Book 3: Chapter Twelve

Corec stood on the quarterdeck, staring out at the horizon. To the south, three smudges of land indicated the tail end of the Kitish island chain the ship had been following for the past few days. Once they were past the islands, it would only take another week to reach the port of Nysa if the weather grew favorable again. At the moment, though, the wind had died down to nothing, and the crew was attempting to keep the ship in place so it didn’t drift off course.

Corec breathed in deeply. It had been ten days since the last of his nausea had faded away, and even the smell no longer bothered him—out on the open ocean, it didn’t seem nearly as bad as he remembered. Perhaps it was the smell of the docks that he disliked, rather than the smell of the sea.

A voice suddenly spoke. “So, what’s this Tir Yadar place, anyway?”

Startled, he turned to see Razai standing next to him. He hadn’t heard her come up. They’d been on the ship for two and a half weeks, and it was the first time she’d approached him to talk.

“It’s an ancient city, or probably the remains of one,” he said.

She sighed, her gazing flickering upward in annoyance. “I got that much from Renny.”

“Sorry. Ellerie and Bobo know more, but I gather it’s supposed to be the center of the Ancients’ civilization. Or Bobo calls them the first peoples. They’re the ones who first learned how to use magic, so we think they’re also the ones who created the wardens. We might be able to find a way to undo the binding spell.”

Razai smirked. “Looking for treasure and getting rid of you? This job might not be so bad after all. Something tells me you didn’t mention the bit about wardens to Varsin Senshall.”

“That’s not part of our deal with him. Everything we told Varsin was true, and Ellerie was planning to make this trip anyway; there’s just more of us coming along than there would have been otherwise.”

“But the place is supposed to be thousands of years old, right?”

“Something like that. Ellerie would know better than me.”

“Then there can’t be much left. What makes you think you’ll find anything about wardens there?”

“We probably won’t, but we’ve got to try,” Corec said with a shrug. “There’s another, more likely option. One of the wardens—they call her Three—knows how to end the binding spell. She might be in Cordaea, but I have no idea how to find her. Do you know who she is?”

“No, and I don’t know where she is either. I don’t know as much about wardens as you seem to think I do.”

“But you knew I was one,” Corec pointed out. “You said your employer was curious about me. Is that why?”

“He didn’t give me a reason,” Razai said.

Was she telling the truth? How could he trust her?

“You were spying in Telfort too,” he said. “Was it really only because of Prince Rikard’s death?” Suddenly, the pieces started to make sense. “Rusol’s a warden, isn’t he? Is that why he’s trying to kill me?”

“I told you, I didn’t even know he was trying to kill you, much less why.”

What she’d left unsaid was more important than what she’d said—she hadn’t denied that Rusol was a warden. Yelena had been worried the wardens might come into conflict if they intruded on each other’s territory, but Corec had been away from Larso for years. If he’d intruded on anyone’s territory, it was Yelena’s, and she hadn’t attempted to kill him.

Rusol being a warden raised more questions than it answered, but it couldn’t be a coincidence. It didn’t explain why he’d attacked Corec and his friends, but maybe it was the beginnings of a reason.

“I wish you’d tell me what you know,” Corec said.

“There’s nothing else to tell. You know as much as I do.”

A shout came from the crow’s nest. “Ships starboard!”

When they’d encountered ships in the past, the crew hadn’t shown much interest, but this time, everyone tried to get a look. Corec peered south, toward the islands, but couldn’t see anything yet.

Captain Valen came out onto the quarterdeck from his stateroom and aimed a spyglass in the same direction. Finally, he said, “I see them.”

“See who?” Ellerie asked. She and Boktar had joined the group.

“I can’t say for sure yet, but it’s best to be safe.” He raised his voice, shouting, “All hands, weapons out!”

The master officer repeated the call, and sailors rushed back and forth, clearing the deck.

“What’s going on?” Corec asked.

