“Master, the West Caravan site is in that direction,” I finally said.

“We aren’t going to the West Caravan site,” the Attolian replied, and his words were knife-edged. “We aren’t going to Zabrisa, either,” he added, and I swallowed, my mouth suddenly dry. I had been indiscreet. He had seen what I had been thinking.

“Don’t call me master again,” he warned, and walked on.

Chastened, I followed him back over the bridge to the east side of the river as he carefully joined a crowd to hide us as well as possible from the watching eyes of the trinket sellers. We threaded our way through the narrow side streets, circling around the inn where we had stayed the night before, lest anyone see us and note our change of direction. The Attolian waved an arm to indicate that I should walk beside him in accordance with my new identity as a free man—and so that he could keep an eye on me. The town of Sherguz had grown more slowly on this side of the river, so there was still empty ground to cross before we reached the high walls of the East Caravan site. Its only gate faced away from us, and its blank walls made it look even more like one of the ziggurats of the capital surrounded by their open plazas.

The emperor provided the enclosed site to keep trade safe and regulated. Those who used it paid taxes on the goods they moved or paid a small fee to enter and seek employment from the merchants within. The Attolian showed the keeper at the gate the dye on his finger, proving that he’d paid a fee once already to enter the site. Then he paid the fee for me, and I dipped a finger in the dye pot. It was the first time I’d done so, though I’d often passed through sites such as this one with my master. My master didn’t dip his finger because he was above such things. I didn’t because as a slave I was beneath them. Unused to the sensation of the slick dye, I rubbed at it and managed to smudge it all over my hand. I only barely stopped myself from trying to wipe it off on my new clothes.

Some caravan sites are just walled courtyards with a well in the middle, but Sherguz was a large trading center where goods were shifted from caravans to boats and sent down or up the river. Its walls were three or more stories high, lined with stables and warehouses. One wall had a covered terrace with an arcade where a row of entryways were pitch-black holes in contrast to the bright sun shining down in the open yard. Inside each would be a business office rented by the day or week or year. Above the arcade, and on the roofs of the warehouses, was another level—rooms for housing and more storage. Above that was a wooden gallery where guards would have walked around the tops of the walls if they’d been needed. In Sherguz, it provided a space for people not afraid of heights to loiter and conduct their business above the stink below.

The Attolian had started across the teeming courtyard filled with animals and men but was looking over his shoulder to see why I lagged. I stepped quickly to catch up. He seemed quite comfortable ducking around the back ends of horses, but I noticed he gave the camels wider berth. Either they were unfamiliar to him and he gave them more room, or they were familiar to him and he gave them more room. He approached several people and asked in his heavily accented Mede for a particular caravan master by the name of Roamanj. He worked his way around the edge of the courtyard, never stepping more than a pace ahead of me, keeping me in the corner of his eye. If I slowed, he lifted an arm around my shoulder, as if in friendship.

We eventually found the man he was seeking, an enormous shaggy-haired Ferrian. Like many of their traders, he had probably spent most of his life in the empire. He was directing the packaging of some bales of fine cloth—each length of worked fabric wrapped in less-fine material that in turn was being wrapped in a larger and coarser cloth, in a meticulous order meant to keep it from the dust and dirt.

“Careful with that, you’ve got it too close to the edge of the baling cloth, move it in and don’t step on the baling cloth, you fool—and who by the gods eternal is this?” the caravan master asked, looking me over with suspicion. “He had better be a paying passenger.”

“Extra guard,” said the Attolian.

The caravan master was unimpressed.

“Good with a sword,” said the Attolian, and I squared my shoulders.

Roamanj snorted. “I don’t need one more guard. He pays passage.” And turning his back he bellowed, “Queen of the Night devour you, off the cloth!” at a poor unfortunate who wasn’t even on the cloth, just too close to it for comfort.

Seeing the Attolian still standing beside him, Roamanj raised his bushy eyebrows, as if surprised. The Attolian looked pointedly at the other caravans mustering around us. He could find work with any of them, but there was no way to know how long that might take and no way to know if there were bounty hunters coming up the river after me. I didn’t want to dawdle for a day or two in Sherguz to find out.

Roamanj crossed his arms. “I’m not paying him. He’s paying me.”

The Attolian lifted one shoulder and let it drop.

“All right, he can travel with us half passage, as he is a friend of yours.”

The Attolian waited, far and away the most eloquent nonspeaker I think I have ever known.

“By gods, I have no time for this!” shouted Roamanj.

The Attolian took a half step away.

“Fine,” said Roamanj, throwing up a hand in defeat, “he comes with us, but I am not giving him a single hennat, you understand?” He shook his finger in the Attolian’s face.

The Attolian waited until Roamanj turned again to his cloth before he said, “Needs a sword.”

“May the Queen of the Night take you!” Roamanj turned back to him. “I should provide a freeloader with a sword, and you are asking this because I look like your generous old uncle, maybe?”

I shuffled farther away, but the Attolian only nodded. “Just like,” he said with a straight face.

The caravan master chuckled. “Fine, fine,” he said. “Go to the quartermaster. So long as you stop wasting my time.” He waved toward a man counting cooking pots not far away—and that’s how I became a caravan guard heading toward the city of Perf.

The Attolian led the way over to the quartermaster. In a few minutes I was holding the sword he’d selected for me from the limited armory. I buckled it around my hips with a sense of unreality. I’d never touched a knife longer than my finger. Even when I dressed my master, I did not touch his weapons, nor did any of his other slaves. He racked and unracked his sword himself and a free man sharpened it and cared for its leathers.

I looked up at the Attolian, who nodded approvingly and clapped me on the shoulder. The chill in his demeanor had thawed a little. Following directions from the quartermaster, we circled the courtyard looking for an entryway with a green-striped curtain. As we walked, the Attolian explained that earlier in the morning he’d gone to pick up a job as a guard at the West Caravan site. With his qualifications obvious, it had been easily done, more easily than if I had been with him. Once he’d secured a position with a large caravan, where he would have been only one new face among many, he’d gone looking for other mercenaries in the job market. When he’d found a likely prospect, another foreigner from the southern coast of the Continent, the Attolian had offered him his job for the westbound caravan, explaining that he’d made a mistake and would earn more money heading east. The mercenary wasn’t stupid, and in exchange for a little palm grease he had agreed to the swap and to tell people he was Attolian if asked.