I had watched the shop for Jacopo on other occasions. I wasn’t much good at it. Jacopo could talk to a customer for an hour about nothing, and before you knew it, a woman who had come in search of a spoon would leave with two crocks, a bowl, three shirts, and a ladle. I rarely managed to get past “Good day.” Fortunately, only two people came into the shop while Jacopo was out.
Mary Fetterling, a bony woman of indeterminate age, brought in a tidy bundle of clothes: a thin summer cloak, a boy’s stiff jacket, some stirrup-footed leggings, and a pair of patched and baggy farmer’s trousers. Her graying hair flew about her head in distracted tangles, and her eyes darted from here to there, never fixing on anything. “I’ve Tim’s things. He won’t be needin” them no more. And I could use a penny.“ Tim was the last of Mary’s four sons, one of thousands of Leiran conscripts dead from Evard’s determination to conquer the desert kingdom of Iskeran, the only one of the Four Realms not under Leiran rule. Mary’s husband had been lost in King Gevron’s campaign against Valleor, and her other three boys in Evard’s conquest of Kerotea.
I had grown up with soldiers, but they were men hired by my father to defend his house and support his obligations to his king, not conscripts. Conscripts were necessary in a war—I understood that—but at the least they deserved good officers and reasoned strategies. And for a family to lose all of its sons…
“Jaco isn’t here, but I’m sure he’d give at least two coppers.” The clothes weren’t worth so much, but Jacopo had taught me his ways.
The woman dipped her head. “Thank you, ma’am. A fella that was with him come to tell me of him. It’s been nigh on two years that it happened, and I didn’t hear of it till this week. But I wasn’t surprised. A mother knows. Tim was my youngest. He would always come—”
“I’m sorry about your boy.” Useless words. Not worth the effort to voice them. But I didn’t want to hear of her sorrows. I swatted at a fly buzzing about my face.
“They say he died brave,” she said. “Blessed Annadis will remember his name.” She clutched her pennies and went on her way. Neither my words nor Jaco’s coppers would keep her fed for long. And I’d seen no evidence that having either of the disinterested Holy Twins remember a dead soldier’s name benefited his family in the least. Mary would end up harnessing herself to a plow on some noble’s leasehold east of Dunfarrie and pull until she dropped dead from it. I hated working the shop.
An hour later, a ragged boy barged through the door carrying a wad of dingy rags, shouts of “Run, Donkey” following him. Underneath a scraggly mop of honey-brown hair and thirteen years’ accumulation of dirt were a thin freckled face and ears that seemed too large for his scrawny frame. One of his legs was shorter than the other, and he loped through the village with an off-kilter gait that left one expecting him to crash into the nearest obstacle at any moment. Paulo was his name. Almost everyone in Dunfarrie called him Donkey.
The boy pulled up short when he saw me, and he quickly stuffed his bundle behind his back. “Where’s Jaco?”
“Out. Do you have something for him?”
“Nope. Nothin”.“ He ducked his head, touched his forehead, and backed toward the door.
“Come, what’s in your hand? You know I work the shop when Jacopo’s away.”
“Nope. I’ll wait.”
“Wait for what?” Jacopo stepped through the doorway, pipe smoke curling about his head.
The boy looked from Jaco to me, hesitating.
“I think Paulo has a treasure for you, Jaco.”
“What’ve you got, boy? Out with it. I’ve no time to dally.”
With a sideways glance at me, the boy unfolded the filthy cloth. Between the stained folds lay a silver dagger half again the length of Paulo’s hand. The guard was a simple, elegant curve, and both guard and hilt were densely filled with intricate engraving that guttered as it caught the light.
Jacopo voiced our mutual astonishment. “Where in perdition did you come up with such a thing?”
“Found it, Jaco. Honest. Left on the ground. Nobody about.” The boy held it well out of my reach. “Didn’t steal it. I promise.”
“Not saying you did.” Jaco stroked the gleaming blade. “Just trying to figure out where such a fine thing might have come from.”
I thought I might understand the boy’s anxiety. The villagers were well aware of my origins. “You needn’t fret, Paulo. I’ve not owned anything so fine for a number of years.” Ten, to be precise. “Here, let me see if I can recognize the markings.”
The boy allowed me to move in a little closer, but kept his thin hand firmly on the knife. A beautiful weapon. Wickedly sharp. I examined the engraving, and the day lurched off in a new direction. “Where did you find it, Paulo? Where exactly?”
Jacopo peeked over the boy’s head and waggled his eyebrows at me in question.
“On the ridge up to the head of Poacher’s Creek.” Paulo glanced suspiciously from Jaco to me. “It’s a fine thing. If you can’t pay, I might try Sheriff. He needs a good one.” The boy was studiously diffident. “Or someone as comes downriver might want it. No hurry.”
I still had Jacopo’s eye and shook my head ever so slightly.
Jacopo turned the dagger over in his hands. “Well, I suppose you could take it to Graeme and he might buy it, but then he might well take it without paying, as maybe it was evidence or something lost as someone will want. All I could give for it would be a silver penny.”
“Three!” Glorious avarice burst through the boy’s hangdog manner.
“Two, and not a copper more.”
Paulo’s eyes gleamed. “Done!” In moments the boy was trotting down the road, carrying more money than he could ever have thought to see in his life.
“Now what is it you find so almighty fascinating about this little bit of wickedness, young lady? It’s cost me dear.”
I pointed to the engraved device on its hilt. “This is the mark Aeren was trying to draw in the dirt.” His version had been crude, but it was unmistakable: a rectangular shield with two rampant lions supporting a curved arch. Not arrows or crosses, but two starbursts sat atop the arch and a third underneath it. I didn’t mention the nagging familiarity that still refused to resolve itself. “The knife might help us trace him, or perhaps there’s another clue at the spring.”
“Hmm. Or it might belong to the other odd fellow what’s been hanging about…”
“Another one? Tell me!”
Jacopo rolled the dagger in a cleaner rag. “Found Graeme havin‘ a pint at the Heron. He was low about Barti Gesso’s thievin” Mistress Jennai’s flour. Barti did it no question, but he’s got seven little ones to feed and his hold’s got the blight. Mistress Jennai wants half the flesh off Barti’s back, and Graeme’s got to do it, so—“
“Spare me the sheriff’s moral dilemmas, Jaco. With two floggings and an eviction within three days, I don’t think I can muster any sympathy for him.”
Sheriffs were constable, judge, and hangman in most Leiran towns and villages. They were charged to enforce the king’s law, to support the king’s whims, and to prevent interference with the conscript gangs, tax collectors, and quartermasters who ensured the unending supplies of lives, money, food, and horses for the king’s wars. But such duties had been acquired only in the past century. The badge sewn on a sheriff’s coat was scarlet, fashioned in the shape of a flaming sword, for the office had been created to enforce the extermination laws—to root out sorcerers in every corner of the realm and burn them.
“You’re still hard on Graeme, Seri. He’s a fair man and does his job well. I’ve known him since he was a boy.”
“I won’t argue it again. So what else did he say?”
“He talked of the king’s men come riding through yesterday looking for the missing servant. They told him no more’n they told you. But then he said another fellow come through here a few days ago, an odd one, dressed as a nob from Kerotea, but his look was not such as would fit his clothes. Said the man was telling how his groom run off with a prize horse, and he was offering a reward for either the groom or the beast.”