“Those islands are the Lower Kitish,” Valen said. “Pirates are active around here. The trading houses usually send their ships east from Kitish to Cordaea, and then travel down the coast, but that adds a week or more to the journey. Peregrine sails straight through because the smaller pirate ships aren’t a threat and she can outrun the larger ones, but she can’t do that without a wind.”

“If there’s no wind, doesn’t that mean the pirates won’t be able to reach us?” Corec asked.

“Those ships are galleys. They’ve got oars. We’ll have to fight. You had a sword when we first met—you know how to use it?”

“I’ll go get it.” Corec had to dodge the sailors who were still scrambling around, preparing the ship for an attack. In his cabin, he slipped his chain shirt on over his head and strapped the sword harness to his back. He left his plate armor behind, not wanting to think about what would happen if he fell overboard while wearing it. At least with his mail, he could probably pull it off before he drowned.

On his way back up, he ran into Boktar and Sarette. Like Corec, Boktar had stuck to just his chainmail. Sarette had left her own mail behind, but was awkwardly buckling her heavy, padded overcoat with one hand while carrying her staff-spear in the other.

Topside, the deck had been cleared and men were wheeling small catapults into place along both sides of the ship, aiming outward. When they had them where they wanted, they used short lengths of rope to secure the weapons tightly to the railing, keeping them from rolling around on the deck. A few men were stringing bows.

“Catapult crews, alternate iron and pitch!” the captain shouted. “Get those ballistae up! Archers, don’t light your arrows until my mark!”

Ballistae? Corec blinked in surprise and looked around. Above and to the rear of the quarterdeck, on the small deck above the captain’s stateroom, two men were assembling a huge mounted crossbow. Like the catapults, it was smaller than the ballistae Corec had trained on during his time with the knights, but it also seemed to be more maneuverable—as he watched, the sailors swiveled it around to test its movement. Another ballista was being pieced together on the forecastle deck at the front of the ship.

To the south, three boats had closed in close enough to make out their shapes, their bows aimed toward the Peregrine.

Corec, Boktar, and Sarette joined Ellerie, who’d found time to strap her sword belt on, and Razai, who’d never stopped carrying her knives around. Valen gave the armed group an approving nod, but looked worried.

“Can you stop them?” Ellerie asked him.

“They’ve got rams,” he replied, looking through his spyglass again. “They’ll try to board. Their ships would normally be no match for Peregrine, but we’re dead in the water, and they’ve got a lot more men. They took their sails down, so it’ll be harder to light their boats on fire.”

Corec looked up at the sails hanging limply above his head. “What about ours?”

“No time to furl them, and if the wind comes back up, they’ll be our best weapon. I guess we’ll find out if the fire-protection wards that Senshall’s been paying for are any good.”

Everyone waited and watched, but there was nothing Corec could do to help while the pirate ships were so far away. He’d learned how to use crossbows during his time training with the Knights of Pallisur, but he didn’t have one with him, and the catapults and ballistae were already manned by others who likely had more experience.

The ships drew closer. They were long and narrow, with rows of oars dipping into the water on each side, moving in unison.

“Are you certain they’re pirates?” Ellerie asked the captain.

“Yes—can’t you see they’re not flying any colors? They’re heading straight at us!”

The elven woman nodded, then muttered under her breath and held her hand out, aiming at the ship in the lead. A beam of white light burst from her fingers and struck the hull. Corec couldn’t see any damage at this distance, but a muttering of mixed fear and excitement spread through the sailors on the Peregrine.

“Bloody hell!” Captain Valen exclaimed. “You’re a wizard?”

“Yes.”

He stared at her, then back at the pirate ships. “Can you hit them below the water line?”

“The spell’s designed to kill a person or cut through armor; it’s not meant for thick wooden planking. I need to…” Ellerie trailed off, staring at her target. She started whispering again, the words indistinct.

This time, the beam was bigger and brighter than Corec had ever seen it. It shot below the water line just before it reached the ship, hiding its impact, but Ellerie nodded curtly. “That worked,” she said, putting one hand on the railing to steady herself. She closed her eyes and took a few deep breaths.

