Letty brought their food and accepted several coppers and a kiss from Laeth before she left.
“Aren’t you worried?” asked Laeth quietly, fingering a slice of fresh bread.
Rialla swallowed her bite and sipped from her glass before answering. “About being a slave?” She shrugged. “I wouldn’t go with anyone else, if that’s what you mean. I know that I can trust you not to leave me there. For someone not used to it, owning a slave is a heady thing; and I am a dancer—more valuable than most. I could bring you more gold than most people will see in a lifetime.” As she spoke, Rialla could feel her face stiffen into its accustomed mask. Her voice went flat, losing the animation that characterized it.
“I won’t do that,” said Laeth softly.
She smiled at him, dropping her slave face. “I know that. Why do you think I wouldn’t go with anyone else? You’ve owned both slaves and estates, and chose to relinquish them. Even if I didn’t know you, I’d rather go with you than a Southwoodsman who has never thought about owning a slave in his life.”
Laeth bowed his head in acknowledgment of the compliment of her trust. They ate without speaking for a time, the silence comfortable between two old friends.
“When you talked to Ren, did he say what he was going to do about the tattoo?” Rialla touched her cheek lightly.
Laeth nodded and finished swallowing before saying, “He has a magician who can disguise your scar and replace the old tattoo with an illusion. Ren wants the tattoo to be the same as it was originally, in case someone recognizes you. Couldn’t it be used to trace your previous owner?”
She shook her head. “I’ve been gone for seven years; after five, a slave doesn’t need to be returned to the original owner. Though I understand that it’s considered proper to do so anyway. As long as Lord Karsten doesn’t make a habit of inviting slave trainers to his birthday parties, I won’t have to worry.”
“No,” he answered, relaxing, “a nobleman would no more invite a slave trainer to a formal occasion than he would invite a swineherd.”
“So I thought,” agreed Rialla.
“Ren also wanted me to tell you that if something happens, he’ll get you out of Darran by fair means or foul; so you don’t have to worry about getting stuck as a slave,” added Laeth.
Rialla shot him a nasty grin. “After all these years of training in Sianim, I don’t think that I’ll have to worry much about someone keeping me as a slave.” Saying it made her feel as if it were true, and some of her tension loosened.
Laeth returned her smile with one as wicked, as he posed the favorite question of one of the combat instructors, “How many ways are there to kill a person with a knife?”
“It doesn’t matter, it only takes one to do the job,” returned Rialla.
They finished their sandwiches in mutual good humor and left just as a new wave of mercenaries pushed through the door. Laeth stopped her just outside with a hand on her shoulder.
“I’ve got some things that I have to get taken care of before we go. Ren told you that we leave in five days?”
She nodded.
“I’ll see to the supplies for the trip, if you can make sure the horses are ready.”
“I’ll find a couple,” answered Rialla. “I’d better find a dancing costume or two as well.”
“If you can’t find one, you might try Midge’s girls. I suspect that one or two of them might have something that would work.”
“I thought you said you didn’t pay for it,” she teased.
Laeth grinned. “I didn’t.”
Rialla flashed him a smile. “I just bet you didn’t. I’d best go see who I can find to take over my horses while I’m gone.”
“Go to it,” he said. “I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”
The early morning sun barely lit the sky when Rialla saddled a horse and took it out. She wasn’t the only one working horses, but the other riders were using different arenas.
Her stallion’s feet thump-thumped rhythmically on the packed sawdust of the enclosure, but his attention was on the mare that was being ridden over the jumps on the other side of the fence. He gathered himself in preparation to dump his rider as he had thrown so many others—and got tapped warningly with the short crop his current rider used.
Reminded that he had to obey this upstart who sat on his back, he continued on the path she chose, with his ears plastered as flat as he could get them. Rialla laughed at the plodding canter that replaced the stallion’s normally buoyant gait.
He really didn’t need the workout. She’d found trainers for all the horses she’d been working on. Rialla had taken the stallion out for a last ride rather than wait around for Laeth and worry about things that she couldn’t change—like the gold, black and green tattoo that graced her scar-less face once more.
Taking advantage of her momentary distraction, the red-bay stallion threw himself sideways in a move that had tossed more than one of his former owners. Rialla sat it easily. With a disgusted snort the big horse flipped his tail and settled back into his canter, insulted that she hadn’t even noticed what he’d done.
Rialla put the horse through his paces until he quit playing and she was tired enough that she forgot about what she had agreed to do to herself. The memory lapse didn’t last long. When she took the horse in to give it a much-deserved rubdown, Laeth was waiting for her in the stables.
“Are you ready to go?”
Rialla nodded and handed the horse off to one of the grooms. “Let me change my clothes and grab my stuff and I’ll meet you back here.”
In her room she slid over her head the simple gray slave’s tunic that she would wear for the journey. She looked at herself in the flat piece of polished copper that she kept on her wall as a mirror, and she couldn’t see the person that she’d worked so hard to become.
She saw instead a white-faced slave with a slave’s tattoo on her left cheek; an unfamiliar plain gold earring dangled from her left ear, projecting the illusion—though she could feel the scar with her fingertips. A faint whip scar marred the deep tan on one of her arms: the slave trainer had beaten the servant responsible for marring so valuable a property. Swallowing, she raised a hand in a grave salute. “Good luck, slave.”
She picked up the small bag that held her dancing costumes, stepped out of the room and closed the door.
2
Like a plague of locusts, the ravenous tide of war had fed upon the small Darranian village of Tallonwood, leaving destruction in its wake. Several once-fertile fields lay barren, the salt from the mines that were the region’s greatest source of wealth turning the rich earth into sterile soil that drifted in the winds, a silent testament to the centuries-old feud between Darran and its neighbor Reth.
As the closest village to Westhold (so named because it lay to the west of the salt mine), one of the principal holds in east Darran and Lord Karsten’s family estate, Tallonwood had been overrun on numerous occasions. The once-prosperous village was poor now, even by Darranian standards. After Darran had lost its most recent war with Reth, even the richest of the villagers had trouble putting food on the table. Last winter, which was mild by all accounts, two of the elders and three infants had died from lack of food.
Lord Karsten, who ruled Westhold and several surrounding villages, including Tallonwood, was one of the few Darranian lords who had not revoked the ancient laws that made it punishable by death for peasants to hunt in the forests. He worried that the animal populations might be decimated as they were elsewhere in Darran; peasants were less valuable to his recreational pursuits. His overseer saw that his wishes were followed.