Pryn was a girl who knew who she was and could now write her name correctly.
Somehow she’d already connected that, as indeed she connected almost all about her she felt to be mature, with accepting that parental death and suppressing those childish fancies that perhaps the black soldier had been mistaken (had found the wrong woman, the wrong city…), or had been part of some trick by a father even more scoundrelly than her mother, when in her cups, sometimes claimed that brave man to have been, or had simply lied from caprice. No, she thought again. He is dead. I am alive.
And my fortune?
Her memory turned to the tale-teller’s city, risen in mist from the waters, its grand dragon guarding the queen’s treasure in those flooded streets.
Sunlight had begun to break through the overcast. Clouds pulled from swatches of blue.
The real city below, under real fog and real sun, the one now giving way to the other, was ominous. She wondered if the tale-teller’s friend — was it Raven? — with her blue beads and her mask and her double blade had ever stood like this, on this rise, this road, looking down on this city as the earth heaved from dark dawn to morning…
Pryn did not hear the hoofbeats till they were almost on her. (Three times over the week she’d hidden in the bushes while mounted men in leather aprons herded dusty, blond men and women, chained collar to collar, along the road ruts. She’d seen slaves chained to planks outside the walls of Ellamon, six or ten together, waiting to be fed. She’d seen slaves, two or three, chained in the sunny corner of the Ellamon market, under the eyes of an overseer, waiting to be bought.) She whirled about, then dashed for the road’s edge. But she had seen the three riders — which meant the riders had seen her.
The three horses hammered abreast of her, halted.
The tallest and, from his nappy beard and open face, the youngest grinned. ‘What are you looking at, girl?’ Some teeth were missing.
Pryn recovered from her crouch, thigh-deep in scratchy brush. ‘Are you slavers?’—though in asking, she’d realized they were not.
Another rider, a weathered man, squat, muscular, and hairy-shouldered, threw back his head and laughed. His teeth, the ones visible, were large, yellow, and sound.
The third was naked, save a cloth tied about his forehead and hanging to his shoulders. ‘Do we look like slavers?’ His voice was rough enough to suggest a throat injury. On the right side of his body, Pryn saw, as his horse wheeled and wheeled back over the road, long scars roped him, chest, flank, and thigh, as though someone had flung blacksnakes at him that had stuck. ‘Do you think we look like slavers, girl?’
Pryn shook her head.
‘Slavers?’ The youngster laughed. Despite his height, Pryn was sure he was not a year older than she. ‘Us, slavers? Do you know Gorgik the Liberator? We’re going to join him and his men at — ’ He stopped, because the other two grimaced. The squat one made half a motion for silence. The youngster leaned forward, more soberly. ‘You want to know if we’re slavers? Well, we have a question for you: Are you one of the Child Empress’s spies, in the pay of the High Court of Eagles?’
Once more Pryn shook her head.
‘That’s what you say.’ The youngster lowered his voice. ‘But how do we know?’ His gappy grin remained. ‘The Liberator isn’t the most popular man in Nevèrÿon. The Empress’s spies are cunning and conniving.’
Pryn stepped onto the road. ‘You know I’m not a spy the same way I know you’re not slavers.’ What she thought was that they might be bandits; she did not want to act afraid. ‘You don’t look like slavers. I don’t look like a spy.’
The youngster leaned even lower, till he looked at her right between his mount’s red ears. ‘While you and I both may very well have seen slavers, and so know what slavers look like, what if we here have never seen a spy…?’
Pryn frowned. She had never seen a spy either.
The squat one said: ‘Spies often look like other than spies. It’s one sign by which you know them.’ He moved thick fingers in the graphite-gray mane.
The naked one with the headrag and the scars said: ‘This road runs from the Faltha mountains to port Kolhari. Which way do you go?’
‘There.’ Pryn pointed toward the city.
‘Good. Come up on my horse. We’ll take you into town.’
Again Pryn shook her head. ‘I can get there by myself.’
The scarred rider pulled a four-foot lance from a holder on his horse’s flank. ‘If you don’t come with us,’ he said evenly, ‘we’ll kill you. Make your choice, spy.’
Pryn thought of bolting from them, thought of running between them, and stood.
The rider held his lance with his elbow against his scarred side so that his forearm was at a right angle to his body. The metal point showed the hammer marks of its forging. ‘Our friend here — ’ he jerked his chin toward the bearded boy — ‘has said more than he should have. You’re going into the city anyway. Ride with us. You may be a spy. We can’t take chances.’
Pryn walked across the road toward his horse. ‘You don’t give me much choice.’
The scarred man said: ‘Sit in front of me.’
Angry and frightened, Pryn reached up to grapple the horse’s hard neck. The naked man bent. He shoved his lance back into its holder and slid his hand under Pryn’s raised thigh to tug her up, while she got one leg awkwardly before his belly. (I’ve climbed on a dragon without help!) As she slid back against him, one of his hands came around her stomach. The mare stamped dirt. The rider behind her, stomach against her, flapped reins before her. She felt him kick the horse — not to a gallop but a leisurely trot. The others, trotting, cantering, trotting again, came abreast. Pryn’s capitulation made her anger more acute. ‘Since I am being punished for what your young friend knows and almost said, at least let me know what it is. Who is this Liberator — and take your hand off my breast!’ She pushed the rider’s hand from where the dark fingers had moved.
The squat rider laughed. ‘You want to know about Gorgik? Once he was a slave; now he’s vowed to end all slavery throughout Nevèrÿon. Some say that someday, if not soon, he may be a minister! Myself, I knew him years ago when he was an officer in the Child Empress’s army. One of the best, too.’ The squat man rubbed a wide, studded belt bound high on hairy ribs. ‘I fought under him — but only for a month. Then they broke up our division and sent me off with another captain. But we’re going to fight under him again — if he’ll have us. Hey, boys?’
‘Aye!’ came from the one boy beside her.
The naked man put his hand lightly back on Pryn’s stomach.
‘Only with him a month, yes.’ The squat rider grew pensive. ‘He won’t remember me. But we loved that man, we did — every one of us under him. And slavery is an evil at least two of us know first hand.’ He laughed again and guided his horse around a branch fallen on the road. Other hooves smashed leaves. ‘That’s why we three go to — ’
‘Move your hand!’ Pryn shoved the naked rider’s arm from where it had again risen. Hoisting herself forward, she glared over her shoulder. ‘I didn’t want this ride! I’m not here to play your dumb games! Cut it out!’