THAT DAY, HE PASSED only two settlements along the Gileath Byway. The first—a hamlet consisting of half a dozen small cottages—lined one side of a cornfield. He came upon these first, where a group of just as many young children played between the cottages in the dull-green grass. The smallest saw him first and rushed toward the road, stumbling on bare feet not yet accustomed to running with such abandon. The boy’s arms swung wildly above his head, and Kherron thought it was to keep his balance until the child had neared enough for him to see the open-mouthed grin of excitement. One of the girls, a few years older, noticed the boy and took off after him, not nearly as excited by a stranger’s presence. When she reached the boy, she grabbed him by the arm, and they both stopped to stare. Kherron felt a bit odd under their gaze, but when he raised his hand for a gentle wave, both children smiled and waved back.
Three figures moved in the field as he passed it, alternately bending and rising amongst the tall stalks to harvest what the season had provided. The closest—a tall, thin man perhaps a decade older than Kherron—straightened from a large woven basket at his feet to wipe the sweat from his brow. He caught sight of Kherron, who raised a hand in greeting, and nodded in return.
Kherron did not see a need to stop here. He had his map, and food, and these people had a day filled with labor ahead of them. He did not wish to distract them, nor did small talk interest him in the least.
An hour after he’d stopped for his second meal, he caught sight of a large stone house at the top of a small rise to the east. It was far enough away that he couldn’t make out any people, but a line of fenceposts stretched all the way toward him, nearly ending at the road and continuing along it. A few horses ambled together near the barn beside the house, and the rows upon rows of various crops he did not know stretched before him. The forest beside which he’d traveled had broken off to the west of the road that morning, leaving him feeling quite alone and conspicuous amidst the short grasses and gently rolling hills along the Byway. But now, on the other side of the farmhouse, a thick growth of trees had begun again. They grew southeast and were far enough away that he guessed the road would not come upon them for many leagues yet, but the sight encouraged him. If another forest existed, it meant more water; he hoped that source was in fact the Sylthurst and that he’d end up in Vereling Town soon enough.
THE IDEA OF LIGHTING a fire that night as he made camp did not strike him as particularly wise. He’d had the cover of the tree line before to shelter him from both the elements and any unwanted gaze. Despite the fact that the weather had cooperated thus far and he’d not been met by hostile beings since the amarach, he had felt safe. A fire in the night out here, with nothing but open land around him, was more likely than not to draw attention, friendly or otherwise. So he merely curled beneath his cloak a few yards from the road and tried to sleep, the handle of the Sky Metal dagger resting against his palm.
Chapter 6
Kherron came upon Vereling Town sooner than he’d expected. That day, he’d passed numerous other small farms along the road and a pasture filled with hundreds of grazing cattle. The sounds of work and trade and many people moving quickly and easily across the open land greeted him shortly after he caught sight of the town but far before he reached its gates.
While he’d been alone on the last stretch of the Watcher’s Road and nearly the entire way from Gileath Junction, far more travelers arrived from the south by way of the Gileath Byway. He saw them now—wagons and carts, peddlers and farmers, strangers on foot, all who’d come north to Vereling Town to carry out their duties there.
A wide road branched from the Gileath Byway, leading him to Vereling Town’s high stone wall manned only by two men atop the twin towers on either side. They eyed him as he approached, which he knew was their duty, but neither of them hailed or questioned him. Four men in tabards of dark grey stood beneath the open gateway, each with a sheathed short sword belted around his waist. One of them had stopped a horse-drawn cart, the contents of which piled particularly high beneath a burlap covering, to question the owner. It seemed a routine inspection, nothing more, but it slowed the northbound traffic by a great deal. Some of the travelers behind the man with the cart found the delay more troublesome than it should have been, and the other two guards moved from the archway to dissuade the grumblers from any unruly action. Other than the watchmen atop the towers, no one paid any mind to the singular traveler coming south toward Vereling Town.
