Meghan's Dragon (23 page)

Chapter 68

Bryan jogged up to the front of the wagon train and asked Theodric, “Why are we stopping?”

“Hill is too steep for the horses to haul up the wagon carrying the stage timbers without risking that they hurt themselves. We’ll unhook the team from the kitchen wagon and double up, though it means a late supper.”

“They need the horses to cook?”

Rowan erupted in laughter, and he thumped Bryan on the back hard enough to make the young man stagger. “You should be on stage,” he said. “I’m getting an idea for a new sort of play, without a script. We’ll just put you up there and you can ask the audience members questions about how they live. Do they need the horses to cook—I’ve never heard anything so funny.”

Bryan laughed along with the others this time, hoping to pass his question off as an intentional joke. He hadn’t really thought that the horses contributed to the food preparation, but the question had come reflexively. It seemed to him that Hadrixia’s translation magic had interfered with his internal filter that prevented every thought from being spoken, but as Meghan pointed out, the healer hadn’t charged for her services.

“Doubling the teams to haul the wagons uphill more than triples the travel time. The horses have to return to haul the next wagon, and there’s plenty of harness fiddling involved,” Theodric explained. “Give me a hand with the changeover and you’ll learn something.”

“Is it just the wagon with the stage that’s too heavy?” Bryan asked. “Couldn’t a bunch of us just help push it along from behind? Maybe Storm Bringer could add a tail wind.”

“Now there’s an original idea,” Rowan said. “It would save a lot of time if it works, and I do like keeping a schedule on the road. How about it, Theodric? The three of us should be able to take the strain off the horses.”

Theodric gave Rowan a close look, shrugged, and took his place at the back corner of the wagon. Bryan took the middle spot for himself to prove that he was no shirker, and the giant leader of the players took the other corner. Somebody signaled the teamster to start the horses, and the men leaned into the wagon. It lurched into motion, and thanks to the extra manpower combined with the fact that the road was just starting to become steeper, the wagon soon reached the regular walking speed of the draft horses.

“This isn’t so bad,” Bryan huffed, straining every muscle in his body. He tried to remember what Meghan had taught him about magical strengthening techniques and realized that he hadn’t been paying attention. “You guys alright?”

“Oh, we’re just fine,” Rowan assured him. “I’ve been pushing wagons out of mud holes and snowdrifts since I was ten, though it never occurred to me to try this before. Good workout for the legs.”

The hill seemed to stretch on forever, and Bryan’s mind went blank as he concentrated on putting one foot in front of the next. He closed his eyes as he pushed, and he thought he heard Meghan starting to say something, but Rowan broke out in an old work song, and the others joined in, drowning her out.

Finally the pushing got much easier and he heard the teamster shouting, so he opened his eyes to see that they were starting down the other side of the hill. Rowan and Theodric were sitting on the tailboard of the wagon, sipping beer and watching him in amusement.

“When did you guys stop pushing?” Bryan demanded.

“Before they started singing,” Meghan told him angrily. She looked all red and flustered, and Bryan realized that the other women had been holding her back as they all walked along to watch him push a wagon up the hill. “Even the horses were slacking off and taking a break.”

“Best example of strengthening magic I’ve seen in a while,” Laitz commented. “If you don’t want to do the one-man comedy play, you should consider a strongman act.”

“I never learned any strengthening magic,” Bryan admitted, out of breath and hungry, but otherwise no worse for the wear.

The nearby players who overheard the conversation stopped walking and stared.

“You called on that power without trying to?” Meghan asked. “No man could have kept that wagon moving without magic. The horses really did stop pulling near the end.”

“I guess I just have a lot of excess energy lately,” Bryan said.

“You’re so lucky,” one of the older women told Meghan. “Enjoy it while you can.”

“It’s said that if newlyweds put a copper in a purse each time they lay together, and then take one out for each time after their first year of marriage, the purse will never be empty,” Faye observed to the general amusement of all.

Meghan turned bright red and fled back towards the props wagon.

Bryan shook his head in disgust and muttered, “What a rip-off.”

