Destiny's Road

Three flattish heads popped up.

"Winston," he said, and one of the Otterfolk came forward to take the sweet potato. Short arms, wide hands with four thick, short fingers.

Jeremy handed sweet potato slices to Shireen. Shireen began distributing them to the other Otterfolk. Winston was still watching Jeremy.

Jeremy curled and uncurled just his fingers, no thumbs. Eight, sixteen, twenty-four fish. Prawns, a double handful. One surf clam. Fingers wiggled: Don't bust your chops, we'll take what you can get.

Winston disappeared. Tomorrow he would be back with what he could collect, and would tell Jeremy what he wanted; but that was easier by daylight and while they were both in the water.

The little girl asked, "Jeremy, can I go in with them?"

"Depends. What are you wearing?"

"No!" cried Greta Schilling, unseen in shadow until now. "Tomorrow morning, yes, dear?"

"Yes, Mommy."

Greta turned to Jeremy. "We wear our good clothes for your first night's banquet, you know." Reproving.

"Mrs. Schilling, you flatter us."

"Please, I am Greta. Jeremy, is it safe for a child to swim with Otterfolk?"

"Absolutely. We depend on it. If we don't entertain them, they don't fish for us. Greta, I know that name. Shireen?"

"Her great-grandmother Shireen died twelve years ago. Dzhokhar and I, we both loved her. So I married Dzhokhar Livnah and gave her name to our first daughter."

It took Jeremy a moment to untangle that in his mind, but the implications-"So Dzhokhar settled with you? In Destiny Town."

"Yes, for twelve years."

And took Greta's surname, of course.

"His wife was with Armstrong wagon, you see, but she retired. Many merchants travel the Road for a time and then retire to a family shop. Dzhokhar could have married another merchant, but we knew each other-"

"Dzhokhar Livnah?"

"Yes. Why?"

"No, nothing." But he'd always assumed that everyone on ibn-Rushd wagon was named ibn-Rushd! Assumed that Joker was single, too. "I only wondered how a man named Livnah joined ibn-Rushd wagon."

She shook her head. "There are things I'm not supposed to tell." If he forced too many merchants to say that too often, it would be noticed. But a caravan trainee was exactly who he wanted to question! He compromised. "Is there anything I can tell you?"

She laughed.

"No, really. I've been listening to fire-pit talk for twenty-seven years. They speak a secret language, but I've picked up a little. Ibn-Rushd cooks, and that is my language."

Shireen tugged at her mother's arm. "The fence," she said.

"Yes. Jeremy, we walked down the beach this afternoon, as far as a razormesh fence. The beach beyond, it looked nice. Private. There were shells. Can you get us past that fence?"

"As I understand it," Jeremy said, "if I could get you past that fence, you wouldn't see a restaurant here next year. That's the local birthground for the Otterfolk, Greta, and the Overview Bureau is very serious about that."

"Oh." She thought a moment, then asked, "After you fillet the tuna, where do you take the bones and head?"

"Soup stock. Everything interesting goes into the cauldron. On the caravans... you won't carry that size cauldron."

"Why do you shudder?"

He shook his head, thinking that a chef could always break off conversation for some convenient urgency- "Is it true that we must get pregnant by men along the Road? And the men make the local women pregnant?"

"That's what they say. They say also that you merchants are almost inhumanly good at doing that with us mortals."

She dimpled. "I thought Dzhokhar might have been having fun with me. Well, I haven't had the training yet."

Most of the merchants had gone up the Road and the rest had gone to bed. The Winslow family cleaned up after them to some extent, then quit. Jeremy went up to bed. He could climb a flight of stairs, now, but not run up it.

He began stripping down, found he had some help. Harlow breathed in his ear. "So you want to join a caravan?"

She must have felt him lose his balance and wince as pain crunched in his healing knee. He said, "I've been thinking about it. Who told you?"

"Yvo

Still thinking as fast as ever in his life, Jeremy said, 'Not sudden, but I never could have talked Karen into doing it, and just to get away from here-"

"But with that limp-"

"Oh, I can wait for the autumn caravan. I'll be healed by then." They were seated on the futon by now, and he took her face in his hands. "Will you marry me after the spring caravan leaves?"

"Well, I'd have to, wouldn't I?"

"What? Why?"

She laughed. "The caravans only take couples!"

"What?"

"You didn't know?" Still laughing. "But you asked me to marry you first. Good!"

He'd been thinking that she could vote his one-fifth share of Wave Rider. This blindsided him. "Everyone on a caravan is married?" What about Rian? and old Shireen? and Joker? Wait, Joker was married- "Well, no, not everyone. A woman in her teens or twenties, or a veteran who wants to die on the Road, but only if they're a caravan family, Jeremy. Anyone else, it's couples. Otherwise there would be too many men, I guess. Local help is supposed to be all men."

He was still stu

"You may be an instinctive liar, Jeremy."

She was the answer all along, and he'd been dodging and weaving- "No, wait, I'm a Spiral. You're a girl. We almost don't talk to each other in Spiral Town. I thought I'd got that....rap out of my head."

"Hmmm."

"Can we get on a caravan? Will you come with me?"

She hesitated. "You know there are certain rules."

"I double-damned don't seem to know what they are!"

"We'd both be rubbing up against locals, mostly younger locals who can make babies. We'll be trained for that at the camp. I don't really know more than that, but I hear jokes."

"Sounds like fun?" He put a question in that, and she gri

She said, "You know how to cook, but they'll train you to sit behind a counter and sell cookware and speckles."

"I've watched. Only watched."

"The third rule is very important. Keep the caravan secrets. Never tell."

"My darling, you seem to have learned a lot of what they never tell."

"I listened to merchants at Wave Rider for years before you came. I've spent more years talking to shopkeepers. A lot of them retired from the wagons, you know. Even so, I don't know anything deep. We'll have to persuade a wagonmaster that we can be trusted."

He thought. Smiled. "I could persuade someone that I have kept a secret. I could ask, 'What would happen if Spadoni wagon fell into the hands of, bandits?' Better to trust me than someone who hasn't been tested."

"What does it mean?"

Doubtfully, "Should I tell you?"

'Jeremy!"

"Spadoni is where they keep the real guns. Tucker has the shark guns and ammo, the stuff the yutzes use. The yutzes don't see what's in Spadoni, and locals shouldn't have it, let alone bandits. If bandits stopped Spadoni, the whole caravan would have to deal with it."

"Any idea what those weapons are like?"

"Some-"

"Don't tell me. Don't tell anyone."

"Can we get in?"

"I don't know. Best if there's an opening on one of the wagons. Sometimes they're shorthanded. We can ask Walther Simonsen at Romanoff's. He knows you're the real thing. The spring caravan won't be back in time to do us any good, so there's no point in you talking to them. Talk to the suppliers."

"Yes. Harlow, thank you."