *We don't have much longer until word reaches Biemestren, but even when it does, we'll keep it from your mother, just as long as we can.*
"Please," Kirah called down, "be careful."
His pounding wings sending leaves and sticks and dust flying about, the dragon leaped into the air, leaving behind Kirah's gentle words to her daughter, Dorann's shouts of excitement, and a few stray oaths from Kennen.
Tennetty already had her rucksack on her back. "Saddle up, people," she said. "I want us to catch the first barge out of Findarel."
She could have passed as a trader, if you didn't know her. She had her glass eye in the empty socket, and it could pass a cursory inspection. Jason hoped she would pass; her identity was too good a clue to his own. The charm that the Spidersect cleric had placed on the eye kept it moist in appearance, and slaved it to the motion of her real eye.
Her sword was stowed with the common gear—women wearing swords were enough of a rarity to be suspicious—but she could protect herself somewhat with the oversized bowie at her waist and with the two pistols she carried, one in a holster under her left armpit, the other tucked into the top of her right boot.
"Move it, people," she said.
Durine looked at her, long and hard, as though to say that she wasn't running things here, and that as far as he was concerned she'd never run things; but Kethol must have caught Jason's headshake out of the corner of his eye, and nudged the bigger man, who subsided.
* * *
Jason swapped a trade knife for passage for all six of them, and got the chief bargeman to throw in two meals and the use of his tent. Durine, Kethol and Bren Adahan were tired; they hadn't gotten much sleep the day before.
Tennetty was unimpressed. If she had been negotiating, the bargeman would have thrown in some local coin, and thanked them smartly for the bargain. Or so she said.
Jane, on the other hand, wasn't visibly bowled over by Tennetty's claim. She tilted her head toward Jason as they leaned against the forward rail, watching the river bend and turn in the distance.
"The other possibility, of course," Jane murmured, "is that Tennetty would have pushed him so far, so hard that he would have called for the local armsmen." Which was entirely possible.
Still, maybe Tennetty would have gotten a better deal. Space wasn't at a particular premium today: the bags of grain and barrels of dried beef weren't piled more than shoulder high anywhere on the barge. There were only a dozen or so chicken cages with their clucking birds idiotically eyeing the outside world as they floated gently toward somebody's stewpot. There was even enough room for the bargemen to have all four of their mules on board, carefully hitched and hobbled at the rear rail, instead of trotting along the mulepath on the riverbank, the same path they would take to haul the barge upriver.
Riding or walking, downriver was easy on the animals, although it was a bit trickier for the bargemen. Instead of using their poles simply to keep the barge far enough from the riverbank to avoid grounding it, the four brawny men, their torsos gleaming with sweat, worked in almost silent coordination to keep the massive craft well toward the middle of the river. The current was fastest there, and business waited for no man. Still, they had to keep the ungainly craft under control, anticipating the turns of the swollen Orduin.
Which were, granted, familiar to them. But the work was hard; all four of them were heavily muscled, and the chief bargeman's hand had been hard and strong when Jason had shaken it.
The day wore on, and with a changing of the guard it was Jason's, Tennetty's and Jane's turn to nap in the shade of the tent, with Durine posted just outside. Tennetty unbuckled her belt and lay down flat on her back, folding her hands over her belly as she shut her eyes.
Jason decided that he was tired; when Janie unselfconsciously stripped down to bare skin and slipped into her blankets, he barely noticed.
Just as he was stretching out and deciding that he really couldn't sleep, that he had a responsibility to keep an eye on everything, tiredness overcame him and he dropped off to sleep.
* * *
Durine woke him when they were only a short while out of Elleport; the other two were already up and out of the tent.
Jason rubbed the backs of his hands against his gritty eyes and scratched at where the bugs infesting the tent had bitten him—all over, basically—and took a few moments to dress, again checking his pistols to make sure that both of them, the one in his shoulder holster and the one in his rucksack, were loaded, which they always were, and turning the cylinder until the chamber under the hammer was the one just ahead of the empty one, then dryfiring each pistol once to make sure that the mechanism still worked, which it did.
Valeran, his teacher, had taught him to handle firearms ritualistically; adapting to a new ritual wasn't difficult.
In only a few moments the pistols were checked and ready and stowed. He walked out into the afternoon.
As the barge rounded the final bend, the bargemen swung the craft out into the river to avoid a pair of barges bound upriver, then bent their backs and their poles to bring it back into the quiet water near the banks, so that it wouldn't be carried away into the Cirric.
Beyond the banks the fields stood idle, expanses of rotting cornstalks proclaiming that they had been harvested neither recently nor long ago, but somewhere in between.
"There's the docks, over there," one of the bargemen said, indicating a direction with a jerk of his chin as he once again bent his back to his pole. It took longer for them to maneuver the barge over to its berth than Jason would have thought it should, but only a few moments for the waiting dock crew to grab the expertly thrown lines, pull the barge in tight against the dock and tie it firmly in place.
Still, the sun was getting low in the sky as they left the barge, making their way across the floating dock to the shore, all of them staggering a bit as they got their land legs back.
Bren Adahan took the lead. "The first thing we should do," the baron said, "is to find some lodgings for the night. Tomorrow we get to find out what's going on."
"Or," Jane put in, "at least what the locals think is going on."