Northbound

For the first day, the northern contract looked like any other bad job.

The road out of Starfall Reach climbed through wet fields and slate-walled farms where goats stared at travelers with the judgment of retired magistrates. By noon, the town had shrunk behind them into a gray notch between hills. By evening, it was smoke on the southern sky.

Noll spent the morning walking too fast and the afternoon pretending his feet did not hurt. Pell rode on the front wagon beside the driver, taking notes whenever Vael said something and not taking them whenever Mara did. Torrun walked because he claimed wagons made him trust wheels, and trust was a habit that got people killed.

Vael rode a dark mare named Sable and never seemed bothered by mud.

That annoyed Mara more than it should have.

The first night they camped beside a stand of wind-bent pines. The carriers kept to themselves, rolling dice on a blanket until Torrun looked at them for too long and they decided sleep was wiser. Vael ate dried fruit and wrote letters by a covered lantern. Pell sharpened a quill with the anxious care of a man preparing for battle and unlikely to survive it.

Mara walked the edge of camp.

There were habits to leaving town. Count packs. Count lamps. Count rope. Note who complained first. Note who laughed too long. Listen to the road after dark. A crew in known tunnels was one thing. A crew outside walls was another. The earth did not have to collapse to kill you when people could do the work just as well.

At the northern edge of the firelight, she found Noll crouched over a patch of mud.

“Tracks,” he said.

“I see that.”

“Small. Not rabbit.”

“Kobold.”

He looked pleased. “Thought so.”

“Do not look pleased. Kobolds mean someone nearby has something worth stealing or nothing worth guarding.”

“Are they dangerous?”

“Everything with teeth is dangerous if it is hungry enough.”

“That includes us.”

“There’s hope for you yet.”

He grinned, then glanced toward Vael. “You trust him?”

“No.”

“Good.”

“I do not trust you either.”

His grin widened. “Also good.”

Mara crouched beside the tracks. Three-toed impressions, light, moving fast toward the north road. One print showed a drag line beside it where something had been pulled or carried. Bread? Tin cup? Knife? Kobolds stole whatever hands could lift and sense could not talk them out of.

“Leave it,” she said.

Noll looked disappointed. “Could follow.”

“You could also swallow a hook and call it fishing.”

“That sounds like something Torrun would say.”

“Torrun is old because he says such things before doing them.”

They returned to camp.

Pell was still awake, though his eyes had gone red. He sat near the fire with his ledger open and his pen hovering.

“You don’t have to write the smoke,” Mara said.

He startled. “I’m recording supply use.”

“Wood burned. Food eaten. Men complained. There.”

Pell looked at the page as if tempted to add it. “The company requires detail.”

“The company requires control. Detail is how it dresses.”

He closed the ledger halfway, then opened it again. “Mistress Venn—”

“Mara.”

“I should say I did not draft the contract.”

“You said.”

“I also did not choose the death compensation.”

“Did you object?”

He looked down.

Mara waited, because silence did useful work if left alone.

“I am a junior clerk,” he said finally.

“That is not no.”

“No,” he said. “I did not object.”

“Then why tell me?”

His hands tightened around the ledger. “Because I would prefer you not think me cruel.”

Mara considered that. The fire snapped. Somewhere beyond the dark, an owl called once.

“Cruel is easy,” she said. “Most men are only afraid.”

Pell did not look comforted.

In the morning, one of the carriers found his belt pouch missing. He accused Noll, then Torrun, then the other carriers, then cursed kobolds when Mara pointed to small prints near the wagon wheel. Vael paid him from company coin before the complaint could grow teeth.

“Generous,” Mara said.

“Efficient,” Vael replied.

“Same pocket for you?”

“Efficiency often appears generous to people who cannot afford delay.”

The road turned poorer after the second day.

Farms thinned. Stone walls broke into hedges. Hedges gave way to scrub, then low wet ground where every wheel rut filled with brown water. The sky widened and lowered. Greyfen Lowlands, Torrun called it. A place where the earth could not decide whether to be road or marsh and failed at both.

They reached the ferry inn near dusk on the third day.

It stood on posts above black water, with a roof patched in three colors of slate and a sign so weather-beaten the painted fish looked like a wound. The ferry itself was a broad flat raft worked by chain across a slow river. On the far bank, the north road climbed toward darker hills.

