Naamah's Curse - Jacqueline Carey [8]
“I do.” I smiled at him. “Was he here?”
“Oh, yes!” Hui pointed at the men playing dominoes. “That is his father.” His grandmother cuffed him and muttered. He lowered his voice. “Or at least, that is the husband of his mother.”
I tried to guess which of the men he was indicating. None of them looked like Bao—but then, none of them would. “I see.”
Grandmother Fang offered helpful commentary. The boy listened, then translated. “Once he was a farmer. Now he does nothing but drink rice-wine and gamble at dominoes all day. Do you want to meet him?”
“I do,” I said. “Is the stick-fighter’s mother here, too?”
Hui nodded and relayed the question to his grandmother. “Yes, but she works in a sewing shop, she and her daughter. They must make a living since Ang Shen has become a drunk.”
“I would like to meet all of them.” I clasped my hand over my fist and bowed from the saddle. “My thanks to you and your honored grandmother. Is there an inn where I might lodge?”
He shook his head, then turned to his grandmother. After another exchange, he said, “Grandmother Fang says you must stay with us as an honored guest. Your horses can stay in the pen with the goat.”
I inclined my head, touching the purse that hung from my belt. “Of course, she will allow me a small gesture of thanks.”
That at least needed no translation. Grandmother Fang grinned and gave an effusive nod.
I let Hui lead me to the home he shared with his mother, father, two younger sisters, and his grandmother on the outskirts of town, collecting my thoughts while he chattered excitedly, telling me that he was the prodigy of the family and he meant to sit for the scholar’s examination that would allow him to become a civil servant when he came of age. In the doorway of their humble house, his mother greeted us with gracious amazement, a round-faced toddler peering out from behind her skirts.
“Come around back!” Hui reached up to tug on Ember’s reins. “I will show you the goat pen.”
In the rear of the house, there was a sizable garden with well-tended crops of squash and soybean—and indeed, a small pen with a wise-eyed goat. With Hui’s assistance, I unsaddled Ember and unloaded Coal’s packs, stowing the gear beneath a weathered lean-to. He fetched a fresh bucket of water and watched with avid curiosity as I checked both horses’ hooves for cracks or stones.
“Why do you not have servants, Noble Barbarian Lady?” Hui asked.
I worked at prying a pebble loose from the frog of Ember’s right front hoof. The chestnut bent his neck and lipped my hair with idle affection. “Because I do not think the man I am following would like it if I came after him with an army of servants. And you may call me by my name, which is Moirin.”
“Moirin.” He pronounced it with the awkward Ch’in lilt I found charming. “Is it true what he said, then? The stick-fighter from Shuntian?”
“I don’t know.” I released Ember’s foreleg and stroked his neck. “What did he say?”
Hui glanced around. “It is rumored that he claimed to be one of those who guarded Princess Snow Tiger on her quest to free the dragon and end the war.”
“Aye,” I said. “It’s true.”
“You were there?”
I nodded. “I was there.”
Hui’s dark gaze travelled from the medallion around my neck to my face. “You’re her. The Emperor’s jade-eyed witch.”
I smiled. “Some say so. I say I am my own, and no one else’s. But aye, the tales are true, and I was there. So was Bao.”
“Oh.” The boy whispered the word, then swallowed visibly. “Ang Shen did not believe the stories. He told the stick-fighter to go away.”
My heart ached for Bao. “Mayhap Ang Shen will believe it when I tell him.”
Hui looked dubious. “Mayhap he will.”
He didn’t.
In the early hours of the afternoon, I returned to the village square to meet with Bao’s father—or at least, the husband of his mother. Hui came with me to translate, his pride in the task offset by a certain degree of anxiety. There