Dieter cried.
“Yes, he is, but give him a moment,” Arden said.
The tracker took two moments to salvage his dignity. Then he got up with a moan of boredom, undid the fabric from the bar, and held it to his nose. The four of them watched as his chest moved up and down rhythmically, the fabric shrinking with his inhales and fluttering out with his exhales. His green eyes were keen. The tracker was so very, uncomfortably close to being a man.
“Shattered Hill,” the tracker said after some time.
“The pr . . . the woman has gone to Shattered Hill?” Arden asked. Keth and Master Maraudi had gathered closely to the cage to listen.
The tracker breathed in the fabric one more time and then retied it to the bar. “No. The crest of Shattered Hill gives me the best place to separate out a specific scent. Ride steadily and we should make it by afternoon.”
“I thought you could follow any scent,” Arden said.
“I can. But I’ve got to catch a whiff of it first and there are billions of scents in the wind. She’s not around here at any rate.”
“This had better not be a waste of our time,” Dieter grumbled.
“If you doubt me or my abilities, you plug-nosed boy, then ride back to Old Man Zamin and ask him how many searches have begun with a trip to Shattered Hill. The only time it didn’t was when I was ordered to find Lady Amiere’s missing uncle. The rot of that body was so thick that I led them straight from her home to his corpse in the woods fifty miles away.”
“Then we will ride for Shattered Hill,” Master Maraudi said, and they were on their way.
“How many searches have you been on?” Arden asked, riding alongside the cage.
“Willing or unwilling?” the tracker asked.
“Willing,” Arden asked. That seemed less charged.
The tracker gripped the bars for balance as they traveled over the uneven road that led out of Brazia. “I’m one of two trackers in all of the pearls, and the other is getting on in years, yes, she is. The pearls are the villages in the mountains, each lovelier than the last, some so high you can’t find your breath, some so low that they butt up to the fishers. Not that you or anyone in Odri would know.”
“Your mountains aren’t by the fishers,” Dieter said.
“I wasn’t talking about Odri fishing cities. I’m not from your country. I’m talking about the fishers who live by the mountain rivers, and within the scrap of northwest land between the mountains and the sea. Those fishers. My fishers. Like I said, not that you would know. You don’t travel through the Cascades unless you’re born to them, with someone born to them, or feel like getting squashed by falling rocks.”
He gave the boy a look of disgust for his ignorance and returned to Arden’s question. “When someone goes missing in the snow or a child wanders off, the family of that person comes to a tracker for help. I don’t know how many searches I went on. I never counted. My home was filled, though. People are very appreciative when you find their loved ones or their wealth in livestock. I had cows and chickens, a feather mattress, baskets of fruit and vegetables appearing on the doorstep. Trackers are very respected in the pearls, you see. They come in ones or twos each generation, never more, sometimes less, so we are greatly favored.”
This wasn’t how Arden imagined the life of a beast. The tracker smoothed back his long hair. It was neither curly nor straight, but rumpled into waves that were quite attractive. “There were big searches in snowfalls and rockfalls; there were little searches of women suspicious their men were cheating and the other way around, many searches for animals. I can track them, too. Sor and Sora Stythe lost their sheep twice a season. I didn’t count how many tracks I went on because it was life. A baker doesn’t count the loaves of bread he or she sells. A farrier doesn’t count the horseshoes. My role was to track since I was very young. My mother