Into the Broken Lands E-Book

Tanya Huff

• Herausgeber: JABberwocky Literary Agency, Inc.
• Kategorie: Fantasy und Science-Fiction
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 800

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023

Beschreibung

Bestselling author Tanya Huff presents an all-new world of action and intrigue, where survivors of a disastrous war have outlawed all magic in favor of shared knowledge—but all is not as it seems. Ryan Marsan was never meant to be Heir to the Lord Protector. But his brothers are dead, and for the first time in decades, the Black Flame that protects his people is flickering. Ryan must retrieve its fuel from the mage-destroyed wastes of the Broken Lands, leading Scholars with more knowledge, warriors with more experience, and an ambitious cousin with the morals of a cat. His authority rests with the weapon. The only mage-crafted artifice to survive the wars, it responds to the command of the heirs of Marsanport. While its capabilities are mysterious, its brutality is legend. Except Ryan soon discovers some mysteries are really omissions. The weapon is more than it appears and the Broken Lands will reveal secrets, lies, and the horrors of twisted sorcery. Even his companions hide more than he knows. With Marsanport's future at risk, Ryan can only race forward, hoping to survive, keep his friends alive—and see truth where it is, not where he wants it to be…

Leseprobe

Into the Broken Lands

Copyright © 2022 by Tanya Huff.

All Rights Reserved.

Cover design 2023 by Ashley Ruggirello // www.cardboardmonet.com.

Published in 2023 by JABberwocky Literary Agency, Inc.

Originally published in 2022 by DAW Books, Inc.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Nearly all the designs and trade names in this book are registered trademarks. All that are still in commercial use are protected by United States and international trademark law.

ISBN 978-1-625676-14-6 (ebook)

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Epigraph

Nonee.Now

Ryan.Now

Lyelee.Now

Ryan.Now

Nonee.Now

Ryan.Now

Lyelee.Now

Ryan.Now

Lyelee.Now

Ryan.Now

Arianna.Then

Ryan.Now

Nonee.Now

Ryan.Now

Lyelee.Now

Nonee.Now

Garrett.Then

Ryan.Now

Nonee.Now

Lyelee.Now

Nonee.Now

Arianna.Then

Ryan.Now

Garrett.Then

Nonee.Now

Ryan.Now

Nonee.Now

Arianna.Then

Garrett.Then

Lyelee.Now

Nonee.Now

Lyelee.Now

Ryan.Now

Arianna.Then

Lyelee.Now

Nonee.Now

Garrett.Then

Ryan.Now

Nonee.Now

Ryan.Now

Arianna.Then

Nonee.Now

Ryan.Now

Lyelee.Now

Ryan.Now

Lyelee.Now

Arianna.Then

Nonee.Now

Ryan.Now

Garrett.Then

Ryan.Now

Garrett.Then

Ryan.Now

Lyelee.Now

Arianna.Then

Nonee.Now

Ryan.Now

Lyelee.Now

Ryan.Now

Arianna.Then

Ryan.Now

Lyelee.Now

Nonee.Now

Ryan.Now

Garrett.Then

Lyelee.Now

Ryan.Now

Lyelee.Now

Garrett.Then

Ryan.Now

Lyelee.Now

Nonee.Now

Ryan.Now

Lyelee.Now

Ryan.Now

Garrett.Then

Arianna.Then

Garrett.Then

Ryan.Now

Nonee.Now

Acknowledgments

Also by Tanya Huff

About the Author

For Sheila … who waited and waited and waited. And who was understanding about delays. Thank you.

We left behind a land given over to chaos, a destroyed city, and uncounted dead.

Those of us who survived the terror and the pain will make a new life here. We will never go back.

—From The Captain’s Chronicle

NONEE.NOW

“Nonee! Nonee!”

Darny’s cry shattered the silence wrapped around Arianna’s deathbed. Squatting close beside the bed, cradling the thin hand of her first friend, she raised her head at the call, shifted in place, and winced as her bulk caused the bed to rock. All but one of Gateway’s inhabitants called her Nonee, and had for long enough she’d accepted it as her name. It wasn’t the name she’d given herself, but other people wore the names they’d been given, why shouldn’t she? Only Arianna refused to use it.

“Nonee!” The timbre of Darny’s voice changed as he entered the herbarium and grew louder as he approached the private rooms at the back. “Nonee! They’re coming!” He rocked to a halt in the open doorway. “Oh. I forgot. Is she dead?”

“No.” Barely louder than her labored breathing, Arianna’s voice held as much conviction as it ever had. “I’m not.”

Not yet. Nonee carefully tightened her grip around loose skin and swollen joints, holding on. Not ever, had there actually been gods who listened.

Darny kicked the threshold. “Sorry, Healer. Sorry, Nonee. But they’re coming!” He lowered his voice when Nonee glanced over and frowned, resenting the need to shift her attention from Arianna even for a moment. “They’re coming like you said they would.”

“Now?” She could hear the anger in her voice.

But Darny had known her for his entire life and merely blew out an annoyed huff of air. “No, I just thought I’d practice running and yelling. Of course now!”

Of course now. When all she wanted to do was be with Arianna, to sit beside her bed and guard her from the inevitable. She needed … She shook her head. She needed to be here, but she also needed information. There’d been four of them the last time. This time … What if they’d come with an army? What if there’d been enough change at the other end of the road that they’d come to try and dig destruction out of the ruins?

This was not the time!

Arianna nodded when Nonee’s gaze returned to her face and her slack lips twitched, the closest she could come to a smile. “I’m not … not going anywhere yet.”

She searched for a clever response, something Arianna could answer with wit or sarcasm, a moment’s banter to delay the inevitable, but Arianna had too few words left to waste any on foolishness. “How many?” she asked Darny without turning.

“Seven riding. Four in leather and scale, two in fancy clothes, with like embroidery and stuff. The seventh isn’t in a uniform and he’s not so fancy dressed as the rest. And they have two people wearing all blue riding in a wagon. They’ve got round hats on, sort of like what Mam wears in the sun but not really, and the hats are the very same blue. So,” he declared after a moment, “nine I could see.”

“A wagon?” That was unexpected. They might have come for trade if they came with a wagon.

“Yeah, hard to miss. And I only saw two people on the wagon, but it’s big and covered over so there could be more soldiers hidden inside.”

“Guardians.”

“What?”

“They call their soldiers guardians. Why do you think they’d hide guardians inside the wagon?” she asked, as Arianna’s lips twitched again. Their arrival had given Arianna a chance to smile twice. For that, Nonee might forgive the interruption.

“They could want to sneak more people inside the wall. People that we didn’t know about, to take us by surprise. It’s a big wagon,” he added defensively. “With two big horses!”

