Wolf in Night by Tara K. Harper

Author:Tara K. Harper
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction
ISBN: 9780345481917
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2008-10-15T04:00:00+00:00

XXIII

The night has always had ears.

—Randonnen saying

Fireside was typical, with the usual business and requests for trade, after-dark complaints, and a dispute over chovas assignments that almost came to blows. The Solomon solution laid down by the Ell pleased neither man, but pride was in the way. Nori endured as usual. She was between Payne and Kettre, almost flinching each time someone jostled her. The smells of humanity clogged her nose, and her eyes seemed blind with movement: people shifting, getting up, edging past each row of legs. Colorful clothes like a visual whirlwind. The waves of murmurs that rose after each judgment or resolution. Her head seemed overfull.

Payne nudged her, and she tried to focus. A trader had discovered that his entire shipment of soft-leaf herbs was molding, and he accused the pack master of sabotaging his goods in favor of the cozar herbalists. Then the team master reported that half the lice wash had become tainted with a harsh bubble soap, as if someone had thought it would be fun to turn the insect wash bottles into endless bubble machines. Brean almost blew his temper over that, and more than one person glanced at Payne, not just at the other youths. Payne was equally angry. Soap in the lice wash wasn’t a prank. The wash was absorbed into the dnu’s skin to prevent lice from feeding on the beasts, and it would take the harsh soap with it right into the dnu’s bloodstream. It could make the beasts sick for a ninan or more, delaying the caravan enough that they might not even make Shockton.

Then Nori flinched as an almost hysterical older woman rushed in from the message master and interrupted the meeting. Her grandfather had died, and the landholdings along a trade route that she’d inherited had somehow been sold instead of being passed along to her. She had four days to reach the assayer’s office on the Eilian border while her family went on to Shockton. She needed a driver to take over her wagon while she rented some riding dnu. The woman was wailing curses up one side and down the other as she arranged the dnu for herself and her son and then galloped away in the night.

Nori had been aware of Hunter the entire evening. He hadn’t spoken, but it surprised her that he’d paid such close attention when the woman’s request was made. Fentris, too, seemed suddenly interested. In fact, she realized, B’Kosan and one of his friends were also watching the Tamrani. Nori almost missed the call for her apology as she frowned across the circle.

Belatedly, she stood up and turned in place till she had seen and been seen by the whole circle. She’d given Brean an informal apology earlier, but a search required one to the caravan. When she faced the Ell again, she began, “I offer my thanks for your support when the search was called, and my apologies that it became necessary. I did not intend to

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