“Are you all right?” Boktar asked.

“I’ll be fine.” She opened her eyes again and whispered the words to a spell. The beam hit again, just above the previous spot, and even stronger than before. The effect was visible this time, the wood splintering apart as the spell blew a two-foot hole in the hull just at the water line. Water poured in.

Corec caught Ellerie in his arms as she collapsed. He passed her off to Boktar, who helped her sit down on the quarterdeck, leaning back against the outer wall of the captain’s stateroom. Treya rushed over to check on her.

The lead ship slowed down as it took on water, the oarsmen in the front half of the boat no longer rowing. Corec could hear the faint sounds of shouting coming from that direction.

“The oar deck is flooding,” Valen announced. “The oarsmen are abandoning their posts.”

But even if that ship dropped out of the fight, there were still two more.

#

Shavala strung her bow and chose a spot on the main deck where she wouldn’t get in the crew’s way, then watched the three ships through the spyglass she’d borrowed from Sarette. The two galleys in the rear soon passed the one that had been hit by Ellerie’s spells.

Sarette left the quarterdeck and joined her, carrying her staff-spear and wearing her armored overcoat. “They’re saying we could get away from them if there was a wind,” the stormborn woman said. “Should we try?”

The two of them had been taking turns manipulating the weather from their perch on the mizzenmast, pushing more wind against the sails hanging from the mainmast and foremast. They’d managed to trim a day or two from the trip, but they hadn’t told anyone what they were doing because the sailors were superstitious about magic. The sailors still muttered about the wind’s strange behavior, though—for a few hours each day, the wind changed directions in odd ways and hit the sails on the mainmast harder than the other masts.

When the wind died down that morning, Shavala and Sarette had stopped their attempts, not wanting to frighten the crew. It would have been too obvious that something unnatural was happening. Was it worth trying now, if it meant avoiding a fight? Shavala glanced through the spyglass again, attempting to measure how fast the galleys were coming.

She shook her head. “Just the two of us wouldn’t be enough,” she said. “We can’t move the ship very fast on our own.”

Sarette frowned and looked up. “I wish there was a storm. I’m not strong enough to do much without one.” The sky was completely clear, a pure blue that seemed to go on forever.

Just then, the captain shouted from the quarterdeck. “Starboard, weapons alight!”

The archers scattered around the ship were all kneeling and facing starboard already, toward the pirate galleys. Next to each was a pile of strange arrows, each with a thick wooden shaft and a bundle of cloth near the tip. On the captain’s order, the archers each grabbed an arrow and lit the cloth bundle on fire, then nocked their bows. Half of the catapult crews on the starboard side took action too. They’d loaded ceramic containers into the buckets, and now they removed the lids to those containers and lit the contents, a flickering flame dancing up from the opening. The other catapult crews had loaded heavy iron balls, and didn’t appear to need any further preparation.

“Starboard, loose weapons!” the captain shouted.

The archers launched their flaming arrows up into the air at a steep angle. The heavy arrows curved downward quickly, most not reaching the enemy boats. One struck the hull that Ellerie had damaged, but the flame went out before it hit. Another skittered across the deck of a ship. A pirate grabbed it and tossed it overboard before it could set anything alight.

The catapults had better luck. A load of iron balls pounded a hole into the hull of the third ship, and one of the ceramic containers shattered across the deck of the second, spreading burning pitch.

The men closest to the fire rushed over to put it out while the archers on the third pirate ship launched their own volley. These, too, were bulky fire arrows. The pirates had no better aim than the sailors on the Peregrine, but they had a lot more men. An arrow struck the main course sail—the lowest sail on the mainmast—and got caught in the canvas. The arrow continued burning, but the fabric didn’t catch fire.

Then another arrow, its flame extinguished midair, hit one of the catapult men in the chest. He fell to the ground without a sound. His companion shouted for the ship’s chirurgeon, but it was too late.