Except for the hand cradled in hers, the clever fingers still and damp and so cold it was clear they’d never be warm again, Nonee might have smiled as well.

A long, long time ago, when Arianna’s hair crowned her head in a gleaming tangle of chestnut curls, when her eyes were bright, when she could beat all challengers in a footrace, Garrett, Heir of Marsan, had stopped at Gateway on his way to the Broken Lands with his ancille, his best friend, and his best friend’s ancille. The ancilles had been barely more than boys, boys from the Five Thousand learning to be men at the side of those older and possibly wiser. “A small party can move fast enough to survive,” Garrett, Heir of Marsan, had said. “The smaller the party, the faster it can move.” Nonee looked down to see Arianna’s eyes dancing and knew, the way she always knew, that Arianna was thinking of the heir as well. The healer had disapproved of Garrett Heir in the beginning, but had come to like him well enough by the end.

Arianna’s fingers twitched. “He brought you … here.” After so many years together, teaching and being taught, living in each other’s head went both ways.

He’d have mocked a party of nine. Maybe he had mocked it. Arianna and he were of an age, he could still be alive.

Garrett Heir hadn’t brought a wagon, but he had brought the only one of the six great mage-crafted weapons to survive the war. This new company riding—and rolling—up the Mage Road to the Broken Lands would want to claim it.

She could hear Darny’s bare feet scuffing against the worn stone floor. “So, are you coming, Nonee?”

“No.”

“But you need to talk to them! You know they’re gonna want …”

“Later.”

“Not long …” Arianna sighed.

She could feel Arianna’s pulse fluttering in her wrist like a small bird throwing itself against the bars of a cage. Would it help if she thought of Arianna’s spirit fighting to be free of the cage that age had made of her body?

No.

“Much later,” she said.

Arianna managed to find the energy for both a snort and an eye roll.

“Much later,” Nonee repeated. Belief wouldn’t slow the inevitable. For all her familiarity with death, for all she was, for all Arianna and others had taught her over the years, she couldn’t stop time. But she refused to surrender.

“So what do I tell the gate guards if you’re not coming?” Darny demanded.

“Has the council been told?”

He snorted dismissively. “Well, yeah. Shalla was hanging around, so they sent her to tell Sa Oryn while I ran for you.”

Oryn Archivist would be the easiest of the council to find; some nights he slept at the archive. “Go to Oryn Archivist. Tell him the council should stay clear until we have more information, that they should send Gils Trader to deal with them. He’ll know how. Then go to the gate. Tell the guards Gils Trader is on his way and that he has the final word on whether or not they open the gate.”

“You mean I should tell Sa Oryn that Nonee says to send Gils? And then tell the guards that Nonee says Gils has the final word? And then run around the walls because I’ve run out of other places to run to?”

“Darny.” She rolled his name out of the depths of her chest, the sound as much a rumble of displeasure as a word.

“Fine. I’ll run. I’ll tell them.” She heard him turn, pause, return. “Nonee? I’m sorry Ari’s dying.”

She closed her eyes. Heard him turn again and leave. Opened her eyes a long moment later.

“Everyone dies,” Arianna murmured. “I shouldn’t have to … tell … you that.”

Nonee carefully brushed a thin strand of brittle, white hair back off the high arc of Arianna’s forehead. “Not you. You don’t die.”

“Also … me.” A shallow breath struggled to lift the sunken chest. “Come … closer. Don’t make me …”

A group of children ran past the herbarium, shrieking with laughter.

“… come up … there and …”

Off to the east, a cow bawled for her calf.

“… get you. You know I … will.”

The remains of Arianna’s imperious expression pulled Nonee in until they breathed the same air. The dying woman’s breath smelled faintly of vinegar as her body devoured itself. They held the position for what seemed like a year or two, although Nonee knew it couldn’t have been more than a moment.

Another labored breath. “Clo … ser.”

“Ari.”

“Don’t be … a … afraid of your … self. I trust … you.”

“Yes, but …”

“You can’t … refuse it … now … stubborn one. Last re … quest.” Fingers twitched within the cage of Nonee’s hand, brushing against her palm like the wings of a mayfly. “Closer.”

She closed the distance. Felt her heart shatter as the first person to ever care for her gave her one last gift as she died.

RYAN.NOW

“Do you know who I am?” Ryan yelled up at the two archers on the battlements. “Do you?”

“Said you were the Heir of Marsan,” replied the taller. She turned and added something quietly to her companion, who laughed.

Ryan stiffened in the saddle. His horse stepped back two paces, dark ears flat. Forcing himself to relax before Slate scaled up his objection, he scratched at a dapple-gray shoulder and reminded himself he was used to laughter. First from his brothers, then while trying to take his brothers’ place. But these people were laughing at the Heir of Marsan. At the title, not at him. That wasn’t supposed to happen.

It wouldn’t have happened to Donal.

“It’s like they’re not glad to see us.” Keetin moved Thorn, his gelding, in close enough for the two horses to bump haunches, the contact calming Slate enough that he stopped shifting in place.

“I don’t care how they feel about us,” Ryan muttered. “I just want them to open the flaming gate.”

The gate should have been opened to the Heir of Marsan.

The gate remained closed.

He lifted his chin and met the archer’s gaze. “How long do we wait?”

She glanced to the west and shrugged. “B’in fore dark.”

The sun showed red between the trees. Daylight lingered in midsummer, especially this far north, but dusk had crept closer than expected.

“Before duck?” Keetin muttered. “What’s duck got to do with it?”

“Dark.”

“No, she said duck.”

The local accent made shared words sound like another language. Ryan dragged the reins across Slate’s neck, wheeled the horse around to the left, and charged back toward the wagon. Slate complained about the sudden start and stop by bucking before he settled, but it was a perfunctory protest at best.

When he became Lord Protector, he’d expand his influence north. Gateway had been a traders’ town, according to the Captain’s Chronicle, a point of contact between the mages and the greater world, with scholars and artisans and merchants gathered together to create a city of unparalleled beauty and advancements. Most of the Five Thousand who went south with Captain Marsan were from Gateway: five thousand survivors of the Mage War who’d had brains enough to realize they couldn’t live in the wreckage.

Those who’d stayed behind, like the ancestors of the archer, had been too stupid to realize their lives had irrevocably changed. They’d clearly bred that stupidity into their descendants.

Slate danced sideways. Ryan forced himself to relax. The guards on the gate were being cautious. It wasn’t personal. No matter how it felt.

