of apologizing for a hard run at the end of a long day. By the time he returned to the fireside, Nimessa was curled up on her side under his blankets and breathing deeply and slowly. He studied her face; she had wide eyes, a delicate point to her chin, and smooth skin that seemed a pale gold in the firelight, hinting at sun elf ancestry. In sleep she looked young and innocent. It was hard to say with someone of elf descent, but he would have guessed her to be twenty-five or so. Younger than Alliere, he decided. And she was fair-haired, while Alliere’s hair was dark as moonshadows. Of course he’d never watched Alliere sleep during the brief months that he’d loved her. Elves didn’t sleep as humans-or half-elves-did. Strange how two peoples could be so much alike and yet so different.
“She’s not Alliere,” Geran told himself softly. With a sigh, he turned away and looked to settle himself for a long night. Nimessa had his bedroll, so all he could do was wrap himself in his cloak. He resigned himself to a night with little rest and found a spot where he could sit with his back to a wall and have a good view of the overgrown fields outside. The night was still and quiet.
He dozed off a couple of times during the night, but no one came along to interrupt their rest. Finally, as the eastern sky began to gray, he roused himself. He didn’t think
Nimessa opened her eyes, looked at him, then sat up sharply with a gasp. She frowned in puzzlement, then she remembered where she was. “Sweet Selune,” she murmured. “For a moment I thought it was all a terrible dream.”
“I’m afraid not,” he told her. He gave her a crooked smile. “I’d offer you some breakfast, but we ate everything I had with me before we went to sleep. Lunch is in Hulburg.”
In a few minutes he packed up the last of his gear, and they set off again. A high overcast was stealing in from the west. Rather than heading back to the coastal trail, Geran decided to put the sunrise on his right and cut northeast through the hills. It would shave a couple of miles off their journey, even if it was more rugged country, and it was also much less likely to lead them into any pirates who might still be looking for them. These hills marked the rolling fall of the land from the high moors of Thar to the Moonsea. The folk of Hulburg called them the Highfells, and Geran knew them well. As a youth he’d explored every vale and hill for a day’s ride around his home. They rode at an easy pace for several miles, slowly climbing higher into the hills and leaving the coast behind them. The higher slopes were treeless and marked by wide slashes of bare, mossy rock.
“It’s so empty,” Nimessa said as they crested a ridge. “Nobody lives here?”
“Shepherds and goatherds sometimes bring their flocks into these hills in the summertime, but we’re past that now,” Geran answered. “A few people settled the coastal hills in the time of old Thentur, but that was two or three centuries ago. Now?” He shook his head. “No, no one lives up here.”
“Where are the mines? And the forests your people cut?”
Geran pointed past her at a faint, gray-green range that marched across their path many miles away. “The Galena Mountains. They lie about fifteen or twenty miles east of Hulburg. That’s where you’ll find the mining and timber camps. West of Hulburg there’s nothing but the Highfells and Thar.” He reined in and swung himself down from the saddle. “You keep riding. I’ll walk a bit.”
“I’m perfectly capable of walking a few miles,” Nimessa answered.
“I don’t doubt it, but I’d feel better if you rode.”
She looked at him with a skeptical expression. “You don’t have to impress me with your gallantry, you know.”
“Would it make you feel better if I said I was mindful of the horse, not you?”
Nimessa laughed briefly and shook her head. She had a pleasant laugh, light and soft, much like many of the elves Geran had known in Myth Drannor. He smiled and set off again, walking at her stirrup as they picked their way down a hillside. If he had his bearings right, they’d hit the inland trail from Thentia soon. “So what business do you have in Hulburg? It seems a fair distance from your home.”
“I’m taking over the management of our House’s tradeyard. My father isn’t satisfied with the return on our investments in Hulburg. He feels that it’s time a Sokol stepped in to put things in order.”
Geran looked up at her. He wondered if she had much experience in overseeing Sokol business. Was her father seeing to her education in the affairs of House Sokol, or was she expected to take a direct hand in the business? He was more than a little responsible for the decline in Sokol profits over the last few months, since he’d played a large part in exposing the corruption of the Merchant Council in Hulburg-although it was Geran’s own cousin Sergen who’d been behind much of that. In the aftermath of Sergen’s failed attempt to seize power, Harmach Grigor had closely examined the leases and rents paid by each of the foreign merchant concessions in Hulburg. Most of the big merchant costers were now paying much more for the right to cut the harmach’s timber and mine the harmach’s hills than they had when Sergen was running things. Of course, that meant Nimessa would be on the other side of the table from him when it came time to negotiate those rights.
“There are still plenty of Veruna leases available,” he observed. House Veruna of Mulmaster had been Sergen’s chief accomplice in the recent troubles. “House Sokol could do worse than to bid on a few of those, since the Verunas won’t be getting them back.”
“The Verunas have made it clear to us that they’d take a very dim view of other families or costers buying up their Hulburg leases,” Nimessa answered. “They feel they’re still the rightful holders, and they’ll retaliate against any other House that takes advantage of your uncle’s draconian measures.”
“Draconian?”
Nimessa tilted her head. “So the Verunas say. I wasn’t here, so I really can’t make a judgment about whether the harmach was within his rights to expel House Veruna and confiscate their holdings.”
Geran snorted to himself. He didn’t have any doubt of it, but of course he was a Hulmaster. He decided that Nimessa wasn’t in Hulburg to learn anything. She was here because her father trusted her to look after Sokol interests. Nimessa hadn’t forgotten that he was a Hulmaster, and despite the fact that she was riding through the middle of nowhere with a borrowed shirt and oversized cloak, she was careful to keep her thoughts to herself about her family’s business.
The rest of the morning passed by quietly enough. From time to time they talked of small things; Geran told Nimessa some of the stories he knew about the Highfells and their brooding barrows, while Nimessa told him about events and doings in Phlan. They saw no signs of
Hulburg itself lay south of the old bridge, a ramshackle town bustling with commerce and trade. Here, where the Winterspear emptied into the Moonsea, an older city had stood hundreds of years ago. The town of Hulburg was built atop its ruins. On the east bank of the river, the castle of Griffonwatch-home of the Hulmasters-overlooked the town’s landward edge, guarding against attack from the wild lands of Thar. The tradeyards and concessions of the foreign merchant companies stood mostly on the west bank, hard by the town’s wharves. A steady stream of wagons and carts pushed out along the road leading inland, ferrying provisions and tools to the camps outside of town. The ruins of an old city wall meandered around the edge of the town, but stonemasons were at work in various spots-Harmach Grigor was pouring most of the Tower’s newfound wealth into repairing the old defenses.
Geran stole a glance at Nimessa’s face, trying to read her reaction to her first sight of the town. She frowned, perhaps taking in the unpaved roads or the smoking smelters. “It’s not quite as cheerless as it looks,” he told her. “The streets down by the bay-side are a little more, well, civilized.”
She summoned a small smile. “It’s busy,” she observed. “That’s a good sign. Besides, I’ve been told that the lodgings in the Sokol concession are fairly comfortable. I’ll be fine.” Then she nodded off to Geran’s left. “It looks like there was a fire.”
Geran followed her gaze. Near the spot where the Vale Road passed through the ancient walls stood a large wooden building on a footing of old stone. One corner was scorched, and a patch of the wooden shakes over that part of the building was missing. A thin plume of smoke rose from a hole in the roof. “The Troll and Tankard,” he said with a frown.
“A tavern?”
“The best ale in Hulburg.” They rode by slowly. A number of workmen were busy with the work of tearing down the ruined siding with hatchets and saws. Several more stood watch over the scene, each with a blue cloth
