And so we did. Who knew he had it in him to arrange for transport! I laughed when Emilia appeared at dawn with a sack of wayfarer’s food, and she delivered us to a pair of older men in charge of a wagon filled with barrels of salted fish.
“Giving him two meals, eh?” said the driver with a laugh as she handed the sack to Rory in exchange for a quick kiss.
She said, “No man governs me, Uncle. I’m of age and can do what I like.”
“So you say and so you will, until it gets you and the town into trouble.” The driver was a stout man, his brown hair half gone to gray. He nodded amiably at me. “Come on up, gel. I’m called Leon. You sit beside me. My cousin—he’s also called Leon, but you can call him Big Leon—and your brother can take turns walking alongside.”
I got up beside the driver. Big Leon was a broad-shouldered, dark-complexioned man a good head taller than his paler cousin, and he gave me a searching and suspicious look so dark and penetrating that I began to get a little angry. Then he shook his shoulders with a twitch of his mouth, almost an apology, before he clambered up beside me on the bench. He braced a musket against his outer leg and slung a crossbow and bolts across his back. We moved out, the wagon rolling at a stately pace behind a pair of well-kept oxen.
“Expecting trouble?” I asked, noting the cousin’s easy way with his weapons.
“Always good to travel in company,” said Little Leon. “Folk like their salted fish. There’s always some who will take what they want without payment. Sheep, for instance. Or you and your brother losing your goods and carriage and horse to brigands.”
“Twins?” asked Big Leon abruptly, looking first at me and then at Roderic, like maybe he had a country superstition that twins would bring bad luck to a journey.
I stuck with the story I’d told the innkeeper. “No, he’s older. And a cursed lot of trouble, if you ask me.”
Little Leon laughed appreciatively. “That we saw, eh? Him and Em are well matched.” Unlike his taciturn cousin, he was a talkative fellow who told us far more than I had ever wanted to know about Emilia and her notorious ways. His gossip did make the miles pass, though. He then regaled us with the gripping drama of his escape from the Great Hallows Blizzard, as folk were calling it now. The storm had howled out of the north on the second day of November and not let up for five relentless days. He’d been on the road to deliver a wagonload of pig iron from a furnace called Crane Marsh Works in Anderida to the blacksmith in Lemanis, and had barely made the village of Rhydcerdin as the whiteout descended to blind him.
“I heard the dogs barking and the temple bell ringing. That’s what guided me in.”
I gestured toward a land barely dusted with white. “I see little trace of snow now. How can it have thawed off at this season?”
“It weren’t a natural storm, lass. Some thought it was the Wild Hunt’s last gallop, but I am of the opinion it was one of them mansas taken by a rare fury. The snow came so deep that for weeks no one moved except from house to privy and privy to byre, maybe to the inn for a pint once a few paths were shoveled out. Then not seven days ago came such winds as were not natural winds. All the night they blew. I thought they would scrape the soil right off the bones of the earth. When we woke the next day, we came to find that the snow had been blown away, and to what place I am sure we will never know. I can’t say what spirit raised that wind, or if it were a withering of cold mages acting in concert what managed it. Were you caught out in the storm?”
“We weathered it in a safe place.” But a sick feeling dug at the pit of my stomach, because I wondered if the mages of Four Moons House had called down the blizzard to kill me. “Did anyone die?”
He glanced at Big Leon, who was scanning the countryside with the gaze of a man who sees brigands everywhere. As the sun rose, the clouds began to shear off to reveal a blue sky. We fell in beside a river, flowing west. “Not so I heard. How far does your brother mean to walk?”
Rory wore a fur hat and a wide grin, striding with the easy grace of a man enjoying the novelty of the landscape. He did not look tired, as if staying up half the night carousing and engaged in other activities was as refreshing as sleeping.
“As far as he wants,” I said. “How far are you taking this fish?”
“To the Crane Marsh Works. This is what’s owed them for the pig iron. It’s part of the winter feed for those who work the furnace. I was meant to bring it weeks ago, but I’ve only been able to move out now.”
In my thoughts, I paged through Uncle’s library of maps. West across the flats on a decent road, and thence up into eastern Anderida, home of mines and ironworks since the days before the Roman invasion. The Romans had left roads and paths aplenty to move the precious metal. The mansa had sent soldiers along this route first thing, looking for me. After six weeks, I hoped my trail was cold. Evidently Tara Bell and Daniel Hassi Barahal had chosen this route as well, going in the other direction, and their trail was not just cold but thirteen years dead.
