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“They say the Lardermen are helping them.”

“Someday someone’s going to take an army into Splintrevej and hang the lot of those pirates.”

“I won’t be in it. Splintrevej is haunted. They say it’s never satisfied till it drowns its victim for the year.”

“There’s weirder things happening than pirates and horse thieves. Old Gerta’s eldest girl saw a dragon flying south. Haven’t seen one of those in a while.”

“What sort of dragon?” Gaunt tried to ask in Kantentongue. She got funny looks but also an answer.

“Orb Dragon.”

“I’ve heard of many a kind of dragon,” Gaunt said. “Some you might not even believe. But I’ve never heard of an Orb Dragon.”

“By your accent, you’re fresh off a ship. No matter, not everyone hereabouts believes in the Orb Dragons. They’re a new thing under the sun, or an old thing newly dusted off. They fly through the air like a round clump of cloud, but with the color of the noonday sky and swifter than anything outside of a diving bird. They always seem to be bearing north, into the Gamellaw, where berserkers and trolls dwell. Some folk say they’re dragons who’ve learned the trick of invisibility, only it doesn’t always quite work. Some say they’re giant dragon eggs, coming here to hatch. Some say it’s a sign we’re heading into Fimbulwinter, when the doom of the world will come.”

“Pray pardon my lunatic friend, goodwife,” said another man. “The term Orb Dragon caught on a while back, and now anything funny-looking in the skies is assumed to be one. We have to have our stories to sustain us through the winter, you see. Alcohol only goes so far! We used to have tales of people abducted and brought underground by the uldra, but now we’re just as likely to hear of people swept into the sky in their nightclothes by an Orb Dragon.”

“Don’t you be laughing at that! A cousin of my Uncle Sten’s best friend got taken by an Orb Dragon to the moon, and that man was only known to lie when sober . . .”

A scream cut the air from somewhere outside.

The talking stopped. There came a second scream. It sounded like a girl, asking to be let go.

“Shut up, thrall,” Gaunt heard a man’s gruff voice say in Kantentongue. “We nabbed you fair and square.”

The tavern began returning to normal. Drinks were raised. Talk resumed.

“My brother!” the girl was saying. “Somebody help us! Let him go, he’s too young!”

“I’ll be the judge of that,” Gaunt heard the man say, or so she believed. She looked into the face of one, then another, then a third patron of the tavern. The drinkers looked uneasy, but none seemed to think anything was worth stirring for.

Bone asked, “Trouble?”

“I think a pair of children are being forced into servitude.”

“Ah.” Bone gulped wine. “We probably shouldn’t get involved.”

“Most likely.”

“We’re getting involved, aren’t we?” he said, checking his daggers.

“Yes,” she said, rising.

“Nice wine,” he said.

“Yes.”

In a moment they burst onto the street. It wasn’t hard to detect where the commotion was coming from. Two burly men with ropes were dragging along a girl and boy dressed in rags. She was perhaps nine, and he eight. Ahead of this procession was a black-bearded mountain of a man, arms as big as Gaunt’s legs, with a set of scars to rival Bone’s. He carried a whip, brandishing it like an army flag as they crossed the nearby bridge.

Gaunt murmured, “We cut the ropes, the children run, we run ourselves. Yes?”

“Yes. Meet you where the wooden road began?”

“It’s a date.”

“You want right or left?” Bone asked, cracking his knuckles.

“Left,” she said, flexing her arms.

The captors seemed rather obtuse about the two outlanders striding up behind them, or perhaps they were simply unused to opposition. By now she could sense Bone preparing to dash even without a signal, and he, her. They dove in, footfalls clunking onto the bridge planks.

Daggers flashed. The ropes were not particularly thick, and Gaunt expected to cut through them in seconds; then they could flee.

What she did not expect was for the children themselves to flee, before the ropes were even cut.

“They weren’t—” Bone began.

“Weren’t tied.” Gaunt shared an instant’s panicked look with her husband.

Now the huge man with the whip was laughing, and his men lunging.

Gaunt and Bone jumped off the bridge. (She took left, he took right.) They splashed and swam.

They had not yet escaped. Many men, who’d appeared to have nothing to do with the slaver party, rushed along the right-hand side. She recognized a few of them from the tavern. They threw weighted nets into the water. She saw Bone dive but could not tell if he’d evaded the nets. Down she went, seeking him. The water was unwholesome, but she found him. He was using a weight to keep himself under while he cut the netting with a dagger. She helped.

