Eleven

In which Daer sits in an inn and gets in touch with the opinions of the common people

They stayed the night with the Sister and returned to the nearest village in the morning, a small place in the foothills called Westhill. Despite its size, it was the last village on the borders of Deepnight before the trading caravans passed up into the mountains of the Cinderstrand. The inn there was as large as those in the city of Ebon Reach, a towering place called The Horse and Quail. A horse with a quail perched on its head pranced across the sign hanging from the porch. The three story establishment had two long wings and a large common room full of colorful travelers.

Daystar and Emberlace hung close behind Bess and Jonathan, uncertain of how to behave. The room was dim - Daystar could see where energy lights used to hang, now removed in favor of flickering lanterns. Even a place this large would no longer be receiving an energy stipend. Merchants in warm, heavy clothes sat clustered around tables, playing cards and sharing stories, and the members of their train who could afford it mingled with each other. They saw a few people like Bess and Daystar, some lingering close to merchants, others lounging around the room, apparently seeking employment. Emberlace fidgeted her hands - she was used to leaning on Daystar’s arm whenever they were entering a room in public. It was strange to enter a room essentially unnoticed, though the feeling was not unpleasant.

The other sellswords in the room seemed the most interested, sizing up their competition, though some remained friendly. Jonathan avoided the rougher, more hostile types and found a table with scraggly, weatherbeaten man dressed in stained furs and buckskins. Despite his appearance and his smell, he looked friendly, and Daystar sat down awkwardly, trying to look like he belonged here and knowing he was failing miserably.

“You traveled the passes?” Jonathan asked the man, flapping a hand at a young woman with a tray.

A servant? Daystar wondered. Oh, yes. A tavern maiden. Not guild. The gesture must have meant something - fetch drinks - but then it didn’t look like any gesture he ever used for asking for a drink.

“Some bit,” the scraggly man allowed, nodding his head. “You headed up there?”

“Wondering who might be still going up.”

The man hummed, smiling appreciatively when the maid returned with five tankards. Daystar sniffed at his before he drank it, trying to be discreet while still checking for alcohol. He’d heard that the stuff the peasants drank could take off the roof of your mouth - nobles never let anything so strong pass their lips.

Whatever was in his tankard appeared to be benign, and he sipped at it, trying to identify the flavor. It had a warm, homey taste, lightly spiced with a small bite to it, enough to wake him up a little. Ginger? He tried to discern the conversation between Jonathan and the man across from him, finally getting from the exchange that the man was a guide for those caravans winding their way over the mountains.

“They were building a road up the cliffs further west,” the man commented, “ ‘fore the dragons hit the operation.”

“How bad were the attacks?” Daystar inquired.

The man glanced at him. “Whole road face out from what I hear. Took out in rock slides. Couldn’t clear it, even if you tried - whole road’s broken off. Smaller trails too. Don’t leave much open for traveling over the mountains no more.”

Upper Vale had little access to the sea or to other kingdoms through the west. Far Haven had their only port, and the other paths to the mountains and most of the Cinderstrand were blocked away by high and terrible cliffs. The southern border of the kingdom was cut off from the sea by the Fel-land, a long, wide waste of magical creatures, swamps, and terrors that kept those who lived even on the edge of it inside well-walled villages after dark. The Wanderstep River cut one of two available passes up into the Cinderstrand, and the trade caravans had to follow the northern boarder of Deepnight all the way to the passes in Damantia to reach the western kingdoms. Bandits roved the border and along the roads - the spices alone carried by the caravans were valuable enough for banditry to be a profitable business.

“Getting too close to the end of the year,” the man admitted. “Season’s nearly over, folks don’t want to get stuck up there. They’ll be coming down quick and heading out, though - I doubt you’ll have to ask around much.”

Jonathan nodded and lounged back in his seat, and Daystar wished he could look that relaxed. He carefully made himself slump in imitation of those around him, leaning his elbows on the table with the voice of his tutor screeching indignantly in his ears. Back straight, elbows off the table! Do you want to look like a peasant?

Yes, Master Fairspeech. Go away and let me look ignoble. Daystar attempted to slide into the mind of his new identity. How was Daer different? He slumped, obviously, and put his elbows on the table. He should be confident, though. Daystar straightened himself slightly. He might not know exactly what a sellsword did, but it involved guarding things and fighting bandits, and that he could do. In the rest, he’d have to follow Jonathan’s lead.

