She grinned in return.

"I'm to mention that Bafaro's son is available to carve the reply. I don't think they really believed my compet.i.tion," he emphasized, "would stay with one train long enough to do it herself."

Nori shrugged. Few knew she had been doing Ell Tai's message rings since she was seventeen. She took no coin-the old Ell had done her more than one favor, so the carving wasn't listed as council duty, and she was careful to work in private. The only reason Jezeren knew her work, and she his, was that they had trained with the same master carver.

Nori had been drawn to the work from the beginning. The patterns seemed natural, as if she could see through the wood as she worked. That, and the slitted eyes that watched her thoughts seemed to approve of the patterns she carved. With the wolf so close in her mind, she didn't examine the patterns too carefully as she tucked the formal ring back into its pouch and snapped it onto her belt.

Jezeren's partner looked as if she wanted to speak, and the mirror man glanced at Nori's small bundle of books and said quickly, "Are those the monthly trade?"

Nori nodded. "Two cla.s.sics, one modern." She handed them over and tried to avoid meeting his partner's gaze. The woman had already called her the Daughter of Dione, Jangharat, Black Wolf, and The Sudden on the stairs up to the tower. Jangharat, she understood. She'd earned the Tumuwen name, "shadow of the forest," years ago when scouting with her mother. But how the tower woman had ever heard that last rep-name, The Sudden, was beyond her. She dreaded going back down, where she could be obligated to a meal and an endless half hour of gossip. Instead, she hopped up on the message table and leaned her shoulders against the wall as if settling in. "Tai's message master has always liked Landfall, " she offered. "Thought you might not mind a reread."

The mirror man leaned back in his own chair. "Aye, it's a good one. I always liked that scene with the third alien, myself."

"It's alright," Nori answered diffidently. "My favorite is still the part where the wolves. .h.i.t ground the first time."

"You mean the part where they scatter?"

"You know that wasn't a scatter," she corrected. "More of a loosing of the wolves. If you're willing?"

She gestured at the water bota.

"As you like." He nodded. "No, they scattered, Black Wolf. They were so far gone when they hit the trees, it was three days before any one of them was seen again."

"Excuse me, maDione," the tower woman interrupted. "Would you like some tea or rou instead of plain water? We have some excellent brews down in the kitchen. We can talk more easily there, too, catch up on the news."

"My thanks, but water is fine." Nori barely glanced at her. "I have to disagree," she went on to Jezeren almost without pause. "The Landers knew where the wolves were. That whole scene is an a.n.a.logy of freedom: to be loosed on an open world after a year and a half on a colony ship, paying aliens to haul them across hundreds of solar systems, only to dump them on the wrong planet, where they couldn't know if they could make it."

"It's not freedom if you're still tethered to the landing site-"

"Which they weren't," she answered. "Except by their desire to remain together."

"That's not an a.n.a.logy of freedom, but of the fear they had to overcome to spread out on the world."

The tower woman resisted the urge to roll her eyes. "Black Wolf," she tried again. "Perhaps you'd like to try some of the early roast? I'd be happy to serve you myself, perhaps find out what's happening in the pre-Test rounds?"

"Later, later." Nori waved her away and continued, "They feared nothing at that point that isn't always an issue on any colony planet. What were the dangers? What were the risks? They faced everything the moment they set foot down, and they didn't do it like timid mice, but in one fell swoop."

"One fell swoop is right. They had eleven years before the Aiueven came down hard enough to kill off more than a third of the population. And again, I'd say that that isn't an a.n.a.logy of freedom, but a cautionary tale-"

The woman tapped her finger against her chair and tried once more to interrupt, but Kettre gave her a wry smile. "We could be here a while," she murmured. "They can argue this story for hours."

"You'd think the Wolfwalker's Daughter would have better things to do when she's riding tower duty,"

the woman said, a bit too sharply.

Kettre shrugged. "I'd be happy to try the roast and the rou. You know-" She leaned in conspiratorily.

