Mark’s answer amazed him, and again he marveled at how such harsh conditions could create such a tempered character as Mark possessed. “She’s not an urchin,” Pellin pressed. “Her mind is that of a child, but her body and spirit obviously regard you as more than her teacher. Do you love her?”
Mark laughed. “How can I not? I’ve spent every moment since I captured her taking care of her every need, but it’s more the love a parent has for their child.”
“Do you think you might want her as your wife someday?” Pellin asked. “Marriage in the Vigil is exceedingly rare. We live too long.”
Mark shrugged, the gravity of his expression belonging to an older man. “She may not want me as her husband. There are a lot of men in the world, and I am just a thief, after all.”
“Hardly that, my boy,” Pellin said. “Hardly that.”
Chapter 17
Toria reined in her horse outside of Hylowold, a city half the size of Bunard that sat on the bend of the Sorrow River, where it looped to the east halfway between Cynestol and the Darkwater Forest. She dismounted and put her hands into the thick ruff of fur surrounding Wag’s neck.
Mistress! Do we hunt?
In a way. Keep close while in the city. We don’t wish to alert our prey.
His tongue flopped out of the side of his mouth. I will keep close. He turned to push his muzzle against Toria’s neck, and she pushed back.
When it became obvious that she meant to enter Hylowold with the sentinel in tow, Fess raised the expected objection. “Should we not skirt the city, Lady Deel?”
“Perhaps,” she conceded, “but it is well after noon, and Hylowold offers the most immediate access to the west side of the Sorrow River.” Memories of her capture at Treflow driving her, she clenched her hands inside her gloves until she heard her knuckles pop.
“Surely there are ferries that can be hired upstream,” Fess said.
She pulled a pair of deep breaths and let them out in a protracted exhale until her heart calmed. “It is customary to scout the enemy before a battle, Fess.”
“And you believe that our enemy is within the walls of Hylowold?”
“Yes,” she said, “and in every other village and town within earshot of rumors about the forest.”
“By that you mean everywhere.”
“Yes. To fight, Cesla needs men. He has no forces of his own to draw upon, so he lures the unsuspecting to the forest.”
He sighed, but she didn’t know whether it was in surrender or agreement.
They crossed the main bridge west into the city proper and settled on an inn in the northwest quarter, where the majority of craftsmen and merchants kept their shops. The cost of the stablehand’s silence in allowing Wag to stay with their horses lightened her purse of a fair amount of silver. She would have to exchange the gold in it once they gained Treflow.
Together, she and Fess stepped off the broad porch of the inn and into the bustle of the streets. “We have two hours until dark,” Fess observed. “Too little to search out the entire city.”
“But more than enough to accomplish the pair of tasks I have in mind,” she said. “We need to make our way to Criers’ Square.”
His brows rose. “They have one of those here in Aille?”
She smiled around a soft laugh. “You’ve adapted so quickly to being a member of the Vigil and a guard,” she said with a small catch of grief in her voice, “that I often forget you haven’t traveled the continent. There is no Criers’ square in Cynestol, or Vadras, for that matter. The Merum still hold nearly absolute sway in the southern part of the continent, but as we move north you will find all four orders represented—nominally, at any rate.” She rolled her shoulders. “I wish to see if the Clast still operates after Jorgen’s death. If we make haste, we will still make the afternoon reading of the office.”
“You will leave any delving of them to me, Toria Deel,” Fess said.
A flash of indignation, a spark of displeasure, flared and heated her face, but when she turned to correct his presumption, the planes of his face matched the steel in his voice, and she nodded stiffly. “Agreed.”
“And what is our second task?” he asked.
“A trip to the ironmongers,” she said. “Those who wish to mine the forest for gold will need tools.”
They turned east to catch the main road through the city—a winding affair that paralleled the river—until they came to a juncture of the north-south road and the east-west road leading to the main bridge. A prominent cathedral boasting six sides filled the southwest corner, dwarfing the buildings of the Servants, Absold, and Vanguard that occupied the compass points opposite.
“Modest,” Fess observed.
Toria shrugged, and a fresh bead of sweat trickled down her back. “This is Aille. The Merum have been the dominant order in this country since the split with the One Church on the southern continent. Many in the order still see the Merum’s split into four parts as a temporary inconvenience.”
They threaded their way through the crowd to the sound of bells coming from a tower attached to one of the Merum cathedral’s six walls. On cue, four robed clerics ascended their stands, prepared to offer their admonition or interpretation of the liturgy. Toria tapped Fess’s shoulder and pointed to a man dressed in the nondescript clothing of a lower craftsman, wearing an apron in which she spied awls and a light hammer, the tools of a cobbler. He stood near a none-too-steady pile of crates and pallets, eyeing the clerics beneath brows heavy with disdain.
“There,” she said.
Fess nodded. “I see him. What sort of cobbler