The idea of someone outranking him hit Daystar hard, but it awakened more of his curiosity than his hubris. What was it like, being a follower of someone rather than a leader, letting someone else make the decisions? He supposed he was about to find out.

Daystar - Daer - he carefully corrected himself - put his arm around Lacy, who sat next to him, equally uncomfortable. He would have to focus on thinking of himself by the lowname Emberlace - Lacy - had suggested. If his name kept popping up in different places, the likelyhood was that some of the barons might seek him out, just to make his life more wretched than it already was. If he vanished into the vast peasant population of Upper Vale, the likelihood was that they would never even notice him, even if they rode right past him on the street. He certainly never noticed people. They weren’t beneath his notice - he’d never been so unkind as to ignore someone attempting to address him directly - but by and large, they all ignored each other. There was no reason to take notice of peasants. All the better for him, he realized. The barons had left him with a gift of anonymity, and he still had the brain to use it.

“Your riding coming more easily?” he murmured to Lacy.

She nodded, though he noticed she still shifted uncomfortably on the bench. Her muscles must ache from the pace they had ridden over the past week, and he wondered if that would raise any puzzlement among those who hired them. The last thing they needed was unwanted questions about who they were and where they came from.

They needed a plausible back story to adapt to this new life.

The scraggly man rose from the table, thanking Jonathan for the drink, and slouched off to mingle with a set of other guides who resembled him enough that they might have all been brothers. Daer leaned over towards Jonathan.

“How to we get hired?” he whispered.

Jonathan smiled, leaning over the table to speak softly with him. “The merchants might not look like it, but they’re scoping out the available sellswords at the moment. They’re hire in the morning when they’ve had the chance to watch us and ask some questions.”

“So me mingle?” Daystar whispered back, a little panicked at the thought.

“Just with our own,” Bess replied. “And any merchants who come to talk with us.”

Lacy was well in the habit of being comfortably quiet and opted not to speak at all through the course of the day. They loitered around the inn, catching up on the news, and Daystar slowly began compiling information.

Since the energy rationing had started, the barons received a ever decreasing stipend, and they had ceased the old tradition of parceling out the energy they were provided with to the people below them. In the old days, when energy was plentiful, even the lowliest serf had stipend enough to keep their house warmed and lit all the year round, but now the nobility kept the energy to themselves, knowing it was finite, and from what Daystar could tell, squandered it in extravagance, using it as a bargaining piece among the lesser nobles until the use of energy became a status symbol.

By and large not surprising, but most surprising was the lack of security along the roads. Each baron was responsible for the upkeep and guarding of their roads, which included controlling the vagabonds who lurked along it, robbing travelers. As noble houses slowly fell from status, growing too poor to maintain their place in society, an ever increasing number turned to crime rather than a trade to support themselves, the barons were giving less and less attention to controlling it.

The merchants grumbled loudly over this, some proposing they go to Ebon Reach to petition to King Felstar for a decree, or perhaps roads maintained and protected by the crown, while those who knew more recent news shook their heads and announced that King Felstar was dead, and the very men who had gotten them into this situation now held the throne. The only option left was to travel with security. A caravan who could put up a fight was less likely to be attacked at all, and if they were, they had a better chance of saving their goods.

“Happened quick,” Daer admitted to the caravaners around them, trying to mimic the lower dialect. “Dead of night, they told me. That new baron, Ravenglen, organized it, but I don’t think he’ll stay in power long.”

“Why not?” a man in bright red inquired.

Daer shrugged offhandedly. “Think they’d let a new one like that order them around when Deepnight and South Plain been bickering over the throne for so long?”

Grunts of agreement came from the gathered men and women. “Can’t see as Runedoor would stand for it, or Fairisle either,” the man in red admitted.

“What could they do?” Daer asked rhetorically. “Throw books at the rest of ‘em? South Plain cuts off Fairisle, they’ll starve.”

The listeners hummed in resigned agreement, and Daer drew back to listen quietly, wondering why no one had ever thought to put agents among the people to gauge their opinions of the kingdom’s policies. The barons were quickly dropping in popularity, but everyone seemed to accept their presence with stoicism. Bad rulers, good rulers, so long as they let you live, it didn’t matter. They joked about Dependents - those who still used energy, Daer discerned at last - and boasted of the length of time they’d been operating without it.