"-I was with the searchers who went out to find her when she left Ell Tai's train the other night."

The woman's eyes gleamed. "I'd love to hear all about it."

Kettre winked at Nori, who pretended not to notice. ". . . not until the end," Nori went on as the other two women made their way down the stairs. "That's when Sarro Duerr realizes what he has to do to buy the freedom they thought they had at Landfall-"

The lower door shut on the stairs. For a moment, there was silence in the tower room. Nori and Jezeren looked at each other. "New partner?" Nori asked finally.

"Aye, out of Sidisport. Moons, but I thought she'd never leave." He stood up. "When she saw the Daughter of Dione riding in the courtyard, she just about tripped on her own pants to meet you." He pulled a book off the shelf, bent the spines back, and eased a flattened roll of paper out of the gap between the covers.

Nori hopped off the table. "So what have you got?"

Jezeren was all business now. "The usual gossip, a few notes of interest. You'll want to check these."

Nori looked the papers over as he shuffled them out for her. She copied two into her old, punctured scout book, then showed Jezeren some of her own recent notes. He compared them to his message log, then looked at the large map that was painted on the wall. "There's been a lot of movement in that area,"

he murmured.

Nori nodded. "Payne thinks something's up. Raiders, maybe. We have a couple Tamrani riding with us now. They're not saying anything, but they wouldn't be heading for the Ariyen council if something big hadn't disturbed them out of their Sidisport lairs."

"I'll pa.s.s word to keep a sharp eye."

She turned to the page with the raider code. "Then there's this."

He studied it closely. "I've seen this before," he said slowly.

"When?"

Her question had been sharp, and he glanced at her before answering. "Not this exactly, but the form of it, and not through any tower traffic." He looked out the window, thinking. "Council meeting," he recalled. "Closed session, last year, early fall." He glanced at her. "This doesn't surprise you."

"I thought it was the same. I was asked to watch for it on duty." The tower man started to copy it down in his private book, but she stopped him. "It's dangerous, Jezeren. I was warned two ninans ago, just before we set out for Shockton. Scouts are going missing when they go after samples like this."

He regarded her thoughtfully. Then he nodded and turned back to the lines, setting them in memory instead. She knew he'd remember. He might not be able to tell a weed from a tree, but he could recall almost every message he'd ever seen.

She hesitated as she put the scout book away. She'd known him since they were children, but he was a man now. What did she really know of the person he'd become? And was it Rishte who made her more wary now, or the slitted eyes inside her mind that hated humankind? She shook both off and, watching Jezeren carefully, said, "That miscount-the eight messages? I need to send the ninth myself. Coded, falsified origin."

Jezeren looked over with a frown. Coded messages required a sender's name in the log. It was one of the ways the county made sure the towers weren't used by criminals to plan their raids and crimes.

Jezeren fingered the large tally book, then tilted his head, closed the book, and stepped away to the window. There he turned his back to her and stared silently out at the forest.

Nori didn't wait for him to change his mind. She moved swiftly to the northbound mirror, checked the light level, then took the flash handle and began flicking the shutters efficiently. She sent the watch code, waited the scant seconds for the answering ready signal, then began her message. Begin, begin, begin; priority high; message to Dione. And then the coded portion: Check all gear. Watch for worlags. Avar Avan. End, end, end.

She signed it with her Sikinya scout name, one that would tell her parents that the danger could be subtle and deadly. There were only ten or twelve people who knew that name, and all were family. She didn't use the wordplague, even in code; that would be something to speak of in person. She didn't specify a destination, either, just her mother's name. The towers always knew where to find the Wolfwalker Dione. They'd send the message fast.

When she finished, Jezeren turned and checked that the mirror was closed, then went to the tally book.

"How do you want it logged in?"

"Ell Tai's train, via a night rider."

"You've taken care of that end?"

She nodded. "Hessa added a tally for me on the caravan board. She'll say it came in with some unnamed ring-runner."