Shavala set her bow to the side while the captain was calling out more orders to his men. Her regular arrows wouldn’t have much effect on the battle, and she hadn’t trained with the odd fire arrows. If the goal of the fight was to set the other boats on fire, she had a better way to do that.

She concentrated on the hull and deck of the second ship, just behind the ram. She needed a bigger flame than she’d ever summoned before, but she also had a huge wooden target ready to feed it. In the past, she’d had to call it out of midair, feeding it only with the magic itself, but now, she just needed to teach it to feed itself. She’d never tried to call flame at a distance before, but after her experience learning to control the lightning storm at Tir Navis, it seemed almost easy. Fire had always been more eager to come at her call than the other elements.

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The fire started up just where she asked it to, spreading from the hull to the deck. It was small at first, but once she was comfortable controlling it, she let it grow.

There were cries of alarm from the burning ship. Two pirates rolled a water barrel over to the flames and hacked it open with axes. As the water gushed out, Shavala called to it and forced it away from her fire. The water rose into the air in a column, drenching the two men before splashing over the side of the ship. She allowed the fire to engulf the bow of the ship, convincing it to grow steadily until the pirates gave up trying to put it out, but not letting it grow so quickly it would kill everyone on board.

With that ship under control, she turned to the last one, which was still approaching. Soon, it too was burning. The pirates quickly abandoned the two ships, some fighting over the rowboats while others jumped into the sea and made their way to the vessel Ellerie had disabled.

“We got lucky,” Captain Valen announced from up on the quarterdeck. “I’ve never seen a ship catch fire so quickly. Was it the archers or the catapult men that did that?”

Shavala’s friends looked her way, but she just nodded and shrugged. She’d managed to end the fight without killing anyone—or at least without killing too many of them. Surely not all of the pirates could swim, but it wasn’t her responsibility to save everyone. She’d done what she could.

“Should we help them?” Treya asked as one man after another leapt into the water in a panic.

“If they weren’t pirates, we’d be required to lend aid,” Valen said. “But that first ship of theirs won’t sink all the way. Galleys don’t carry ballast, so the hull will keep floating—enough for them to hang onto it, at least. Most of them will live, and make it back to the islands.”

“Most?” Treya said.

Corec frowned. “You’re just letting them go?” he asked Valen.

“Pirates aren’t worth capturing. Nobody will pay ransom for them, and we can’t keep that many men under guard. Even if the wind picks up, the only place we could take them is back to their own islands, and the only authority there is the pirates themselves. Besides, this was just the home fleet. We don’t want to be caught at anchor when their sail fleet returns. As soon as the wind picks up, we need to leave.”

#

Treya returned to her cabin, relieved to find it empty. She needed to meditate, and it was easier to do that without distractions. Once she and Corec had gotten over their seasickness, she’d returned to sharing a room with Shavala, but the elven woman hadn’t come below decks yet after the battle. Shavala wasn’t a particularly distracting person, but it was still easier to concentrate when she wasn’t around.

Ellerie and Shavala had ended the fight with the pirates before it began, but Treya’s body was still poised for battle, tense in anticipation of a conflict that never happened. Even her healing magic had been of little use. A sailor had been struck by an arrow, dying before she could reach him, but other than that, the crew had only suffered a single sprained wrist. Ellerie’s drain shock had been minor enough to not require any healing.

Treya hoped meditating and performing her exercises would help her regain her balance.

She sat crosslegged in the middle of the floor, facing two empty wooden crates she’d borrowed and stacked together. A bell would have been better, but the only bells on the ship were fixed in place, and she didn’t want to do her exercises in full view of the sailors. The crates would have to do.

Closing her eyes and leaning her head back, she gradually blanked out each of the worries and stresses of the battle, one after another. She quieted the physical sensations too—the feeling of her clothing, the deck below her, the slight sway of the ship. She slowed her heart beat, then followed the blood as it pulsed throughout her body, from her heart to her extremities and then back again, constantly renewing itself.

Then she dove deeper, feeling the smaller bits that made up the blood—the bits that nobody had a name for because only a mystic could sense them. Her entire body tingled, every part vibrating in unison.