Lyelee was standing when he reached the wagon, ready to dismount. He’d gotten used to seeing her in regular clothes, but during a quick late afternoon stop, before they’d started out to cover the last bit of road before Gateway, both scholars had dressed in full regalia. Robes. Stoles. Even the ridiculous flat hats. She was no longer his family—the two of them closest in age among the cousins so expected to get along in spite of differences—she was a scholar novitiate.

The scholars didn’t answer to the Lord Protector and they certainly didn’t answer to the Heir. According to their Charter, they were directed only by scholarship and were above the day-to-day distractions of commerce and politics. They were to be scholars before anything else.

No one had expected the Lord Protector to give them permission to take the Mage Road north. Scholars were revered, venerable, wise, not sent into certain danger. In the end, for that permission to be granted, they’d had to agree that safety would overrule scholarship until they were back in the Scholar’s Hall. During their travels, the Heir of Marsan would have the last word.

Ryan hadn’t yet tested the strength of the agreement, and he was well aware that Court and the Scholar’s Hall had both assumed the last word would actually come from Captain Yansav.

“Lyelee …” He paused as her brows rose and she twitched a fold from her robe: a fabric reminder that she had an audience now. He stifled a sigh. “Scholar Novitiate Marsan, please remain in the wagon.”

“Why?”

He glanced at the streaks of orange above the horizon. “We need to be ready to move when they open the gate.”

“How long do you think it takes me to get back into the wagon?” she demanded.

Scholars never asked rhetorical questions. If they asked a question, they expected an answer. Over the last twenty-eight days of travel, the non-scholars in the company had learned they could be knocked off the scent with a return question, and on the days the scholars had been particularly scholar-like they’d taken a petty pleasure in winding them up until annoyance turned to affronted silence. “Do you want to have to scramble back on board when the gate opens? With that lot watching?”

Head tipped back to lift the angle of her hat, she glanced past him, up at the archers, and he hoped the need to been seen as in control would outweigh a scholar’s need to be right every single time. He breathed a sigh of relief when she sat.

“So.” She shot him a narrow-eyed glare from under her hat. “What are we waiting for?”

“Possibly a duck.” Keetin reinserted himself at Ryan’s side.

Lyelee glanced between them, frown deepening. “A duck?”

“A sacrifice perhaps,” Scholar Gearing suggested from the other side of the wagon seat, back straightening, the chance to lecture easing his exhaustion. “Some primitive peoples read entrails when they require …”

“There’s no duck!” Ryan snapped. Slate bucked again. He shifted his weight into the movement and used it to turn the horse to the left until they faced Captain Yansav and the three guardians at the rear of the wagon. “Gateway wants us to wait,” he announced, pitching his voice to carry over the scholarly discussion on what exactly constituted entrails and why they couldn’t be referred to in the singular. “As we haven’t much choice in the matter, we wait.”

They needed to enter Gateway. They needed the weapon. Both the Lord Protector and the Heir’s Chronicle—the record of the trip the Lord Protector had made sixty-three years earlier—had specifically said that no one could enter the Broken Lands without the weapon and expect to survive.

“Not that the weapon guarantees survival.” The Lord Protector had blinked rheumy eyes more or less in Ryan’s direction. “Raises the odds though.” He’d coughed, spat, and added, “To about fifty-fifty.”

Even with the weapon, half the people accompanying him would die.

Four of the eight.

Ryan had been able to bury that number and the terror it evoked under the monotony of the road. Riding, walking, eating, sleeping, then doing it again and again and again had made the concept seem unreal. Here and now, off the road, with night approaching and the Broken Lands in sight, he used the irritation of being kept waiting, of not being acknowledged as Donal would have been, to shove it aside.

Donal would face it, acknowledge it; he’d do what he had to to keep moving.

Captain Yansav narrowed her eyes and studied the archers on the wall, her expression suggesting she, not they, had the advantage. “Do you expect trouble?”

“No.” He could recognize asshole behavior when he saw it, flame knew he’d seen it often enough. “But we should stay alert in case that changes.”

“Sir.”

Promoted out of the Lord Protector’s Guard, Captain Yansav could have taken advantage of her position with the new, inexperienced heir, and everyone in the Citadel was aware of it. Half the Court expected it, and Ryan hadn’t helped by spending the first days after being publicly declared heir in a near panic, looking to her for orders. She’d finally broken him of that during their first ten days on the Mage Road by forcing him to make every single decision no matter how inane until he’d ordered her to stop. He may have continued to ask himself what would Donal do, but as she hadn’t known, it hadn’t mattered. During the next ten days, he’d learned she wasn’t a morning person, her first name was Coree, and she’d been driven from her native land by a political coup. That Shurlia had also been Captain Marsan’s native land had no doubt been a factor in her choice as the new Heir’s Captain.

Also, his brother’s captain hadn’t wanted the job.

Ryan thought both he and the captain had made the best of having been pitched into not just the unexpected inheritance but the sudden departure for the Broken Lands. At this point, given a choice between Captain Yansav and an officer he could choose himself, he’d stick with the captain. He wanted to believe the captain would stick with him.

He didn’t. Not entirely.

In creating the new Heir’s Guard, Captain Yansav had ignored guardians who’d been in service to his oldest brother, not giving them their captain’s chance to refuse, and had chosen the guardians to accompany them from outside the political appointees serving at the Citadel. All three had at least ten years on Ryan. Vaylin Curtin-cee had nearly fifteen. Curtin and Calintris Servan-cee were of the Five Thousand—the formal “cee” matronym, dropped after introductions but never forgotten. Borit Destros and the captain were not. All three were decent shots, but Servan was the best archer Ryan had ever seen. On the road, her bow had supplemented dried and salted meats with ducks, geese, rabbits, and once, a yearling buck.

None of them had bonded or children back in Marsanport, which said more about the captain’s understanding of this trip than Ryan found comfortable.

“Sir?” Harris appeared from behind the wagon. Cloud, his mare, stopped a body length away and shot Slate an eloquent don’t try anything look. “Do we consider this a rest stop?”

Do I light the kettle and make tea?

Ryan took another look at the angle of the sun, half inclined to have Harris boil some water and show Gateway how little he cared about their insult, both to him and to Marsanport. “No need,” he said instead, turning Slate back toward the wall and raising his voice. “We won’t be out here long.”

The two archers had been joined by two more. At least he assumed they were archers from the similarity of clothing. If they had bows, they kept them out of sight.

The lower levels of the wall had been cobbled together from the rubble left behind by the Mage War—described in the Heir’s Chronicle as the result of panicked survivors piling the stone from shattered buildings into a barricade. The upper levels, built sometime in the last sixty-three years, had a familiar silhouette. It looked as though Gateway had copied the wall surrounding the Citadel, although Ryan had no idea how. Only a single family of Marsan traders had been allowed contact. Traders, not masons or artists.

