The White Road

CHAPTER 26 Scouting the Ground

ONE OF THE horse trader’s servants roused them early the next morning and brought them into the kitchen for a hot breakfast. Alec rubbed the sleep from his eyes as they entered the warm, steamy room to find bread trenchers already set out for them on a side table. The kitchen girl even gave them a smile as she brought them a platter of crisp turnip cakes fried in bacon grease and a pitcher of fresh milk. Micum must have made a good impression on his host.

Micum and the horse trader came in and ate with them, talking and laughing like old friends. When they were done, Micum kissed the serving girl to make her giggle, then the four of them set off toward the slave market.

“I wish there was another direction to go,” Alec said when they were away from the house.

“Actually, I’d like to see it this time,” Seregil replied.

“So would I,” Rieser murmured, eyes hard above his veil.

The markets were as Alec remembered, but he had more time to look around than he’d had before. Slave barns, money houses, taverns, and inns surrounded a series of squares. Each barn had a raised platform out in front, and already a few slaves were on display to small clusters of bidders. At this hour it was mostly children; the poor things were half naked, with heavy chains attached to their little collars.

The sights and smells brought back bad memories and made Alec’s stomach hurt, but he didn’t recognize anything until they reached one of the larger squares, where he caught sight of the maimed slaves chained along a wall with filthy bandages where limbs had been.

“By the Light!” Rieser gasped softly behind his veil. “What happened to them?”

“Punishment.” Alec made himself look back at them again. “Run away and lose a foot. Be rude to your master and they cut out your tongue. Steal and—”

“I understand,” Rieser replied. Even whispering, his outrage was obvious.

“Quiet, you lot!” Micum ordered sharply, giving them a meaningful look over one shoulder.

Alec obeyed, then turned to find Seregil looking up at a handsome young Aurënfaie man on one of the platforms. He was naked, hands shackled behind his back so that he couldn’t cover himself. Pale with cold, he stared out over the crowd, eyes devoid of hope.

Seregil turned to Alec, telling him with narrowed eyes that this place should be burned to the ground with every slaver locked in their own barn.

They came at last to the barn with a moon and sun sign done in gilt work hanging over the door, and the street they were seeking. Turning right, they left the market and continued up a busy thoroughfare, following it to the east gate.

Alec had been made to kneel in Yhakobin’s carriage and hadn’t been able to see anything more than the tops of houses and trees out the open window. It wasn’t much help to them now; they left the city behind and rode through rolling farmland, following the horse trader’s directions.

It was greener here than on the coast, and they rode past horse pastures and fields of winter wheat and turnips that had been left in the ground through the cold season. At last Alec spotted a sprawling villa on a wooded hilltop half a mile or so in the distance.

“That’s the place,” he told the others.

“Are you sure?” asked Seregil.

“Yes. It’s the right shape and I recognize the tree line behind it, with the dead oak.”

“You don’t know the place?” Rieser asked Seregil.

“I was kept inside more than Alec, and it was dark when we escaped.”

“And we’re going there now?”

“Not yet.”

They reached the tree-lined lane the trader had told them of, but continued past it. The road was less traveled here, and the farms spaced farther apart.

They stopped at last in a copse of trees at the edge of a field.

“Micum, you and Rieser can wait for us here. The farm should be within a mile of here.” He looked up at the sun; it was coming to midafternoon now. “I think we have time to find it, just in case we end up having to use the tunnel. Alec?”

“I think it was—” He scanned the horizon. “Northish.”

“Northish?” Rieser looked less than impressed.

“Don’t worry. He has a fine sense of direction,” said Seregil, but as soon as Rieser looked away Seregil raised a brow at Alec. Northish?

They continued up the road, blending their horses’ tracks with those of all the riders who’d been along this way since the last rain. As always, Alec’s sense of direction stood them well. Within the hour he spotted a little horse farm with an apple orchard and an onion field. “That’s it.”

“Smoke is coming out of the chimney. Someone’s home,” noted Micum.

“Last time we were here, there weren’t any dogs,” said Alec.

