Scion of Cyador

LXX

On the night of the day after the battle on the West Branch ford, Lorn sits in the twilight, on the side of a slope above one of the few springs in the Grass Hills. He reads slowly through the papers in the second footchest carried by the wagon back from Jera. There are two piles of paper and parchment before him. Most sheets go in one pile, but every so often he sets one in the second pile, the one with but a handful of sheets in it.

The wind off the hill is light, but Lorn has to use stones to keep the papers in their piles.

He looks up at a cough to see Gyraet standing there. “Yes?”

“Might be as I could help some,” offers the captain. “Don’t tell many people, but I do have some traders in my family.”

“So do I,” Lorn says. “It’s still hard.” He grins and gestures to the third chest, still closed and set behind the second one. “I’d appreciate the help. I really would. You know what we’re looking for-anything that shows traders sending weapons to Jera.” He pauses, then adds, “And anything that might show that Hamor is trying to get a foothold there.”

“Like the Hamorian armsmen?”

“Didn’t you think it was strange that we didn’t see many armsmen once we left the Grass Hills-and those we did see were from Hamor?”

Gyraet bobs his head. “Well-trained, too, and that’s a bother.”

Lorn understands. Is the Emperor of Hamor supplying blades to the barbarians to weaken both the barbarians and Cyador? He glances down at the papers, and takes a deep breath.

Gyraet opens the third chest. “Lots of invoices here, too many for an old and dying port like Jera. Makes you wonder.”

“It does.” Then, Lorn wonders about so many things-how Ryalth and Kerial are doing, the health of his parents, and what new schemes Dettaur is hatching. But he cannot deal with any of those until he returns to Inividra.

By then, he must know what the traders’ papers show, and what he will do with what they show.