Total pages in book: 222
Estimated words: 210715 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1054(@200wpm)___ 843(@250wpm)___ 702(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 210715 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1054(@200wpm)___ 843(@250wpm)___ 702(@300wpm)
That was their dream. They talked about it when the going got tough. One day they would get a farm with fruit trees and a little house. They would have a calm and peaceful life, free of marching through the mud to almost certain death. Will and Lute wouldn’t have to risk their lives to put food on the table.
All Gort and Shana wanted was something a little bit better for themselves and their kids. Just like my parents.
I sipped my tea.
There were hundreds of Gorts and Shanas out there, working to get their own little farms and a little slice of peace. Two weeks from now, eighty of them would die.
I had a hard decision to make.
“Maggie,” Reynald said on my left.
“Yes?”
“We’ve run out of land.”
I stopped.
We faced the harbor. Ahead the stone wharf stretched, and beyond it the ocean shimmered, the water a flawless turquoise darkening to a heartbreaking blue.
To the left lay the fishing docks. About a hundred yards away, a team of fishermen was pulling a huge fish onto a ramp leading from the water. It was trapped in a net, hooked by enormous ropes to a big wheel-and-pulley contraption, and one of the fishermen led a pair of horses connected to the wheel, winching the net ashore. The fish glistened with purple and blue, its spiny fins bristling in the thick net. Its head and chest were as big as one of those oversized Ford Transit vans, and I couldn’t even see its tail. Four stelkas bickered by the pulley, fighting over the fish guts someone had dumped on the stone. None of them had a crescent-shaped white patch on their chest.
Normally I would’ve gaped at the scene, but right now I just wanted to get to our destination. We needed to go north along the coast, away from the fishing dock and toward the commercial wharf.
“Which way?” Reynald asked.
“To the right.”
We made a right and headed down a wide street, parallel to the wharf, with massive warehouses rising on both sides.
Reynald, Gort, and Clover had come back from the market an hour and a half ago, followed by three delivery people pushing carts loaded with their purchases. I told them I needed to go to the docks, and Reynald immediately volunteered to escort me.
I had included “outfit that would make me look like I’m from a minor noble house” in the shopping list, and Clover had come through with flying colors. I wore a green gown the exact shade of lawns from the weed killer commercials, a cloak of slightly darker green, and my hairdo was a work of art secured with a pricey silver ornament shaped like a flower. My shoes were much better, too. I looked like I had just enough money and status to be annoying.
Next to me, Reynald broadcast kickass bodyguard. He wore his outfit from the teahouse, and he’d added a lancer’s coif to it. The coif fit over his face and hid everything except a narrow part around his eyes. Originally the coif had served to protect the faces of Rellasian lancers from their heavy helmets, but now it functioned like a local version of a sheisty. Masons wore it to keep from breathing in stone dust, butchers put it on it to keep the gore from their face, and private guards and mercenaries used it to look more scary.
Together with the hood of his cloak, the coif took Reynald from menacing into downright sinister territory. A good thing, too. The more threatening he looked, the more credibility it would give me.
I’d been turning the problem of the mercenaries in my head over and over, trying to account for all possible consequences, and gotten nowhere. It gnawed at me. I knew what I wanted to do. Unfortunately, it was completely opposite of what I should do, and I had trouble justifying my choice.
There it was, on the left. A warehouse with a painted wooden shield above the door. A copper warhammer on a field of dark cobalt blue striking a gray anvil. The Keepers of Iron. The Yolenta Great Family.
“Do I look like a noble?” I asked under my breath.
“Yes,” Reynald told me. “Green suits you, Maggie.”
Great.
I made a beeline for the open door. Reynald got there before me, stepped inside, pulled his coif down off his face, and glowered.
The interior was filled with goods, some in barrels, others in chests, grouped by type, with samples on display: chunks of ore in different colors, some sort of powdered stone, big hunks of crystal . . . Quartz, maybe?
A seller hurried out from behind a short counter, keeping an eye on Reynald, and bowed to me. “How may I help you, my lady?”
“Do you sell pink salt?”
“We do, my lady. Right this way.”
Clover’s outfit did its job. Excellent.
He led me down the aisle to a group of barrels. One of them stood open, filled to the brim with small, coarse pebbles of pink rock salt.