Seven people now watched from the top of the wall.

Eight.

Nine.

That was more people than he’d seen in one place since they’d left Marsanport. His back ached, and he wished he could relax the rigid posture the Heir of Marsan was expected to maintain in public.

They wouldn’t have made Donal wait.

Donal would have been there eleven days earlier, into and out of Gateway, and into and out of the Broken Lands by now.

According to the Heir’s Chronicle, it had taken seventeen days to ride from Marsanport to Gateway. Seventeen. Ryan’s company had been held by the wagon to the same pace as Captain Marsan’s walking wounded, who’d taken twenty-eight days to limp, stagger, and crawl from the destroyed city to Marsanport after the war.

The Court had protested the time the wagon would add when the Lord Protector granted the ridiculous petition from the Scholar’s Hall to study the Broken Lands, but the Lord Protector, in full possession of his mind for that moment at least, had swept his gaze around the chamber, locked eyes with Ryan, and dismissed the protest with a curt, “They go for the good of Marsan.”

For the good of Marsan.

The scholars sought knowledge.

Knowledge was power. Everyone knew that.

Knowledge traveled too flaming slowly.

When he became Lord Protector, the scholars would stay in the Scholar’s Hall.

Yeah, he didn’t believe that either.

“Sir.”

Captain Yansav’s quiet voice stopped his spiraling thoughts and drew his attention back to the wall in question. Two of the nine archers were gone; four of the remaining seven leaned far enough out to look straight down.

The door cut into the left half of the gate opened.

The man who stepped out had straight dark hair, cropped short, and a full beard braided with copper beads that glinted in the sun. He was darker than Lyelee, but not as dark as the captain or even Ryan himself; the heavy black lines of tattoos spiraling around both arms were visible at a distance. He didn’t have the heavy muscle of a physical job, the bearing of a guardian, or the confidence of a politician. He wore loose trousers, a sleeveless tunic, and sandals—all in shades of brown.

Except for the beads, he could have stepped through the gate from a working-class street in Marsanport. Ryan picked at a loose thread on the edge of his saddle. To be fair, beads might be popular with the working class in Marsanport. He wouldn’t know.

The man didn’t look like a fighter, but the archers above the gate meant he didn’t have to.

He knew the crest on Ryan’s tabard, his eyes drawn to it before his gaze rose to Ryan’s face. He frowned. “Your pardon, but I’ve seen the heir and you are not he.”

Grateful that the man spoke slowly enough to be understood, Ryan moved Slate up beside Captain Yansav. “When did you see the heir?”

“Six years ago, when the Lord Protector granted me permission to remain in Gateway.”

A lot had changed in six years.

A lot had changed since the Water Moon.

“You saw my brother Donal. He died. As did my brothers Corryn and Josan. They drowned. All three of them. Together.” When it rained and the water ran into his eyes and his clothing got soaked through, he could hear his father howling as croppers pulled the bodies of his three oldest sons from the lake, the lake pulling back at their sodden clothing.

“Apologies, Lord Marsan. And my condolences on your loss.” He raised his right fist to his chest and bowed his head. “I am Gilsin Yeri-cer.”

Yeri. The trader family. Emphasizing their weak connection to the Five Thousand by using the patrilineal cer. Had the Lord Protector inserted Gilsin Yeri-cer into Gateway as a spy? Six years ago the Lord Protector’s mind had still been sharp. Had he planted one of his own within Gateway to keep an eye on the weapon? “We’re not here to trade …” Repeating the patronym would mock the trader’s weak lineage. Donal had excelled at mockery. In this instance, Ryan realized, he didn’t care what Donal would have done. “… Gilsin Yeri.”

“I’m aware of that, my lord.” The beads flashed when he smiled. “You’ve come, as the Lord Protector did when he was Heir, because the Black Flame’s fuel is nearly spent and, before you enter the Broken Lands, you need the weapon. And, very probably, to receive a report on how conditions in the Broken Lands have changed over the last sixty-three years.” He paused and asked, “You’ll be trading for supplies?”

“We will.” Ryan knew he sounded defensive when he should have sounded assertive.

Gilsin Yeri didn’t appear to notice. “Any chance you’ve brought anchovies in oil? Love the little buggers and I always run out before my family returns.” He smiled so broadly the corners of his mouth disappeared into his beard. Then he stopped smiling. “I’ll need to have a look at the wagon. This close to the Broken Lands, we have to be careful of what we allow within the walls.”

That seemed too reasonable for Ryan to deny him. Too reasonable for Ryan to ask him what wasn’t allowed. Or should he assume the answer was obvious, given Gateway’s proximity to the Broken Lands?

He rapped his knuckles against both water barrels, and dribbled a thin stream of water onto his palm and then onto the ground. He examined the underside of the wagon …

“Mage Road’s easy on the rig, I’ll give it that.” He winked at Harris, who rolled his eyes.

 … then untied and flipped up one of the canvas sides. Even with the trade goods, the scholar’s supplies, bedrolls, cooking gear, and the like, the wagon was nearly empty.

Ryan could see the questions as Gilsin Yeri stepped back. “It was full when we left Marsanport,” he said. “Food. Grain for the horses. Other things we might need on the road.”

“Looks like you needed all of them.”

“We’ve been traveling for twenty-eight days,” Gearing snapped, having apparently heard insult rather than observation.

“It’s always twenty-eight days, Scholar,” the trader/possible spy said flatly. “It’s a mage road.”

“It is?” Sarcasm dripped from the question. “Would that be why they call it the Mage Road then?”

“Yes.” The scholar seemed taken aback by the flat answer and hadn’t yet recovered when Gilsin Yeri added, “It takes twenty-eight days because they built a full turn of the moon into it.”

Keetin nudged his horse forward. “The Lord Protector took only seventeen days.”

Within the depths of his beard, Gilsin Yeri’s mouth twisted. “I’ve read the Heir’s Chronicle.”

“And what is that supposed to mean?” Lyelee’s scowl looked capable of physical damage. Beside her, Gearing seemed to have sucked the overhang of his mustache into his mouth.

“It means that the Mage Road always takes twenty-eight days from Marsanport to Gateway, Scholar.”

Like everyone in Marsanport, Ryan had been taught that scholars always had, always would have the last word. Both of them would have plenty to say in response to the lack of respect, and Ryan had been raised to let them say it. But they needed to be behind the wall before dark. He’d opened his mouth to try and stop the lecture before it began when Gilsin Yeri leaned back far enough to get a better angle on the battlements, cupped his hands around his mouth, and yelled, “I speak for the Heir of Marsan and his party, Clea. Open the gate.”

