Free Traitors' Gate (Crossroads) by Kate Elliott Page A

then speaking ill of some old man I’ve never even met.”
    “Whew! My ears are burning!” They sauntered away to get a look at Pil.
    She turned back to Tumna, awkward with the hand signals. “Remain” was easy enough, a sweep and clutch sketched in the air. Then she ran after the fawkners. “Heya! Where am I supposed to go?”
    Copper Hall’s island was larger than Argent Hall. To make it all more confusing, this parade ground was rimmed on all sides by buildings, lofts, barracks, store houses, even a smithy roiling with smoke and noisy with beaten strokes,
wang wang wang
! Her head hurt already, and in addition to the iron sting wafting from the smithy, there crept into her nostrils a slimy fragrance that dwelt in the air the same way a winter byre full of goats has a smell as much texture as scent.
    “To the docks,” they shouted back before they approached Pil. He had climbed up the ladder to the fawkner’s board just below the perch to examine Sweet’s wings. Sweet was a good-tempered bird, less territorial than most not so much because she was friendlier but because she seemed bored of going to the trouble of posturing over each least perch. Nallo suspected that things wouldn’t go so smoothly if you really crossed the old bird.
    Pil satisfied himself on the matter of the wing feathers—how he fussed over that eagle!—and descended the ladder. His exchange with the fawkners was briefer than hers had been; then he jogged to meet her, gesturing toward a gap between the smithy and a warehouse.
    “That way,” he said.
    The experienced reeves assured her she’d eventually get the hang of retracing, on earth, ground she’d flown over. Pil could already backtrack easily. She hurried after him, the fawkners staying with the raptors.
    He stopped short, and she barreled into his back.
    “Oof! Aui, Pil, what’s—?”
    Few things surprised Pil, but right now he was gaping like a dumbstruck child. A
creature
, human in shape but stout and hairless, had backed out of the enclosed smithy to slop a bucket of steaming water over the paving stones. Its skin, like coals, was charred black and broken with veins of fiery red.
    “A demon!” murmured Pil.
    With the clamor hammering within the smithy and the distance between them, no ears should have been able to catch that muttered comment, but the creature swiveled its head as if identifying distance and direction.
    “Heya! Are you two the other reeves from Clan Hall?” A steward came running down the alley between smithy and warehouse. She wheezed to a stop beside them, bent to rest hands on thighs as she caught her breath. “Hunh! Eie! Your other reeve . . .” A spate of coughing calmed her. “She needs a hand there at the dock. Old Iron-goat-shanks is in full spout.” Excitement gave air to her voice. “Despicable man! We hear a rumor he’s getting a new bride from Olossi. Poor lass. They’re already running bets in the hall over how long she’ll survive his beatings. Two years, maybe; five if she’s strong. I’m Ju’urda, by the way. I hope those cursed fawkners Arvi and Offina weren’t rude. My apologies on behalf of the hall.”
    “What is that?” Nallo gestured toward the smithy.
    “Eh?” She looked around in the manner of someone who can’t see anything except what she expects to see. “What?”
    “That, uh, that—oh, the hells!” Cursed if the creature wasn’t already looking in their direction as if it could hear every word over the boom and hammer coming from inside the confines of the smoky forge. “It’s a delving, isn’t it? Just like in the tales.”
    “A delving?” asked Pil.
    “Country cousins, eh?” Ju’urda laughed in a way that stung, but immediately she tipped back her head and spoke past them, not shouting as a normal person would have to, to have a hope of being heard above the racket. “Heya, Be. These are reeves visiting from another hall. One’s an outlander and the other has never seen your kind before.