Evan didn’t have a ship—not yet—but he could have this, at least.
For a while. But he needed work, and that was going to be hard to find in Tarvos.
4AN INFESTATION OF FARMERS
When Evan had arrived in Tarvos a year ago, horse rich and money poor, he’d taken to exploring the countryside whenever he was in port. A short ride south of town, he’d come across an abandoned farm. The cottage was in a pretty spot, next to a river fed by snowmelt from the Dragonback Mountains, and close enough to the sea to suit him. After watching it for several days and seeing no sign of activity, he’d simply moved in. It was dilapidated, falling down in places, but it kept the rain off, saved him paying swiving Kadar palace prices for a room in town, and kept him out of sight when he wasn’t crewing somewhere.
It also gave him some space and privacy in which to practice weathermaking. Not that it had helped much. His power came and went, all but impossible to control. He was never sure how much he had on board until he used it, with unpredictable, sometimes disastrous results. He thought of what the empress had said.
Come serve me, and I’ll teach you all about how to use your magic.
No doubt there would be a price he was unwilling to pay.
Once he had a stake, he’d inquired into the ownership of the property, but it led to a dead end. After the attack on the port, the few survivors had abandoned homes and businesses and moved to safer places. So he’d stayed, leaving everything pretty much as it was. It allowed him to put his money to other uses. He wasn’t a farmer. He was too restless to stay still for long ashore.
Now, as he approached the cottage, he was surprised to see smoke curling from the chimney and light leaking from behind the shutters. Djillaba balked, calling a challenge to unseen horses. Inside the cottage, a dog began barking furiously.
“Scummer!” Evan retreated a few hundred yards down the shore, where a rocky promontory extended nearly all the way to the water. He walked the stallion around to the other side and hid him out of sight. Then he walked back on foot, his knife in his hand, while possibilities slid through his mind. Had the owners returned? Or were the intruders squatters like him? Was it an ambush? Had the empress’s bloodsworn somehow found him? If so, why would they advertise their presence by building a fire? Then again, he’d been gone for months. It would be easy to lower your guard after so long a time.
What if Kadar had found out about the farm? What if he had confiscated it in Evan’s absence, meaning to force him into renting a room in town? Kadar was accustomed to taking whatever he wanted in and around the port of Tarvos. Was this just one more lesson he had to teach him?
In this situation, the gift of weathermaking seemed a poor weapon unless the newcomers were afraid of a little rain pouring in through the many holes in the roof. Though, given his limited skills, he might just blow the whole place down.
Blessedly, by now the dog had quit barking. Evan circled around the rear of the house, heading for the barn. As he got closer, he stopped in his tracks, gaping. In the months that he’d been gone, the holes in the cottage roof had been repaired, the broken roof tiles replaced, and the mud-brick walls had been replastered. The tumbledown fencing around the paddock had been straightened and lashed to new posts. The ground inside the fence had been beaten down by hooves and was now littered with the leavings of horses. So whoever was living there had been there for a while.
Someone had even diverted part of the river into an ingenious millrace that drove a waterwheel before it drained into a stock pond. It was hard to imagine Kadar going to all this trouble for a tenant. Unless the tenant had done it on his own.
At the barn door, Evan stood, listening, hearing nothing but the sounds sleepy animals make. After one more look back at the house, he slipped inside, to be met by the scents of hay, manure, and fresh-sawn wood. The newcomers had been busy in here, as well. To the left, there were three stalls now, instead of two, and he could see that the tack room wall had been repaired. Djillaba’s stall was occupied by a sturdy pony, and another stall by a dun-colored wetland gelding. To the right of the door, the squatters had built a large pen and two smaller ones. From the larger pen, he heard a bleating sound. Goats?
It appeared that he was dealing with an infestation of farmers. Or engineers.
Moving was a job he didn’t need, but he’d have to find another bolt-hole. He had no legal claim to the cottage, after all, and spent little time there. These tenants had done more work on the place in a matter of months than he’d done in a year.
He couldn’t simply walk away, not yet. His savings, including his shares from his last voyage with Strangward, were hidden in a niche behind the fireplace in the cottage. He’d left his growing collection of books on the shelves to either side.
If Kadar was responsible for this, Evan would find a way to make him pay. Anger and frustration rose in him like a full-moon tide, and lightning flickered around his fingertips. Not a good thing inside a barn filled with hay.
“If you set this place on fire, I’ll kill you,” someone behind him said in
