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“Good horse.” I thwacked him on the shoulder, careful not to touch the welt raised by the liveryman.

Whnuffff…

“I didn’t like them much either.”

I glanced at the causeway and the dark spot that marked the gate. Nothing seemed to have happened. No other horses had followed us. The intermittent stream of people, horses, and wagons still headed up the stone pavement toward the city.

Then I realized I was still holding the staff in my hand. The wood had cooled until it was no longer warm to my touch. Half of the leather thong I had used to tie the staff in place was missing, ripped in two when I had grabbed for the staff to defend against the guard. I replaced the staff in the lance cup, tying it in place with the remaining leather.

Looking from the staff to the road, my eyes fixed on the rectangular stone post by the road. “Hrisbarg—40 K” proclaimed the weathered stone.

I let go of Gairloch’s mane and straightened up in the saddle, chucking the reins lightly as we headed down the rise on the road to Hrisbarg.

Already it had been more of a day than I had planned. Assaulted by a thief, attacked by the duke’s gate guard and probably declared a criminal in Freetown—all in the first day. I didn’t know where I was going, except I knew that Hrisbarg was where I had to go first before I could get to the roads leading to the Easthorns and eventually the Westhorns.

Would the Freetown guards spread the word? Or would they take it out on the other dangergelders? Or had the others left while I had been haggling with Cerclas to get Gairloch?

My guts wrenched a little, wondering if I could have left Freetown without causing so much of an uproar. I shrugged, knowing I couldn’t undo what I had done, but also knowing I might end up paying for it somehow, some way, when I really didn’t want to. So Gairloch and I started the long walk toward Hrisbarg.

Thrummmm…thrummm…

Above us, the clouds thickened and rumbled, promising more rain.

XX

THE MAN IN white smiles, a warm and reassuring smile that spreads through the coldness of the public room, which the dying embers in the dark hearth barely warm. “Innkeeper! Could we have some warmth?”

As the woman in gray leathers watches from the dark corner table, a heavy-set man lumbers forward. He wears shapeless leather trousers, a worn brown tunic, and a soiled linen apron over which protrudes a sagging gut. “Your lordship, there’s no wood and no coal, naught but the little we got on the grate. The black bastards cut us off, and there’s none to be had for us working folk.”

A hissing whisper of agreement wafts across the scattering of men and the few women who huddle at the tables closer to the near-dead embers on the hearth.

“Bring me some stones, then.”

“Stones?”

“Yes, stones. You wish to warm your inn, do you not?”

Confusion and hope war upon the innkeeper’s face, but he retreats from the still-smiling man in white, who turns to the veiled woman beside him and says something in a voice low enough that not even the hovering serving-girl can catch the words.

At the kitchen door, the innkeeper motions, then speaks quickly to the pregnant girl who responds. He remains by the doorway, surveying the dim and chilly room.

In the shadows, the redhead in gray leans forward and the hood of her cloak slips back, revealing the clean lines of her face and the fire of her hair.

A thin-faced man grins through his straggly beard and eases from his seat toward the table where his prey waits. His hand touches the hilt of the sharp knife at his belt.

Even before he has reached the shadows, the redhead has turned toward the thin-faced man.

“You look like you need a man.” His voice is ingratiating.

“In that case, you aren’t the one.”

Only the dark-eyed and veiled woman who sits beside the man in white watches as the thin man edges toward the redhead.

“Uppity wench, aren’t you?”

“No. Just pointing out the obvious.” Her voice is cool, detached, and her eyes go right through him.

Oblivious to the confidence behind her words, he reaches for the