20

Chapter 19

"Let's just go up that next rise before we head back," Corec said to Josip. "It'll give us a better view."

"Do you really think anything's going to change?" the guide asked. The scouting party had been in the barrens for two hours and had seen little other than scraggly bushes, weeds, and flat, dry land.

"No, but we're close enough that we might as well take a look."

They nudged their horses forward, Leena and Nedley following behind them. The Sanvari woman had accompanied the scouting group just in case her skills were needed, but Corec had brought Nedley along to get the boy more accustomed to taking on new responsibilities. Nedley was sixteen, the same age Corec had been when he was expelled from the Knights of Pallisur, but while Corec had had four years of training by then and had been comfortable taking care of himself on the road, Nedley didn't seem confident enough to do anything without someone else telling him to do it. He was eager to please and attentive to his duties as the group's groom, but the only time he'd shown much of a personality had been back with the refugees from Jol's Brook, when he'd been able to spend time with other children near his own age. Treya had privately mentioned her fear that the demonic magic had affected him in ways she couldn't heal.

At the top of the small hill, Corec stopped his horse and gazed out over the desolate landscape. "Is the whole place like this?" he said to Josip.

"The mapmaker said it was," the other man replied.

Corec had borrowed Sarette's collapsible spyglass for the trip. He pulled it out of its leather case and spun the cylinders to open the device to its full width, then peered through, adjusting the focusing lens until the view was clear. To the north, as far as he could see, it looked just the same as the miles they'd already traveled, but when he scanned to the east, he noticed a faint smudge of green.

"There's something over there," he said.

Josip had his own spyglass out. He aimed it in the same direction. "We've got time to check it out, I think."

It took the four of them half an hour to reach the spot. The green growth turned out to be short, wispy grass at the edge of a small creek flowing south. Corec's horse started grazing.

"Hildra was right, there's water here," Corec said. He turned to Leena. "Do you think you can find more? This place may not be a desert, but it makes me nervous to have no towns or trees." He felt guilty asking her to use her magic, even though she didn't appear to mind. He'd only cast the warden binding spell on her because she thought it was the best way to protect her people. He'd told her he wouldn't ask for anything in return, but she insisted she needed the practice.

Her eyes unfocused for a moment. "The creek comes from the northwest," she said. "There's more water to the east, maybe seven miles? I'm not used to measuring distances this way. In the past, I only had just a general sense of where something was."

Corec nodded. "We don't need to know exactly where it is right now, as long as we know we can find it. Food will still be a problem, though, both for us and the horses. This grass isn't going to be enough, and it's the first we've seen since we got here." He and Boktar had discussed options for traversing the barrens, but now that he'd seen the place for himself, there was only one possibility. They'd have to take wagons with feed for the animals, and that would cause its own problems. "Nedley, could you go cut some of the smaller, greener branches from those bushes? Get ones with plenty of leaves. Try to collect some of each type, and some of the weeds as well. When we get back, we'll see if the mules will eat any of it."

"Yes, sir," the boy replied.

"I told you, you don't have to keep calling me sir."

"I'm sorry."

Corec laughed. "You don't have to apologize, either."

Nedley stared at him, apparently unsure what to say in response. After a moment, the boy nodded, then dismounted and headed to the nearest shrub, drawing his belt knife.

"Wagons?" Josip guessed.

"I don't see any other choice," Corec said. "But even with wagons, I'm worried about how much weight we'll be able to carry with us. I'm not sure if it'll be enough."

"I have an idea," Leena said.

#

Ellerie glanced at her list. "Did you pay out this week's wages?" she asked Marco.

"This morning," he said, looking at his own notes. "Were there any other expenses for the week? How much was the new horse?"

Boktar said, "Forty-five silver, but I only got twenty-five selling the old one."

Katrin's horse had thrown a shoe and injured its hoof the day before they'd arrived in the small village of Perga, a two-hour ride from the barrens.

"We lost twenty on the deal?" Marco asked. "It was a four-year-old horse in good shape! We should have gotten more than that."

"The farrier's the only person I could find who was willing to buy an injured horse, and that's as high as he would go."

"Then you should have let me do the selling."