Metal groaned behind the slabs of wood.

At Slate’s shoulder, far enough away he’d clearly taken the horse’s measure, Gilsin Yeri met Ryan’s gaze. “The Trader’s Hall is being prepared, my lord. Beds made up, kitchen stocked. If you’ve been traveling since your evening meal, you’ll want a bite. There’s stabling and a turn-out for the animals once the sun’s up again.” He cocked his head at Ryan’s frown and added, “It’s late. Representatives from the council will meet with you tomorrow.”

“Of course.” He’d assumed they’d do it all tonight—resupply, accept the weapon, collect information—and leave at dawn, but admitting that would be admitting how little he understood what was happening. Donal would’ve known.

“Follow me.” The trader/possible spy turned toward the open gate. “And stay on the road. We’re almost positive we’ve located the last of the cellars, but we’d rather you not risk it.”

No need to ask what Donal would have done. Donal would’ve taken insult at being commanded by a mere trader. He’d have sent someone to find a cellar just to prove who was in charge. Ryan, who’d been told how dissimilar he was to his stronger, smarter, better-prepared-to-be-heir brother half a hundred times his first day in the Citadel, preferred not to fall into a cellar.

He settled back into the saddle and met Captain Yansav’s eyes. Did she know the spy? Had she been assigned to him to keep him from accidentally giving Gilsin Yeri’s position away? Would she tell him the truth if he asked? Would it matter? He already missed the monotony of the road, where he’d come to know the answers. Was this a trap? No, that was a stupid overreaction. Gateway wanted trade with Marsanport and they’d agreed to help when the Black Flame flickered. “We follow the trader, Captain, and we stay on the road.”

“Sir. Curtin, take point.”

“Captain.”

The guardian passed so close, Ryan could have effortlessly clapped him on the shoulder, and it was luck as much as skill that kept their knees from cracking together. Suspicious by nature and raised to believe in guilt by association when it came to mages and mage-craft, Curtin wouldn’t be distracted.

LYELEE.NOW

Lyelee understood why they had to enter Gateway.

But once within the walls, what then?

Trust Ryan not to have asked how long she’d have to wait before they moved on into the Broken Lands.

She’d been planning for this expedition—although absent the presence of Ryan and Scholar Gearing—since she was a child. A thousand questions had pushed against the inside of her ribs for as long as she could remember. They’d driven her into the Scholar’s Hall, and finally, into this wagon.

For the last few nights, she’d dreamed of the Broken Lands as they had been, filled with lost wonders. History waiting to be reclaimed. On the approach to Gateway, she’d been able to see the foothills from her dreams climb to meet the purple smudge of distant mountains, and the urge to take the whip to the horses and race toward the greatest mysteries that scholarship could ever hope to unravel was almost unbearable.

But right now, she’d have to settle for Gateway, the point of entry to the territory the mages had controlled. For hundreds of years, it had supplied the mages with mundane necessities while the mages supplied it with the crumbs of arcane knowledge they’d been willing to share. According to documents in the Scholar’s Archive, Gateway had been the only point of entry—which was both ridiculous and illogical. The maps of the Broken Lands had been drawn years after the war, and, even if failing memory hadn’t shifted borders, not one of the fleeing Five Thousand had known the full extent of the mages’ combined territory. It had been large, that they’d agreed on. And if they were correct, why would the mage furthest from Gateway—historically equal in knowledge and power to the mage closest to Gateway—agree to such an inconvenient distance when they also shared a border with the outside world?

Logic answered that they’d create their own trade town in a more convenient location.

The original Captain’s Chronicle, safely preserved in the Archive, said they hadn’t.

There was only Gateway.

Gateway has been destroyed, said the Five Thousand.

Green flame engulfed the temple of Gani Hav. The walls melted as though made of butter.

Stones fell from the sky and crushed my mother’s house and all my family.

Lyelee had read everything in both the library and the archives, from family histories filling multiple journals to illustrated manuscripts to scraps of paper with yellowed edges still stained with soot and faded brown smudges of blood. She knew what to expect.

There’d be ruins inside the walls: the remnants of an ancient civilization taken down to bare bones at the edge of a magnificent destruction. If forced to wait, she could fill a few hours with study.

Lyelee shifted forward on her seat as they passed beneath the gate, readying herself for the first glimpse of the city her ancestors had fled.

When the wagon emerged back into the sunlight, she stood, braced herself against the curved frame supporting the wagon’s painted canvas top, took a deep breath, and looked around.

There were no ruins.

“How dare they!”

“How dare they what?” Gearing asked, his attention on the horses.

“The ruins of ancient Gateway have been removed! The history erased!”

“The history we’re concerned with remains within the Broken Lands, Novitiate. Now, sit down.”

She remained on her feet, the only protest she could make.

A circle of grass paralleling the wall was obviously used for common grazing. Given the amount of wool the traders brought back to Marsanport, there had to be grazing outside as well—to the west, she assumed, given the position of the road and the Broken Lands. The open area was most likely a part of Gateway’s defenses. Allowing structures to be built against a defensive wall was a documented bad idea, although very few cities managed to prevent it. Had Gateway’s council used the weapon to keep the area clear? Lyelee wondered. Historically, the possession of a weapon resulted in the use of that weapon.

Beyond the inner edge of the grass, the only ruins she could see had become part of the new Gateway—broken walls still high enough and stable enough to pen livestock, blocks of dressed stone used to build a patternless jumble of small houses and barns. History disrespected by expediency.

Trees made it difficult to see if the entire ancient city had been repurposed.

The wagon bounced. She twisted to keep her balance, and saw, off to the left, the upper story of a row of tenements rising above the trees. Her fingers tightened around the strut. The roofline matched rooflines in the sections of Marsanport first rebuilt by the Five Thousand. Did the roof still protect an intact building from before the Mage War?

Did the people of Gateway have some small awareness of what was actually of value?

On both sides of the road, children and dogs gathered sheep into small groups. If the inhabitants of Gateway hadn’t found all the cellars, they were remarkably careless about both their livestock and their children.

Unless the small, random piles of rock scattered through the grass warned of danger below.

The children shouted as they passed the wagon, the spill of high-pitched words too fast for Lyelee to understand.

The mixed sounds of people and animals came nowhere close to the roar of Marsanport outside the buffering walls of Scholar’s Hall and Citadel. She could smell sausages and honey cakes. And sheep. There’d been plenty of time for crowds to gather, but except for those few who’d joined the archers on the wall, no one seemed to care about their arrival.

“Government repression?” she wondered.

“A reasonable explanation for the apparent lack of interest our arrival has generated,” Gearing allowed, understanding her question without it needing to be expanded.