Together they swam free.

They gasped for breath in the middle of the river, diving again with shouts in their ears.

Reaching the far shore they dragged themselves up and ran through lanes and tripped over chickens and racks of lye-fish and one very stubborn goat. They did not know the layout, however, and they found a dozen ruffians facing them at the harbor. There were no adorable captive children with them. Bone’s breath was coming in heaves. He’d lost wind in the river and hadn’t recovered it yet. Gaunt had to give him direction.

“Throw and go?” she said.

“Yes,” he said, and out came a dagger. Hers was already in hand.

She threw and caught the lead slaver in the cheek. For all the big man’s intimidating appearance, his yowl suggested he’d little experience with physical pain.

Bone began his throw—

And the girl and boy they’d tried to rescue ran in front of the wounded slaver, crying out, “Father! Father!”

Bone twisted his body so that the blade dropped into the dirt; and so did he.

Down on one knee, Bone stared at the Kantenings rushing at him. Gaunt yanked him to his feet, and his wits returned.

It was too late. The slavers were enraged, and the two of them were surrounded. The children whom they’d sought to save threw mud and rocks.

Before she knew anything more, she’d drawn Crypttongue and was jabbing at their foes.

A man screamed and dropped, and one of the gems of Crypttongue’s hilt glowed. She heard his voice babbling within her mind now, in incomprehensibly manic Kantentongue. She ignored him and turned to a new foe.

“Don’t,” Bone said. “It changes you.”

“How else!”

“We’ll find a way! They want our capture, not our deaths—”

He went down. They tripped and tackled him.

Absurd as the thought of beating this many foes might be, Gaunt considered it. The sword felt hungry in her hand.

Yet she hesitated, for Bone was right. She hungered to slay.

While she hesitated, Bone was kicked, jeered at, yanked to his feet, his arms roped behind him. This accomplished, the gang edged warily away from Gaunt.

“Give him back!” She looked this way and that at the bystanders, all of whom merely stared. “Swan’s blood, will no one intervene? This is a kidnapping!”

A fiftyish woman in a white robe came forward, a Swan priestess with blonde hair going to white. “What is this, Yngvarr? Are your own children thrall-takers now too?” Her accent marked her as a Swanislander.

“They were necessary, Roisin,” said the Kantening with the bleeding cheek. He gave Bone a kick, staring at Gaunt all the while. Bone was able to twist away from the worst of the impact, but she snarled in rage. Yngvarr said, “This man is a criminal by his own admission. And the woman’s a murderer.”

“I slew in self-defense!” Gaunt answered.

“You are many things, Yngvarr,” Roisin said, “but you are not the law. And it is the Gull-Jarl’s law that self-defense is permitted, and that no Swanling be enslaved.”

A new speaker stepped forward, and Gaunt’s fury brimmed over.

It was Crowbeard.

“The woman may be a Swanling,” said the old warrior who’d given them shelter. “But the man is not, by his own words. Indeed, he confessed he was a ruffian. If he’s not a nithing, he’s something near. Thus by old ways and new, he is fit to be a thrall.”

Yngvarr rolled his eyes and tossed a bag of coin at Crowbeard’s feet. “Now we’ve paid you, old man. We’ll take it from here.”

Crowbeard looked suddenly confused, and stricken. “I had thought . . . instead of a fee, you might take me on a venture . . . I’ve proven my worth. . . .”

There was laughter at that. Yngvarr shook his head. “Take you foamreaving? Take Muninn Surehand, maybe. But you, old one, you are Crowbeard the Palsied now. Take what you can get.”

Gaunt, who cared nothing for Crowbeard’s fate, gripped Roisin’s shoulder. “We were betrayed.”

The priestess’s gaze was bleak “Are his words true? Is your man a criminal? A heathen?”

“No!” Gaunt said, envisioning her lost daggers entering Crowbeard’s eyes. “He’s been in church with me many times.”

At once Bone said, “Swan take my life now if I lie! I follow her, and I have repented all the evil ways of my past!”

As of perhaps three seconds ago
, Gaunt thought, but she had to admit he sounded sincere. She hoped she wasn’t alone in that assessment.