"You can go one better than that," he suggested. She raised an eyebrow, and the man grinned slowly.

"Trungon rode tower duty yesterday off young Ell Pero's train."

Nori frowned. "Pero should have been up in Bronton by now."

"They had some delays. One of their elders died in his sleep. Probably never should have been traveling, the old boot. Then some northern trader got drunk with hischovas, fell off his wagon box, and cracked his head. Twelve hours later, he finally died." Jezeren snorted. "The whole line was held up for two days while the caravan was searched front to back by a council Straker who was looking for a thief. You'd think they'd lost the county crest the way he tore into the wagons."

"It's a bad-luck spring," she said slowly.

"Aye. Pero will be lucky to lead a train again within his lifetime. But Trungon, now, he was riding fine.

He'd claim the message for you without blinking an eye."

Aye, Trungon would. The scout knew Nori's parents well. He'd carried messages for them before. He also knew Nori and almost always left something with Jezeren when he knew she would be in the area.

She rubbed absently at her wrist. "He didn't happen to have anything interesting of his own to pa.s.s along, did he?"

The tower man grinned again. "He said you'd ask that." He went to the tower door, opened it and listened to the murmuring from below, then closed it softly. Then he went back to his chair, reached down, and popped a spoke out of the legs. He drew a small sc.r.a.p of paper from the hollowed tube. "He left this." There were no words on the sc.r.a.p, just letters and numbers in two clumps of neat little lines.

Nori's violet eyes gleamed. "That's not what I think it is, is it?"

"Aye, and it's for the inner council only." She reached out, but he held it out of reach and grinned as she almost snapped at him. "It's council duty, so Trungon said there's no trade required," Jezeren added slyly, "but he also said you'd be willing to give him some token in return for making sure you and you alone get this."

She nodded impatiently. Her hands itched to take it. "I think I know something he wants."

"He said you'd say that, too." The tower man handed over the sc.r.a.p and pointed to the top set of symbols. "It's in the same form as what you found at Bell Rocks. The timing implies they're connected.

This first message went south around two in the morning after crossing over from the Deepening line two nights ago. The second set came back north from Sidisport just over an hour later. Someone wanted a fast reply, and someone else was willing to get up in the middle of the night to make it."

Nori felt a spike of excitement. Two nights ago, she'd been on Deepening Road. She'd just stolen the code from the raiders. That had been around midnight, and she hadn't seen the raiders in the hour afterward that she'd been on the trail. If they had survived the worlags, even if they'd ridden pell-mell for the second h.e.l.l, they couldn't make the Tendan Ridge tower in time to send that message. But they didn't have to go to the hub tower itself. There were relay towers closer, if one was willing to ride trail in the middle of the night. In two hours, they could have made it to the Deeping or Elen Ridge relay. There had been that other rider, too, that Sidisport youth who had joined up with Hunter's nephew. He could have been set among the Tamrani to watch for news of trade. Watching Hunter meet with Nori would have been worth his while. Either way, if the answering message came out of Sidisport, she and Payne were right. There was more going on than a few raider bands hara.s.sing the Journey trains.

Jezeren pointed. "This is the tofrom part."

She nodded. "It's almost the same in all of the samples. From what I remember, it's similar to what the council has, too."

"Aye. And these tofrom sequences are a perfect swap. And here, the same T-sequences show up in both."

Nori fingered the sc.r.a.p. T-sequences like those and another repeated pattern had appeared in each of the samples she'd seen. "I'll log the activity of that night and pa.s.s it along with these messages. The Lloroi's code masters should have enough by now to start pulling this code apart. Until then-"

"Be careful," he finished. "You also, Black Wolf."

She carefully copied both sets of lines into her book. Then she lashed the book closed, took the sc.r.a.p to the waste bin, and burned it carefully. Jezeren almost protested as she destroyed the code, but she merely looked at him over her shoulder when he started to reach in to take it out of the flame.