The people of Gateway were acting as if scholars came through the gate every day.

“Whaha lukin fa?”

Lyelee jerked around and stared down at the boy keeping pace beside the wagon. “Where did you come from?”

“Me?” He made a face that suggested she was a little slow. “From here.”

He had the medium-brown coloring dominant in Marsanport—the blend of a trading city evident on Lyelee’s skin as well. His hair was thick and dark, his feet bare and dirty, and his homespun tunic and trousers declared farm not city. He looked as though he was waiting for a response, although his reply had been a statement, not another question.

Ah, Lyelee realized. He waited for a response to his first question.

“What am I looking for?” An exaggerated eye-roll confirmed her translation. “Evidence of the days before the Mage War.”

“He might be sensitive about that,” Gearing muttered.

He didn’t seem to be. But why would he? The Mage War had happened long before he was born.

“All the ruinser outsye th’all on th’ay ta th’ine.”

“Outside the wall? On the way to the line?”

“W’else?” He slapped his chest with an open palm. “I’s Darny. Who’re you?”

“Just Darny?” That gave her very little information.

“A’yea. You?”

“I am Scholar Novitiate Kalyealee Marsan-cee.”

Dark eyes widened. “S’truth? Marsan like at the gate?” He slowed his voice down to a close approximation of Ryan’s. “I am the Heir of Marsan!”

Lyelee rolled her eyes. The respect due a scholar was of considerably more significance than the respect Ryan thought should be due declaration of the family name. “The Heir of Marsan is my cousin.”

“You a Heir of Marsan too?”

“Not while the current Heir lives.”

“You plannin’ t’off ’m?”

“No.” She planned to remove herself from the line of succession the moment her novitiate ended and legality allowed. Knowledge was power and the actual power in Marsan lay with the scholars.

He flashed a pair of dimples. “You d’it, you’d b’eir.”

“Not where my interests lie.”

Gearing cleared his throat. He either disapproved of the discussion or he’d swallowed another insect. Lyelee ignored him.

So did Darny. “Is novisheet like a ’prentice?”

Would he know what essentially meant? Unlikely. “Sort of.”

“Aren’t you abbotol to be a ’prentice?”

Abbotol? Ah. A bit old. “No.”

Darny studied her face, apparently unconcerned with where he put his feet in an area of potentially undiscovered cellars. “Takes that long, does it? How much longer you got to be a novisheet?”

“I’ll be a full scholar later this year.”

“If you defend your thesis,” Gearing cautioned.

“F’in you don’t die in the Broken Lands,” Darny added. “That’s where you’re going’ right? ’Cause the Black Flame’s goin’ out and you gotta get more fuel ’cause if you don’t no one’ll be scared of you even though my mam said that’s a load of ratshit.”

“Daaaaar-neeeeeeey!”

He jerked, stared into the direction his name had drifted out of, then threw her a grin. “S’my mam. Think she knows when I’m talkin’ ’bout her. Gotta go. My turn to gather the chickens and bring ’em in. The chickens hate me,” he added and broke into a run, racing diagonally through the sheep, lambs scattering like balls on a game table, the protests of the children who’d been gathering them drowned out by his bellowed, “Coooooom-ing!”

“The point of that conversation?” Gearing muttered as Lyelee sat and arranged the folds of her robe.

“Children lie less often than adults do. Prevarication is a learned behavior.”

“Granted. And what did you discover?”

“That a scholar is less important to him than a chicken.”

“Chickens. Plural.” He twitched the reins. Dusk and Star continued to follow the horses in front of them as they had since leaving Marsanport. “The boy suggested our business here is common knowledge.”

“Ryan’s business, not ours.” Let Ryan retrieve the fuel; she’d retrieve their past. The shadows lengthened. More adults called out, more children responded—not only sheep and chickens were being gathered in for the night. “The Heir’s Chronicle referred to Gateway as a surprisingly thriving community.”

Gearing snorted. “I don’t doubt he was surprised, given that the Five Thousand believed they’d left behind fire and ash.”

Lyelee waved a hand at the low buildings, at the trees they hid among, at the pockets of density further in from the wall. “Fire and ash aside, I wouldn’t call this thriving. Before the Mage War, the people of Gateway had access to mage-craft. They had lights that burned without oil. They had heat without fire. They had …”

“Death and destruction raining down from the sky.”

It always came to that, as though death and destruction wiped out everything that came before. And yes, it had—literally—but she referred to knowledge, to wisdom, to craft.

As though he knew her thoughts—and he very well could, their argument was an old one—her mentor made a noncommittal sound and turned toward her, the reins loose over the swollen knuckles of his left hand. “In comparison to nonexistence, I have to agree with the chronicle’s assessment of thriving.”

She gestured toward the sound of a protesting rooster. “Chickens and sheep.”

“Eggs and fiber and meat.”

“Government repression.”

“Or a complete lack of curiosity.”

“Which indicates a population focused solely on survival. Consider the resources that have gone into that wall—not only building materials, but the hours of work taken away from actual progress. No wonder the people are at a chickens-and-sheep level.” She leaned out and twisted around to peer back the way they’d come. Two silhouettes were barely visible against the sky over the gate. Where had the other watchers gone? “During her tenure, the sixth governor of Midlake wrote and enforced two hundred and sixty-three different ordinances and lived in luxury while her people starved,” she continued, facing front again. “How many ordinances did it take to build the wall?”

“That Darny boy didn’t seem to be starving.”

“Granted. But it would’ve been useful had the Lord Protector included specifics in the Heir’s Chronicle about how this rebuilt Gateway was governed. And if not that, had he remembered enough to speak to me about it before we left. Although, had he retained his memories …”

“If his advanced age hadn’t weakened his memory of his journey to the Broken Lands, we wouldn’t have this opportunity,” Gearing interrupted. “The Court would never have agreed to fund scholarship if they’d been happy with the details at hand. If anything, we should be thankful for the Lord Protector’s lack of specifics.”

And that Ryan’s brothers drowned, Lyelee added silently. Gearing disliked her treating the tragedy as though it were any other mitigating factor. She didn’t understand his objection; the deaths hadn’t occurred in his family. And he was ignoring the way the accident had become the default conversation throughout the entire protectorate. Nice day. You’re looking good. Did you hear about the accident? The ripples of losing the childless heir and his two closest brothers would continue for generations.