“Well, just in case.” Seregil held out his left hand to Rieser, the fingers curled against his palm except for the first and last. “I know you have a bit of magic, at least. Do you know how to do the dog charm?”

Rieser mimicked the hand gesture. “Soora thasáli, you mean? Of course. What do we do now?”

Micum gazed off at the house. “I’d say we should have a look while we have the chance, just to see what’s what.”

The farmstead was just as Seregil and Alec remembered—a small, well-kept place with a large corral, a barn, and a good-sized stable.

Micum approached first, with the others well behind him, but this time a snarling dog appeared from the open barn door and ran at him. Micum had to rein in his piebald before she could buck.

“Hello in the house,” he called out over the barking.

A man in a leather apron came from the barn, wiping his hands on a grimy cloth. “Brute, come!” The dog retreated grudgingly, still growling as he went to sit by his master’s feet. “What do you want?”

“Water for our horses, and to see if you have any you’d part with,” Micum replied. “Do you have any to sell?”

The man brightened at that. “I do, sir, if you’ve got gold to pay for them.”

“I do.”

“Well, then. Have your slaves water your mounts while we look over the herd. Are they safe to leave on their own?”

“Oh, yes. No worries there.” Micum turned to the others and curtly ordered them to see to the horses.

Seregil and the others bowed and led the string over to a long trough beside the corral. They stayed there, hooded and silent, while Micum and the man headed up into the meadow beyond the house.

“Yhakobin’s widow must be selling off her herd for capital,” murmured Seregil.

“I don’t understand. Why are you doing this in broad daylight?” Rieser asked.

“Micum is finding out how many people live here, so we know what to expect if we come back tonight. This place is part of Yhakobin’s estate.”

“Where is the tunnel?”

Seregil pointed to the stable. “It comes up in there.”

Micum and farmer returned and went into the house together. Micum came out again after a time, smiling and smelling of beer and sausage. He’d brought them some of the latter in a napkin. A woman and a young girl with dark braids stood by the open doorway, smiling as they watched the men go back to the stable.

“Oh hell, a child!” Seregil muttered under his breath.

Micum? Alec signed.

Seregil gave him a slight nod. The girl looked to be the same age as Micum’s youngest daughter, Illia.

“If the time comes, I will kill them,” Rieser whispered.

“Because they’re only Tír?” hissed Alec.

“We’re not killing anyone unless it’s absolutely necessary, and leave out the girl and the woman,” Seregil told him. “We’re not murderers.”

“And yet you kill?”

“Only when necessary. This lot shouldn’t be any problem. I haven’t seen anyone else around.”

“There was a drunken stable hand the night we escaped,” Alec reminded him.

“Let’s hope he hasn’t improved his habits.”

Micum struck a deal for three fine Aurënfaie horses and parted on the best of terms with the master of the house. Alec tied the new ones into the string they already had, and they set off the way they’d come.

“Well?” asked Seregil when they were out of sight of the house.

“It’s just the family you saw, a hired man, and a stable boy,” Micum told them. “There’s a front room as you go in, with a kitchen on the left and the bedchamber at the back. I assume the hired man sleeps in the front room or the barn.”

“Good to know. Hopefully it won’t come to needing it, though,” Alec said.

They reached the thick stand of trees and took their horse string to the heart of it, tethering them there. Then they waited for night to fall, watching the bow of a waxing moon sinking in the west. Seregil took a spare shirt from his pack and cut it into strips with Micum’s knife, then wrapped them around the iron hooks of the grapple, to deaden the sound of it when he used it on the wall.

“I guess it’s time,” he said when it was full dark. He tied the neck of his cloak more tightly to cover his collar. “We should be back by sunrise if everything goes according to plan. If we’re not and you don’t find us between here and the farm, ride into the city and see if they’re burning our entrails and gouging out our eyes.”

“You shouldn’t joke about such things,” warned Rieser.

“He jokes about everything,” Alec explained.

“It’s better than worrying,” said Seregil. “Micum, if we’re not captured, go to an inn by the south gate and we’ll find you. Come on, Alec. We’ve got risks to face and books to steal.”