Reaching out, she lightly touched her fingertip to the crate on top of the stack. It hurled violently away from her, slamming into the wall with a heavy crash.

Treya came out of her meditation in shock. It had finally worked.

“You did it!”

She twisted around to find Shavala standing at the door, watching. Treya hadn’t heard the door open—it was difficult to focus both inward and outward at the same time.

“I guess I did,” she replied.

“You’ve been trying that one since the Storm Heights,” Shavala said.

Treya looked back at the crates. “Kelis and Shana said I needed to practice more, but I think there’s more to it than what I just did. I had to touch it, but I don’t think the touch is the important part.” It was always hard to describe her mystic exercises—there were no words for much of what she did. “I need to keep trying.”

“Do you want me to leave?”

“No. I’m done for now. I’m just going to stretch.”

Shavala came into the cabin and sat on her cot. “We’ll be leaving soon. The wind is starting to pick up. Captain Valen was right—the first ship only sank part of the way. A few of the pirates weren’t strong enough swimmers to reach it, so he lowered the rowboat for them and sent them over to join their friends. They found enough of the oars that they’re using it like a raft to go back to the islands.”

“You’re the one who started the fires, right?”

Shavala nodded.

“I didn’t know you could do that. Not that much, at least.”

“The fire arrows weren’t working. It was easier than I thought it would be.”

There was a knock on the cabin door. Treya rose to her feet and answered it, finding Corec on the other side.

“Ahh, good, you’re both here,” he said. “I’ve got some news.”

She stood aside to let him enter. “News?”

“Razai told me Prince Rusol is a warden.” He paused and shrugged. “She hinted at it, anyway.”

“She wouldn’t say for certain?”

Corec laughed. “Have you ever tried talking to her? It’s like trying to pull information from a stone. I get the impression she thinks of it like a game. Maybe if I don’t annoy her too much, she’ll say more.”

“Why would a warden attack us? Yelena didn’t.”

“No, but Yelena was afraid of what might happen if the wardens came together—not because they’re wardens, but because they’re all mages and she doesn’t know what the others want. She didn’t want to risk a war breaking out. That’s why she asked me not to stay in Tyrsall.”

“Then Prince Rusol is a mage, right?” Treya said. “With other mages around him? His bondmates, I mean?”

“He must be.”

“How are we going to fight mages? The red-eyes were bad enough!” The red-eyes’ fighting skills had been inhibited by whatever magic was used to control them, but in a way, that made them even worse. Rusol had thrown away dozens of lives in his failed attacks.

“If they’re wizards, we can stop them from casting spells,” Corec said. “We just have to interrupt them. That’s what the knights told me, anyway.”

“You can do that to any mage,” Shavala said. “It’s just easier to know when a wizard is casting a spell.”

“You know how to fight mages?” Corec asked her, his eyebrows raised.

“Not much, but Meritia mentioned it a few times. A wizard once tried to kill her when she was on her travels. She fed him to the plants.”

Corec opened his mouth to speak, but then he stopped and turned back to Shavala. “Fed him to the plants?” he asked incredulously.

“Like what I did with the drake and the blackberry bush, but with more vines, and the wizard wasn’t strong enough to break free. Meritia bound his mouth with roots to keep him from casting any spells. If she’d let him go, he’d have tried to kill her again, so she let the plants keep him.”

Corec just stared at her.

“Can you do that?” Treya asked the elven woman.

“No, Meritia’s always been better than me with plants. Maybe I could do it in the Terril Forest. It’s easier with the…” Shavala hesitated. “It’s easier there. That would only stop a wizard, though. You’d need to do something else for other mages.”

Corec said, “The knights say the best option is to surprise them before they can cast a spell, but it’s dangerous if you don’t know what they can do. Maybe Ellerie will have some ideas.”

Treya shivered. Her mystic training hadn’t covered how to fight against magic. “So we need to learn about the mages with him?”

