I laughed dutifully at the feeble attempt at a pleasantry but the others stayed silent as we slowly picked our way across the stepping stones, luckily without mishap. I paused to fill my waterskin and the river was as cold as a mother’s curse as I hurriedly rinsed the handkerchief I’d been clutching.

“We’ll keep moving until daybreak,” said Sorgrad suddenly. “We want to get clear of the soke and down to the villages as soon as we can.”

“Then we can plan our next move,” I agreed. I sucked at the shallow cut on the ball of my thumb, tasting the bitterness of the dried blood. Full-time cutpurses carry a sliver of horn to protect themselves from their own blades.

“Then we head down into Solura,” Usara corrected me.

“I think you can lose the lordly tone now that you’ve finished impressing the girls back there.” I was going to have my say now. “What’s the point of going back to Solura? We know they’ve got the knowledge we want up here now. What we need is to set about planning a way to get it!”

The wizard halted, faint light reflecting off his balding head, his face in shadow. “Knowledge isn’t some silver cup you can go about stealing, Livak!”

“Where’s that written, O wise one?” I retorted.

“You can’t say something’s impossible until you’ve tried it, wizard.” ’Gren’s smile was a gleam of white in the darkness.

“Do you have a better plan?” inquired Sorgrad, a creak of leather suggesting he was putting his hands through his belt.

“Curse it, Usara; you were the one complaining about wasting time in the Forest. Now that we know where to look, why delay?”

The wizard ignored me, much to my irritation. “What exactly did that woman say? Did she give any reason for her hatred of our magic?”

Sorgrad’s tone was both light and bitter at the same time. “We are apparently abominations in Misaen’s eyes, a foul betrayal of Maewelin’s goodness, polluting whatever we touch.”

“Oh,” said Usara blankly. He sighed. “If she had a rational argument, no matter how flawed, we might have some chance of pointing out the error in her logic. If it’s a matter of entrenched belief, no amount of reason will prevail.”

“So why bother arguing with her?” I demanded.

Usara peered upward to check the sky. “We should see the first arc of the greater moon tomorrow, shouldn’t we? If we can make it back to Pastamar by the end of For-Summer and as long as certain people have remembered the Soluran calendar doesn’t march quite in step with the Tormalin one, there’s someone I need to meet.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Spit it out, Sandy!”

“What’s in Pastamar?”

Usara shook his head at all our questions. “Given we know Artificers can eavesdrop on conversations from quite some distance, I would prefer to get away from that unpleasant female before I discuss it further.”

That silenced us all. We began the long and weary trudge up the side of the main valley and I struggled to contain my irritation. As soon as Usara was prepared to talk again, my first question would be what did he have planned to make up for having to spend the Summer Solstice in some benighted Soluran backwater. The next was how were we going about getting our hands on the undoubted knowledge of the Sheltya. Usara could give up if he liked, but I wasn’t about to. I owed the bitch that much.

Seven

When our children were young, we moved to the milder lands of Dalasor. Their nurse would sing them to sleep with this song and its words of caution proved most effective in curbing their irresistible urge to wander the boundless plains that surrounded our steading.

Pastamar Town, Solura,

41st of For-Summer (Tormalin Calendar),

27th of Lytelar (Soluran Calendar)

These people really know how to enjoy themselves.” I didn’t bother muting my sarcasm.

“I’ll bet it’s harder than it looks,” ’Gren protested.

We were watching a lad balancing one shaft of wood upright on the end of another. Given both pieces were about as long as my arm but barely thicker than the circle of my finger and thumb, I suppose it wasn’t that easy. The lad got the balance right and the circle of admiring youths around him rapidly broke away. The lad thrust upward, the top shaft soared high, fell back, and he hit it smack in the middle with the piece he still held, a full-blooded blow that sent it away in a soaring arc. A cheer went up and a little boy went scampering down the grassy strip that divided vegetable gardens from the wide muddy flow of the Pasfal. He retrieved the billet of wood and marked where it fell with a piece of stick. The youths were taking advantage of their noon break to practice for the forthcoming Solstice celebrations.

A gate opened in one fence and a woman looked out to see the cause of the commotion. She shouted, and after a few defiant responses the lads drifted away through the alleys that led up to the market square and the high road. A few yelled mocking insults, but only after the woman’s gate was safely closed. The sweet scent of roses floated on the breeze. Most of the fences were covered in pink-edged yellow blooms and we had left our landlady debating when would be the best time to cut hers for the mid-summer door garland. Early enough to steal a march on her neighbors, late enough that the blooms would not drop too soon, that was her dilemma.

“When is the Solstice?” I asked ’Gren as we continued to wander aimlessly upstream, chewing on rough bread and sharp yellow cheese. “I can’t recall when I last saw an almanac.”

“Yours or theirs?” He offered me a bite of his cold bacon.

I gave him a look. “Solstice is Solstice wherever you are, ’Gren. That’s the whole point of us being here.”

“Four days from now,” he told me after a moment’s thought, “and they get two days’ holiday.”

“We’d get five in Ensaimin,” I grumbled, “as well as a lot more exciting sport than peasants beating the sap out of defenseless bits of firewood.”

“There’s going to be bonfires,” ’Gren volunteered. “And a venison roast. Lord Pastiss gives the town some stags for the festival.”

As well he might, given he was so keen for them to break their backs earning their days of leisure. I looked up at the massive bulk of Castle Pastamar, the great keep distant and unassailable inside the ring of its walls. Tall towers were spaced to give warning of any assault and in particular to keep watch on the great span of the bridge. The stone arches rose above us as we wandered along the bank, marching away across the river low in the summer heat. Lord Pastiss’s device, the silver boar’s head on a blue ground, was on a carved and painted stone shield above the central span, on the pennants that fluttered from the guard posts at either end of the bridge and flying from just about every vantage point on the great gray fortress. It had to make him feel important to see his emblem everywhere, something to make up for his fiefdom being mostly made up of peasants grubbing a living from scrubby pasture, untamed woodland and rank marsh.