The other one smiled with a twist that made Kirya uncomfortable. “Your tribe doesn’t trade down here, does it?”

She shrugged, realizing how foolish she was, blabbing her errand to these strangers.

“You’ve seen your mistake now, haven’t you? We might track you, and once you have the boy, what’s to stop us from stealing him and trading him again to the merchant?”

Kirya indicated her quiver and bow. “I am not unarmed. Would your riders attack a woman?”

“Don’t insult us!” The girl’s hard expression softened to one more thoughtful. “That’s the kind of thing the Vidrini might do, now they’ve raised a foreign woman to be their headwoman. They might do anything, with a hard-hearted Qin woman having put her claws into their hearts. Still, it’s a rash choice on your part, to ride into demon lands.”

“They’re not so far away. I can catch them by tomorrow, surely.”

“Take only one step into demon lands, and anything might happen. If you die in demon lands, the gods will never find your spirit and bring you home.”

“He’s my younger brother. Our mother is dead.”

“Yes, I can see you are obligated to retrieve him, although I wonder why your war leader has not—well—” As Kirya sucked in a sharp breath and tightened her hand on the reins, the girl broke stride and changed course. “The Easterners speak words smeared with honey, but you can’t trust them.”

“How do you know?”

“My people trade with the caravans. The Easterners are not people, not like us. Yet I suppose you can do nothing else, not if you want to keep your honor. May the gods ride with you, cousin.”

She signaled to her companions and rode back the way she had come, back to the familiarity of tent, herd, and grass.

KIRYA CAMPED THAT night on the lake bed, staring up at the stars, the campfires of the gods’ tribe. Beside which of those fires did her mother now shelter? She could not tell.

She moved out at first light. Not long after dawn she began to taste the caravan’s dust. Soon after that, she rode past the disturbed ground where they had camped. Soon after that, she saw firsthand the ponderous creature that foreigners called caravan. This ungainly beast was made up of a tightly controlled herd of sheep and unsaddled horses, a line of grindingly slow-paced wagons dragged by worthless dray beasts a toddler could have outpaced, and various human figures—maybe some demons, although from here it was difficult to tell—walking alongside and within the ranks. Between two wagons, six ranks of boys and youths, most blond, trudged along. She scanned the rows. Was that Kontas? He had his head down, so she couldn’t be sure.

Swinging wide, she rode parallel alongside the caravan. She willed Kontas to look up, and the pale head shifted, face rising to look at the heavens . . . even from this distance, she could see it was not Kontas. She felt as if she’d been kicked.