Page 3 of Winter's Echo
“There’s been talk of change,” she whispered quickly, low enough that only I could hear. “You don’t need to pay for my silence with the Watch this time, Amarya. You keep that and take the north gate. I don’t know what they want, but a girl like you won’t go unnoticed.”
I gave my bottom lip a quick lick as I looked back at the gate. I didn’t ask what a “girl like me” meant. Young, female, alone, and a trailfinder. Those who could find a safe route through the frozen terrain of my homeland.
“Aye,” I murmured.
She squeezed my hand slightly. “Quickly, now, this is the only place the likes of them will come into.”
I reached into my pocket and pulled out a copper. “For the warning,” I murmured. I gathered my quarterstaff and satchel, and, with a nod, I left the inn through the back door, like I had a dozen times before.
I noticed as I left, a few of her customers had already slipped out the back. Sayla’s husband stood on sentry at the door and moved aside wordlessly as I approached. I gave him a wink as I passed. He knew I wouldn’t be as foolish as some people to try to duck out without paying.
The cold threatened to steal what little warmth I’d gained in the inn, and I wrapped my cloak around me tighter. My traveling cloak, my only item of luxury, had a fur lining inside the hood, and I gratefully pulled it lower as I headed to the north gate. I’d been hoping to spend the night with a roof over my head, even if it was in Sayla’s stables, but no such luck.
Resigned to another night with the sky as my only cover, I saw some of my earlier dinner fellows heading back the way they’d come.
Cautiously, I approached the north gate. My eyes widened as I saw the Town Watch and some of the Darysian soldiers already there.
“Shit.” I clucked my tongue as I considered my options. Back to the inn, where it was warm, or keep out of sight until the tin men left?
I called them tin men because even in the middle of Crystallese, they wore their armor, and the sound of their chattering teeth always seemed to echo.
Fools.
The fastest way to freeze to death up here was to cover your body in metal.
I was stuck. I thought about what Sayla had meant when she said “a girl like me.” Even if I didn’t say I was a trailfinder, an unmarried woman in the town “just passing through” might be hauled into one of their tents on the mistaken assumption she was a whore. Or wanted to be.
With a sigh, I hefted my satchel over my shoulder, gripped my staff, and headed back to the market in the hopes that one of the merchants was only here for a day’s trading and would need a trailfinder out of the town back home or onto the next market.
I avoided the old bastard I came in with this morning. One more day on the road with him, and the soldiers would have cause to look for me, because I’d have slit his throat.
At the corner of a stall filled with wooden utensils and bowls, I tried to catch the merchant’s eye, but he was too busy watching the Darysian soldiers as if he’d never seen them before.
“Sir?” I asked him, keeping my voice low.
He turned with that hopeful gleam in his eye that all merchants had, which quickly faded when he saw it was only me.
“I’m here for a few days,” he told me immediately.
I gave a slight nod, ready to move away, when he caught my sleeve. “They’re looking for a trailfinder.”
I looked past him to the group of soldiers. “I wish them luck.” I moved away, bypassed the next stall that sold fancy-smelling soaps, which did nothing but make my head hurt, and edged closer to the metal merchant.
Sometimes he used me, but most times, he had an armed guard. Metal was a rarity up here. You needed to have a heavy purse to buy from him.
I cleared my throat, and he turned, expecting a sale, and met my small smile with a similar expression of disappointment as the last merchant.
“Heading south to Florlunia after this, Amarya,” he told me gruffly.
Florlunia. They didn’t need my skills to head to the lands of spring.
He looked toward the soldiers. “They’reheading north.”
Why?
I shook my head slightly, and he nodded knowingly. “I won’t mention you when they ask.”
“They’re asking everyone?”
