They walked in silence through the busy morning bustle of Hadrumal.

“What’s going on?” Usara’s surprise as they turned the final corner startled Shiv out of his musing. He watched, mouth half open, as two less than competent lads manoeuvred a bed through the narrow entrance of his home.

Pered appeared just as the two mages reached the doorway. He stepped aside for a grey-haired man who counted solid gold coin into his palm. “And here’s the luck back.” Pered delved into one pocket and handed the man a silver penny.

“Morning, Shiv.” The grey-haired man nodded before following his purchase to the third doors up the row.

“Master Wryen.” Shiv followed Pered into the house, Usara avidly curious behind him.

The front room was still dominated by the broad slope of Pered’s copying desk but new ribbon tied all the parchments into neat bundles now, every stage of work from the first faint lines ruled for pen and ink to bright illuminations needing only the final burnish of gold. Pered picked a slim wooden case out of a small casket full of coloured bottles and began putting pens into it. “I told you; the next time you went off on some quest for Planir or whoever, I wasn’t being left behind again.” His voice was affectionate.

Usara ducked his head on a smile.

“We’re not exactly leaving on Planir’s instructions,” Shiv admitted.

“So much the better.” Pered put a careful lid on his pens. “You’ve been talking over your tisanes about striking out on your own for long enough.” He grinned at their guilty faces. “I’ve heard all your plans for setting wizardry to rights in the kitchen while I’ve been working in here.”

A knock at the door saved Shiv from having to find a reply.

Pered opened it to a thin woman who peered inside with lively interest, adjusting her tawny headscarf with nervous fingers. “So you’re off then?”

“That’s right, Abiah.” Pered led the goodwife through to the kitchen. “So you’re welcome to whatever linens or pots you want, for coin on the table.”

“Off to Col, are you?” The woman looked at Pered. “You’ve your sister there, haven’t you?” Her eyes brightened as she looked at the exotic array of spice jars. “You won’t be wanting all them weighing down your bags. Make a nice spot of colour in my parlour, they would.”

“We’ll manage a few pennyweight of spice.” Pered’s voice was friendly but he stood protectively in front of his collection.

“Rent’s paid up till the quarter year.” Abiah shook her head, at the same time continuing to make interested inventory of the kitchen. “Must be urgent business to call you away and leave that for old Barl’s profit. He’ll have someone in here before the hearth’s cold, you do know that.”

Pered was proof against the invitation to confide in her. “If he does, you tell him to send the rent he owes us to my sister.”

Abiah laughed. “I will, at that. You’d best write down her direction for me.”

“Tell Barl I can keep an eye on him no matter where I am,” Shiv added.

Abiah looked unsure that this was a joke. “I’ll do my best to see he does right by you lads.” She gave Pered a quick hug. “I only hope we get neighbours as good as you’ve been. You know, my daughter’s getting wed at Solstice. She’s no great store in her bottom drawer so I’ll go and get her, if that’s all right.” She hugged Pered again but Shiv stepped deftly out of her reach so she had to content herself with a wave of farewell.

Pered took her through the house and closed the front door behind her. He turned. “You needn’t laugh, ’Sar. You’ll have half the hall wanting to know why you’re packing up.”

Usara set down a small portrait he’d picked up from Pered’s desk. “We’re leaving for good then.”

Pered looked at him and then at Shiv. “You don’t seriously imagine you’ll be coming back? Not after all that’s been said?”

Are you awake?”

“I barely slept.” Naldeth roused himself, heavy-eyed and dishevelled. “What is it?”

“Food, I imagine.” Parrail sat creased and grimy beneath the shelter of the stockade’s wall walk. He hugged his knees as the heavy gates swung open just wide enough to admit three men and a woman lugging a basket.

Naldeth looked nauseous. “I’m not hungry.”

Parrail’s look of grim determination sat oddly on his boyish face. “We have to keep our strength up, if we’re to get out of here.”

“How are we to do that?” Naldeth looked around hastily in case anyone had noticed his incautious despair but everyone else was already forming a sullen line. Parrail returned with a soft loaf of bread tucked under his arm, hands occupied with a slab of yellow cheese and a succulently meaty haunch. “This is what they were smoking. It’s some beast from the woods.”

“Ugly as an unwed maid but good eating,” a voice above them remarked. Startled, they looked up to see a pirate on the parapet. He nodded a cordial greeting. “We don’t do so badly.”

Naldeth and Parrail exchanged a wary glance and applied themselves to their food.

“You two with your soft hands and new-bought clothes, I don’t reckon you’ve gone hungry too often.” The pirate raised his voice and caught the eye of three lads huddled some way beyond the magic wielders. “Join Muredarch and the ache of an empty belly’ll be but a memory, my oath on it.”

“Where do you hail from?” Parrail asked cautiously.

“Me?” The pirate leaned against the splintered bark of the stockade. “A village called Gostrand, three days up the Dalas from Inglis and just where the hills reach high enough to keep your feet out of the floods.”

“You’re a long way from home.” This wasn’t the Gidestan who’d dragged them out of the hold the day before, Naldeth realised.

“Fifty times richer than I’d be on my deathbed if I’d stayed. A man in Muredarch’s crew sees full value for his work.” The pirate gave the three youths another significant look. “I’d had enough of breaking my back for whatever pittance some silk-gowned bastard in Inglis would pay for a year’s digging, and of watching him sell it off down the coast for ten coin in gold for every silver he paid for it.”

Sudden activity drowned out the man’s words; bellowed commands, obliging shouts answering and the thud and crash of casks and bales outside the stockade. Parrail nudged Naldeth and nodded towards a ladder that another pirate was setting firm in the trampled ground so the prisoners could get on to the wall walk. Naldeth looked doubtfully at the scholar but followed him up.

The looted contents of the Tang had been piled beneath rough shelters of sailcloth and raw lumber in the open space in front of the stockade. Muredarch surveyed the booty, strolling along in a scarlet linen shirt over black breeches, gold chains braided around his waist and catching the sun. A dark-haired woman in dull green walked at his heels, a ledger cradled in one arm, pen poised.

Muredarch’s whistle carried clearly across the encampment and summoned women and pirates who’d been busy about the scattered tents and huts.

“Can you hear what he’s saying?” Parrail asked Naldeth in a low tone.

Naldeth shook his head.

“It’s all written up, so there can’t be no quarrelling,” said the pirate with approval. “Them as drew the tail end lots last time around step up first.”

A man and woman waited for Muredarch’s nod before taking a bolt of cloth and a barrel. The woman in green made a note in her ledger as the man wheeled the heavy barrel carefully away, his companion balancing the cloth on her shoulder. Both were smiling broadly. The next man stopped to speak to Muredarch before departing with a heavy casket whose rope handles strained at the weight within it.

“That’ll be my uncle’s tools,” said the lad glumly. “And my apprenticeship gone with them.”

“Swear your oath to Muredarch and earn something to trade for them.” Another pirate came up, a saturnine man with scars on his forearms both long healed and freshly red. “Indentured to your uncle? No masters here, my lad, to take all the coin and begrudge you half the pay they promised you. Anyway, I wouldn’t go back to a journeyman’s full day rate.” He laughed and flourished a lavishly beringed hand marred by filthy nails. “I earn thrice the coin in half the time!”