He locked up the day’s take in his strongbox, then cleaned up the workshop where he’d spent most of the day fletching crossbow bolts. When he was done he headed up to the top floor of his shop where he kept his living quarters. Heavy velvet drapes covered all the windows there, blocking out the fierce sunlight. They were tacked in place, but still a few errant beams of light broke into his room. More than enough to see by. Snurrin went to his desk and took out a long thin strip of paper. Using a heavy stylus of white lead, he wrote out a message in dwarven runes. When he was done the paper still looked blank, but if it were held over the proper sort of oil lamp for a few moments the runes would be revealed, as the particles of smoke adhered to the paper but not to the lead. What he had written was not for every eye to see.
Snurrin was no stranger to spycraft. Every dwarf living in Skrae-or at least every one loyal to the dwarven king-was expected to keep an eye on what the humans did, and report as necessary. The treaty between the crown of Skrae and the kingdom of dwarves was ironclad and made their two nations fast allies. That didn’t mean they trusted each other for a moment.
When the message was ready, Snurrin headed up to the roof where he kept a wooden box sealed with a good stout padlock. Inside were a dozen bats each as big as his forearm, still asleep with their wings folded over them like cloaks. He picked one with three black dots painted on its back and rolled his message around its leg. The bat kicked and squealed in its sleep but was unable to shake the slip of paper loose. When Snurrin was sure it was done properly, he locked the box again and went back downstairs to take his supper. His work was done.
The city of Redweir lay over a hundred miles away, far to the southeast on the Bay of Serpents. It would take a human rider three days to cover that distance, even if he rode through the night and assuming he had fresh horses waiting for him at every stop on the way. A fast ship sailing with a fair wind might make it there in half the time. But even if the entire Free City of Ness had been swallowed up by a crack in the earth and dragged down to the pit of souls, no human in Redweir would hear of it and quicker than that.
The dwarves had a far more convenient method of getting messages back and forth between the two cities. That night when darkness fell, the bat would clamber out of a thin slot in the side of the box and wing toward Redweir. It knew the only way to get the objectionable piece of paper off its leg was to present itself to a certain dwarf who lived there. It would fly at full speed and arrive by dawn, when a minor clerk in the dwarven embassy at Redweir would find it just as he was headed for bed. The clerk would take the message-unread-directly to the Envoy of that city, who would know exactly how to make it legible. The Envoy would also know exactly what to do with the information Snurrin had provided:
BARBARIAN LEAVING TODAY FOR VINC
MUST NOT FIND WHAT IS HIDDEN THERE
THE KING GIVES THIS UTMOST PRIORITY
HUMAN CASUALTIES ARE ACCEPTABLE
SEND BALINT
Chapter Sixteen
The band of adventurers passed through King’s Gate without any trouble-none of the guards were interested in stopping such a dangerous-looking crew from leaving the city-and before Malden knew it he was out in the world.
His reaction was immediate, and visceral.
Never, in his entire life, had he set so much as a foot outside the walls of the Free City of Ness. He was for the first time seeing that there even was a world beyond.
And it terrified him.
The land rolled like the waves of a vast ocean, a sea of tawny grain that never stopped moving under the lowering gray sky. In the distance the clouds broke and sunlight streamed down in impossibly long, straight rays to flicker on golden fields. A small army of peasants worked out there, bent over with sickles to harvest the glowing treasure. To the northeast a church stood white and straight, its spire pointing upward like an accusing finger. It looked terribly alone in that open space, its right angles and distinct shape like some piece of his life cut loose and cast down carelessly like a plaything by some cyclopean child.
Every hour of Malden’s life to that point had been spent in narrow lanes, or climbing over rooftops, or in well-mannered parkland hampered by walls. Now there was nothing on any side of him that he could reach out and touch. If I were plucked up into the sky by some violent wind, he thought, and tossed out into the middle of the ocean with no land in sight, this is how it would feel. He felt exposed, naked, vulnerable in a way he distinctly disliked.
Over time this unease ebbed, though it never left him.
For hours they ambled through the fields under the blustery rain, never seeing more than the occasional distant group of laborers. The only way to measure the distance they covered was to count the mile markers that stood by the side of the road, simple piles of stones marked with the sigil of the local nobility: a crudely drawn stork or a pair of chevrons or just a simple crown. To Malden the symbols meant only one thing, really: all this land belonged to someone else. He was trespassing on someone else’s property, and if they wanted to, they could run him off.
It seemed there was no place outside the city where a man could be free after all.
Despite his unease he soon found himself drowsing in his seat. He worried that if he fell unconscious he would slump and fall from the swaying wagon, and so was almost grateful when Croy began to sing a traveling song. It was a rather sentimental tune about a knight who went out riding to do battle for his lady’s honor. Malden knew a far different version, a much lustier tale of a farmer’s lovely daughters and dragons that disguised themselves as naked women (and only gave themselves away by a certain scaliness of their skin), but he knew there would be plenty of time to sing his version later. This journey was likely to take more than a week-no need to use up all his songs on the first day.
After about an hour’s travel Cythera dropped back to ride beside the wagon. “I’m surprised to see you here,” she told him, “though I’ll admit I’m rather glad.” She reached across to touch Malden’s face. “Oh. You’re hurt,” she said.
Malden shrugged, even though it pained him to do so. “ ’Tis a trifle only,” he told her.
“What happened?” she asked.
He puffed himself up and said, “A host of villainous assassins came upon me in the dark. Now, normally I would have been ready for them, but I was busy at that moment stealing the silver out of the moon, so they got first licks in before I knew what they were about. After that, of course, it was a done deal, and I left them in far worse shape than I found them.”
She laughed, which made him smile for the first time in a day.
“Boasting’s not your strength, thief,” she said. “Regardless, I’m glad you weren’t killed. Or arrested, for that matter. Was there much silver in the moon? It looks no bigger than a single coin held out at arm’s reach.”
“When matched with the gold I took from the sun, that’s still a sum worth stealing.” He glanced sideways at Croy but the knight made a good show of paying no attention to their talk. He was busy singing anyway, and was deep into a verse about the virtue of courtly love, so Malden felt he had a little liberty to spend. “I must say, if you’re surprised to see me, I’m doubly so to see you. I didn’t think you were prone to Croy’s nature of folly.”
“I’ve spent my whole life working for my father or my mother, almost every day of it inside Ness’s walls. I wished to see the world one time before I was married. Once I am pregnant with Croy’s get, there will be no more opportunities of this sort.” She looked away from him and added, “Besides, there were certain temptations I wished to leave behind me.”
“Like me,” he said.
“Don’t flatter yourself,” she told him, looking straight ahead.
Malden shook his head. “I saw the way you hesitated when you tried to sign the banns. You aren’t sure of your own heart, are you?”
“Malden… we’ve spoken of this before. You know my mind’s made up. When we return to Ness I’ll marry Croy. My life’s course is sure and steady before me, straighter even than this road.”
“I’ll believe it when I see you wed,” he told her.
