“Mari! Kiri!”

Beyond the tent, Yara and Uliya were whispering, and the men stood in a huddle like sheep, Feder’s cart pulled out to join them. The children cowered at the entrance to the tent, Kontas with his head in his hands.

“What did you say to insult the Singer?” demanded Aunt. “Now Mother Oliski has sent word that under no circumstances will she consider the marriage. We’re ruined!” Her words were punctuated by the rhythmic slap of Edina whipping the churn. Cheese and butter could not wait on disaster.

“We didn’t even have a chance to talk to the Singer.” Kirya heaved the leather sack to the ground and stood there, panting.

“I knew that orphan was trouble!”

Mari said, “Orphan?”

Kirya clenched her hands. “Orphan? What has he ever done except work hard to please us?”

“His eyes are demon eyes!”

It was true enough, but Kirya was too angry to keep silence. “This isn’t his fault. How the Singer could even have known we were coming to see him I can’t imagine.”

“The gods see everything.” She looked old, broken. “We have to leave at dawn tomorrow. Orphan cannot come with us. That’s the end of it.”

“Just one more day, surely—” cried Mariya. “Just one more day.”

Aunt turned a cold gaze on her daughter. “Do you think I don’t know your hopes about the Vidrini boy, Mariya? Put them aside. We must go quickly. Trouble is coming. We must run before it catches us.”

Mari covered her face with her hands.

“Maybe that cloth I found is the trouble,” said Kirya hesitantly.

“Pack up everything. Orphan may take some meat, a pair of wooden bowls, some sinew, a sack, and knife with him. He’s a strong young man now. He can find a place in a war band.”

“Not as a kinless orphan, Aunt. He’s done nothing wrong.”

“His family is dead, and he survived. That is enough wrong for one person. We should never have taken him in. A demon’s child can have a handsome face as easily as an ugly one.” Her eyes were stones, the line of her mouth a closed tent. “Take some milk to your mother.”

Her mother was awake, but only semiconscious, too weak to sit up but able to swallow milk spooned into her mouth. Her eyes were the same intense blue as Kirya’s, and with these she gazed at her daughter, her only way of communicating since she could not speak. Such torment. Such trouble.

Kirya said, “It seems we’ll be moving on, Mother. Don’t worry, I’ll be with you always.”

Gently, she turned her to the other side, arranged the pillows around her, took away the pad of soft grass that caught her urine and loose feces and replaced it with another. The smell wasn’t too bad; she was used to it. Maybe if her mother could talk, she would ask to be left behind on the grass, to die in the proper manner, but the illness had taken her voice as suddenly as her ability to walk, and in the eyes of the gods to abandon her without her consent was no different from murder.