Snow stopped by what Arvid guessed was midday. By then they had crossed a creek and followed a trail upstream and around several bends without finding any sign of habitation. The clouds lifted slowly, letting in more and more light. Now he could see mountains rising above the slope they climbed, higher, snow on their sides. Which mountains, those to the west or those north of Valdaire? The pass to the north? After the blows to his head and riding in that closed wagon, he had little idea of direction. He glanced at Dattur and pointed. “The pass?”
“Dwarfmounts. Dasksinyi,” Dattur said. “We cannot cross until spring.”
“I don’t want to go north now,” Arvid said. “I want to kill that man and get the necklace back. And my horse.” The shaggy beasts they were on had the short plodding stride of a typical farm chunk and jolted his bruises and strained joints.
“You think he has the necklace?”
“I think he knows where it is,” Arvid said. “And if I’m beaten up, robbed, starved, and left to die in a cold rain because I’m running errands for the Marshal-General of Gird, then I intend to finish the job.” He rubbed his cold nose. “And I want my own Guildmaster medallion back.” That treacherous scum Mathol, the Valdaire Guildmaster, would have it locked safe away.
“Are you sure?” Dattur asked. “You don’t act much like a thief, really. Maybe you will reform—”
“Of course I am … well, not an ordinary thief …”
“You’re a liar—I’ve seen that—but I’ve never seen you steal.”
“I used to,” Arvid said. “When I was a lad; we all had to. But stealing … it’s boring, mostly. And when the Guildmaster asked me to check on some businesses we had a contract with, he found my insight into accounting most useful.” He sniffed. Was that a hint of woodsmoke? A current of air brushed his left cheek. He looked at the gnome. “Do you smell smoke?”
“Aye,” Dattur said. He pointed. “Upslope and ahead. It’ll be woodsfolk, I don’t doubt.”
In the north that would mean woodcutters on some lord’s estate. Here he had learned to be wary of his assumptions. “Do you know anything about them?”
“Sly. Dirty, thieving, mischievous—” Dattur looked disapproving, not frightened.
“My brethren,” Arvid said, grinning. “Apart from ‘dirty,’ though right now we qualify there. I wonder if they’re under the Guild, though … We could be walking into danger.”
“I don’t know,” Dattur said. “If you help me down, stand me on a rock, I can find out more.”
The horses had shambled to a halt; Arvid slid off, then lifted Dattur down to stand on one of the many snow-capped boulders. He himself was stiff, cold, and still very hungry. One horse snuffled hopefully at the sack of oats across the other’s withers; Arvid led them a length apart, tied Dattur’s to a small tree, and considered whether to give them a handful of oats. Might as well. It wasn’t the horses’ fault that his stomach felt glued to his backbone.
By the time he’d untied the sack and put oats in both nose bags, Dattur had finished whatever gnomes did with the rock and hopped down. “They’re not Guild connected,” he said. “Woodsfolk.” He sniffed.
“They have a fire and maybe a cooking pot, and we have meal, onions, and redroots.” Which would be better for being cooked in a pot. When the horses finished munching, Arvid lifted Dattur back onto his horse and mounted his own.
The horses told him where the woodsfolk were before he could see them, ears pointing at both sides of the track. Arvid could see the drift of smoke through the trees now and smell baking bread. His mouth watered. He reined in.
“I would share,” he said loudly. For a long moment, no one answered, then a stocky man wearing a dirty sheepskin as a crude cloak stepped out from behind the very tree Arvid had picked as most likely. He had a short bow in his hands and a wicked-looking arrow to the string.
“You not us,” the man said in Common so accented that Arvid could barely understand.
Arvid’s horse flicked both ears backward; Arvid glanced back and saw that another man had stepped into the trail behind them, also with a bow. In the distance, another horse whinnied; Arvid’s horse whuffled.
“Friends for food,” Arvid said. “We share.”
“You give. Us eat.”
“No.” Dattur launched into a language Arvid didn’t know, sounding more like quarreling cats than words. The men answered in the same language, and finally the one in front removed the arrow from the string of his bow and stuck it in a quiver by his side.