"Let it go, Marco," Razai said with an annoyed sigh. The demonborn woman was a reluctant participant in the accounting meetings, only attending because, as Renny's representative, she had to agree to the expenditures. It was useful to have her around, though—Marco seemed slightly afraid of her, and was unwilling to push too hard when she disagreed with him.

Marco grunted. "Fine. I suppose we've saved some money by camping out so often. If we subtract the horse, Corec's armor, and how long it took us to get through that damned swamp, then we're just about even with my initial estimates."

"Corec's armor?" Ellerie asked. "You mean that cheap brigandine you paid for? We still owe him for his real armor."

"The contract doesn't call for anything like that!"

"The damage happened while he was fighting to save the lives of everyone here," she pointed out. "A fight he wouldn't have been in if he hadn't accompanied us."

"Let it

go

, Ellerie," Razai said in that same annoyed tone. "We all take care of our own gear. Corec's the one who agreed to sign on for no pay. A new breastplate and mail would have cost way too much, and we'd have been stuck in Aencyr for another week to have them fitted."

Sometimes

it was useful to have her around. This time, though, her disagreement played into Ellerie's hand.

"How about this?" she said. "I'll stop bringing up the armor, but we need to make a change in the wages we're paying out." The armor issue had been settled a month earlier, but it was easier to get Marco to agree to one proposal if he'd already turned down another.

"We're not paying your friends," he said. "The charter members have all agreed to the share distribution."

"Not them. Leena. She needs to be paid the same as Razai. Four silver a day and one-eighth of a share."

Razai raised her eyebrows, then sat back in her chair with her arms crossed, an amused smirk on her face as she waited for Marco's response.

"What?" he exclaimed. "Why?"

"She's a mage, Razai's a mage. It's a fair deal. We've been depending on Leena more than anyone else. Without her, we'd have had to stable the horses back in Aencyr and buy new ones on this side of the swamp."

"Razai's also a guard!" Marco protested. "And she's serving as Mistress Renny's representative!"

Razai snorted. "If that's what you call listening to you two argue, then signing my name on the ledger."

"You're right, Marco," Ellerie said, unperturbed. "Razai's a guard, but Leena's still our cook. We've only been in one fight in Cordaea, but we eat every single day. If we want her to keep helping, we need to pay the going rate for a mage. She's not a charter member, but she's doing the work of one."

The man sighed. "All right, fine, maybe the wages, but you can't just add a share!"

"Yes, I can. Article twenty-two of the contract. Charter members may vote to add up to four non-voting shares to individuals who provide worthwhile contributions to the expedition, as long as the recipients have not already been allocated shares."

"We still have to vote!"

Ellerie shrugged. "Sure. We will. What do you think the result will be?" She'd already talked to her friends, and they'd all agreed to it. Marco only controlled four votes, two each for Varsin's and Burton's shares. He wouldn't have enough even if Razai added Renny's votes to his, and that seemed unlikely. The quiet cook and the acerbic demonborn woman had struck up an odd sort of friendship.

Marco glared. "If she's so good at finding things, why can't she just find Tir Yadar?"

"Yelena says the Tirs are warded against scrying," Ellerie replied. Marco didn't know about wardens, but he accepted Yelena as an expert on all things magical. It seemed that the Senshall Trading Company consulted with her regularly.

Before he could reply, the inn's front door opened and Corec came inside, stopping to brush dust off his clothing. The rest of his scouting party followed him—Leena, Josip, and Nedley.

"How were the barrens?" Ellerie asked them.

"Barren," Corec said.

She rolled her eyes. "Well, that's good to know." Sometimes she thought he was taking lessons from Boktar on how to tease her.

"It's just like Hildra described it. The land is flat and easy for traveling, but there's no firewood and there's nothing for the animals to graze on. There's water, at least, but anything else we need we'll have to bring with us."

"It's got to be wagons, then," Boktar said. "Nothing for the animals at all?"

"The mules will eat some of it. There's not much for the horses."

Boktar sighed. "Thirteen horses and twelve mules. That's a lot of feed to carry around with us. How long will we be there?"

"I'm not sure," Ellerie said. "We don't know where we're going, and if it's as—" she smirked "—

barren

as Corec says, it'll be harder to find our way."

