Radeon reached the cesspit and the sour reek hit him like a slap. Tobacco smoke lay low over the sitting planks, where men squatted and traded talk, tongues as loose as their bowels.
"They say those peaks drink more blood than rain."
"Aye, but the chances. Might not come in a lifetime."
Radeon took their measure with a single glance. Most wore the look of itinerant practitioners.
Clothes patched and sun faded. Boots tired. Spirits high.
For them this place was still a crossroads.
A chance to band together as mercenaries or, if luck and flattery aligned, to catch the eye of a sect.
He drifted to the pits and squatted with the rest, folding himself into the low ring of bodies and foul air.
One figure caught his eye. He sat quiet in the middle of it all. Pristine white robes hitched carefully out of danger.
The man edged from one knot of conversation to the next without moving his feet. Eyes kept sliding to the rags in another man's hand.
His own fingers stayed empty and tight on his knees.
A fool who had squatted first and only afterward remembered he had brought nothing to wipe with.
Radeon stepped closer, face twisted in shared misery as he muttered about stubborn bowels and bad rations.
As he shifted, a clean scrap of parchment slipped from his sleeve and came to rest just within the other man's reach.
"Here, young sir. Use it."
The young man took it without looking at him. Radeon was already turning away, giving him the courtesy of not seeing his shame.
When the used parchment dropped into the muck, Radeon uncapped his waterskin and let a thin stream wash over the young man's stained fingers.
The boy stared at the unexpected kindness, then looked up with a sharp, puzzled gaze.
"Young sir," Radeon said, eyes on the dirt. "I'm only a scholar. If I'm to write these wars, to put your name where it belongs, where should I put myself?"
The young man's lip curled as his gaze flicked over Radeon's soft boots and ink-stained cuffs.
But the young man, as if his master's presence had reminded him of his manners, swallowed the curses on his tongue.
He tugged a folded map from his belt, and decided this pampered scribe would do well enough.
"Draw it clean. Now. Do that for me, scribe, and I'll show you where they pen the ones too soft to fight."
Radeon fished a stub of charcoal from his pouch. His wrist moved in quick, sure strokes.
In a few breaths, a second map lay between them, cleaner than the first. The young man tried to keep his face still and paid for it with talk.
"I can't tell you much. You'll be briefed properly when you arrive. It's my first time on this run as well," said the young man.
Not wanting to linger, the young man turned to go, certain he had done the scribe an immaculate favor, a deed worthy of ink and wax on any record.
Radeon walked back to the tent and dropped down beside Fay. He watched her scribble across the pages of her leather-bound book.
The stick of coal scraped too hard on the parchment, each stroke a rattle of nerves.
'She's got to decide where she draws the line. What path she's willing to walk, alone or not.'
He set his hand between her shoulders and began a slow, steady rub along her back.
Not a lover's touch. A firm squeeze, the kind a mentor gave a frightened child.
Fay did not pull away. For a moment she leaned into him, as if his shoulder were a post in a storm.
He too had been afraid once, a hungry boy begging for alms and small chances.
As his road climbed above the ones who had helped him, he learned to regret how tightly he had clung to every kindly word.
He had wasted resources, trusted techniques with irreversible costs, and followed cultivation manuals that promised no further advancement unless he rebuilt his chances from the ground up.
That lesson stayed with him.
Better to shoulder the hard choice myself than let another people's comfort steer my hand toward regret.
As he slowly drew his hand away, he noticed her eyes had closed.
At some point her muttering had sunk into slow, even breaths. She had fallen asleep.
Not wanting her to wake with a sore back, Radeon dragged a few vegetable crates together and fashioned a rough bed. He eased her down onto it, inch by inch, so she did not stir.
As the day went on, more than thirty paintings left the tent.
Some sold for a handful of stones, some for just one, but all in all Radeon managed to squeeze everyone dry as best he could.
The stones in his hands were mostly low grade, that was true, but they were at least thrice what Fay had loaned him.
"Over three hundred stones," he murmured. "Decent sum."
He went to Fay and caught the edge of the cloak he had made, the one she wore now.
He pried it open with careful fingers and found what he had sewn in. Tens of inner pockets, hidden in the lining where a quick search would miss them.
He filled each one and closed them with tight, hiding and securing the stones against her body.
"Let her keep the fortune," he whispered, tying the last knot.
Radeon stepped outside and found the muddy lanes near empty. The forge at the end was going dark, its hammers long since fallen silent.
He went for the smithy. The air inside held the faint ghost of coal smoke, the fires banked low.
"I need a dagger," he said.
The smith grunted, reached under a bench, and produced a short blade with a plain hilt.
"Twenty stones."
Radeon weighed it in his hand. The balance was fair enough, the edge serviceable, yet the steel was common. Worth five at most.
He did not haggle. He counted out twenty stones and left them on the anvil, letting the man believe he had swindled a soft-handed scribe.
The sting in his purse was a small one. Sooner or later he meant to see every stone come back to him.