Chapter 69

At the communal supper, Rowan announced, “We’re here a day early, thanks in no small part to the efforts of our young friend.” He indicated Bryan with one beefy hand.

“Way to push a wagon, boy,” Simon called out.

“You made the poor horses nervous about their job security,” Jomar added. “They practically trotted the rest of the way.”

“The horses have seen him eat and they were worried about the grain running out,” somebody else contributed.

Bryan scowled and reached for a turkey drumstick on the latest tray deposited by the boy working as the kitchen wagon runner. His twist-and-yank method failed to separate the joint, and the whole bird slid across the table, bringing a new wave of laughter and comments from the players.

“Don’t make fun of him,” Hardol remonstrated the others. “A growing boy has to eat.”

“We’ll set the stage in the morning, but the performances won’t start until the day after, so everybody is welcome to take the afternoon off and visit the attractions,” Rowan continued with his announcement. “I understand that some of the vendors who keep booths on the fairgrounds actually raise their prices once the festivities start, so this may be our year to find some bargains.”

“What’s so special about the shopping here?” Meghan asked Faye. Simon’s wife often sat next to the girl at meals in order to pepper her with questions about the healing techniques she had seen.

“The merchants around the port here specialize in importing the latest fashions from Old Land. They get a whole shipload of new styles every year, and there are thousands of local women who earn a good living making copies. I don’t know of anywhere else in New Land where the production of clothing is so advanced.”

Bryan leaned around Meghan and asked, “They have factories? I thought mass production wasn’t possible here.”

“Mass production, that’s an interesting way to describe it,” Faye replied. “The way it was explained to me, a merchant will purchase enough cloth to make a large number of garments and then buy examples of the new fashions. An expert seamstress carefully cuts all of the stitching out of the new garment and makes a drawing of how the pieces fit together.”

“So a woman can borrow the pieces as a pattern to make a new dress and use the drawing to put them together,” Meghan concluded. “What a great idea.”

“It’s more advanced than that,” Faye said. “There are some large sheds down near the wharf with hundreds of women and girls working in each one. They sit at long tables, each of them doing a single task, like cutting the same piece or stitching a particular seam, and then they pass it on to the next person. Within a day of the ship arriving, the markets are flooded with the latest fashions.”

“But then they’re copies,” Bryan objected.

“What’s the difference?” Meghan asked.

“Well, if you could buy the original or a copy, wouldn’t you pay more for the original?”

“But the original has been taken apart and handled by all of the seamstresses. I’d pay more for a new one.”

“You don’t get it. I mean, if you could have an original, wouldn’t you prefer that over a copy?”

“How could there be copies if the original wasn’t taken apart?”

“A different original. There can’t be a whole shipload of unique new dresses.”

“Well, if the new fashions are already copies, what difference does it make?”

“But the clothes from Old Land are original copies,” Bryan insisted. “Get it? Like, people would see you and think that you’re really sophisticated because you’re wearing new Old Land clothes.”

“Either something is original or it’s a copy,” Meghan replied, unable to follow Bryan’s line of reasoning. “What difference does it make if it’s copied here or copied on the other side of the ocean?”

“One is original and the other is pirated!”

“You think that pirates are interested in fashion?” Meghan asked. “I’ve always heard that they wear whatever they can steal. That’s how you can tell them from regular sailors.”

“Never mind,” Bryan muttered, turning his attention back to the food.

Chapter 70

“Step right up, the next contest begins in ten minutes. Win a cup of coppers or a stuffed dragon for your sweetheart back home. How about you, sir? With those long legs, the prize is as good as yours.”

“What’s the deal?” Bryan asked the barker, ignoring Meghan’s attempts to pull him away.

“Just two coppers to participate. First place winner takes all the money in the goblet, second place gets the stuffed dragon, third place gets free entry into the next contest.”

“How much is in the goblet?”

“Well, that’s anybody’s guess, but you can see for yourself that it’s full.”

“And how many men are running?”