“She does not take or give, like a servant, at our ill-considered oaths,” Roisin said, sternness swelling in her voice. She removed her necklace. Alongside a silver swan pennant hung a glass disc bearing a lock of pale hair. “This is a relic of Santa Fiametta of Archaeopolis, brought here with great courage by he who founded our church yonder. Her feast day draws near. In the right hands Santa Fiametta’s hair will glow to reveal the sincerity of a person’s words. For only the Painter of Clouds, his daughter the Swan, and his messenger the Quenching Fire can know if one is truly a Swanling at heart; but the relic can tell me who believes their own words.” Roisin cupped the glass disc in her hands and held it before one eye, the hair coiling before it. “Tell me what is in your heart, sir.”

Gaunt devoutly hoped the priestess was not overly corrupt, and Bone not overly honest.

“I have done some bad deeds,” he said. “I repent of them. My wife’s example has urged me onto the path of the Swan. I have walked many roads, far from home. I have seen many faiths, and many un-faiths. For a time we even traveled with a Swan priestess. I have come to respect the trifold divinity the Swan represents. I will serve her faithfully.”

“But have you been brushed with holy water from a consecrated feather?”

“No—have you such available?”

“Or have you been immersed in a sacred swan-pond?”

“On such a crisp day it sounds invigorating.”

“Or, and it stretches my mandate to even ask, have you had a sudden conversion accompanied by voices or perhaps visual manifestations?”

“I should be so honored.”

Roisin sighed. “You have said nothing false, but I have cause to question your status as an honest Swanling.”

“He is willing!” Gaunt said, clutching the priestess’s arm. “You heard him!”

“Willing or not, it is his current status that matters. I dislike this law, but I am not the Gull-Jarl. I cannot contest this man’s servitude.” The priestess looked hard at the foamreavers. “You have absolutely no claim on the woman, however, and she owes no were-gild for your man.”

“We thought as much,” said Yngvarr. “I will not argue. Floki was a clumsy fool anyway. Though you can come, woman, if you wish to stay with your man. You might find a posting in the same house, though you’ll be a servant and he a thrall. I’ll even put in a good word. They might make you a guard, heh.”

There seemed no help for it. A chance to be together, however . . . that was worth much. They would puzzle out a solution.

Bone was shaking his head at her, but surely he would see reason. “Where he goes,” she said, “I—”

“I repudiate her!” Bone said. “I don’t even know where she came from.”

She understood at once what he was doing, and just in case her gaze didn’t make it clear, she strode forward and slapped him hard.

He reeled but said, “She’s a madwoman! Priestess, take her away!”

“Perhaps, goodwife,” said Roisin, looking pale, “you should—”

“Imago Bone,” said Gaunt as the foamreavers snatched him from her grasp, “so help me, when you get free you’re a dead man.”

“Crazy woman! She has clearly lost her wits!” Bone narrowed his eyes at her before his captors began to beat him. He rallied long enough to say, “And her Innocence! Do you hear me? She’s lost her Innocence!” Then he was bleeding and pinned.

“That much is obvious,” murmured Crowbeard. But when Gaunt stared at the old foamreaver he flinched and stalked away.

“Bone!” she shouted, and before she knew it she was advancing with the sword.

A hush came over the street. Even the gulls were silent. There were many of them, but she had Crypttongue. If she gave herself fully to slaughter, to the hunger for lives, she might win Bone free. She met his gaze. She knew what he wanted: her as she was, not who she’d become after that battle. But the choice belonged to her.

One encountered many crossroads without knowing it. It was rare to see one clearly.

She lowered the sword.

“For once,” said Yngvarr, looking at Gaunt in vexation and puzzlement, “the wishes of a thrall may prevail.”

“Please,” Gaunt said, “take me with you. Enslave me too if you must.”

“Do you deny the Swan?”

Silence caught her throat.

“I thought as much,” said Yngvarr. “The law is the law, woman. I can’t chain you, and now I won’t have you otherwise. Priestess, she’s all yours.”

Bone had no more words as they dragged him off, staring fish-eyed at the metal-gray skies.

“I am sorry,” said Roisin.

“You are brave,” said Gaunt, hand shaking, “to speak to me now.”

The other backed away a step, her gaze shifting to Crypttongue. But she kept talking. “I have to be brave, sister, to work in such a place. If there is any way, short of recovering your companion, I can help . . . ask.”

Almost, Gaunt backhanded the priestess with the hilt. Almost. It was a near thing. An even more difficult struggle nearly sent her steps wordlessly inland, toward the hills and an escape from these monstrous people.