Mercedes Lackey - Fiddler Fair (anthology)

“There is such a thing as telling more truth than a man wishes to hear,” Petro replied. “Especially to Gaje.”

Huh. But not all Gaje. I have heard a different tale from you every time we come to a new holding. You tell us to always tell the whole of the truth to the Horseclans folk, no matter how bitter.

“They are not Gaje. They are not o phral, either, but they are not Gaje. I do not know what they are, but one does not lie to them.”

But why the rule? We have not seen Horseclans since before I can remember, she objected.

“They are like the Wind they call upon—they go where they will. But they have the dook. So it is wise to be prepared for meeting them at all times.”

I would like to see them, one day.

He regarded her out of the corner of his eye. “If I am still rom baro, you will be hidden if we meet them. If I am not, I hope you will be wise and hide yourself. They have dook, I tell you—and I am not certain that I wish them to know that we also have it.”

She nodded, thoughtfully. The Rom had not survived this long by giving away secrets. Do you think my dook is greater than theirs? Or that they would seek me out if they knew of it?

“It could be. I know they value such gifts greatly. I am not minded to have you stolen from us for the sake of the children you could bear to one of them.”

She clasped her hands behind her, eyes looking downward at the dusty, trampled grass as they passed through the open town gate. This was the first time Petro had ever said anything indicating that he thought her a woman and not a child. Most of the kumpania, including Petro’s wife Sara and their boy Tibo, treated her as an odd mixture of child and phuri dai. Granted, she was tiny; perhaps the same injury that had taken her voice had kept her small. But she was nearly sixteen winters—and still they reacted to her body as to that of a child’s, and to her mind as to that of a drabarni of sixty. As she frowned a little, she pondered Petro’s words, and concluded they were wise. Very wise. That the Rom possessed draban was not a thing to be bandied about. That her own dook was as strong as it was should rightly be kept secret as well.

Yes, rom baro, I will do as you advise, she replied.

Although he did not mindspeak her in return, she knew he had heard everything she had told him perfectly well. She had so much draban that any human and most beasts could hear her when she chose. Petro could hear and understand her perfectly, for though his mindspeech was not as strong as hers, he would have heard her even had he been mind-deaf.

That he had no strong dook was not unusual; among the Rom, since the Evil Days, it was the women that tended to have more draban than the men. That was one reason why females had come to enjoy all the freedoms of a man since that time—when his wife could make a man feel every blow, he tended to be less inclined to beat her . . . when his own eyes burned with every tear his daughter shed, he was less inclined to sell her into a marriage with someone she feared or hated.

And when she could blast you with her own pain, she tended to be safe from rape.

As she skipped along beside Petro on the worn ruts that led out of the palisade gate and away from town, she was vaguely aware of every mind about her. She and everyone else in the kumpania had known for a very long time that her dook was growing stronger every year, perhaps to compensate for her muteness. Even the herd-guard horses, those wise old mares, had been impressed, and it took a great deal to impress them!

Petro sighed, rubbing the back of his neck ­absently, and she could read his surface thoughts easily. That was an evil day, when ill-luck led us to the settlement of the Chosen. A day that ended with poor Chali senseless — her brother dead, and Chali’s parents captured and burned as witches. And every other able-bodied, weapons-handy member of the kumpania either wounded or too busy making sure the rest got away alive to avenge the fallen. She winced as guilt flooded him as always.

You gave your eye to save me, Elder Brother. That was more than enough.

“I could have done more. I could have sent ­others with your mama and papa. I could have taken ­everyone away from that sty of pigs, that nest of—I will not call them Chosen of God. Chosen of o Beng perhaps—”

And o Beng claims his own, Elder Brother. Are we not o phral ? We have more patience than all the Gaje in the world. We will see the day when o Beng takes them. Chali was as certain of that as she was of the sun overhead and the grass beside the track.

Petro’s only reply was another sigh. He had less faith than she. He changed the subject that was making him increasingly uncomfortable. “So, when you stopped being a frighted tawnie juva, did you touch the qajo, the Townsman’s heart? Should we sell him old Pika for his little son?”

I think yes. He is a good one, for Gaje. Pika will like him; also, it is nearly fall, and another winter wandering would be hard on his bones.

They had made their camp up against a stand of tangled woodland, and a good long way off from the palisaded town. The camp itself could only be seen from the top of the walls, not from the ground. That was the way the Rom liked things—they preferred to be apart from the Gaje.

The tsera was within shouting distance by now, and Petro sent her off with a pat to her backside. The vurdon, those neatly built wooden wagons, were ­arranged in a precise circle under the wilderness of trees at the edge of the grasslands, with the common fire neatly laid in a pit in the center. Seven wagons, seven families—Chali shared Petro’s. Some thirty seven Rom in all—and for all they knew, the last Rom in the world, the only Rom to have survived the Evil Days.

But then, not a great deal had survived the Evil Days. Those trees, for instance, showed signs of having once been a purposeful planting, but so many generations had passed since the Evil Days they were now as wild as any forest.

Chali headed, not for the camp, but for the unpick­eted string of horses grazing beyond. She wanted to sound out Pika. If he was willing to stay here, this Mayor Kevin would have his gentle old pony for his son, and cheap at the price. Chali knew Pika would guard any child in his charge with all the care he would give one of his own foals. Pika was a stallion, but Chali would have trusted a tiny baby to his care.

Petro trusted her judgment in matters of finding their horses homes; a few months ago she had ­allowed him to sell one of their saddlebred stallions and a clutch of mares to mutual satisfaction on the part of horses, Rom, and buyers. Then it had been a series of sales of mules and donkeys to folk who wound up treating them with good sense and more consideration than they gave to their own well-being. And in Five Points she had similarly placed an aging mare Petro had raised from a filly, and when Chali had helped the rom baro strain his meager dook to bid her farewell, Lisa had been nearly incoherent with gratitude for the fine stable, the good feeding, the easy work.

Horses were bred into Chali’s blood, for like the rest of this kumpania, she was of the Lowara natsiyi—and the Lowara were the Horsedealers. Mostly, anyway, though there had been some Kalderash, or Coppersmiths, among them in the first years. By now the Kalderash blood was spread thinly through the whole kumpania. Once or twice in each ­generation there were artificers, but most of rom baro Petro’s people danced to Lowara music.