Parsian Valley and the Deeplink River joined its lazy, looping spirals to the green rush of the Elenn. Kost sat on the delta formed by the confluence of the two rivers. Tiered streets jam-packed with wooden buildings layered the valley’s side, and the smoke from countless wood fires hung trapped in a dense pall over the town. I much preferred the clean white stone and magelights of Ninavel, but for once I welcomed the sight of the throat-clogging haze.
Kost’s border gate lay on the far side of a broad bridge built of granite blocks and cinnabar planks that spanned the gleaming swirl of the Elenn. The gate itself was a wide freestanding arch some twenty feet high, carved from rock the faint yellow of old bone. Ward sigils covered the arch’s surface, in inset lines of an odd, glassy black substance. Metal or crystal, maybe. I’d never managed a close enough inspection to find out. The Alathians didn’t take kindly to gawkers.
I approached the bridge with the brisk stride appropriate to a prospector eager to wet his dusty throat at a riverside tavern. The buzz of my nerves was back, loud enough to set my neck muscles twitching. Gods, but I wished I could spare the time to study the way the guards handled entry inspections. If Pello had beaten us here, or if Kiran was wrong about Ruslan’s willingness to involve the Alathians, the guards would be looking for men matching our descriptions.
But with Ruslan chipping away at Kiran’s amulet like a miner hunting an ore seam—not to mention tracking me down in the bargain—I couldn’t afford any delays. I’d have to trust to Khalmet that our shortcut over Bearjaw had given us enough lead time, and I wasn’t only steps away from getting arrested.
I crossed the bridge just as a guard lit the great torches at the gate in advance of twilight. Three more guards lounged against the squat stone building of the gatehouse, and another two stood beyond the arch, their gray and brown livery melding into the shadows. The mage handling inspection duty wasn’t in view. He was probably lurking in the relative comfort of the gatehouse, along with the guard captain.
When the guards came to attention, it was the half-hearted, lazy attention of men faced with a scruffy prospector of no importance. A trickle of relief lightened my stomach, as two of them ambled over to bar the way. The guard captain strode out of the gatehouse with his logbook under his arm.
“State your name and business.” He sounded bored, but his eyes were a mite sharp for my taste.
“Devan na soliin, out of Ninavel.” I used the old Arkennlander form that politely indicated I lacked a family name. I didn’t dare lie about my identity, and not only because the mage would be listening for it. I’d been in and out of Kost too many times under my own name to chance not being recognized. Times like this I always wished Suliyya had seen fit to bless me with a pair of properly nondescript dark eyes to match my Arkennlander coloring.
The way to deal with Alathians was to tell the truth, just not all of the truth. “I’ve been up mountain-side, and I’m coming in to arrange sale of my wares,” I told the captain. He wrote in the log, and I shrugged out of my pack and handed it to a waiting guard.
The mage finally deigned to appear from the gatehouse. He was a small, stiff-backed man whose olive skin had a sallow tinge, as if he rarely saw the sun. His dark hair was cut screamingly short in the formal Alathian style, the gold seal of the Council prominent on the chest of his gray and blue uniform. Unlike the guards, his every move was as rigidly proper as a soldier on a parade ground.
The mage stalked in a slow circle around me, his ringed hands spread. Long practice let me keep my expression bored as that of the guard rifling through my pack while the captain peppered me with questions. How long did I intend to stay in Kost, which importers did I mean to deal with, how many times had I crossed the border before...the usual annoyingly nosy list.
After a small eternity, the mage stopped his circling. He moved to my pack, and spent a further age fondling each charm in my much-reduced stash. I’d taken care to bring only those so weak as to be Alathian-legal. Too bad I