“Yes. I wonder if Rusol bonded the demon that’s been creating the red-eyes for him. Does the warden bond work on demons?”

“It could be a demonborn,” Treya suggested. “Bishop Lastal said that demonborn sometimes inherit the same abilities that demons have.” He’d said the same thing about godborn.

“True,” Corec said. “I’ll ask Razai the next time she’s feeling talkative. Rusol must have other bondmates, too, and he’s got to be a mage himself. How has he managed to hide it for so long? Magic is illegal in Telfort. After we get back to Aravor, maybe I should sneak over the border and see what I can find out.”

“That seems more dangerous than waiting for them to come to us,” Treya pointed out. Corec wasn’t any good at sneaking around.

“Yes, but if I manage to learn what they can do, it’d be worth it.”

“Something about all of this feels wrong,” Treya said with a sigh. “Maybe we should avoid the other wardens entirely. Yelena spies on everyone, Prince Rusol is trying to kill us, and from what you said, the First sounds like he’s gone mad. What are the rest of them like? Do you really want to be one of them them?”

“We can decide for ourselves what we want to do. The wardens don’t have any sort of real purpose, or at least they don’t have a shared purpose. The First is crazy, but he claims he protects his people. Maybe he does. Yelena…after she suggested starting a civil war to get rid of Rusol, I don’t know what to think about her. Still, people come to her for advice and for help. I don’t think she’s necessarily a bad person.”

Treya nodded. “What about us?” She and Corec, together with Katrin and Shavala, had talked several times about what they planned to do in the future, but they’d carefully skirted around discussing what being a warden actually meant.

“For me, I’d be happy to just live my life, and to help a few people along the way,” he said. “Maybe someday, I’ll take on a more official position, like Yelena, but not right now. What about you?”

“Shana says I need to figure out my own purpose. I like what we’ve talked about before. A place where people can find me if they need healing. But I don’t want to forget that I’m a mystic first.”

Corec said, “Then let’s stick with the plan, but whatever we decide to do, I need to deal with Rusol first—unless we go so far away that he won’t bother to follow us. Maybe that’s in Cordaea.”

“Stay?” Shavala asked. “I can’t stay in Cordaea. I have to return to Terrillia someday. I thought you were considering towns near the forest.”

“We are. I was just thinking out loud. Should we wait and see if Rusol gives up, or should we return as soon as we’re done helping Ellerie? I guess we need to return if we’re ever going to figure out what to do about him.”

Treya said, “Maybe Yelena will figure it out before we get back.”

“Oh, bloody hell,” Corec said. “She doesn’t know he’s a warden. I’m going to go ask Captain Valen if he can take a letter back to her for me on his return trip. I hope she hasn’t done anything to draw attention to herself.”

Treya nodded. She’d have to update the letter she was writing to Mother Ola as well. Corec left to find the captain, but Treya couldn’t stop thinking about the conversation. Her talk with Priest Telkin about the different divine blessings had been enlightening, but since then, she’d spent all of her time practicing her mystic abilities. If Rusol was a mage, and had other mages backing him, being a mystic wouldn’t be enough.

“Shavala,” she said, “after the pirates, are you too tired to make a flame? A little one, like you use for lighting the campfire?”

Shavala raised a finger and a tiny flame sprang from it. “Why?”

Treya closed her eyes and tried to construct one of the protection spells Telkin had described. In her mind, she felt something shift into place around her. It was weak and wavering, but it was there.

“Try to touch me with it,” she said.

“What? Why?”

“Because if we’re going to fight mages, we need to be able to protect ourselves from their magic.”

“But what if I burn you?” Shavala asked.

“Then I’ll heal myself.”

#

Corec walked hand-in-hand with Katrin through the streets of Nysa, taking in the unfamiliar sights and sounds. They’d arrived the evening before, and he’d gotten sick again briefly at the sudden transition back to a surface that didn’t constantly sway and roll. He’d been fine by morning, though, so the two of them had decided to take the time to explore before the group got together to plan.