“I see we have a regular money counter on our hands here,” the barker replied, using a magic assist to raise his voice even further to try to create interest with passersby. “There aren’t nearly as many men today as we’ll get starting tomorrow, when the fair is in full swing.”

“But how many?” Bryan insisted, eyeing the goblet.

“You only have to look at the starting line. Early birds get the best position.”

“There must be a hundred men there already,” Meghan whispered to Bryan doubtfully. “They all look like runners, do you see how skinny they are? And I doubt there are even a hundred coppers in that narrow goblet. It’s like he’s taking half of the money for the privilege of letting the men run around a horse track.”

“It’ll be a piece of cake. You saw me push the wagon.”

“There’s strength and there’s speed. You’ve proven that you’re strong, but for all we know that’s making you slower. All of those men will be using magic to make themselves faster.”

“It’s just two coppers to try,” Bryan cajoled.

“My two coppers, because you turned all of our earnings into that little gold ring!”

“Come on. I won’t ask you for anything else the rest of the day.”

“Horse manure,” Meghan grumbled, but she dug in her purse and gave him two coppers, which were immediately transferred to the barker.

“In through the gate you go, contestants only. Your little brother can watch from the rail.”

After twenty additional contestants entered the gate, and a long delay, followed by a great deal of shouting, Bryan emerged from the mob at the finish line and found Meghan sitting on the rail.

“They must have all been cheating,” he blustered, brushing the dust off of his clothes. “I should go and demand my two coppers back.”

“
Your
two coppers? And all of them were cheating?”

“Just the ones that finished ahead of me,” he said, managing a grin.

“That would be all of them,” the girl replied, unable to suppress a smile of her own. “I hope you learned something, anyway.”

“I did, so you don’t have to rub it in.”

As they left the race area and headed into the market, the barker began calling for contestants to compete in a strongman competition. Bryan snuck a sideways glance at Meghan, but she was pretending not to hear.

Chapter 71

“Where do they get all this stuff?” Bryan asked, devouring the display of edged weapons with his eyes. “Back home I could sell these to historical reenactors for a fortune.”

“Weapons? They’re made by smiths. What did you think?”

“I don’t know, magic maybe.”

“You’ve been here almost two months and you haven’t noticed that people make everything by hand? From what you told me about Dark Earth, most of the stuff you bought came from the Far East in giant ships. The only things we get from there are silk and jade, occasionally tea. The luxury items that are worth transporting.”

“Doesn’t seem very efficient,” he objected.

“Efficient? You’ve seen how much the horses eat, so if you’re going to fill a wagon with goods, it had better be worth it. Other than weapons like this and other high value objects, there isn’t even that much trade between the dukedoms.”

“But what about the clothes from Old Land we were talking about last night?”

“The latest fashions are high value, as are spices and precious metals. The kind of things that dragons like,” she added, hoping it would sink in that way.

“Is there anything you want?”

“Really? You’d let me spend what’s left of my savings on something for myself?”

“Don’t be sarcastic,” Bryan replied mildly. “It makes you sound like an adolescent boy.”

Meghan elbowed him hard, catching her funny bone on one of his ribs and nearly collapsing from the resulting shock that traveled up her arm and left her momentarily paralyzed. The fact that she had inflicted the injury on herself only made her madder, and she stalked off in the direction of the clothing stalls, doing her best to ignore her companion.

“What did I do?”

The girl set her lips in a thin line and ostentatiously looked the other direction.

“I shouldn’t have said you sound like a boy,” Bryan apologized, remembering too late that she was a bit touchy on the subject. “I know you’re tired of walking around pretending all the time, but Simon told me that after the tour, we’ll go back to their winter site and you can dress any way you want. Besides, I like your
Elstan
voice.”

This last unexpected compliment brought Meghan up short. “You’re weird,” she said, but she stopped looking away from him and slowed her steps. “Will you look at dresses with me? We can tell them that I need something to wear on stage.”

“Sure, I love shopping for women’s clothes,” Bryan lied, figuring he owed her that much for losing her money in the race. Besides, it was getting near lunch and there were some food stands he hoped to talk her into visiting.