Cornelius grinned. “They needed an escort through the crowd.” He hooked a thumb over his shoulder.
Makarios remembered his duties as host. “You must be thirsty, come in, come in! Sofronia! Beer!” He unceremoniously dislodged a dozing patron from a large table comfortably close to the fireplace and disappeared for a moment, to reappear again with a tray loaded with meat rolls, cheese, and fruit. Crow’s stomach chose that moment to growl, loudly, which made Makarios grin and shove the platter closer to her. Her mouth was full when Sofronia, a plump woman with red cheeks and thick gray hair in a plait hanging to her waist bustled out with four tankards in one hand and an enormous earthenware pitcher in the other, which, pour as they would, never seemed to empty. Makarios grinned at Crow when she noticed this. “You’re drinking on the king’s coin, aren’t you?” and she had to admit that they were. The lager was cold and crisp, tasting of sun on grain, and good, rich earth, and deep, clear water.
Sharryn polished off the last crumble of cheese and sat back with a satisfied sigh. “That was worth the ride.” She smiled at Makarios, who was looking at her with love in his eyes.
Cornelius drained his tankard and went to refill it, but the pitcher was empty this time. “Sofronia!” Makarios bellowed. “Knock the bung out of another keg!”
“You don’t have to get me drunk,” Sharryn told him.
His smile could only be described as lecherous. “Yes, but it’s more fun when I do.”
Cornelius burped. “Excuse me, Sword.”
“The name is Crowfoot, Cornelius.”
She had unbuckled the sword. It rested against the arm of her chair. He eyed it. It was almost as tall as he was. “Do you mind if I ask how heavy it is?”
He was angling for an invitation to test the heft and balance of the weapon. She ignored the bait, more out of a care for his health than for any proprietary feel for the sword. “Heavy enough for justice,” she said, and wished the truth sounded less sanctimonious.
“Of course, of course,” he said hastily. Cornelius was square-jawed and solid, with dark hair neatly combed over dark, steady eyes, jerkin and leggings made with quality but not luxury, knee boots well traveled but also well kept. He wore a guild badge with a Catherine wheel embroidered on it. A trader, then.
“You recognized us,” Crow said.
He nodded. “I was trading in the capital two years ago when the king announced the Treaty of the Nine, along with the Charter of Mnemosynea and the conditions thereof.”
“And what do you think of it?”
He gave her question serious consideration, ignoring for the moment the din rising in back of them as the common room filled with the evening crowd. “If it will bring peace to the Nine Provinces and safe roads to get my goods to market, I’m for it.”
“And do you think it will?”
Their eyes met for a long moment. “I don’t know.”
The corners of her mouth quirked. “I don’t either, Cornelius.”
Night had fallen, and, at a look from Makarios, Sofronia lit the oil lamps hanging from brackets on the walls with a snap of fingers. Crow decided to stretch her legs in the direction of the stables, a glance enough to keep Cornelius in his seat. Sharryn made a face at her just before Makarios pulled Sharryn toward the stairs.
Blanca and Pedro had been brushed to a dull gleam, their hooves looked as if they had been polished, and both had buckets of water and troughs of hay and grain in their stalls. In the third stall down, she found Zeno industriously polishing the metal bits of her tack. Made of the finest steel from the king’s forges, they shone silver in the lamplight, Sofronia’s evening lighting task having apparently extended to the outbuildings. Crow wondered if that included the necessary. She hoped so; one of the less pleasant aspects of being continually on the road was trying to find an unfamiliar outhouse in the middle of the night.
“There must be some magic in your polish, boy,” she said. “That bridle hasn’t looked that good since we left the capital.”
He gave a proud nod. “My Talent is for horses, and anything to do with them.”
“You’re young to know that.” It happened, though, and often enough not to occasion more than idle comment.
Everyone in the Nine Provinces was born with the gift of magic. What kind and how much was usually revealed to them at the onset of puberty, but sometimes it happened earlier. Crow herself had been thirteen when she felt herself drawn to a former soldier who had lost a leg in battle and stumped into her village on a wooden replacement, there to buy out the local stable and begin an ambitious breeding program. He had found her on the back of a fiery-tempered mare, sans bridle or saddle, and his first and last glimpse of her for the afternoon was her gripping the mare’s black mane as both of them went over the fence and disappeared into the forest at a gallop.
She had apologized when she brought the mare back. He eyed her for a long, uncomfortable moment before stumping over to the wall where his sword hung, still in the scabbard in which he had last sheathed it. He pulled it free and in the same motion sent it hurtling at her. It spun, point over hilt, to smack into her open palm. She had gazed at it in astonishment, unable to remember raising her hand.
She smiled now, remembering doughty old Nicodemus and the long, sweaty hours of schooling in the training area he built in back of the barn. Riding, horse care, use of sword and shield and knife and quarterstaff and longbow and crossbow and a hundred other weapons that she would probably never encounter. “But if you lose your sword and your shield and the only weapon you can lay hand to is a Yranean war club,” Nicodemus had said, “then you’d better by the gods know how to use it.”
Her mother had wept when her daughter’s Talent had been revealed. Her father had been proud, especially when she was named head of her own cohort in the last war. She was an only child, and her mother still yearned for grandchildren, making visits home a nightmarish progression of eligible suitors. Her village was too near the capital, it made visits home too easy, so when the king had called for volunteers to bear the Swords of Justice she had seen a job that would keep her on the road for the better part of every year. She’d been second to sign up, and still took a certain amount of pride in the fact that she had been the first to pass successfully through the Ten Trials of the Sword.
Zeno was regarding the sword with a fascinated eye. “It’s beautiful. My friend Elias is a smith, but he does nothing like that.”
“All the Swords come from the Magi Guild’s forge,” she said. “They do good work.”
They grinned at each other, and he went back to polishing. “How do you get to be a Sword, anyway?”
“Didn’t your mayor publish the Treaty and the Charter?”
He hunched an impatient shoulder. “Who has time for all that reading?”
She sat down next to him in the straw, setting the sword beside her, the hilt ready to hand. Education was part and parcel of their charter, and besides, Blanca’s tack hadn’t looked this good since it was first made. Blanca, her great white head hooked over the stall, whickered agreement down the back of Crow’s neck. Crow reached up to rub the velvety nose. “You know about the wars.”
He nodded emphatically. “We all do. This is the first year in the last twenty that my father was able to sell all our wheat to the miller, and for a good price, too. ’Course the tithe to the king comes out of that, but it’s half of what it was before.” He scrubbed at a bit of stubborn tarnish. “It’s why my father was able to apprentice me out when my Talent revealed itself. Father can afford to hire someone over the next few years.”
She nodded. “King Loukas thinks that your father ought to be able to sell his grain without tithing to maintain an army. That’s why he proposed the Treaty of the Nine.”
“Yeah, but the king wasn’t the one fighting the wars, that was the wizards.” Zeno looked uncertain. “Wasn’t it?”