“Share,” he said, and gestured. Arvid slid off his horse and lifted Dattur down. The gnome stamped three times with his left foot and twice with his right. Arvid had no idea what that meant but hoped it would mean supper and a safe night’s sleep.
The fire they’d smelled lay in a slight hollow; four wagons surrounded it, brush piled on the windward side to break the wind. Their two horses joined nine others tied to a picket line; Dattur took their sack of redroots and onions to the fire. Arvid took off the bits of harness while Dattur jabbered away with the woodsfolk, then filled the horses’ nose bags with oats and spread the tattered blankets over their backs. When he bent to pick up a hoof, the man watching him grunted.
“You care horse?”
“Horse needs foot,” Arvid said. Without a word, the man passed him a hoofpick made of horn. “Thanks,” Arvid said, and went to work. By the time he’d finished both horses, he was trembling again with cold and hunger.
As he came to the fire, the dancing light picked out details he had not noticed before: men, all in rough sheepskins with the fleece turned out; women in layers and layers of long shirts and skirts. All the women wore a string of blue beads across their foreheads. In the north, blue would mean Girdish. Did it here? Children, legs wrapped in strips of sheepskin with the fleece in.
A man brought him a round of bread and held it out. Arvid looked at Dattur. “Share?”
Dattur nodded at one of the several pots on the fire. “Cooking.”
Arvid bowed, hoping it was the right thing to do, and tore the round, handing the larger piece to the other man. He tore it again and offered the larger to Dattur, but Dattur shook his head and took the smaller one.
The bread was warm; Arvid could hardly wait until the other man tore off pieces and handed them to the oldest man and woman and then bit into his own piece. At last he could eat, and he sat with a thump, his legs betraying him, and stuffed his mouth with warm bread.
“Who hit?” asked the first man, pointing at Arvid’s face.
“Thieves,” Arvid said.
“You thief!”
“Not same.” A woman handed him a bowl of something that steamed; Arvid nodded his thanks and sniffed. Onions and redroots and whole peppers as long as his thumb. Something else … he looked up. The woman’s eyelids were almost closed. Without taking a bite, he turned to the man. “I don’t steal from fire-friends.”
The man blinked, looked away, looked back. “Only give little sleep. You need.”
“Not fire-friends,” another man said. “No gaj is fire-friend.”
“Is fire-friend,” the first man said. “One night. Give me bowl, fire-friend.” Arvid handed it over; the man dipped his bread in it and ate. “I could sleep better. Ajai, give him only the plain.” The woman turned back to the fire. “Is insult to refuse food from woman. Woman angry causes trouble.”
“I meant no insult,” Arvid said. “But I have had a bad several days. Makes trust hard.”
“So face shows,” the man said.
The woman brought him another bowl; she widened her eyes at him. Arvid dipped his bread in and ate it. If it was drugged … he would be robbed, but he did not think they’d leave him naked in the rain or snow. The stuff burned his mouth so he gasped; tears ran down his face. The women laughed at him; the men grinned.
“No peppers so hot in the north,” Arvid said when he could.
“No,” the first man said. “But is good for many things. Makes sweat.”
“I can tell,” Arvid said.
Across the fire, a man began to pluck the strings of a fat-bellied instrument, and another tapped sticks … or bones, Arvid saw on second look. A woman began a song in a high nasal voice, words Arvid could not follow. It would not have passed for music in any city tavern in Tsaia, but here in the snowy woods, as more voices joined in, that human resonance had a similar effect. He did not know the tune or the song … and it stopped abruptly. Another instrument was passed from hand to hand toward him until he took it and tried to pass it to the man on his right, who shook his head.
He looked at it more closely. Flatter than the other; when he plucked a string, it had a strong sound. “I once played a small one something like this,” he said, plucking one string after another and feeling out the sounds it could make. “As a boy, my father bade me learn.” There … and there … and there … he could find a half dozen notes, four or five combinations that sounded good. “I do not know your songs, but here is one of my people.” A drinking song, common in all the taverns of Vérella because it was easy to make up more verses. He started with the ones that came first to mind:
“A pretty girl in springtime
Sweet and fresh as the air
Is like the wild-plum flower
But only for an hour …
A handsome lad in springtime
Is like the Windsteed’s foal
Quick to dance and fight
His pride is his delight …”
One of the men beat a rhythm, this time with a stick against a box, and a woman shook a gourd with pebbles. Two men started the next verse with him.