Donal had been Heir of Marsan for seventeen years, since his mother had died of sepsis when Donal was fourteen and Ryan just two. As the Heir’s Journey to refuel the Black Flame would one day need to be made again, the Lord Protector had gifted his eldest great-nephew with all he knew of the Broken Lands and the ancient weapon. It was knowledge meant for the heir, but Lyelee bet Donal would have shared what he knew with Corryn and Josan, because the three were inseparable. Everyone knew that when Donal went to the Broken Lands, the twins would be going with him.

Donal’s bonded had quite a bit to say about how inseparable they were at the funeral, emphasizing that they’d learned to sail at the same time and that clearly the person who’d taught them was an idiot.

The point was—and Lyelee had made it countless times on the road—Ryan’s brothers drowning and the information lost with them had more to do with the Court agreeing to advance scholarship than the Lord Protector’s advanced age.

She’d barely to had remind her Uncle Heath that Scholar Gearing, her mentor, held the Scholarship of the Broken Lands before her uncle had begun leaning on the Court. It didn’t matter that Uncle Heath—and her mother—thought they were arranging things so she’d be available to bring the fuel home and claim the Lord Protectorship should Ryan not survive. After all, her uncle had announced—with heavy emphasis—it was to be a dangerous trip. Lyelee had smiled and nodded and let them scheme. Eventually, she’d been granted time with her great-uncle, had held his hand and answered a hundred and one questions about her studies—roughly seventy-five percent of them multiple times. In a moment of clarity, when his eyes had locked with hers, she’d pointed out that the knowledge trapped in the Broken Lands was just that, knowledge, neither good nor bad in and of itself, and it should not be abandoned as though it had personally been responsible for the destruction. After a long moment and a mournful expression, he’d tightened his grip and said, “I suppose you’d better go, then.”

It wasn’t a ringing endorsement, but it had been enough.

Watching Dusk’s tail sweep from side to side, she wondered if Gilsin Yeri-cer, who’d stayed in Gateway for love, even considered how close he now was to the greatest cache of lost knowledge that had or likely ever would exist. Had he ever crossed the Broken Line? Or had he wasted his time with chickens and sheep?

Then the light of a lamp shone through a distant window. And another. And another. Sometime in the last few minutes, without her noticing, the sky above had taken on the brilliant sapphire of pre-dark. “Do they have to build the Trader’s Hall before we can spend the night in it?” she asked, scratching at a line of raised welts on her shoulder. “What’s taking so long?”

“Patience …”

She locked her response behind her teeth.

“I understand your frustration.” Gearing shifted on the seat. He’d lost weight during the journey and he hadn’t been well padded when they’d started. “We have the opportunity to create a new framework for Broken Lands Scholarship that generations of scholars will use.” He gestured toward the far curve of the wall as though he were in a lecture hall, the motion shifting the reins lying slack on the horses’ haunches. Dusk tossed his head. Star ignored him, her head down, checking the ground for food. “You and I, Novitiate, are very close to true history. Close to uncovering the truth buried in five thousand and one highly subjective memories. We’ve been given an opportunity we must make the most of.”

Five thousand and one. Captain Marsan had led the Five Thousand, not been a part of it, although her memory had been just as subjective. Gearing had declared multiple times that they must make the most of the opportunity. Lyelee had decided repetition number thirty marked the border between scholarship and obsession and had stopped counting. He’d continued to make the declaration regardless.

At the front of the line, Gilsin Yeri-cer pointed left toward a two-story building, the nearer side separated from the grazing lands by a single tree. The angle prevented her from seeing an entrance, but when Curtin dismounted, walked left, and disappeared, she had to assume one existed or acknowledge that if Curtin had walked through a solid wall, enough mage-craft had survived in Gateway to justify Marsan’s concerns.

“If that’s the Trader’s Hall …” Gearing paused, as a distant, angry voice ran words together into incomprehensible disapproval before stopping abruptly. “… we’ll find nothing of worth in it even should it be as old as it looks. Everything of value will have been either removed or its provenience destroyed.”

The building—a stone rectangle with narrow windows on both the floors she could see—might have been pre–Mage War; its architecture was too basic for her to be sure of age at a distance. The enormous tree between her and the building didn’t help. Nor did the loss of light.

Ryan and Captain Yansav moved forward when Curtin emerged. The guardian remained a careful distance from Ryan’s obnoxious horse, and appeared to speak to them both—even though everyone but Ryan knew he spoke to the captain. After a moment, the captain beckoned them forward.

Lyelee clutched the wagon seat, practiced now at keeping the initial lurch from toppling her backward. Glancing down, rubbing her ankles together, scratching welts with welts, she realized her feet were so dirty her sandal straps were barely visible. She suspected the rest of her body matched. Cutting her hair off short before they’d left had been a brilliant idea, but the curls had grown long enough to mat together with sweat and dust, tipping her hat to the right. Servan had offered to take a blade to them or roll them into short locs, but she’d watched the guardian shave Destros’s head and refused. Her clothing hadn’t been properly washed in twenty-eight days and although she hadn’t worn her robe since the barrier, it still smelled of sweat. As a Marsan, she was self-aware enough to realize, she’d never been hungry or cold or dirty unless she’d chosen to be, and while she’d most definitely chosen to travel to the Broken Lands—the prologue to the chronicle she’d write would include a few more mundane details. Bring twice as much soap. Half as much salt fish. Build inns along the road and staff them with guardians to keep scavengers from the Broken Lands—there was no reason that scholars should have to travel like barbarians.

In the Heir’s Chronicle, the Lord Protector noted that he’d been able to bathe in Gateway.

A dribble of sweat rolled down Lyelee’s side, the salt burning in an insect bite she’d dug open. She could almost reach out and touch the history she’d spent a lifetime working toward, and having to stop in Gateway to make nice with the natives made a mockery of scholarship.

Her tongue dragged through grit as she wet her lips.

However, if the Traders Hall provided her with the chance to study large amounts of hot water, she’d try and cope with the delay.

RYAN.NOW

Ryan glanced around the courtyard, aware of Lyelee and Gearing arguing about delivery areas and warehousing in the ancient city. He paid little attention to the spill of words. For all those two were always talking, they covered a limited number of topics and always ended up at Oh woe. So much knowledge lost in the Mage War.

Although oh woe had never actually been said aloud.

The back wall of the courtyard rose two full stories where it attached to the stone buildings and dipped to barely one story in the center. Whoever’d capped the brick against the weather hadn’t bothered to even out the damage. The wall had clearly been part of a third building; even in the dusk, Ryan could see where windows had been filled in. Had it fallen during the Mage War, the brick less able to stand against mage-craft than stone, or had it been a newer build that had collapsed on its own, evidence of how Gateway’s post-war population had degraded?

The windows in the hall that opened out into the courtyard had shutters, not glass, and the wooden door had been patched into a larger opening. The surviving color suggested it had once been painted a deep yellow-orange.

