where merchants paid to set up their business. This was the largest of those, a ten-acre field filled with tents of all colors—blue-and-white trimmed with yellow, scarlet-and-black, green-and-blue—each with pennants above them declaring who they were and what they sold.
“Look,” Nettle said and pointed. “The Kish.”
Talen looked and saw the black-and-white tent of the Kish bowmaster. He was surprised that merchant was here. In the last four years of Bone Face raids, many merchants had become wary of sending ships to the New Lands. And now with the Sleth, it was a wonder those who did come would stay. Kish bows were the finest made. They were small and powerful, made of wood, sinew, and bone. He could have the finest bow for sale along with a few dozen bundles of arrows; all he had to do was turn those hatchlings in.
Talen watched a merchant’s guard chase two boys away from a wagon, and then, with a jolt of the wagon, the road turned from a humped dirt affair with weeds growing in the middle to a flat cobblestone street.
What a fine arrangement for the rich to be able to step out of their houses in the middle of a rain and not muddy their boots.
Up ahead, people thronged the way. In front of them a man led an ass laden with bundles of dried hemp. To the side a young woman wearing a yellow hat pointed to a clay prayer disk laying on a holy man’s table. Each disk was engraved with some type of boon—the holy man would write your name on the disk in ink, then you could hang it on the wooden statue in front of the temple and let the fires carry your request to the ears of the Creators.
A young boy carrying a yoke of water across his shoulders cut in front of the wagon, followed by a girl in a pale blue dress selling candles that hung from a pole fitted with a double cross.
Da halted Iron Boy. When the two had passed, he flicked the reins again. A few minutes later, Da turned off the busy street, following the lane that led to Master Farkin’s. Farkin’s house stood three stories high and had half a dozen smoking chimneys. Talen wondered how it would be to have a hearth in almost every room. A lot of work or money in firewood, that’s what it would be. Perhaps that woodsman was on his way here.
A servant stood outside the door. Da went inside to see what price he could get for the pelts they had brought.
While Talen waited on the back of the wagon, two carriages rolled by, their curtains drawn. When Da came back out, he had Talen and Nettle help him carry the pelts down an alley into a yard in the back of the house.
Master Farkin was, according to Da, one of the few merchants who bargained a fair price with every man, regardless of clan.
While they were making the exchange, Master Farkin said, “Have you heard the news about the Envoy?”
“Mokad has sent an Envoy?”
“Not only an Envoy, but a Skir Master. The message just came today. We’re saved.”
“Is he here to stay?” asked Da.
“Nobody knows. There was no word of his coming until the birds arrived today. But it bodes well. We can, at the very least, hope for a hunt.”
“Creators be blessed,” Da said, smooth as cream. But Talen knew he didn’t mean a word of that.
“And look at this one,” Master Farkin said of Talen. “I would suspect that the girls would find much to admire there.”
“If they do,” said Talen, “they have a funny way of showing it.”
“Oh?”
“They tend to run away,” said Nettle.
Master Farkin chuckled. He asked after Captain Argoth, told them he needed more mink, suggested they avoid the Dog Street tailors, then bid them goodbye.
Da asked Talen and Nettle to join him up on the seat. When they’d pulled out into the road, Da said, “Kindness, boys. It’s irresistible. Don’t you think?”
“Some people are immune to it,” said Nettle.
“I don’t know,” said Da. “Sometimes kindness can even renew the hate-salted field of a man’s heart.”
“But people won’t see kindness if they don’t trust you,” said Talen. He was thinking of the lies they’d told the bailiff. The small lie Da had just told Master Farkin. What if Master Farkin discovered Da’s treachery? And that’s what it was, legally. How much kindness would he show then?