Paladin of Souls - Lois McMaster Bujold [12]
The two parties reached the joining of the roads simultaneously, and dy Ferrej exchanged reassuring nods with the soldier-brothers, stolid conscientious fellows like himself. The pilgrims stared in speculation at Ista in her fine somber clothes. A stout, red-faced older woman—she’s not any older than I am, surely—offered Ista a cheery smile. After an uncertain moment, Ista’s lips curved up in response, and she returned her nod. Dy Ferrej had placed his horse between the pilgrims and Ista, but his shielding purpose was defeated when the stout woman reined her horse back and kneed it into a trot to come up around him.
“The gods give you a good day, lady,” the woman puffed. Her fat piebald horse was overburdened with stuffed saddlebags and yet more bags tied to them with twine and bouncing as precariously as its rider. It dropped back to a walk, and she caught her breath and straightened her straw hat. She wore Mother’s greens in somewhat mismatched dark hues proper to a widow, but the braided ribbons circling her sleeve marched down in a full rank of five: blue wound with white, green with yellow, red with orange, black with gray, and white twined with cream.
After a moment’s hesitation, Ista nodded again. “And you.”
“We are pilgrims from around Baocia,” the woman announced invitingly. “Traveling to the shrine of the miraculous death of Chancellor dy Jironal, in Taryoon. Well, except for the good Ser dy Brauda over there.” She nodded toward an older man in subdued browns wearing a red-and-orange favor marking allegiance to the Son of Autumn. A more brightly togged young man rode by his side, who leaned forward to frown quellingly around him at the green-clad woman. “He’s taking his boy, over there—isn’t he a pretty lad, now, eh?”
The boy recoiled and stared straight ahead, growing flushed as if to harmonize with the ribbons on his sleeve; his father was not successful in suppressing a smile.
“—up to Cardegoss to be invested in the Son’s Order, like his papa before him, to be sure. The ceremony is to be performed by the holy general, the Royse-Consort Bergon himself! I’d so like to see him. They say he’s a handsome fellow. That Ibran seashore he comes from is supposed to be good for growing fine young men. I shall have to find some reason to pray in Cardegoss myself, and give my old eyes that treat.”
“Indeed,” said Ista neutrally at this anticipatory, but on the whole accurate, description of her son-in-law.
“I am Caria of Palma. I was wife of a saddler there, most lately. Widow, now. And you, good lady? Is this surly fellow your husband, then?”
The castle warder, listening with obvious disapproval to such familiarity, made to pull his horse back and fend off the tiresome woman, but Ista held up her hand. “Peace, dy Ferrej.” He raised his brows, but shrugged and held his tongue.
Ista continued to the pilgrim, “I am a widow of . . . Valenda.”
“Ah, indeed? Why, and so am I,” the woman returned brightly. “My first man was of there. Though I’ve buried three husbands altogether.” She announced this as though it were an achievement. “Oh, not all together, of course. One at a time.” She cocked her head in curiosity at Ista’s high mourning colors. “Did you just bury yours, then, lady? Pity. No wonder you look so sad and pale. Well, dear, it’s a hard time, especially with the first, you know. At the beginning you want to die—I know I did—but that’s just fear talking. Things will come about again, don’t you worry.”
Ista smiled briefly and shook her head in faint disagreement, but was not moved to correct the woman’s misapprehension. Dy Ferrej was clearly itching to depress the creature’s forwardness by announcing Ista’s rank and station, and by implication his own, and perhaps driving her off, but Ista realized with a little wonder that she found Caria amusing. The widow’s burble did not displease her, and she didn’t want her to stop.
There was, apparently, no danger of that. Caria of Palma pointed out her fellow pilgrims, favoring Ista with a rambling account of their