He stepped back quickly. Her eyes had been cold, and her lips half curled back as if she would snarl.

He waited till she had stirred the ashes before clearing his throat and prompting, "The token?"

She glanced at the map. "Tell Trungon that what he wants is near the junction of Triple Trail and Cata cross-trail, over on the east side of Teptich Cliff. I've placed a piece of shale, foot-sized, an hour down the cross-trail, around the fifth or sixth kay, near the base of a double-trunked pintree. The right corner points to a marker in some root moss two trees to the east. What he wants is growing in a patch thirty-two degrees, about seventy meters from that marker. Tell him to wear gloves. I trashed mine getting in there."

"Triple Trail, Cata. One hour down the cross-trail. Slate marker, moss marker. Gloves." Jezeren set the instructions in his head. "I'll pa.s.s it along when he comes back south tomorrow, and I'll warn him to up his message tally."

"How about you?" She was impatient to get this note back to Payne, but she glanced around dutifully.

"Have you needs?"

"No, supply came through four days ago, and the calibration teams were here last ninan."

"Then I suppose it's time to rescue Kettre."

Jezeren grinned sourly. "I'd rather you rescued me."

"Your duty," she returned blithely.

XXII.

Poolah lurk right at the ground, When defending, crack their crowns; Bihwadi circle, like the night, Stand your ground or climb for height; Badgerbears can flow like water, Flee or you will be the slaughter; Worlags pack and run you down, Head for water or high ground.

-first verse,What to Do if You Run Into, an Ariyen teaching poem Nori and Kettre left the tower as they'd entered it, in a burst of speed. The badgerbear was still lurking, but Jezeren opened a window on the back side of the gate and waved a slice of roast pelan. By the time the beast realized its prey was fleeing from the other side of the compound, Nori and Kettre were flying down the trail.

Since the caravan had stopped for lunch, they caught up an hour after they hit the road at a canter. Nori had time only to pa.s.s her scout book to Payne before she was swallowed back up by the cozar. She worked the meal wagon almost impatiently, checked in with the caravan healer, and got her scout book back from her brother just in time to receive more messages for her parents.

The first was delivered by the standard ring-runner, one of the dozens of messengers who pa.s.sed during the day. The second was handed over by an older Randonnen scout who was taking two of her own students to Test. They exchanged gossip before the woman rode on, and the scout wished Nori luck.

The wolfwalker wondered if it was for dodging the elders or for managing a Journey with Payne. She could barely wait to tell Payne about the code, but they had no time alone. She was scheduled for three more duty tasks for causing the cozar a search.

For an hour, she helped Mian with some of the exotics the girl was trying to raise. The vari birds didn't want to be sedated, and some noise outside spooked them into escaping their cages. The wagon was a shambles of feathers, fresh droppings, and clawed fabric before the three birds were recaged. Nori was still sneezing from wispy down as she left Mian to clean up while she went back to her own wagon to wash.

Elder Mato caught her there. "MaDione," he began as she stepped out on the wagon seat. "I understand you're on general duty today. I've been needing a scout and would pay dearly for two liters of fresh ca.s.sar root for an important dye present. I'd like to hire you to find a good growth stand before we reach Shockton."

Nori answered with careful courtesy. "My thanks for the offer of work, Elder Mato, but I have other duties to attend to."

"You don't seem to be doing any right now," the older man observed. "And I understand that you can climb well enough to reach the upper growths."

Climb on a damaged rope? She kept her face expressionless. "I'm scheduled for the teaching wagon an hour from now."

"After that, then."

"I also have extensive family duties. You should ask one of the other outriders. B'Kosan, perhaps, or maSera."

"I am asking you, maDione." A note of irritation crept into his voice.

One wagon up, Kettre looked back and caught the narrowing of Nori's eyes. She dropped back closer to Nori.

Mato didn't even greet the woman as he held his temper with difficulty. "Well, when will I have your answer?"