“I was so scared when you slipped,” said Avisha in a gulping wet voice. “I thought we lost you.”

“Well, you didn’t!”

There was the temper. It made even Kesh stand up straight.

Bai said sweetly, “Kesh, you swim the horses across. I’ll take the boat. You two follow. Best we get moving in case anyone else is on the road.”

The crossing went swiftly and without incident.

While Kesh slung panniers and bags back on the packhorse, Bai and Nallo waded back into the river to recover the precious rope. On this side of the river, someone had abandoned a pile of refuse since battered by wind and rain. Avisha ripped through the pile, but except for sodden cloth and a bronze bucket she found nothing worth keeping.

“Where are you two going now?” Avisha asked as she rolled up the cloth.

He shrugged, hoping she would leave him alone.

“It’s true what you said,” she added with a catch in her voice. “We walked a long way to get to Candra Crossing. It’s the only place you can cross the river for days and days. We had to hide a few days after we left the village because there was a group of soldiers, marching Horn-ward on West Track, back the way they’d come. They had tens of children roped up like beasts. Eiya! Just like beasts.” She grimaced, wiped her eyes and her nose, and sucked in breath to keep talking. “We could see from where we were hiding. There was one child who stumbled and another child who helped him up, and then the soldiers come and beat that child to death, the one who helped.”

Kesh had seen such a company of children being marched away as slaves, and he had no desire to relive the memory. If only she would stop talking!

“Just for helping, you know. Just for helping.” She began to rock back and forth like a sweet-smoke addict.

Kesh grabbed her wrist. “Listen! If you want to survive, you have to keep walking. There’s nothing any of us can do for those children.”

A glance from fine, tear-filled eyes could make the world bright, if you were the kind of man who liked pretty girls made tense by a touch of fear. He’d worked as a debt slave in Master Feden’s house for twelve years, and he’d seen men, and women, who did enjoy forcing sex on reluctant slaves. He’d hated them especially. He released her arm as though it burned him and turned away, but the cursed girl would keep talking.

“I thought Nallo was going to abandon us, too, when we got back to the village to find my father dead and everyone dead—you know Dad and the rest, they ran out with their shovels and hoes to try to hold off the soldiers so us children could run away. Afterward, the landlady wanted to sell us as slaves. Nallo wouldn’t let her.”

“Can you tighten that rope for me?” he asked, to shut her up. “We need to get moving.”