“Now, that’s enough of that,” Hamil managed to say, and Geran smiled to see a bright gleam in the corner of his friend’s eye. It seemed that Hamil wasn’t quite as unattached as he would like to believe. Both children were only half a head shorter than he was, and it took the halfling a long moment to extricate himself from their embrace. He grinned fondly at the two of them and reached over to muss Kirr’s hair. “I always liked human children. It’s the only time your kind are sensibly sized. Anyway, I’ll be back by the end of the summer, sprouts. I promise.”
Geran stepped back and touched his hand to his brow. “A swift and safe journey, Hamil. I’ll see you in Tantras soon. Sweet water and light laughter until we meet again.”
“Someday someone must explain that bit of Elvish nonsense to me,” the halfling muttered. But he waved to Geran and the others, and boarded the ship-a sturdy two-masted ketch named Thentian Star. The master of the ship shouted orders to his sailors. They hauled up the gangway and took in their mooring lines, raising a half-sail on the foremast to carry them away from the wharf. Kirr and Natali ran along the dock, waving to Hamil, as the ship slid clear of the pier and began to beat away from Hulburg. Hamil stood by the sternrail waving back at the children until the ship began to rock in the sea-swells.
“I’m going to miss him,” Kara said as she watched the Thentian Star beginning to pick up speed. “A good friend, and a better man than he lets on.”
“He’d never admit it,” Geran said. It pleased him that Kara and Hamil had hit it off so well. Few people impressed the halfling, and Kara had never been one to let many people get close to her. The spellscar had something to do with that, of course. So many people regarded it as some sort of character flaw instead of an accident of birth. The rain began to fall more heavily, and he finally shivered and looked away from the retreating ship. “We ought to be going. Hamil’s going to outrun this rain, but we won’t be so lucky.”
“Come along, children,” Mirya said firmly. She corralled the young Hulmasters and her own daughter and shooed them on; the three children skipped ahead of the adults, leading the way as they climbed from the wharves up into the center of the town. There were still plenty of foreigners thronging the streets, but Geran thought the mercenaries and House bravos they passed seemed to swagger just a little bit less. Of course, most of the storefronts displayed small silver shields with blue crescent moons on them, and on two occasions they passed by small bands of Hulburgan men who wore blue bands around their left arms. More than a hundred Spearmeet had been killed at Lendon’s Dike, and hundreds more wounded, but those who’d stood shoulder to shoulder against the Bloody Skulls were no longer shy about proclaiming their allegiance to the harmach and their willingness to stand up to anyone- anyone — who had a mind to push around Hulburg’s folk.
“When do you think you’ll be leaving, Geran?” Mirya asked as they walked.
“A couple of days, I suppose. I want to finish looking through Sergen’s papers before I go.” His traitorous stepcousin had been forced to abandon his private villa and his chambers at Council Hall and take shelter in the Veruna compound with little warning, so Geran had appointed himself the task of sifting through the correspondence and accounts Sergen had been unable to take with him or destroy. He’d also helped Kara organize bands of riders in the last two tendays to chase off orcs and ogres lingering in Hulburg’s hinterlands. After their defeat at Lendon’s Dike, the horde had fallen apart swiftly, with the subject tribes quickly abandoning the orcs and retiring to Thar. The last Geran had heard, several minor Bloody Skull chiefs were feuding over control of the tribe. “And I heard that a wyvern was sighted up near Lake Sterritt. I really should borrow a few Shieldsworn-”
“Geran,” said Kara, interrupting him, “we’re glad to have your help, but if your heart’s telling you to go back to your life in the south, then you should go. No one in Hulburg will hold it against you.”
Mirya glanced at Geran but said nothing. He walked on in silence for a short time, watching Natali, Kirr, and Selsha exploring the street ahead. He hadn’t been much older than Natali when he’d started to discover the familiar streets and squares for the first time, though Hulburg had been a smaller and safer place then. He looked into his own heart, trying to read what was written there, and discovered that he simply couldn’t tell any longer. Certainly he’d come to Hulburg with the intention of returning to Tantras after satisfying himself that Jarad Erstenwold’s charge had been kept, that justice was dealt out to his murderers, and that Jarad’s family and his home were well. He’d seen to that as well as he could, and if Darsi Veruna or his traitorous cousin ever crossed his path again, well, he’d attend to them as well. He had a house in Tantras, and friends, and a stake in the Red Sail Coster. But he couldn’t honestly say that his heart was calling him back to the city on the Dragon Reach. If there was a place that called to his heart, it was Myth Drannor, and that was a place he could never return to. Perhaps there was some far shore, some hidden treasure, that might cure him of that, and he thought for a long moment about how it would feel to go in search of it. It hadn’t been so different when he’d left Hulburg for the first time as a twenty-year-old with the whole world ahead of him.
“I’m afraid my heart hasn’t seen fit to tell me much of anything in quite some time, Kara,” he finally said. “I’ve got some affairs to look after in Tantras, but after that? I have no idea. I have a hard time remembering what seemed so important to me only a couple of months ago.”
They arrived at Erstenwold’s, and the three children pelted up the steps of the porch and into the shop. Mirya had reopened it a tenday ago, and she was doing quite well; miners and woodcutters who had been abandoned by Veruna’s withdrawal had turned to Erstenwold’s for their provisions, especially since many of the outlying camps had been burned or sacked by marauding bands from the Bloody Skull horde.
“Natali! Kirr!” Kara called after the children. She winced as something crashed inside the store. “I’d better collect them before they wreck your place, Mirya,” she said. “Excuse me.”
She hurried inside in pursuit of the two young Hulmasters. Geran and Mirya climbed up the steps to get out of the rain, and Geran paused on the wide covered porch to shake the raindrops from his cloak. “Did it always rain this much?” he wondered aloud.
“In springtime? Aye,” Mirya answered. She hung her own cloak from a peg by the door, and then tilted her head to undo her long midnight braid, finding it too frayed to rescue. When she absently shook out her hair and began to gather it again, Geran found himself standing still to watch. Mirya’s hair was still as long and dark as he remembered, and the strong lines of her face softened without the stern braid. She’d be thirty this year, but for a moment she looked just like the girl he’d fallen in love with a dozen summers past, with a small spray of freckles across her nose and a strange wistful dreaminess to her gaze when she thought no one was looking at her. Then Mirya glanced up and caught him watching her. She frowned. “What are you looking at, Geran Hulmaster?”
“Nothing,” he said. “I suppose I was wondering why you braid your hair.”
“Because that’s for a married woman?”
“Well… yes. Is it for Selsha’s father?”
Mirya paused and looked away. “No, it’s not. He’s dead, Geran, seven years now. And I’m no widow in mourning. We never married. Once Selsha came along, I didn’t much think I was worth courting any longer. I suppose I began to braid my hair because it was the easiest way for me.”
“I shouldn’t have asked. It isn’t my business.”
“You’ve a better right to expect an answer than you know,” Mirya said softly. “I did something terrible not long after you left, Geran. I was angry with you, and bitter, and perhaps I thought that if I hurt someone the way I thought you’d hurt me, I’d feel better. I fell in with a sisterhood of sorts, a circle of women who met in secret and never showed their faces. They said they understood what grieved me, and I believed them. After a few months they arranged for me to meet Selsha’s father.” She folded her arms and paced away across the old wooden porch. Water dripped from the eaves. “A nobleman of Melvaunt he was-and a married man. Now I know that they meant for me to have his child so that they could blackmail him, but I didn’t know it at the time.” She flinched from her own words, but made herself to finish. “Later I learned that he took his own life to spare his family the shame.”