The innkeeper was a woman with arms like rope and a voice like wet gravel. She looked at Vael’s seal, then at Mara’s crew, then at Vael again.

“Company crossing?” she asked.

“Authorized,” Vael said.

“Last company crossing went poorly.”

Pell’s pen stopped moving.

Vael’s face remained pleasant. “Did it?”

“Men came down from Frostcut two weeks back. Not the same men went up.”

Mara felt Torrun shift beside her.

Vael removed his gloves finger by finger. “You may be mistaken.”

“May be.”

“I would appreciate accuracy.”

The innkeeper looked past him to Mara. “Accuracy costs more than ale.”

Mara put two copper coins on the counter. The innkeeper did not touch them.

Vael placed a silver beside them.

The innkeeper touched that.

“Storm took your survey crew, I heard,” she said.

“That is our understanding.”

“Funny storm. Came through dry.”

Vael’s eyes cooled.

The common room had gone quiet in the way rooms do when people pretend to talk. A man near the hearth lifted his mug and forgot to drink. Noll stared openly until Mara nudged him with her boot.

The innkeeper continued, because some people take coin as permission and some as challenge. “Five went north. Five came back as far as here. One limping. One with his head wrapped. Dwarf in front. Paid for bread, vinegar, lamp oil. Said they had ridge work still. Next I heard, storm ate them.”

“Names?” Mara asked.

Vael turned slightly. “Mistress Venn.”

“Names,” Mara repeated.

The innkeeper shrugged. “Didn’t ask. Dwarf had a blue mark on his hand. Old clan work maybe. One young dwarven woman with him. Survey rods. Blue leather at her wrist. Kept checking the road behind them.”

Pell wrote too quickly. Vael saw. Pell stopped.

Torrun leaned near Mara and muttered, “Vuldane mark, maybe.”

Vael’s voice remained mild. “Road stories grow in wet places. We should all be cautious what we water.”

The innkeeper smiled without warmth. “Then mind your boots.”

They took rooms because crossing after dark was foolish and because Vael could not insist otherwise without looking afraid.

Mara slept little.

Near midnight, she heard movement in the hall. Not the heavy step of a drunk or the soft barefoot pad of a thief. A careful step. A clerk’s step, if clerks took to creeping.

She opened her door before Pell could knock.

He nearly dropped his candle.

“I wanted to speak,” he whispered.

“You are doing that.”

“Not here.”

Mara looked past him. The hall was empty. At the far end, Vael’s door was closed.

She stepped out, pulling her coat around her shoulders, and followed Pell to the narrow back stair overlooking the river. Mist lay over the water like dirty wool.

Pell held his candle cupped. “The first crew did not fail to return.”

“I heard.”

“No. I mean the company knew they came back through Greyfen. There is a note in the travel file. A ferry record. I saw it before we left.”

“Why mention this now?”

His mouth worked.

“Because it was removed.”

“By Vael?”

“I don’t know.”

“You do.”

Pell looked out at the river. “I know whose hand signed the removal.”

Mara waited.

“Mine,” he said.

The candle guttered.

“You removed it?”

“I copied the instruction. I did not understand what it meant.”

“That seems to happen to you often.”

His face tightened. “Yes.”

For a moment he looked younger than Noll.

Mara leaned on the rail. The river below moved quietly north, as if it had somewhere better to be.

“Why send you?” she asked.

“Because I sign cleanly.”

“No.”

He swallowed.

“Because Vael thinks you will obey,” Mara said.

Pell said nothing.

“Will you?”

The question frightened him. That was good. Men who were not frightened by such questions had usually answered them already.

“I don’t know,” Pell said.

Mara looked at him for a long time.

“That,” she said, “is the first useful thing you’ve written.”

Across the river, something moved in the reeds. Small shapes, three or four of them, hunched and quick. Kobolds, likely, drawn by ferry scraps and careless travelers. One paused at the water’s edge, eyes catching candlelight. Then it vanished.

Pell shivered.

“Do they attack?”

“Only if they think they can win.”

“How do they know?”

Mara blew out his candle.

“They guess,” she said. “Like everyone else.”