“Want to explain why we are taking this job?” Hadrian asked, shielding his eyes as they stepped outside. The sky was a perfect blue, the morning sun already working to dry the lingering puddles from the night before. All around them people rushed to market. Carts loaded with spring vegetables and tarp-covered barrels sat trapped behind three wagons mounded high with hay. Out of the crowd in front of them, a fat man charged forward with a flapping chicken gripped tightly under each arm. He danced around the puddles, dodging people and carts and offering a muttered “Excuse me,” as he pressed by.
“She’s paying us ten silver for a job that has already cost us a gold tenent,” Hadrian continued after successfully skirting the chicken man. “It will cost us several more before we’re done.”
“We’re not doing it for the money,” Royce informed him as he cut a path through the crowd.
“Obviously, but why are we doing it? I mean, sure, she’s cute as a button and all, but unless you’re planning on selling her, I don’t see the angle here.”
Royce looked over his shoulder, displaying an evil grin. “I never even considered selling her. That could defray the costs considerably.”
“Forget I brought it up. Just tell me why we’re doing this.”
Royce led them out of the crowd toward Ognoton’s Curio Shop, whose window exhibited hookahs, porcelain animal figurines, and jewelry boxes with brass latches. They ducked around the side into the narrow bricked space between it and a confectioner shop that was offering free samples of hard candy.
“Don’t tell me you haven’t wondered what Esrahaddon has been doing,” Royce whispered. “That wizard was imprisoned for nine hundred years, then disappears the day we break him out and we don’t hear a word about him until now? The church must know, and yet the Imperialists haven’t launched search parties or posted notices. I would think that if the most dangerous man alive was on the loose, there might be a bit more of a commotion.
“Two years later he turns up in a tiny village and invites us to come visit. On top of that, he picks the elven frontier and Avempartha as the meeting place. Don’t you want to find out what he wants?”
“What is this Avempartha?”
“All I know is that it’s old. Real old. Some kind of ancient elven citadel. Which also begs the question, wouldn’t you like to get a peek inside? If Esrahaddon thinks there’s value in opening it, I’m guessing he’s right.”
“So we’re going after ancient elven treasure?”
“I have no idea, but I’m sure there is something valuable in there. But for that we need supplies and we need to get out of town before Price lets loose the hounds.”
“Well, as long as you promise not to sell the girl.”
“I won’t—if she behaves herself.”
Hadrian felt Thrace leaning again, this time gazing at a two-story country home of stucco and stone with a yellow thatch roof and orange clay chimney. It was surrounded by a waist-high wall overgrown with lilacs and ivy.
“It’s so beautiful,” she whispered.
It was early afternoon and they were only a few miles out of Colnora, traveling east along the Alburn road. The country lane twisted through the tangle of tiny villages that comprised the hill region surrounding the city, little hamlets where poor farmers worked their fields alongside the summer cottages of the idle rich, who for three months a year pretended to be country squires. Royce rode beside them or trotted forward as congestion demanded. His hood was up despite the pleasant weather. Thrace rode behind Hadrian on his bay mare, her legs dangled off one side, bobbing to the rhythm of the horse’s stride.
“It’s a different world here,” she said. “A paradise, really. Everyone is wealthy. Everyone a king.”
“Colnora does all right, but I wouldn’t go that far.”
“Then how do you explain all the grand houses? The horse carts have metal rims on their wheels. The vegetable stands overflow with bushels of onions and green peas. In Dahlgren all we have are footpaths and they are an awful mess after a rain, but here you have such wide roads and they even have names on posts. And back there a farmer was wearing gloves—gloves on his hands—while working. In Dahlgren, even the church deacon doesn’t own fancy gloves, and he certainly wouldn’t work in them if he did. You all are so rich.”
“Some of them are.”
“Like you two.”
Hadrian laughed.
“But you have nice clothes and beautiful horses.”
“She’s not much of a horse really.”
“No one in Dahlgren but the lord and his knights own horses, and yours are so pretty. I especially like her eyes—such long lashes. What’s her name?”
“I call her Millie, after a woman I once knew who had the same habit of not listening to me.”
“Millie is a pretty name. I like it. What about Royce’s horse?”
Hadrian frowned and looked over at him. “I don’t know. Royce, did you ever name her?”
“What for?”
Hadrian glanced back at Thrace, who returned an appalled look.
“How about …” She paused, shifting and twisting as she scanned the roadside. “Lilac, or Daisy? Oh wait, no, how about Chrysanthemum?”
“Chrysanthemum?” Hadrian repeated. As funny as it might be to have Royce riding a Chrysanthemum, or even a Lilac or Daisy, he had to point out that flower names just did not fit Royce’s short, dirty gray mare. “How about Shorty or Sooty?”