At first within the walls, Kherron felt as if he’d done something untoward; going unnoticed and not seeming worth anyone else’s time made him feel as if he cheated these people, somehow—as if the guards would soon realize their mistake and apprehend him to correct it. That thought, however, soon disappeared when the full scope of the settlement he’d entered fully hit him.
Beliran had been Kherron’s first and only experience with a true town until he’d left the Iron Pit. He’d thought Hephorai had been large, and for a western city, it most likely was; its rings of symmetrical brick buildings around the lofty central towers of white stone and glass had given it a certain expansive quality. But that had been the “City of Thinkers”, as the captivatingly frank owner of an inn called The Laughing Sister had once coined it. Vereling Town, however, far more resembled what Kherron expected large towns to be, and it felt massive.
The main road through the gates, cobblestoned now within the town’s limits, stretched eastward until he could no longer see it beneath the jostling traffic. A maze of side streets and alleyways between rising stone edifices spanned either side of the main road. The intensity of the buzzing din around Kherron made him pause for a moment—the hooves of pack animals clopping across the stone; the rumbling of moving wagon wheels; joyful screams of children, their bare feet slapping on the ground as they ran by him and out of sight; the heightened shouts of hawking peddlers; a burst of rough laughter from an open doorway somewhere along a side street; the grating whir of steel held to a grindstone; and the harsh, unmistakable ping of hammer upon anvil. That last brought a confusing wave of both nostalgia and anxiety into Kherron’s gut.
Until nearly a fortnight ago, the forge and fire had been all he’d ever known. Granted, the Iron Pit did not apprentice their wards so much as indenture them. Most of the boys were abandoned on the gritty doorsteps of the Overseer’s quarters, or seized by the law and turned over to be of some use, before they could speak in full sentences—some even younger than that, including Kherron. He himself remembered nothing before the dust, heat, and cloying sweat. The Iron Pit had owned him, shaped him, but it had been his home. And it had taught him an invaluable skill which, had he been anyone else and not predestined for the things he’d experienced in the last fortnight and the things he had yet to do, would have made him quite valuable to any master blacksmith. Kherron was capable of forging raw metal into the shapes it was meant to take—more than capable; he’d been among the best at the Pit before his abrupt departure and had trained a small number of the younger boys who did not try to challenge him. He might have even held the position as most skilled among them for a short time. His assigned mentor Eian, just a few years older than Kherron and two years before sold to a master blacksmith in parts unknown, had occupied that position. It had only been a matter of time before the others more skilled than Kherron himself—Rori, Jem, and Calabas—were purchased and carted away to apprentice under men who might or might not have treated them any better than working property.
Though no one enjoyed surviving on minimum rations, or unexplained beatings, or being owned by Pitmasters who cared little more for one’s person than the work one could produce, he’d never dreamed that fate would deal him anything beyond just that. In twenty-odd years, he’d made peace with the uselessness of wishing for better things. Now, the undeniable fact that he found himself missing the work—the rhythm, the focus of his physical strength into a tangible tool—combined with the thought of boys he had known at the Pit now somewhere out there, doing very much the same, turned his stomach.
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What he needed, he decided, was to find this Uishen man Mattheus had mentioned and see about passage across the Sylthurst. Then he could follow that with a meal and perhaps a bed. He did not feel like asking for directions. Not again. But the Sylthurst ran north to south, Vereling Town’s main road ran east, and it seemed highly unlikely that he would not come upon the river and this Uishen if he moved through the city in that direction.
Navigating the bustle took more of his attention than he’d expected. After his time spent in open spaces and the company of comparatively very few people, crowded streets and loud noises—which he’d known most of his life—had now become something with which he had to refamiliarize himself. That in and of itself was enough to convince him just how much had changed—how much he’d changed—in such a short amount of time. But he’d guessed correctly, and the main road did in fact lead him to the wharves beside the Sylthurst and the odd assortment of vessels moored there.