"We're not going to find any freight wagons around here, or anyone who knows how to make one. We'll have to make do with farm wagons, but they're too small." Boktar scribbled down some figures on the sheet of notes he'd brought to the meeting. "Hay bales here are a hundred pounds, and four feet long—I already checked. We need to find the biggest farm wagons in town and extend them to twelve feet long, then build railings up along the side like a hay wagon."

"How much will that carry?" she asked.

"We need about twenty pounds of feed per day per horse, a bit less for the mules. Let's say eighty percent hay and twenty percent oats. Stack the hay bales four levels high, and then put bags of oats on top. Twenty-five animals ... with large enough wagons, we'll have about six days of feed per wagon. We'll probably need three wagons if we're going to make any progress. That would be twenty, twenty-one days depending on how much grazing the mules can do. We'll leave the pack saddles here, but the wagons will have to be large enough to hold all the gear the mules have been carrying. Either four feet wide, or we can extend them longer than twelve feet."

Corec frowned. "That's only four mules per wagon. That's not enough—the load will be too heavy."

"It'd be slow for the first few days, but we'll be emptying them out fast. If everyone walks, we can add two horses per wagon, and move the saddlebags over to the other horses. If the land's as flat as you say, we should be able to make it work."

"It's still heavy. That's three thousand pounds of feed, not counting the wagon itself or the rest of our gear. What if we take twenty-five hundred pounds of feed per wagon instead? With the mules grazing, we'd probably still get about eighteen days, but we'd be moving faster."

Ellerie waited for Boktar's response. She trusted his planning, but Corec had years of experience working with trading caravans.

Boktar considered the suggestion, looking down at his notes. "It'll mean fewer days, but I suppose it would be safer. We might get up to twenty miles each day doing it that way. A bit less at the beginning. Is that enough?"

Ellerie did the math in her head. Three hundred sixty miles, and according to the map, the barrens were only two hundred fifty miles across at their widest point.

She said, "That would get us across, but it wouldn't leave us much time to explore. We only have a general idea of where we're going."

"We can make more than one trip," Corec said. "When we run low on supplies, we'll just head out of the barrens to the nearest town."

"What if something delays us? We'll need to build in extra time in case of any problems, and that means less time to explore. Or we buy a fourth wagon and more mules."

Boktar said, "Another wagon would help, but we'd need so much food for the new animals, I'm not sure it's worth the extra two or three days it would give us."

Leena spoke up then. "I can Travel and buy more food. I can't carry a bale of hay, but I can bring whatever else we need. If I go every day, we won't run low so quickly."

Razai frowned at her. "I thought you said it wasn't safe to Travel that far."

"Other Travelers do it all the time. My Seeking is better than it ever was, but I need to practice teleporting too."

"What are you two talking about?" Marco asked. He'd been excluded from most of the conversations about Leena's abilities. "I thought you couldn't do that—you said you never finished your training."

"It's dangerous, but I can do it," Leena said calmly. "I think I should try again to see if I've gotten better." She didn't mention the warden bond.

"Are you sure?" Ellerie asked her. Leena had told her about her early experiments with Traveling.

"I have to try it sometime. I have to know. I can practice before we leave."

The Sanvari woman seemed determined, so Ellerie nodded.

Marco glanced around the room, scowling when nobody else seemed surprised. Even Josip and Nedley appeared to understand what was going on, which suggested Leena had mentioned it during the scouting trip.

"You all knew?" Marco asked. He glared at Leena. "You could have done this all along? You should have told me!"

"Most of us are mages, Marco," Corec said in a carefully neutral tone. "I don't recall ever telling you what

I

can do, either."

The man threw his hands up in exasperation. "Fine. Do what you want. You're going to anyway."

Ellerie held back a sigh. The wagons were going to be a major expense, big enough that Marco could veto it. She couldn't risk losing his support.

"I'm sorry I didn't talk to you about it earlier," she said to him, keeping her tone apologetic rather than annoyed. "We don't know if it's going to work, and this is the first time we've ever considered actually risking it. We didn't realize we'd encounter a situation where it would be necessary. We can all cast spells that are only helpful in certain situations—we just don't talk about them until they become important."

The man's jaw worked, but he didn't seem to know how to respond. Finally, he said, "I suppose that makes sense."

