"Where," he asked the housekeeper, "have our three great watchmen gone?"
There was a moment's silence, and then everyone stated talking at once.
"They've run off, haven't you heard?" said the scullery maid. "What with all the refugees, the big houses fear thieves. There've been criers in the streets asking for trained house guards to come work up the hill, offering much better terms than the old vulture here does. That's where our three louts have gone, I can tell you."
"'Tis the end of the world," the housekeeper gloomed. "The barbarians could come any day, breach the walls, rape and slaughter us in our beds."
"You've small need to fear that," the porter muttered.
"My spells will protect us," the house wizard mumbled into his cup.
"We'll starve first," the cook grumbled. "No food from the northlands, and there'll be less and less from the river valley as the Ancar come south. Nowhere to buy but from Esha across the water, and their prices are terrible."
"They can hardly feed their own people and us too," Arizun noted. "Best to cross the water, I think, and not stop in Mez, but keep on going."
That started everyone talking about flight, gathering up one's hoarded coppers and taking passage on the next boat. Sulun's party looked at each other and huddled closer, thinking much along the same lines. Sulun shook his head, disgusted at their naivete.
"Do you think you'll be welcome in Esha?" he commented, mostly to his own people but loudly enough that the rest could hear him. "They've too many refugees already, and most of them starving. In Mez, I'll wager, you can find beggars in the streets and slaves on the block who were once rich folk here in Sabis. Go down the coast to Tari, and you might find the rich folk keeping out of the gutter—but what about poor folk like us? Hah! You'd have to run further than that. And how far will your copper bits take you? You'd do better to go inland, work for the farmers and herdsmen if they'll have you. Or go all the way to the towns at the Bay of Naydres—if you can speak the language, or learn it quickly. You might keep from starving thereby, but don't expect to ever be richer than you are in this house, right now."
He drained his cup and waited, wondering what the reaction would be.
After a moment's silence, the servants went back to discussing passage to Mez. As far as Sulun could tell, the only effect of his words was that some of the servants seriously considered how they would make a living in Esha, a land they'd never seen and knew little about.
Sulun pushed his plate aside, got up, and went out. After a moment's hesitation, the apprentices and Omis and family rose and followed him.
They clustered in Sulun's room, even the children, crowding it unbearably though no one complained. Omis asked first where they could realistically plan to go, if not Mez.
"Could we get as far as Tari?" Arizun asked, guessing that none of them could afford passage to the Naydres Bay cities.
"I doubt it," Doshi answered, consulting a scribbled wax board. "I'm guessing that anyone in the south with so much as a donkey wagon to rent will be charging top prices, with so many refugees on the roads. There are, what, ten of us? Never. Perhaps we should go inland, find a farming town that needs us and our, uh, wares . . ." He shrugged, guessing as well as any of them that their particular wares commanded a poor market.
"Back to where we began when Shibari's house burned," Omis groaned. "At least now we have our tools, but I'd need a wagon to carry my anvil."
"If you had the anvil, and the rest," Sulun pondered, "could you build another forge?"
"I could, but it would take a good moon and a half—besides paying some potter to fire the bricks. Have we the money for that?"
"If we could reach Sakar, our trade would be welcomed," Yanados put in.
"The problem is reaching Sakar," Arizun pointed out. "We haven't the money to hire a ship."
"South," Vari pronounced. "It's all we can reach. How we'd live after . . . Who knows the most about the southlands?"
Everyone looked at Arizun, who only shrugged. "Why ask me? I was only a baby when we left there. All I know is that my mother had reason to leave."
"Zeren," Sulun murmured, drawing their attention back. "Zeren fought there. He'd know."
"Well, by all the gods, ask him!" Omis snorted. "Ask him tomorrow."
"We will." Sulun straightened up, rubbing kinks out of his back. "Arizun, tomorrow take Yanados and some stout sticks in case of trouble, and carry a letter to Zeren's house. Meanwhile . . ." He looked at Omis. "How soon can we start moving our necessities to the riverside shop?"
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Zeren pondered the question long and hard, letting his gaze wander over the cracks in the ceiling. He looked, Sulun noted, worse than last time. "Nowhere in the south," he finally said. "Nowhere you could reach. Neither could you get safe passage to any of the isles. It's hopeless."
"There must be somewhere!" Sulun insisted. "And no, before you ask, I've not lost hope for the bombard. Given time, I can make it work. If not given time, I ask you, where can I take us to be safe?"
"Us?" Zeren looked at the little gathering clustered in his dining room. "You've never considered going your separate ways?"
"No," said Omis, Sulun, and Vari together.
Vari added, "How would we take care of the children?'
"So it comes to that." Zeren looked at all of them for a long moment. "You may be right, you know. As a family, most especially a family of tradesmen, you could live better than any single man alone—if you could once find a place beyond the reach of the war."
"Where?" Sulun insisted. "Name a place."
Zeren leaned forward, rested his elbows on the table and his chin in his hands. "Behind the lines," he answered. "Could you once get past the army of the Ancar, find a place where they've long since passed, you'd be left alone. Doshi—"
The youth flinched, sat up. "Yes?"
"You know the northlands. Behind the Ancars' lines, what's the land like? What sort of folk live there?'
"Farmers, as I remember." Doshi scratched his arm nervously, unused to being asked for advice. "There were villages, small villas, all over that land before the invaders came. I don't know what's there now."
"I doubt that the Ancar destroyed every village they found," Zeren considered, "or that they found all of them. There's my advice, friends, for whatever good it may do. Go become the blacksmiths and brass smiths of some town behind the Ancars' march—and the further behind, the better. Go up beyond the Gol, if you can, and if you can abide the northern winters. Ah, hell, if Sabis falls, I might even come with you." He poured himself some more wine, seeming in a much better humor.
The others looked at each other, wondering if that was a joke.
Yanados paced back and forth along the worktable, studying the engine model as Sulun assembled it, frowning and muttering to herself until Sulun couldn't ignore her anymore.
"Did you have some complaint?" he asked, setting his tools aside.
"I was thinking . . ." Yanados shuffled from foot to foot. "If such a ship were to meet with pirates, well . . . pirates hire magicians too, you know, to ill-wish their victims."
Sulun shrugged. That made sense, but he couldn't see the relevance.
"Sulun, if a full-sized engine of this sort were ill-wished, what could it do wrong?"
"I don't know," Sulun admitted, peering at his model. "The valves might fail, perhaps. We'll have to make them strong. . . ."
"What else?" Yanados tapped a finger against the tiny boiler tube set over its miniature brazier. "Fire and water, and the fierce pressure-power of steam. Could it . . . explode?"