The sun had not yet set, and while the golden autumn light fell slanted and dimming from the sky, its reflection danced upon the water’s edge, and Kherron had to momentarily look away. Men docked and tied their fishing boats along the quay, stepping out to haul in their catch. Some nets looked emptier than others, and some men had already seated themselves behind carts or stalls, sorting, gutting, cleaning. The smell made Kherron swallow hard, but it wasn’t unbearable. A breeze blew along the water, occasionally clearing out the scent, and he soon grew accustomed to it.
He turned and walked along the wharf, and a man sitting cross-legged and mending a net in his lap looked up at him with a curious gaze. “You lost?” the man asked, then cut a thin thread from the net with his teeth.
Kherron still didn’t enjoy being singled out as a stranger wherever he went, but apparently, it could not be helped. Something about him must have screamed I don’t know what I’m doing, and he reminded himself he’d have to define that quality and eliminate it. “I’m looking for Uishen,” he said.
The man’s eyes widened with something between surprise and admiration, and he snorted a short laugh. Then he nodded upriver. “The big one.” When Kherron nodded in thanks, the man returned the gesture, then focused once more on his net.
Though Kherron wondered just how he was supposed to know the big one, it did not take long for him to find it just upriver, beyond a small flotilla of narrow sailboats. He was suddenly glad he had not asked the man to elaborate after he’d been dismissed with those three words; the thing was unmistakable. Despite the fact that he knew very little about water vessels in general, he doubted this could be called a boat. It looked more like a junk heap disguised as a house, painted shoddily in garish hues of purple and bright green. Rope, fishing line, and strung nets crossed and re-crossed each other, dangling from nearly every corner of every surface and attaching incomprehensibly to something else. The odd assortment of tin cans and foreign baubles dangled from these, and when the light from the setting sun glinted off the water to strike the swaying trinkets, they flashed brilliant colors in all directions. The vessel itself was almost square, slightly longer than it was wide, and a smaller second story rested atop the first like a pair of stacked boxes. Kherron had already seen a number of other vessels he thought he’d trust far more on the river than this contraption, but at least it did seem watertight; tied loosely to the dock, it bobbed with the current and made little noise beyond the jangle of its odd ornaments.
When he approached the thing, his eyes were drawn to the cabin door facing the docks, painted an alarming shade of yellow. He considered stepping onto the strange vessel’s deck to knock on it himself but was saved the trouble. The door burst open with a clatter from within the cabin, and a man in loose trousers and a faded brown shirt stepped out. He stumbled for a moment on a stray bucket, kicked it to the side, then caught sight of Kherron.
“Well, hello,” the man said. He took a deep breath and pulled his thick brown hair back to tie it with a leather thong. Then he glanced around and stopped, scanning the orange-tainted sky. “Sunset already?”
Kherron assumed the question rather rhetorical, so he said instead, “I was told I could find Uishen here.”
“People say all sorts of things,” the man replied, still gazing at the sky as if something there confused him. Then he finally looked back at Kherron and eyed him from head to toe. “Did Bernard send you?”
“No.” Kherron paused, then briefly shook his head. “I came to—”
“Excellent.” The man ducked inside the cabin before stepping out again with a coin purse, which he tossed in his hand as if he were readying to throw it. “What do you want with Uishen?” He stepped off the deck and steadied himself with a hand on a docking post.
“I want to buy passage across the river.”
The man cleared his throat. “Find someone else to do it.” Then he turned and made to take off in the direction Kherron had come.
Kherron stepped in front of him, standing a few inches taller than the other man and, from the looks of the stranger, a good deal sturdier. He wasn’t about to let someone else brush him aside. “Mattheus sent me.”
The man did not lift his head to meet Kherron’s gaze, but he glared up at him all the same. Kherron thought they must have been around the same age, which surprised him; he’d expected a man as old as Mattheus to refer him to someone of the same generation. But he did not back down, hoping that if the name didn’t do it, his own size would help sway the situation.
The man snorted at him, then his skeptical grimace twitched into a smirk. “Did he, now?” Kherron said nothing, and the man grinned. “Well, then, you’ve found me.”
