It took very little to draw her into a learned conversation about Chalced’s slave trade and slave tattoos and freedom rings. It soon became apparent that she desired Burrich’s earring, not for any patron, but for herself. She’d had an ancestor who had won his way out of slavery. She still possessed the freedom ring he’d been granted by his owners as the visible sign that he was no longer a slave. The possession of such an earring, correctly matching the last clan symbol tattooed on a slave’s cheek, was the only way a former slave might move freely in Chalced, let alone leave that country. If a slave was troublesome, it was easily seen from the number of tattoos across the face, tracking the history of ownership. So that “mapface” was a byword for a slave that had been sold all over Chalced, a troublemaker fit for nothing but galley or mine work. She bade me take the earring off and truly look at it, at the fineness of the linked silver that made up the mesh that entrapped what was definitely a sapphire. “You see,” she explained, “a slave has not only to win himself free, but to then earn from his master the cost of such an earring. For without it, his freedom is little more than an extended leash. He can go nowhere without being stopped at the checkpoints, can accept no freeman’s work without the written consent of his former owner. The former master is no longer liable for his food or shelter, but the former slave has no such freedom from his old owner.”
She offered me three golds without hesitation. That was more than caravan fare; I could have bought a horse, a good horse, and not only joined a caravan but traveled in comfort on that. Instead I left her shop before she would try to dissuade me with a higher offer. With a copper I bought a loaf of coarse bread and sat down to eat it near the docks. I wondered a great many things. The earring had probably been Burrich’s grandmother’s. He had mentioned she had been a slave but had won free of that life. I wondered what the earring had come to mean to him, that he had given it to my father, and what it had meant to my father that he had kept it. Had Patience known any of this when she had passed it on to me?
I am human. I tempted myself with her offer of golds. I reflected that if Burrich knew of my situation, he would tell me to go ahead and sell it, that my life and safety were worth more to him than an earring of silver and sapphire. I could get a horse and go to the Mountains and find Verity and put an end to the constant nagging of his Skill-order that was like an itch I could not scratch.
I stared out over the river and finally confronted the enormous journey before me. From here I must journey through near desert to get to Blue Lake. I had no idea how I would cross Blue Lake itself. On the other side, forest trails wound through the foothills up into the rugged lands of the Mountain Kingdom. To Jhaampe the capital city I must go, to somehow obtain a copy of the map Verity had used. It had been based on old writings in the Jhaampe library; perhaps the original was still there. Only it could lead me to Verity somewhere in the unknown territory beyond the Mountain Kingdom. I would need every coin, every resource I could command.
But despite all that, I decided to keep the earring. Not for what it meant to Burrich, but what it had come to mean to me. It was my last physical link to my past, to who I had been, to the man who had raised me, even to the father who had once worn it. It was oddly difficult to bring myself to do what I knew was wise. I reached up and undid the tiny catch that secured the earring to my ear. I still had the scraps of silk from my masquerade, and I used the smallest one to wrap the earring well and put it inside my belt pouch. The trader woman had been too interested in it and marked its appearance too well. If Regal did decide to send seekers after me, that earring would be one of the ways I’d be described.
Afterward I walked about the city, listening to folk talk and trying to learn what I needed to know without asking questions. I loitered in the marketplace, wandering from stall to stall idly. I allotted myself the lavish sum of four coppers, and spent them on what seemed exotic luxuries: a small bag of tea herbs, dried fruit, a piece of looking glass, a small cooking pot, and a cup. I asked at several herb stalls for elfbark, but either they did not know it or they knew it by another name in Farrow. I told myself it was all right, for I did not expect to have any need for its restorative powers. I hoped I was right. Instead I dubiously purchased something called sunskirt seeds, which I was assured would revive a man to wakefulness no matter how weary he might be.
I found a rag woman who let me go through her cart for two more coppers. I found a smelly but serviceable cloak and some leggings that promised to be as itchy as they were warm. I traded her my remaining scraps of yellow silk for a head kerchief, and with many leering remarks she showed me how to tie it about my head. I did as I had done before, making the cloak into a bundle to carry my things, and then went down to the slaughter yards east of town.
I had never encountered such a stench as I found there. There was pen after pen after pen of animals, veritable mountains of manure, the smell of blood and offal from the slaughter sheds, and the harsh stinks of the tannery pits. As if the assault on my nose was not enough, the air was likewise filled with the bawling of cattle, the squealing of haragars, the buzzing of the blowflies, and the shouts of the folk moving the animals from pen to pen or dragging them off to slaughter. Steel myself as I would, I could not insulate myself from the blind misery and panic of the waiting animals. They had no clear knowledge of what awaited them, but the smell of the fresh blood and the cries of the other beasts awoke in some of them a terror equivalent to what I had felt as I sprawled on the dungeon floor. Yet here I must be, for this was where the caravans ended, and also where some began. Folk who had driven animals here to sell would most likely be returning. Most would be buying other trade goods to take back with them, so as not to waste a trip. I had hopes of finding some sort of work with one of them that would gain me the companionship of a caravan at least as far as Blue Lake.
I soon found I was not the only one with such hopes. There was a ragtag hiring fair in a space between two taverns that fronted on the holding pens. Some of the folk there were herders who had come from Blue Lake with one herd, stayed in Landing to spend their earnings, and now, out of coin and far from home, were looking for passage back. For some of them, that was the pattern of their lives as drovers. There were a few youngsters there, obviously looking for adventure and travel and a chance to strike out on their own. And there were those who were obviously the dregs of the town, folk who could get no steady work, or had not the character to live in one place for long. I did not blend very well with any group, but I ended up standing with the drovers.
My tale was that my mother had recently died and turned over her estates to my older sister, who had little use for me. And so I had set out to travel to my uncle, who lived past Blue Lake, but my coin had run out before I had reached there. No, I’d not been a drover before, but we’d been wealthy enough to have horses, cattle, and sheep, and I knew the basic care of them and, so some said, “had a way” with dumb beasts.
I was not hired that day. Few were, and night found most of us bedding down right where we had stood all day. A baker’s apprentice came amongst us with a tray of leftover wares, and I parted with another copper for a long loaf of dark bread studded with seeds. I shared it with a stout fellow whose pale hair kept creeping out of his kerchief and over his face. In return, Creece offered me some dried meat, a drink of the most appalling wine I’d ever tasted, and a great deal of gossip. He was a talker, one of those men who take the most extreme stance on any topic and have not conversations but arguments with their fellows. As I had little to say, Creece soon needled the other folk about us into a contentious discussion of the current politics in Farrow. Someone kindled a small fire, more for light than any need for warmth, and several bottles were passed about. I lay back, my head pillowed on my bundle, and pretended to be dozing as I listened.