Rounding the corner, she saw a knot of people at the side of the road, in front of one of the tailor shops. Its window had been smashed, and a burly man was kicking the front door with a heavy boot. The door crashed open, and the crowd surged inside. A moment later, several heavy bolts of cloth came flying out through the broken window. Laughing, the people outside scooped them up and staggered away down the street, carrying as many as they could under their arms. In front of the shop, two women each grabbed an end of the same bolt of cloth-a green fabric heavily embroidered with the outline of gold leaves-and began squabbling over it like a pair of angry chickens.
Shocked, Larajin realized these people were looting the shop. She looked around, searching for the city watch. She spotted three of them just up the street, lounging on their horses. Not one of the chain-mailed guards made a move for the bow at his pommel, however, or for the mace that hung from his belt. Instead one pointed at the looters, and the other two chuckled.
As she skirted around the mob, crossing to the other side of the road, Larajin noticed a symbol, painted on the door of the looted shop in a blaze of red: a vertical oval, with triangles jutting out of the top of it, like a face with horns. She wondered what it signified. Surely not a symbol of disease, with all of those people so willingly entering the shop. Perhaps the tailor had been convicted of a crime, and this was his punishment?
From inside the shop came the sound of blows and grunts of pain. Larajin hesitated, wondering if she should intervene, then she reminded herself that this was not her quarrel-that she was a stranger in Ordulin with trouble enough of her own. She didn’t need to go shouldering someone else’s burden, especially if the recipient of the mob’s wrath was a criminal. Wincing, she tore herself away. She’d come back to Thread Street later, when the commotion had died down, and seek out the Harper agent.
She strode instead toward the Trader’s Quarter, which lay just ahead. The smell of manure, hay, and axle grease assaulted her nose as she walked through an arched gate into a wide plaza fronted on all four sides by enormous stables. At its center was a notice board; on it was a document bearing the same symbol Larajin had seen on the tailor shop the mob had just looted. Curious, she decided to take a closer look.
She wove through the crowd of people and horses, sidestepping piles of dung that dotted the cobblestones. The notice bearing the horned oval turned out to be an official proclamation-one that sent a chill through Larajin as she read it, despite the heat of the sun on her shoulders. It reminded the citizens of Ordulin that the ten-year-old ban prohibiting elves from entering Sembia was still in effect. Not only that, but the ban now had been extended to half-elves, as well.
Dated less than a tenday ago, the proclamation ordered all half-elves living in Ordulin to leave the city immediately or face retribution at the point of a sword. It further ordered that all homes and businesses belonging to half-elves were to be marked with a sign warning the citizens of Ordulin against doing business with the enemy. An example of the symbol used to designate the property to be confiscated was printed at the bottom of the notice. It was a crude representation of an elf’s face-an oval with pointed, triangular ears.
Sickened, Larajin turned away from the notice board. She realized now that the tailor she’d heard being beaten inside his shop hadn’t committed any crime, other than being born a half-elf. He was probably the man Habrith had told her to contact. Only an agent of the Harpers would tarry so long in a city that was hostile to his race. Was it too late to run back and offer him whatever healing she could-or had the mob that had looted his shop also carried him away … even killed him?
Larajin nervously fingered an ear. Were people looking at her, noticing her too-slim build? If the scales of fate had tipped only slightly differently, giving her the pointed ears of her mother’s race, Larajin could have been the one receiving that beating.
In one corner of the plaza, a dozen men in civilian clothes practiced with pikes, taking turns thrusting at a wooden dummy under the eye of a member of the town guard. They were the militia, no doubt only recently mobilized. Larajin once again was confronted by the oval-and-triangles symbol. This time, it had been painted on the practice dummy.
Ordulin no longer felt like a safe haven. She was in as much danger there as she had been in Selgaunt. She needed to leave the city as soon as possible, to keep moving north. She’d have to try to find the Harper agent in Essembra on her own.
She scanned the notice board, looking for a suitable caravan, but while the notices advertised caravans bound for Yhaunn, for Highmoon, to Archenbridge, and back south to Selgaunt, the only caravans bound for Essembra had departed more than a tenday ago.
“Looking for a caravan, Mistress? Where to? If it’s north, I c’n help you.”
Larajin could smell the man before she turned around. His breath had the fetid odor of a bad tooth, and his appearance matched the smell. His hose had a tear in the knee, and his leather doublet was stained under the arms. One hand rested on the hilt of a sword, which hung in a rust-spotted scabbard at his hip. The man’s scalp was shaved but he wore his beard long. Flecks of what must have been his lunch still clung to it. His eyes kept darting to the money pouch that hung from Larajin’s belt. One cheek puckered as he sucked on his bad tooth.
Larajin wanted nothing to do with him, but she did want to find out more about any caravan headed north-if one existed. The fact that no such caravan was advertised on the notice board made her wary. She wasn’t going to venture down any back alleys with this lout. She rested a hand casually on the dagger she’d belted at her hip.
“North to where?” she asked him.
“To Featherdale and Essembra, and, if luck holds, all the way to Hillsfar. It’ll prob’ly be the last one heading north ’fore the road closes. We’ll have to wait out the war in Hillsfar-not that I mind.”
Larajin looked him in the eye. “How do you know about this caravan?” she asked. “It’s not posted on the board-and you’re no trader.”
He guffawed, and Larajin winced at the smell.
“Course it’s not posted! You want some halfie reading it and telling his savage cousins in the trees we’re coming through?” He shook his head. “You got one thing right, though, I’m no trader. I’m a sellsword. Name’s Enik.”
He waited for Larajin to volunteer her name. When she didn’t, he shrugged and continued, “I been hired to protect the caravan.” He stroked the hilt of his sword. “You come north with us, and me and my steel will be what’s standing between you and them wild elves, missy.”
Larajin didn’t like the way he was rubbing the hilt of his sword. It was all too suggestive of something else. Still, it wouldn’t hurt to see if this caravan really existed. If it was the only one headed north, it might be her only chance to reach the Tangled Trees. From her readings of the Master’s books, she knew they lay more than one hundred and fifty miles to the north. She could hardly travel all that distance on foot.
This man was only a sellsword and as such could be expected to be rough and unsavory. She could at least see if the traders driving the caravan were decent folk.
“Where is the caravan assembling, and when?”
Enik gave her a twisted grin, still sucking his bad tooth. “That’ll cost you a raven. Fer all I know, you’re a halfie spy.”
Larajin froze, feeling the blood drain from her face. He hadn’t guessed that…
No, he hadn’t. Enik, still grinning, gave her a broad wink. He hadn’t spotted the elf blood in her, after all. It had just been his idea of a joke.
“Tell you what,” Larajin said carefully. “You give me the information, and when it’s proved to be accurate, you’ll get your raven-but not until we’re under way. Deal?”