“Larajin,” he panted, a worried look in his eye. “I’m so glad I found you. Are you really leaving Selgaunt? These are dangerous times to be traveling.”
Larajin nodded. “I have to, Tal. Drakkar-”
“I want to come with you …” Tal said in a husky voice, then, before Larajin could protest, he added, “but I can’t. The Merchant Council is agitating for war against the elves. If it comes, I’m to serve in a company under Master Ferrick. Leaving now would be seen as desertion-as cowardice. I just wish …”
Larajin, horrified by the prospect of war engulfing the lands to the north-lands through which she was about to travel-could only stare at Tal.
Misinterpreting her look, he hastily added, “Don’t worry, Larajin. The elves are only half the soldiers that we are. They’re too simple to understand the tactics of battle. If it does come to war, we’ll squash those savages in a tenday. I’ll march home again without a scratch.”
Larajin said nothing. In his usual blundering way, Tal had insulted her without realizing it, not understanding that Larajin had been born to a mother who was a “savage” and therefore “simple.”
The leather pouch clinked as he thrust it into Larajin’s hands. “There’s twelve fivestars and nearly a hundred ravens in there-all I could scrape together at a moment’s notice. That should help you along.”
It was an incredible sum. “Tal, I can’t-”
Tal waved her protest away. “Yes, you can.”
Thanking him with a silent nod, Larajin found her bag and tucked the pouch inside it.
“I’ve brought something for you to protect yourself with,” Tal continued. “Here.”
He held out the cloth-swaddled bundle. Taking it, Larajin noted that it was heavy. She unwrapped the cloth and saw a dagger, its pommel embossed with the Uskevren family crest. Sliding it out of its sheath revealed a brightly polished silver blade with a strange glyph engraved upon it.
“It’s magic,” Tal said in a hushed voice, as if afraid his words would activate it. “If you say ‘illunathros’ while holding it, the blade will glow with the brightness of a torch. It may also have other magical properties, but I don’t know what…” He hastily amended whatever it was he’d been about to say. “I, uh … haven’t used it that much, so I’m not sure what they are.”
Larajin saw a twinge of guilt in his eye. She refrained from asking whom he’d stolen the dagger from. By the crest on its pommel, she could guess.
“You’re too generous, Tal. I’ll never be able to repay you.”
Out in the street, a member of the city guard called the All’s Well. Larajin glanced nervously at the gate, even though she knew the guard couldn’t see in to where they were standing. Across the courtyard, the sound of singing stopped, as the Song of Sunrise ended.
“I have to go,” she whispered. “The clerics I’ll be traveling with are leaving now.”
Tal’s eyes ranged up and down the crimson vestments Larajin was wearing and lingered on the freshly painted eye of Sune upon her midriff.
Hesitantly, he asked, “You’re not just … making this up as an excuse to follow some cleric on a quest, are you?”
Larajin’s anger flared at his over-protectiveness, but then she realized he was only asking because he cared. Tal wasn’t the one who had sent men after her to force her back to the city, when she’d tried to follow Diurgo Karn on his abortive pilgrimage to Lake Sember eighteen months past. Despite Tal’s animosity with the Karn family and his own personal dislike for Diurgo, he had defended Larajin’s right to follow the dictates of her heart-and of her budding religion. It had earned him stony silence from his father for several days afterward.
“Nothing like that, Tal. The Hulorn’s wizard really did recognize me. The danger’s real enough.”
“Where are you going?” he asked.
“North, to Ordulin,” she answered, giving him a partial truth.
“Ordulin?” Tal gaped. “Why there? That’s where our armies will be mobilizing, if war comes. It’s no place for-” He paused abruptly at the look Larajin gave him, then changed his approach. “Why not go to ground here, in the temple, and let me deal with the Hulorn’s men? Wouldn’t that be safer?”
“Tal,” she said carefully, “I can’t tell you exactly where I’m going, or why, except to say that I feel the goddess calling me. There are some secrets that have to be kept, even from …” She paused, choosing her words more carefully. “Some secrets that can’t be shared, even between a brother and sister. Can you understand that?”
To her surprise, he nodded. “I suppose we all have secrets,” he muttered.
His gaze shifted to something behind her. Turning, Larajin saw the Heartwarder and four novices heading toward them. She gave his arm a squeeze.
“I love you, Tal. If it comes to war, take care of yourself.”
“You too,” he said gruffly, then he turned and left through the gate, without looking back.
As the clerics shouldered their luggage, chattering brightly about the five-day carriage ride that lay ahead of them, Larajin’s thoughts were grave. She’d known there was tension between Sembia and the elves to the north. She’d heard of caravans being attacked-had known that this was not the best time to be traveling to the Tangled Trees-but she hadn’t realized that Sembia was on the verge of war. If it came to that, the Tangled Trees wouldn’t just be a strange and foreign land, it would be behind enemy lines.
Larajin made her way through the streets of Ordulin, navigating by three buildings at the city’s center that rose above all the rest: the Great Hall where the Merchant Council sat, with its gilded dome that shone golden in the late afternoon sun; the crenellated Tower of the Guards that housed the city’s soldiers; and the so-called Guarded Gate-in actuality, an enormous stone-walled and column-fronted warehouse that housed the Sembian mint. Just beyond them lay the Trader’s Quarter, starting point for the caravans that fanned north, east, south, and west through Sembia, carrying the goods of Ordulin’s many merchants.
Though Ordulin was smaller than Selgaunt, its streets were more crowded. Nobles rode past in gilded carriages, with servants holding parasols to shade them from the blaze of the sun. Merchants in elaborately patterned hose and quilted doublets walked the streets, their only concession to the muggy heat being their lace-sleeved shirts, designed to allow the non-existent breezes through. The common laborers had no such pretensions. A gang of stonemasons setting the foundations of a house sweated bare-chested in the heat, while serving women gathering water from a well in the street splashed water onto their reddened faces and bare arms.
High overhead, the tressym wheeled and circled, occasionally disappearing from sight behind a building. So far, no one had noticed her, perhaps thinking her a hawk or an eagle. Larajin hoped it stayed that way.
Throughout the five-day journey to Ordulin, Larajin had remained in the crimson vestments of Sune, but now she wore what she thought of as her “adventuring garb”: serviceable boots, her trouser-skirt, and a lightweight shirt. She still wore the crimson scarf of Sune in her hair, however, and the brass heart hung from her wrist. She might be trying to look nondescript, to blend in, but she would not forsake her devotions to the goddesses-both of them.
As she walked along, Larajin’s ears were filled with the noise of the streets: the clatter of carriage wheels on cobblestones, the calls of merchants from their shops, and the clip-clop of horse’s hooves. She stopped to ask a driver who was lounging on his carriage, waiting for his master, the way to Thread Street, the four-block-long collection of tailor’s shops where Habrith’s friend had his shop. The driver pointed at the next street and indicated she should turn the corner to the right. Thanking him, Larajin walked in that direction.
As she drew closer to the corner, she could hear a commotion. There was laughter and shouting … and the sound of heavy thuds and breaking glass.