“They’re not exactly attempting to impress the Heir of Marsan, are they?” Keetin murmured, moving up to stand at his left shoulder.

Ryan had been thinking the same thing. Aloud, it sounded significantly less justified than it had inside the confines of his head. “No reason they should. At this point, the Heir of Marsan will be impressed by a bath and a mattress.”

“There’s a good-sized copper in the hall, my lord.”

He flushed as he realized the trader had heard him refer to himself by his title. If the man were a spy for the Lord Protector, would he include that trivia in his report? Could he be convinced not to?

“I had them light the fire, so the water should be hot by now. The stable …” Gilsin Yeri leapt back as Slate snapped at his outstretched arm.

“Hey, you. Don’t be rude.” Ryan lightly smacked the big horse’s shoulder while backing him away from further temptation. “You startled him,” he explained.

Keetin snorted. “You gave the bad-tempered sack of dog meat an excuse,” he amended. “I have a scar,” he added, before Ryan could protest.

“You don’t …”

“Half-circle hollow on my shoulder.” Keetin patted the body part in question. “The big brute has taken a bite out of everyone in the company but Servan.”

“He’s exaggerating,” Ryan told the trader. “His shoulder was barely bruised. You were about to say?”

Gilsin Yeri shot a narrow-eyed look at Slate and took another step back before answering. “There’s plenty of hay, but not much of last year’s grain. Use it if you want to, my family won’t be returning until after the harvest.” He nodded toward the painted door. “Beds are made up, kitchen’s been stocked, you should be good for the night. Anything else, we’ll deal with tomorrow.”

A line of sweat dribbled down Ryan’s side. “The weapon …”

“Tomorrow,” he repeated, as though it were nothing to interrupt the future Lord Protector.

I am the Heir of Marsan, I don’t answer to you. Except it seemed he did. He suspected a demand for immediate access to the weapon would lead to a flat refusal, shredding any pretense of authority he might have. Donal wouldn’t have stood for it. “And if we want to leave the hall tonight?”

His lips twitched, but Gilsin Yeri’s tone remained even. “You’re not a prisoner, my lord, but wandering about in the dark would be unwise. Not only are you likely to get lost, but some of the nocturnal shattered fly, and back during the Milk Moon, we lost an archer off the wall.”

“Shattered is a local reference to a creature from the Broken Lands,” Lyelee called from the wagon seat as though Ryan had never read either chronicle. “Was it killed?”

“It was.”

“Did you keep the body?”

“It was back in the Milk Moon, Scholar. No,” he added hurriedly as Lyelee opened her mouth, proving to Ryan’s satisfaction that however long he’d been in Gateway, he remembered how to deal with scholars. “We didn’t keep the body.”

“Keep the next one.” The failing light hid the nuance of Lyelee’s expression, but her tone split the difference between thwarted scholar and Ryan’s ten-year-old cousin denied an exploratory trip into the Citadel’s chimneys. “I want to study it.”

“We,” Gearing called. “We want to study it.”

Lyelee rolled her eyes, the motion so extreme the gathering dusk couldn’t hide it. Ryan noticed she replaced impatience with a neutral expression before she turned toward her mentor. “You’ve never cared about anatomy before.”

“The anatomy in question has never originated in the Broken Lands before.”

Ryan shook his head as the scholars began debating the descriptions of shattered in the Captain’s Chronicle that only marginally matched those in the Heir’s. When he noticed Gilsin Yeri watching them, arms folded, brows drawn in, he said, “They’re Scholars of the Broken Lands. This is their first chance to do actual research.” When arms remained folded and brows down, he added, “They’re historians, mostly.”

“Dissolving precludes descendants!” Lyelee snapped.

Who or what, Ryan wondered, had been dissolved? He’d clearly missed that particular shattered in his readings.

“Will they be crossing the line with you?” the trader asked over Gearing insisting the chronicles’ timelines had been misinterpreted.

Ryan snorted. “We may have to lock their doors tonight to keep them from crossing before us.”

“They won’t be allowed outside the wall, but please try to convince them it’s a bad idea.”

“Scholars.” Ryan shrugged.

“A very bad idea.”

“I’ll do what I can.”

“All anyone could ask. I leave you to your rest, my lords.”

“You’re not staying?”

He spread his hands. “The Hall has everything you need and I’ve a home of my own.” With a quick nod in Ryan’s direction and a wary eye on Slate, he walked around them and sidled past the wagon that nearly blocked the entrance to the courtyard. He turned right, Ryan noted, taking the road back toward the wall.

“There used to be gates closing the courtyard off,” Lyelee called. “The hinges left discoloration on the stone, there …” She pointed. “And there. And if you’d get off your collective asses and stable your horses, we’d be that much closer to hot water and beds and a dawn departure.”

“Should I be pleased you’ve noticed my ass?” Keetin preened.

“You should get your ass off your horse,” Lyelee replied flatly.

“Come on.” Ryan flicked the ends of his reins at Keetin’s leg. “The Scholar’s Hall has the last word.”

The courtyard barely held four horses and a wagon. Had the captain not already hustled the guardians’ mounts into the stable, the wagon would still be out on the road. Ryan swung out of the saddle, the soles of his feet buzzing at the impact with the cobblestones even through the soles of his boots. It seemed darker at ground level. He grabbed for Slate’s bridle as Destros and Curtin emerged, heading purposefully across the courtyard toward the painted door.

Destros paused long enough to say, “Captain Yansav asks you to wait to enter until we’ve checked the building, sir.”

“I can do that.”

Harris followed close behind the two guardians. “I’ll examine the food and drink before preparing a light meal.”

“Do you expect them to poison us?”

“I was thinking more of checking the available quantities, my lord, but I’ll keep the potential for poison in mind.”

“Is he serious?” Keetin murmured, pushing up against Ryan’s side so as not to be overheard.

“Isn’t he always?” Keetin had called Harris “mother” the first three days of the trip. Then he’d been shown the folly of annoying their only retainer. Among other things, Harris did the cooking. Ryan shoved his friend toward the stable doors. “Get moving or I’ll take Slate in first.”

Slate kicked. And his back end was harder to control than his front.

The stable was as deep as the courtyard, at least twice as wide, and unexpectedly well lit. Half of the space had been divided into ten box stalls, the five against the far wall already occupied. Lattice-work bins filled the other half, bulging with sweet-smelling hay. Slate tried to push toward the familiar scent. Ryan braced himself and pushed back against his chest. “Not yet.”

“I wonder what they’re burning?” Keetin reached up and poked one of the lanterns, setting it swinging. “That can’t be oil, not throwing that much light.”