"If there are a hundred and sixty horses free-grazing on each sixth, that comes to .. ."
She waited for him to come up with nine hundred and sixty. When he did, she nodded. He looked down a moment longer, and grunted with surprise when Rusher nosed him in the small of the back. Susan put a curled hand to her mouth to stifle a laugh. From the impatient way he pushed the horse's muzzle away, she guessed he still saw little that was funny.
"How many more are stabled or training or working, do you reckon?" he asked.
"One for every three down there. At a guess."
"So we'd be talking twelve hundred head of horses. All threaded stock, no muties."
She looked at him with faint surprise. "Aye. There's almost no mutie stock here in Mejis ... in any of the Outer Baronies, for that matter."
"You true-breed more than three out of every five?"
"We breed em all! Of course every now and then we get a freak that has to be put down, but - "
"Not one freak out of every five livebirths? One out of five born with - " How had Renfrew put it? "With extra legs or its guts on the outside?"
Her shocked look was enough answer. "Who's been telling ye such?"
"Renfrew. He also told me that there was about five hundred and seventy head of threaded stock here in Mejis."
"That's just . . ." She gave a bewildered little laugh. "Just crazy! If my da was here - "
"But he's not," Roland said, his tone as dry as a snapping twig. "He's dead."
For a moment she seemed not to register the change in that tone. Then, as if an eclipse had begun to happen somewhere inside her head, her entire aspect darkened. "My da had an accident. Do you understand that, Will Dearborn? An accident. It was terribly sad, but the sort of thing that happens, sometimes. A horse rolled on him. Ocean Foam. Fran says Foam saw a snake in the grass."
"Fran Lengyll?"
"Aye." Her skin was pale, except for two wild roses - pink, like those in the bouquet he'd sent her by way of Sheemie - glowing high up on her cheekbones. "Fran rode many miles with my father. They weren't great friends - they were of different classes, for one thing - but they rode together. I've a cap put away somewhere that Fran's first wife made for my christening. They rode the trail together. 1 can't believe Fran Lengyll would lie about how my da died, let alone that he had ... anything to do with it."
Yet she looked doubtfully down at the running horses. So many. Too many. Her da would have seen. And her da would have wondered what she was wondering now: whose brands were on the extras?
"It so happens Fran Lengyll and my friend Stockworth had a discussion about horses," Will said. His voice sounded almost casual, but there was nothing casual on his face. "Over glasses of spring water, after beer had been offered and refused. They spoke of them much as I did with Renfrew at Mayor Thorin's welcoming dinner. When Richard asked sai Lengyll to estimate riding horses, he said perhaps four hundred."
"Insane."
"It would seem so," Will agreed.
"Do they not kennit the horses are out here where ye can see em?"
"They know we've barely gotten started," he said, "and that we've begun with the fisherfolk. We'll be a month yet, I'm sure they think, before we start to concern ourselves with the horseflesh hereabouts. And in the meantime, they have an attitude about us of... how shall I put it? Well, never mind how I'd put it. I'm not very good with words, but my friend Arthur calls it 'genial contempt.' They leave the horses out in front of our eyes, I think, because they don't believe we'll know what we're looking at. Or because they think we won't believe what we're seeing. I'm very glad I found you out here."
Just so I could give you a more accurate horse-count? Is that the only reason?
"But ye will get around to counting the horses. Eventually. I mean, that must surely be one of the Affiliation's main needs."
He gave her an odd look, as if she had missed something that should have been obvious. It made her feel self-conscious.
"What? What is it?"
"Perhaps they expect the extra horses to be gone by the time we get around to this side of the Barony's business."
"Gone where?"
"I don't know. But I don't like this. Susan, you will keep this just between the two of us, won't you?"
She nodded. She'd be insane totell anyone she had been with willdearborn, unchaperoned except by Rusher and Pylon, out on the Drop.
"It may all turn out to be nothing, but if it doesn't, knowing could be dangerous."
Which led back to her da again. Lengyll had told her and Aunt Cord that Pat had been thrown, and that Ocean Foam had then rolled upon him. Neither of them had had any reason to doubt the man's story. But Fran Lengyll had also told Will's friend that there were only four hundred head of riding stock in Mejis, and that was a bald lie.