“A pretty girl in summertime
Working in the sun
She ripens like the grain
But harvest brings her pain …”
Feet stamped when he finished. Arvid could not tell if it was courtesy or actual pleasure. He held the instrument out; this time his neighbor took it. He was handed a bowl of something that smelled of strong drink. He pointed to the lumps on his head, shrugged, and passed it on. They seemed to understand. After more songs—mostly long, plaintive laments—one of the older women said something in their language, and the men got up slowly.
That night, Arvid set himself to sleep lightly despite the supper he’d eaten and the exertions of the day. No matter what the woodsfolk said, he knew they still regarded him as a target. He guessed that their laws required him to prove himself worthy of their friendship; it could not be bought with redroots and onions, a song, or even gold. Residual soreness from riding bareback, from the bruises and cuts, helped him stave off deep sleep.
Soon he heard the faint sound of steps approaching, pausing, the creak of a knee joint as someone bent down to him. Arvid lay still, aware of every probing finger, every stealthy shift of his cloak. He did not tense at the slight tug before the thongs that held the sack to his waist were cut away, but as the thief settled back, letting the cloak fall, Arvid rolled, sprang, parried the cut aimed at his head, and tripped the thief.
As they rolled together, trading blows, others awoke and lit torches from the banked fire. No one interfered, though Arvid heard mutters that sounded suspiciously like bets being laid on one or the other. Finally he managed an elbowstrike to the other man’s head and then rolled him into a choke hold, held until the man dropped his long knife.
“Mine,” Arvid said, snatching the sack of coins as he released the man and shoved him aside. He stood.
Those watching all nodded; the man felt his neck, nodded, and left his knife on the ground, looking from it to Arvid.
“Yours,” Arvid said, making a pushing motion. The man grinned, thrust it into his belt, and stood. The women made a peculiar sound, a fluttering whistle, thin and high, and then one of them threw her arms up and whirled around, skirts flying.
The brawl made them all friends, even the one he had fought. “You did well,” the man said over and over, nodding and grinning. “No gaj lie so still, breathe so sleep. You one of us, Torre’s childer.”
“Torre?”
They went off in a mix of Common and their own speech Arvid could hardly understand, about Torre Bignose, a poor shepherd, and Dort the Master Shepherd. Was this the same Torre as in the legend of Torre’s Necklace? And—as he was following the trail of a necklace—did he have, Simyits save him, another legendary figure interested in his fate? Gird and Torre working together? He shuddered.
He asked about the way to the pass; they shook their heads. “Too late. Much snow.”
They were stuck in the South for the winter, then. Dattur agreed … no one took the Valdaire pass in deep snow; it would be worse on the other side. Despite repeated invitations from the woodsfolk, Arvid had no mind to spend the winter with them. For one thing, the Guildmaster in Valdaire needed a lessoning, and for another, he wanted to redeem his reputation by coming north with the necklace in hand. They stayed with the band through another snowstorm, then refused an invitation to stay through Midwinter. Arvid knew he would learn nothing more of the necklace here; he needed the city. Arvid could not walk the streets of Valdaire as himself, Arvid Semminson, but his beard had grown in, his hair was unkempt, the woodsfolk happily traded their typical garb—more colorful than he’d worn in years—for one of the horses, and two men guided him within sight of the city walls. No one, he was sure, would recognize him now.
Valdaire, approached from the northwest on one of the minor roads that fanned out toward the Westmounts, looked as dour as the winter day: clouds hung low on the mountains, lifting only to reveal a longer trail of snow. Arvid trudged along, feeling the perfect oaf in a blue-striped shirt, a blue-and-red knit two-tasseled cap, fleece-in sheepskin shoes like shapeless blobs, and a sheepskin cape over all. He was warm enough, but he knew he smelled just like the woodsfolk: smoke, sheep, and dirty human. Dattur, beside him, wore much the same, but in different colors. He seemed content.