Nysa wasn’t quite as big as Tyrsall, but Marco had claimed there were six hundred thousand people in the city, making it larger than Telfort. Bobo had been right, too—very few people spoke trade tongue or Eastern, and nobody spoke Western. The street vendors called out to the crowd in languages Corec had never heard before.

Few people were carrying weapons out on the streets. Laborers scurried past, eyeing Corec’s sword fearfully, but even the wealthy gave him plenty of space. The only people who didn’t seem concerned were other armed men. It wasn’t clear why everyone was so frightened; both Valen and Marco had said that Nysa was as peaceful as Tyrsall.

Most buildings were constructed of yellow stone bricks, fitted together so tightly that no mortar was necessary. The bricks came in a variety of sizes, but were too regular in shape to be naturally occurring. Smaller buildings, such as homes, were often completely round, with high-sloped roofs that curved inward before coming up to an open point in the center, which appeared to be used as a chimney. Larger rectangular buildings often had rounded protuberances at each corner following the same style.

A gray haze hung over the city, keeping the temperature chilly. It was raining out, but the rain was so light that it felt more like mist or fog.

After they’d been walking for an hour, Corec and Katrin came to a stop in front of a pen.

“I guess we’ve found where to buy the horses,” Katrin said.

“I think these are for eating,” Corec replied. There were butchers’ tools hanging in the window of a small shack off to the side of the yard.

She wrinkled her nose in distaste. “They eat horses here?”

“The hillfolk back home do, too. And others.”

“Yuck. Can we buy riding horses here?” She peered down the street, where more animal pens could be seen.

“Maybe, but I don’t think we have enough time to look right now. We need to be getting back. Do you remember which way the Senshall building is?”

“That way to start with,” Katrin said, pointing at the street they’d just come down. “After that…umm, somewhere toward the ocean?”

Corec laughed. “I forgot we wouldn’t be able to ask directions. Maybe I remember enough Stoneborn to ask one of the dwarves.”

While dwarves weren’t an uncommon sight in Tyrsall, they made up at least a third of the people Corec had encountered in Nysa so far. Strangely, there hadn’t been any elves or seaborn at all outside the docks.

He managed to say, “Where is Senshall?” in Stoneborn to a dwarven merchant. The woman tried to give him directions, but when it became obvious he couldn’t understand her, she simply pointed. He smiled and nodded his thanks.

After a few wrong turns, they made it back to the harbor. From there, they remembered the way to the Senshall offices. As they walked, Corec glanced west across the ocean. Summer would arrive before the group returned to Tyrsall, which meant that he and Katrin would soon have known each other for a year. He’d never have believed that back when he’d first chased after her for the bounty.

“We should get married,” he said suddenly. “Not here, but when we get back to Aravor.”

Katrin burst out laughing. “That’s how you ask me to marry you?”

Laughter wasn’t the response he’d expected. “What’s wrong?”

“I love you, Corec, but I swear, you’ve got to be the least romantic man I’ve ever met. Treya’s got a book of love stories that Renny Senshall gave her before we left. It’s good. You should read it and get some ideas.”

“Uhh, I’ll think about it, but are you going to answer?”

“Of course I’ll marry you,” she said, still laughing. Then she hesitated. “Not right away, though. Let’s get settled first. What do you think of Shavala?”

“What?” Corec was confused by the sudden change in topic. “She’s a good friend. Why?”

“Is that all?”

“What do you mean?”

“I know you find her attractive. She thinks the same of you.”

Corec shrugged. Neither of them had made a secret of that, but he wasn’t sure it was wise to admit it out loud. They’d been careful not to do anything that would hurt Katrin’s feelings. Shavala just liked to tease him, knowing he couldn’t react.

Katrin continued, “You should ask her about the elven custom of sharing. Tell her I said it’s all right.”

“What’s all right?” He looked at her suspiciously.

“Trust me,” she said innocently.

By the time they reached the Senshall building, their friends had gathered together in a room that didn’t have enough chairs for everyone. Corec stood out of the way, while Katrin worked her way through the crowd so she could whisper something in Shavala’s ear. She gave the surprised woman a mischievous grin.

