As the camp quieted down, I regretted not breaking my slave chain in the town behind us and dropping it quietly into the river with my shift. I’d kept it because its heavy gold links were my only asset, but I’d underappreciated its danger. If anyone else in the caravan saw it, it meant certain betrayal, yet I couldn’t risk being seen trying to pull it off, and even if I could, it was less safe in a pocket than it was around my neck. I could keep my shirt pulled tightly shut, but couldn’t keep my pockets so private. I’d felt the little fingers of the children in the caravan dipping in and out of them already.

I could leave the camp for my private business and yank the chain loose in the dark, but if I went far enough away to be out of sight, it would be noted. If I tried to bury something out there in the hard dirt, everyone would be curious. If I dropped the chain without burying it, it might be found, and suspicion would fall on me instantly. Already I had drawn inquisitive looks—I was so obviously not a guard—and it would be foolish to draw even more attention. I resolved to sleep lightly and with the blanket the Attolian had purchased drawn close around my shoulders.

The next day I left the horseback riding to the real guards. The men had taken their measure of me and seemed content to pretend I was one of them, but no one wanted to rely on me for defense. That evening the food was even worse than it had been the night before. The Attolian silently laughed at me when he caught me looking at my meal in consternation, and I tried to be good-humored about it. It would be two weeks or more to Perf. I thought I might starve on the way.

The Attolian ate the swill, slept heavily, and woke alert. He got on well with the guards, and if he listened far more than he spoke, he had his broken Mede as an excuse. He sparred with them in the evenings, or wrestled in the dirt, testing himself against their skill and strength. They had invited me to join them the first time, and I had refused—with some haughtiness so that they would not ask me again—and so they were friendly with the Attolian but eyed me sideways. I knew my anxiety had made me appear arrogant, and I tried to be more ingratiating, but that seemed to draw even more questioning looks. I longed to be in Perf already, but even more I longed to be back in my alcove, just off my master’s main room with the curtain to give me a pretense of privacy and my daily tasks before me and my master living and breathing in the outer room. Then I remembered Laela and told myself not to be so stupid.

The Attolian frequently volunteered the two of us for the least attractive shifts of guard duty, though he always glanced at me first to see if I was amenable. We worked as one man, he and I, so that no resentment built up over my inabilities.

Late at night, as we sat alone at a watch fire, the Attolian voiced my thoughts for me. “We could have made it to Perf on our own much faster.”

He scratched at a row of bug bites on his arm and explained. “I would have needed to buy supplies, and that would have taken time we didn’t have. I didn’t have money for a horse, maybe for a mule or a donkey once I’d sold my ring, but it’s hard to buy a decent mount from strangers. And people notice who buys their animals.”

I hadn’t thought of that. I was coming to understand how narrow my world had been and how little I knew of others’ experiences. “I am not familiar with this kind of traveling,” I admitted, after clearing my throat. I didn’t want the Attolian to think that I felt he was under any obligation to justify his actions to me.

I had been many places with my master, and I may have slept on the floor next to his bed, but I had slept wrapped in fine linen with a soft cushion for a pillow. Here I slept on the dirt. I had never walked so far in my life and never been so bone weary. I considered the journey still ahead in this new light and wondered if the Attolian had any idea how challenging the Taymet Mountains were. If they weren’t so formidable, the tiny nation of Zaboar would be part of the Mede empire instead of its own little city-state on the Shallow Sea. It was too dangerous to discuss our plans, though, even if we believed all those around us were asleep. There was nothing else we had to speak of, so we fell silent, sitting together by the fire.

Every evening the guards not on duty ate together before their shifts started, so there was a group around the fire as the Braeling told us his plans. He meant to make enough money fighting for the emperor that he could go back home and buy land. The other guards were pessimistic. Tikir and Simkit, who I’d learned were brothers, exchanged a look and then dropped their eyes, but no one said anything.

“The money is good,” insisted the Braeling. “Two years, and I’ll have the stake for a small farm. Four, and I’ll have a stake for a large one.”

I thought it was a sensible plan, but even the Attolian was shaking his head.

“Bah!” said the Braeling, dismissing all of them. “You are old women, afraid of sweat and blood. And you,” he said to me, “don’t have any meat in your dish.”

It was true—I didn’t dive into the common pot to claim my share. I wasn’t going to try to chisel a piece of meat away from a man twice my size, especially not when that man was eating with his knife. I made myself content with whatever was left once they’d served themselves.

The Braeling generously filled up my bowl and castigated the Attolian. “You should take better care of your little friend,” he said, and the other guards joined in agreement, happier to give the Attolian a good-natured ribbing than to talk about the Braeling’s future.

Later, when we were alone, I asked the Attolian why he and the other guards had seemed so doubtful about the Braeling’s plans. “He’ll overstay his luck,” said the Attolian. “He’ll take a wound that kills or cripples him, and he’ll live out his life among strangers. He knows he’ll never see his home again.”

“Why not turn back, then?”

The Attolian shrugged. “Maybe he left debts behind. Maybe he killed the wrong man.” The other guards had asked us no questions about our past. No one would ask the Braeling about his. He would go east and fight the emperor’s wars, carrying out the bloody business of larger countries eating up the littler ones. It wasn’t a matter of theory in a tiny office in the emperor’s palace. It was the work of their lives and the end of many of them.

CHAPTER FOUR

We were more than halfway to Perf. Everything around us was rocks and chalky red dirt. We had spent the previous day climbing up to a rocky and narrow passage that twisted through the range of hills that lay across our path. The guards had been particularly alert—this was where a few daring bandits might have swept out of a narrow side canyon to pluck up a sheep or a goat or a child and disappear back into the rocky terrain—but the pass was behind us without incident. On our right, the hills still rose, and on our left, the ground fell away to a rolling, mostly barren plain. Presumably there was life growing out there, but I couldn’t see it. Ahead of us, we had a long and gradual descent and the fading possibility of bandits. Two of the guards, as well as the Attolian and myself, were relaxing on the back end of the last wagon of the caravan.

I was counting the hours left in the day when we heard hoofbeats echoing in the pass behind us. We all looked up at the sound, alert but not particularly concerned. It was only when two horsemen came into view behind us, riding hard, that the guards stiffened. The Attolian suddenly dropped off the back of the wagon, pulling me with him.