Arvid had to show coin at the city gate to gain entrance, but it took only five copper serfs—fumbled one at a time from different pockets—to prove his solvency. The guards did not search the sheepskin cape, where he’d hidden the gold, or Dattur’s, where he’d hidden his weapons, though they looked into the horse’s pack. A small sack of oats, a few onions and redroots, a couple of round hard loaves of bread, plus a dirty blanket offered no threat.
“What’s your business here?” one guard asked.
“Sell horse,” Arvid said as gruffly as he could. “Eat much.”
“Go along, then,” he was told. “Horse market’s across the city.”
He had thought long about coming back to Valdaire. It would be easy enough to kill the Guildmaster. Easy for him, anyway. But to do it and get away safely—that would be more difficult. And to do it in a way that the Guildmaster—and the others—knew who had done it, and still get away safely, that would be nearly impossible.
Perhaps he should just kill the man. Perhaps he should just get the necklace … if he could figure out where it was … and kill the man on the way back north. But first—he dragged his mind to the immediate present—they needed different clothes and a place to stay. And they needed to get rid of the horse.
The horse market in Valdaire was busy even in winter. Their nondescript dray horse sold to the second horse-coper for less than its worth but with no questions asked. Arvid pocketed the nitis and started looking for a used-clothes dealer, avoiding the streets near the Thieves’ Guildhouse.
You know your companion is a kteknik gnome?”
Arvid grunted. He was hungry and tired and longed for civilized food and a bath, which he could not get in these clothes and smelling as he smelled. One shopkeeper after another had turned them away. It was almost dark, the markets closed, and they had found this shopkeeper just closing up. Arvid hadn’t liked the look of the shop or the man, but he had run out of choices.
Now the shopkeeper poked him, hard. “You hear me? I said your companion is a gnome … did you know?”
“Knew,” Arvid said, in as woodsfolk an acc
ent as he could manage. “Don’t care.”
“You’re not woodsfolk,” the man said. “And you travel with a gnome. I know someone would pay to know more.” He smirked and rubbed his fingers.
“I know someone who would die to say more,” Arvid said, and grabbed the man’s sword wrist, slamming it to the counter. Under his grip, the man’s wrist twisted, but Arvid had the correct angle and used it. The man cursed and reached for his dagger with his other hand, but Arvid was faster. “That was a mistake,” he said as the man stared in surprise and then slowly slumped onto the table. “True or not, you set your own fate.”
“A bad mistake,” Dattur said from behind him. “They will know who killed him.”
“They won’t care,” Arvid said. “And they won’t know if we change clothes fast enough.” As he spoke, he rummaged through the assortment of secondhand clothes in the shop, tossing Dattur a green wool jacket to replace his sheepskin and then an oiled-leather hooded cape. Arvid pulled off his own motley assortment, shivering in the cold shop. When they were dressed, Arvid put the sheepskins and other woodsfolk items into a pile of other rustic clothing at the back of the shop.
Outside, the snow still fell; the narrow street was empty. Arvid found a cash box with “Gallis” carved in the lid under the counter, then used the shopkeeper’s chalk to draw a Thieves’ Guild symbol on the table—“Didn’t pay.” He took what he thought would be a likely Guild fee from the box and replaced the box under the counter.
They left, unseen and unheard, Arvid hoped, in the dark and silent snowfall. Thanks to his experience and the tools in his own black cloak, he found a likely lock to pick, behind which was a small stable providing a bed of hay and the company of two stocky, warm, and very calm cart horses.
When they left well before dawn the next morning, Arvid fluffed the hay, brushed the snow over their tracks to the gate, and relocked the gate from the outside. By late afternoon, he had visited a money changer and changed a few of the gold Guild League natas into less noticeable silver nitis and nis, replaced his clothing, and visited a barber to have his beard trimmed. Now he presented the appearance of a somewhat travel-stained but respectable merchant, and felt ready to look for comfortable lodging for a few days.