“Well, really we need twenty-three,” Blade said. “My sister’s here as bard.”
He had to wrestle his sleeve loose from Sukey and show the Horselady his list before she would believe him. “Two more than I was told, even without your sister,” she said, when she had counted the names. “Why can’t they get it right? Very well. I’ll bring them around to the inn. With feed. And the reason I’m doing this myself is that I want to make it quite clear that if anyone mistreats a horse or hurts one in any way, I shall call them all in and you can do the rest on foot. Have you got that? I’m going around all the tours saying this. I’m giving warning.”
“Right,” said Blade. “By the way, how much do they pay you for the horses?”
“Not enough,” the Horselady replied over her shoulder as she strode away.
It wouldn’t be, Blade thought. He went back to the inn with Sukey skipping beside him as if she were half her real age. The other Pilgrims straggled happily back an hour or so later. They had all, except Miss Ledbury, bought themselves swords. Even Professor Ledbury had acquired a mighty old twisted iron broadsword which he would keep whirling around his head. Blade winced every time he heard it whistle.
“Harmless high spirits,” Miss Ledbury said. “Much better exercise than weighted clubs, young man.”
With Sukey dogging his steps and Shona concentrating on Geoffrey and being no help at all, Blade got them all to load their horses and buckle everything where it should be. This led to another set-to with Miss Ledbury. The tour had provided each person with a rolled blanket, a cloak, and two leather water bottles. Miss Ledbury would have none of these. Instead, she and the professor had scarlet sleeping bags, neat Windcheaters, and backpacks to carry plastic water bottles and Miss Ledbury’s coffee.
“I do not care what your black book says, young man,” she told Blade. “I am not on this tour to do penance, and my brother is in poor health. Our equipment is far more efficient.”
The trouble was, Blade rather agreed with her. But he did not like to see good blankets and water bottles wasted. He strapped them on his own horse instead.
“Oh, Wizard, take mine as well,” Sukey said. “They’re such a nuisance.”
“You’ll be cold,” Blade said.
“You can give me them tonight,” she said, archly smiling.
The result was that when everyone finally mounted up, Blade was strung about with bundles and not in the best of tempers. When he realized he had forgotten his walking-stick staff, he ground his teeth and decided to leave it behind. But Reville hurried out of the inn, carrying it. Bracelets flashed on his arm as he held it up to Blade, smiling. “Oh, you needn—” Blade began.
Here Mother Poole fell off her horse. She did it with a wild shriek and a laugh and lay on the ground gasping, “Every picture tells a story!” It was, in fact, only the first of many, many falls, and Mother Poole always shrieked and always laughed and always said, “Every picture tells a story!” but Blade did not know that then, and he felt dreadfully anxious and responsible.
“Let’s get moving, shall we?” Geoffrey suggested in a calm, carrying voice.
Everyone, to Blade’s mortification, instantly obeyed Geoffrey. Mother Poole floundered aboard again, Reville got on his horse, and the procession straggled out of town, pursued by barking dogs and children shouting, “Go home, tourists!” and “Piss off, Pilgrims!” Miss Ledbury managed to make a note about this as she rode.
The merchant, waiting in the highway with his line of covered wagons and mounted guards, received them impatiently. “About time, too! Thank the gods this is the last party! I’m real sick of going from here to nowhere and pretending to run away from bandits. And I don’t envy you having this lot for another six weeks, Wizard. They look a right bunch of idiots.”
They did, too, Blade thought, surveying his party, what with Sukey’s baby blue outfit, the Ledburys’ outlandish gear, and the innocent, eager looks on all the faces except Reville’s and Geoffrey’s. Those two at least looked as if they knew what they were in for.
They journeyed on rather slowly, with frequent pauses to collect Mother Poole off the ground, and everyone seemed in high good spirits. Even old Professor Ledbury rode beaming vaguely around at fields and woods and the distant hills. Blade was glad that the bandits were not going to attack until the next day. His Pilgrims seemed to need time to take things more seriously.
They were very merry that night around the campfire, listening to Shona sing. The exceptions were Miss Ledbury, Sukey, and Blade. Miss Ledbury had gone around asking the merchant and the guards all sorts of searching questions about where they were from and how much they earned and how they felt about their work, and now she was writing it all down by the light of an efficient little electric torch on a stand. She had a little black cassette thing whirring, too, that she said was recording Shona’s songs. Blade knew he should tell her that the black book said she should use a candle and not have the recorder at all, but he knew she would take no notice. Besides, he was gloomily wondering what to do about Sukey.
Sukey had come up to him while he was unloading his horse, beguilingly shaking her wood-shaving curls. Blade thought she had come for her blanket and turned around to give it to her. He found the baby blue tunic pressed against him and Sukey once again staring into his eyes. “Oh, Wizard, is it true that a special magic happens when a wizard kisses you?”
Blade felt hot under his beard and wholly trapped. He did not know what it was about Sukey—a smell, or a look, or something—but every time she came close to him she seemed to remind him of someone else he disliked very much, though he could not for life of him think who. “Wizards are forbidden to kiss,” he told her sternly. “Here’s your blanket. Now leave me alone.”
Sukey took the blanket and turned to look over her shoulder at him. “I don’t believe you. It’s not in any of the rules I’ve seen.”
“It’s a secret rule for wizards. Go away!” Blade barked at her. To his embarrassment, his voice came out like a griffin’s squawk. His hairy face felt hotter than ever.
“There’s no need to be rude,” she said huffily. He watched her go up to her brother, Geoffrey, and tell him how rude Blade had been. But Geoffrey was helping Shona unload her horse, and he simply said something brief and sarcastic. Sukey had been sulking ever since. Blade stared at her pouting profile in the firelight and wondered what to do about her.
Miss Ledbury snapped off her torch. “Bedtime, Eldred. Don’t forget to remove your rainproof trousers before you get into your sleeping bag.”
“Up the wooden hill to beddie-byes!” Mother Poole laughed.
“Down on the stone floor, you mean!” someone else joked.
The Pilgrims began unrolling blankets and preparing for the night. Blade watched Professor Ledbury obediently climbing out of his trousers and was glad to see the poor old man wore long white woolen pants underneath. Reville was watching, too, and at the sight of those long, skinny legs in white wrinkly wool, he turned to Blade with his eyebrows up humorously.
At that, or maybe at the set of Reville’s head as he turned round in the firelight, Blade almost recognized Reville. He knew—even more than he knew over Sukey—that he had seen someone exactly like Reville not so long ago. Blade lay awake on the damp and lumpy ground, wishing he had dared bring his sleeping bag like the Ledburys, going doggedly over in his mind everyone he had met in these last crowded months. Reville was not tall, so he could not be that obnoxious bard or the man on the camel. But some of the Emir’s ladies—could Reville be a woman? No. There were hairs on his chin that had picked up the firelight as golden bristle. Was he a wizard? No, most of the wizards were tall, t