Assassin's Quest

I next endeavored to book passage for myself on a barge across Blue Lake. Actually, I went to the waterfront hiring square, hoping to work my passage across. I swiftly found out no one was hiring. "Look, mate," a boy of thirteen loftily told me. "Everyone knows the big barges don't work the lake this time of year less there's gold in it. And there ain't this year. Mountain witch shut down all the trade to the Mountains. Nothing to haul means no money worth taking the risk. And that's it, plain and simple. But even if the trade was open, you'd not find much going back and forth in winter. Summers is when the big barges can cross from this side to that. Winds can be iffy even then, but a good crew can work a barge, sail and oar, there and back again. But this time of year, it's a waste of time. The storms blow up every five days or so and the rest of the time the winds only blow one way, and if they aren't full of water, they're carrying ice and snow. It's a fine time to come from the Mountain side to Blue Lake town, if you don't mind getting wet and cold and chopping ice off your rigging all the way. But you won't find any of the big freight barges making the run from here to there until next spring. There's smaller boats that will take folk across, but passage on them is dear and for the daring. If you take ship on one of those, it's because you're willing to pay gold for the passage, and pay with your life if your skipper makes a mistake. You don't look as if you've got the coin for it, man, let alone to pay the King's tariff on the trip."

Boy he might have been, but he knew what he spoke about. The more I listened, the more I heard the same thing. The Mountain witch had closed the passes and innocent travelers were being attacked and robbed by Mountain brigands. For their own good, travelers and traders were being turned back at the border. War was looming. That chilled my heart, and made me all the more certain I must reach Verity. But when I insisted I had to get to the Mountains, and soon, I was advised to somehow avail myself of five gold pieces for the passage across the lake and good luck from there. In one instance, a man hinted he knew of a somewhat illegal endeavor in which I might gain that much in a month's time or less, if I were interested. I was not. I already had enough difficulties to contend with.

Come to me.

I knew that somehow, I would.

I found a very cheap inn, run-down and drafty, but at least not smelling too much of Smoke. The clientele could not afford it. I paid for a bed and got a pallet in an open loft above the common room. At least heat also rose with the errant smoke from the hearth below. By draping my cloak and clothes over a chair by my pallet, I was finally able to dry them completely for the first time in days. Song and conversation, both rowdy and quiet, were a constant chorus to my first effort at sleep. There was no privacy and I finally got the hot bath I longed for at a bath-and-steamhouse five doors away. But there was a certain weary pleasure in knowing where I would sleep at night, if not how well.

I had not planned it, but it was an excellent way also to listen to the common gossip of Blue Lake. The first night I was there, I learned much more than I wished to of a certain young noble who had got not one, but two serving women with child and the intimate details of a major brawl in a tavern two streets away that had left Jake Ruddy Nose without his namesake portion of anatomy, having had it bitten off by Crookarm the Scribe.

The second night I was at the inn, I heard the rumor that twelve King's guards had been found slaughtered by brigands half a day's ride past Jernigan's Spring. By the next night, someone had made the connection, and tales were told of how the bodies had been savaged and fed upon by a beast. I considered it quite likely that scavengers had found the bodies and fed from them. But as the tale was told, it was clearly the work of the WitBastard, who had changed himself into a wolf to escape his fetters of cold iron, and fallen upon the whole company by the light of a full moon to wreak his savage violence on them. As the teller described me, I had little fear of being discovered in their midst. My eyes did not glow red in firelight, nor did my fangs protrude from my mouth. I knew there would be other, more prosaic descriptions of me passed about. Regal's treatment of me had left me with a singular set of scars that were difficult to conceal. I began to grasp how difficult it had been for Chade to work with a pock-scarred face.