Leena opened her mouth, perhaps to add to the apology, but Ellerie quickly shook her head. It wasn't the other woman's job to keep Marco happy or informed.

"What else?" Ellerie asked the group, changing the subject. "What about firewood? The weather's warming up, but how are we going to cook?"

"Cold camps," Corec said. "Dried fruit, dried meat, hardtack. Only bring things we can eat without cooking. Sell or store all of our other food so we're not hauling it with us. Leave behind most of the cookware too, so we're carrying less weight."

Boktar nodded. "It's the best way. If we brought a fourth wagon for firewood, we'd need a fifth just to feed the extra animals. It's not worth it."

Ellerie grimaced. "That's not going to give us much variety."

Boktar said, "Don't forget nuts, cheese, dried mushrooms, sausages. We can live with it. I think we still have some of the trail rations the stormborn use. Pemmican?"

Corec made a face.

"All right," Ellerie said. "Let's do it."

"It's going to cost us," Boktar warned. "The early haying season hasn't quite started here yet, so we'll be buying last year's crop. Plus, there's no wagonmaker here in town. We've either got to work with the smith and build our own wagons, or find some farmers who've finished the spring planting and are willing to part with theirs. Building our own takes longer, but buying from the farmers will cost more. We'd have to give them enough to build new ones, plus extra for the inconvenience."

Ellerie looked toward Marco, tilting her head questioningly.

The factor cleared his throat. "Are you sure we need to cross into the barrens?"

"I'm as certain as I can be, but I can't promise that we'll find what we're looking for there," she replied.

Marco nodded. "Boktar, go ahead and find out how much everything will cost and let me know. Let's just hope I brought enough coin."

Ellerie hid her smile.

#

Leena's old travel pack was still in her saddlebags. She moved her clothing and personal items back into it, then added her coin pouch and five days worth of food. If everything went well, none of it would be necessary, but she was tired of ending up in strange new places unprepared.

"Here," Razai said from the other side of the room, tossing one of her curved knives onto Leena's bed, still in its sheath. "You need to take a weapon."

Leena picked it up. It was heavier than she'd expected. "I wouldn't know what to do with it."

"If someone wants to hurt you, hit them with the sharp side or stab them with the pointy end."

Leena managed a nervous chuckle. She wasn't always certain when Razai was being serious. "I saw what you did during the fight outside Tir Shar—it looked more complicated than that. Besides, I'll only be gone for a few minutes, and I'll have that snake knife with me."

"If you really thought you'd be back that quickly, you wouldn't be packing all your things. And that other knife isn't much of a weapon, especially if you're going to keep it buried in the bottom of your pack. Just take this one, all right? I'll feel better if you have it."

Leena gave in and nodded. "Thank you."

It had been over a month since Corec had cast the warden binding spell on her, and Leena still wasn't sure what she was supposed to be doing in Cordaea. If the warden bond was the only reason she was there, shouldn't her Seeking have sent her somewhere else by now? Instead, it was still suggesting that she accompany the group. Were they on their way to wherever it was that she needed to be? Or did the Seeking magic just feel she'd be safer with their help? It was disconcerting to consider the idea that the magic might be able to

think

in that way—that it might have some otherworldly intelligence behind it. For now, she could only do what it told her, and hope that her family would stay safe until she could get back to them.

Her plan was to Travel to Betan, the village on the western side of the swamp where they'd met Niklo. It would make a good practice attempt—it was outside her Seeking range but still well within her Traveling range. Any fully trained Traveler would be able to cross those two hundred fifty miles easily, but it was the first time Leena would have ever deliberately tried to teleport that far. To do so, she'd have to target the village's location signature, and since it was too far away to Seek, she'd be depending on her memories of the place. She was confident she could return to a location she'd visited a day or two in the past, but they'd left Betan nearly a month ago.

Hefting her bag over her shoulder, she said, "I guess that's everything."

There was a knock at the door and Ellerie came in. She blinked when she saw Leena carrying the pack.

"You're leaving now?" she asked. "It'll take us a few days before we're ready to go. There's still plenty of time."

"I thought it would be good to know as soon as possible whether it'll work, to help Boktar with the planning," Leena said. In truth, she wanted to get it over with before her nerves got the better of her.