Daer sunk in to thought as he listened. Apparently his plan to get the guilds to ration energy or change their trades had been short-sighted, at least in the sense that the guilds were already working on such endeavors. The common people and the caravaners had adjusted years ago, the guilds were connected enough with the people to have begun adjusting themselves, and only the nobility clung to the former lifestyle, here referred to as extravagant. These people had a sort of pride in their poor conditions, and boasted of the difficulties they had endured and overcome.

“Pretty soon, we won’t need no energy,” a merchant’s apprentice in bright blue said proudly, putting his feet up on the table. “And we’ll be the better off for it.”

“What about the rumor of a war with the dragons?” another piped up.

“Let ‘em war,” the young merchant’s apprentice scoffed. “You think we’ll fight for them? No, if they want to fight the dragons, let ‘em do it themselves.”

“Can’t say no if you’re conscripted,” someone put in.

“Can say no until I am. Can’t fight much with an army that don’t want to.”

“And what happens if you don’t fight?” a woman demanded. “We lose the war. Then what?”

“Can’t see as dragons would be worse than the nobles we got.”

The woman subsided, chuckling. “I suppose if they had a trouble with the trading, they would have hit a caravan by now.”

“They burned down two cities.”

“Noble’s cities. Villages weren’t hit, fields either,” a young woman in flamboyant yellow corrected. “Didn’t lose many of our people. And if we had, who would care? Hawkstream’s been raided for months, and nobody’s done nothing. Slavers, they say.”

“I ain’t seen no slavers in the Cinderstrand.”

“You wouldn’t. They go up north.”

“North’s barbarians anyway.”

“Northmarch ain’t stopping them parties, and neither is Hawkstream.” An old man waved his finger at them all. “Nobody says a peep until a couple of castle compounds get burned, and then it’s all ‘fight the dragons, kill the dragons’, but a few peasants enslaved by raiders? Don’t see nothing, don’t say nothing, don’t hear nothing.” He leaned back in the chair. “Let the dragons take ‘em, I say. We live as part of the land, and the land don’t leave.”

A mutter of assent rounded the room, and Daer and Lacy made sure to toast the thought as well. Daer listened in amazement at the harsh criticism, and thought of what the barons would do to these people if they heard of it. But then, when would they hear of it? The nobles kept themselves aloof, and the guild’s sympathies were with the peasants, since no self-respecting nobleman or woman would apprentice themselves to a guild, leaving all the industries in common hands.

“You’ve been to Ebon Reach lately, then?” someone asked him.

Daer looked up at the merchant in green and burgundy robes and nodded.

“How is the city adjusting to new rule?”

“I don’t know,” Daer admitted. “We left the night the king was assassinated.”

“Strange time to leave,” the merchant hedged, eying him narrowly.

“I worked for the prince,” Daer improvised quickly. “He hired me to track down some information for him. I didn’t know if the barons might target me and didn’t want to take the risk.”

“What did he want?” the merchant asked curiously.

“Something about a Drageklek,” Daer replied, being sure to stumble over the name a little. “He was obsessed with it, thought it might bring about a peaceful resolution between us and the dragons.”

He let the information hang, curious to see how the people here would react to it.

“Heard a few stories that mention the name,” the merchant’s apprentice in blue commented. “Dragon tamers, according to the westerners.”

“Crying shame they killed the prince,” the women who had spoken earlier said, staring into her drink. “Only nobleman I heard of as had some good sense.”

“Don’t care much for royalty, but that one? I think I might have followed that one.”

Daer’s heart warmed with amazement at the murmur of assent that rounded the room. Solemnly, like a eulogy, the gathered people recited stories they’d heard, things Daystar had done for them, barons he’d held back from oppressing their people - often, Daer was stunned to realize - without even knowing he was doing so. From the people’s recitation here, the barons were terrified of him, fearful he would strip them of their power, reduce them to mere cronies, and govern the nation as an absolute and unchallenged monarch.

His fate was not because they did not fear him. They’d done to him what they feared he would do to them, and expected them to have their reaction to it. Daer wondered faintly what would happen if he stood up right now and claimed to be Prince Daystar. Everyone would disbelieve him, he figured, but in the instance that he could prove it, he suspected these people would support him - or at least go so far as to not stop him.