Marco entered the room with a bearded man in rough brown clothing, who had a hand axe slung through a loop on the left side of his belt and a small pickaxe on the right side.

“Ellerie,” Marco said, “this is Josip, who’ll be our guide. He was Burton’s first choice, and we were lucky to find him still in the city.”

Ellerie nodded and greeted the man, then introduced everyone else. “We might as well get started,” she said. She pointed to a large, stylized map painted on one of the walls, showing Senshall’s caravan routes in Cordaea. “First, we’ll be heading east to Lato, a town that sits on the border between Nysar and Bancyra. I understand there’s a good road, and the company’s got a way station there?”

Josip nodded. “We do. It’s a nine-day leg if the weather’s favorable, though the next run to Lato is seven days out if you plan to wait for it. If you want wagons of your own to carry supplies, Senshall can spare two that aren’t in use right now.”

Marco frowned.

“Wagons are slow,” Corec said. “We’d planned to take a string of pack mules. I don’t see any reason to travel with the caravans.”

Boktar nodded. “We’d need twelve mules to haul two wagons anyway. If we take twelve mules without the wagons, and we’re careful not to overload them, they can go as fast as the horses. We’ll need to plan our route so we can resupply more often, but it’ll be worth it.”

“I agree,” Marco said. “It’ll be cheaper and faster, at the cost of a little convenience.”

“Then you’re looking at five days out,” Josip said.

“We can overnight at the way station, but Senshall doesn’t have a counting house there.” Marco gave Ellerie a look. “I can’t withdraw funds in Lato, and if I don’t know where we’re going next, I don’t know if I’ll be able to withdraw funds there, either.”

“We don’t know where we’re going next,” she said. “There are three likely options based on what we’ve learned so far. I’d like to talk to Josip about them, and Bobo’s going to check the library here to see if he can find any clues. Would you accompany him to translate?”

Marco nodded. “There are three possible sites where we might find Tir Yadar?”

“No. We’re looking for the beginning of the route, not the end. There are three likely locations to start at, but it’s possible none of them will be the right one. If so, we’ll need Josip’s help to identify other choices. For now, just withdraw enough coin to get us started.”

“It won’t be cheap,” Boktar warned the factor. “Thirteen horses, twelve mules. We brought our own camping gear, but we’ll need as much food as we can carry without slowing us down.”

Ellerie added, “If we end up in a place where we need money and you can’t get to any, we can put in enough to get by. You can pay us back when we return to Senshall territory.”

“I’d like to have a couple of crossbows on hand, just in case we need them,” Corec said. “And Boktar and I need warhorses that aren’t going to get spooked if we run into a fight.”

“Warhorses are too expensive,” Marco protested.

“You can sell them when we’re done. You won’t be out any money at all.”

The man considered that, then nodded. “I’ll withdraw sixty gold, with the expectation that getting outfitted won’t cost more than forty to forty-five. The remainder will be used for expenses until we need to make another withdrawal.”

“That should be enough,” Boktar said, “unless prices here are wildly different than I’m used to. We’ll need two or three days to get everything in order. Corec will be helping me purchase the horses and mules. Ellerie may ask some of the rest of you to help her get all the food—Leena and I worked up a full list while we were on the Peregrine. Oh, and Leena will need camping gear.”

The cook wasn’t in the room, but Ellerie nodded. “I’ll take care of that, since she and I will be working together.”

Boktar said, “Josip, Marco, if you need anything, be sure to let us know.”

Ellerie and Boktar continued switching back and forth as they spoke, one of them taking charge, then standing to the side while the other seamlessly took over. It was the same way Corec and Ellerie had worked together in the Storm Heights. Had she simply substituted him for Boktar in her mind? Regardless of the reason, the two of them got along much better now than they had before, and Corec didn’t mind someone else taking the lead for a while. It would give him time to watch how Boktar organized the expedition—those skills might come in handy in the future.