Kherron raised his brows. “And you’ll take me across the river?”
“Sure.” Uishen clapped Kherron on the shoulder and pulled him in for a conspiratorial whisper. “Not tonight.” He yanked his hand off Kherron’s shoulder and started off toward the center of the wharves. “Feel free to join me,” he called without turning.
With balled fists, Kherron took a deep breath, gave Uishen’s purple vessel a final wary glance, and followed the man away from it.
UISHEN LED HIM BACK through the wharves, strutting like he’d just received his award and tossing the coin purse, until he turned onto Vereling Town’s main road. He stopped shortly thereafter at a door beneath a darkening archway. Though he hadn’t turned back once to ensure Kherron followed him, he stopped to hold open the door, glancing up at the sky again as Kherron stepped inside.
Another tavern, Kherron realized, and it was full of people. The smell hit him first—a mix of spilled ale, pipe smoke, and sweat. It almost reminded him of Beliran, though slightly cleaner. Dozens of conversations hummed within the warmth and the low light, punctuated by the clink of tin plates and mugs on the wooden bar and tables.
Uishen brought his hand down on Kherron’s shoulder again and gestured to an empty table almost directly in the center of the tavern, which might have been their only option. “Sit,” he said. “I won’t be too long. Well, hopefully more than a few minutes, at least.” He winked at Kherron, grinned, and turned to make his way through the tavern’s patrons.
Finding Uishen had been remarkably anticlimactic, seeing that the man obviously did not share Kherron’s urgency to cross the Sylthurst. Apparently, he’d be spending another night on this side of its banks, and this thought brought an anxiety to keep moving, itching beneath his skin as if he’d fallen ill. He’d hoped that making it to Vereling Town a few hours before sunset might have meant he could buy passage and be on his way. Now, he hoped whatever business Uishen had in a place like this would not keep him all night. Kherron did not wish to waste time come the morning on explaining his business and making the necessary preparations when it could be done before he went to sleep.
With no small measure of reluctance, he worked his way around the men and women carrying drinks, greeting comrades, and moving back and forth from the bar. Few of them seemed particularly drunk, but he did not wish to be here long enough to discov
er what happened in such a popular tavern after dark. Fortunately, no one had made it to the open table before him to claim it, and he sat to wait. A few men at the closest table eyed him, most likely because he did not have food or drink. He was, of course, hungry enough to eat after another day of walking, and ale or wine would do well to relieve some of the burden of his eagerness to continue, but he did not want to make himself too comfortable. First, he had to be sure he could rely on Uishen to charter him across the river the next day, and he wouldn’t be satisfied until coin had exchanged hands and they’d shaken upon it.
“Polly!” The cry carried over the din of the patrons, and Kherron looked up to see Uishen at the far corner of the tavern beside a set of stairs, his arms spread wide open in greeting. A young woman in a pink, corseted gown, her red-blonde hair piled atop her head, stood upon the stairs, smirking at him with her arms folded. Any other conversation between them was lost, but the woman eventually came down the few remaining steps to speak to the man. Not ten seconds later, she slapped him across the face with her bare hand, and the strength in that blow contradicted her delicate image and slim features. An explosion of laughter rose around them, and the woman folded her arms again, daring Uishen with raised brows to continue. Slowly, the man turned, his face reddened either by embarrassment or the woman’s hand, and moved farther down the bar. Polly stared after him, and Kherron caught her grabbing a small glass from the bar and throwing back its contents in one swift movement. But she did not leave.
Uishen joined Kherron shortly, a mug of ale in each hand, and clunked them down upon the table as he sat. “Not more than a few minutes, after all,” he said with a snigger and buried his face into the mug for a long draught. Then he wiped away the foam with the back of his hand and added, “Looks like my coin goes to the drink tonight.” Though Kherron did not respond, the man grinned at him. “For you.” Uishen pushed the second mug across the table.
Secret of Dehlyn (The Unclaimed Book 2) Page 5
