The fountain's spray drifted back on a light breeze and freckled Kaelen's sleeves. Miro finished the last bite of Old Lysa's loaf and brushed crumbs from his tunic with the same ceremony he might give a knighthood.
"Bread's lighter in your belly than in your pack," he declared, sage as a monk.
"Convenient philosophy," Kaelen said, pushing off the fountain's rim. "Let's see what the guild has for us before your wisdom gets expensive."
They cut through the flow of late-morning traffic, slipping past a pair of mule carts piled high with wool bales and a cluster of apprentices hurrying under the weight of a copper still. Harrowick's market heaved around them—hawkers calling, shutters banging, the iron heartbeat of the farrier's hammer. A short boy ran by with a string of tin charms clinking at his belt and nearly collided with Miro.
"Sorry!" the boy yelped, then added in a worried stage whisper, "Don't tell Ma that the ward for lost keys doesn't work on lost goats."
"We'll keep your secret," Miro said solemnly, and the boy vanished into the crowd like a fish into reeds.
They passed the cooper's shop where hoops cooled in neat rings along the wall, and the tanner's yard where hides hung in stiff banners that smelled of river and bark. Between those, squatting as stolid as ever, stood the Guild Hall: heavy oak doors carved with the crossed swords and rearing griffon sigil, dark windows like sleepy eyes, a slate roof patched here and there with mismatched shingles that told stories of storms past.
Inside, warmth and noise wrapped around them. The Hall always felt like a crossroads more than a building—the kind of place where a dozen paths met, tangled, and set off again. A fire snapped in the hearth beneath a mantel crowded with old trophies (a dented helm, a cracked shield, something like a boar's tusk except it hummed faintly if you touched it). The air was a comforting stew of oiled leather, lamp smoke, and the sour-sweet ghosts of last night's ale.
"Look what the river dragged back," called Darrin from a table near the door. He and Osric—veterans whose beards were more salt than pepper now—were bent over a battered deck of cards. A small heap of coppers sat between them like a disputed territory.
"You two still haven't retired?" Miro asked, weaving close enough to flick a card from Osric's sleeve with magician's flair. Osric scowled in theatrical outrage and then grinned.
"Retire?" Darrin snorted. "From what? The thrill of listening to Farlan complain about quill prices?"
"You'll miss it when we're gone," Kaelen said.
Osric raised his mug in solemn salute. "We already do, lad. You bring the average age in here down to something respectable."
They pushed on toward the job board, a wide plank wall hammered full of nailheads and ambition. Parchments layered it like fish scales—fresh contracts crisp and proud over older notices curling at the corners. A few were scrawled, a few illuminated with tidy hand and ink flourishes. Some bore official seals; others had only thumbprints and hope.
Kaelen scanned, tuning out the Hall's murmur until words began to sort themselves into sense. Timber escort. Chimney sweeping. Rat-clearing—no thank you. A dispute over grazing rights with the hillfolk—double no thank you. And there, at the center, a neat hand in dark ink:
Merchant Brevik seeks escort for caravan to Fairmere via South Road. Departure today after noon bell. Payment split half on departure, half on safe arrival.
Beside it, in a cramped hand that fought the parchment, a different notice:
Wolf trouble near Northwood. Reward offered by the millers' guild for proof of pack removal.
Miro tapped the latter, eyes sparking in that way that always meant trouble or a story later. "What about the wolf trouble? Could be fun."
"Could be a waste of time," Kaelen replied. "If the pack's already moved on, we'd just walk for half a day to find nothing."
"Less walking if the wolves find us first," Miro said, bright as a coin.
"Comforting," Kaelen deadpanned, though the corner of his mouth tugged upward.
A dry voice cut in. "If you're done composing poetry to poor decisions, I can actually hand you a contract."
Farlan stood by the counter like a scarecrow grown out of ledgers. Ink had seeped permanently into the beds of his nails; a quill was tucked behind one ear as if he might, at any moment, decide to write down the sum of your sins. He slid a parchment forward with the economy of someone who'd learned not to waste movement—or paper.
"You know the rules," Farlan said, tapping the parchment. "Payment's split in halves — the first upon departure, the second when the merchant arrives with his head still on his shoulders."
Kaelen took the quill. "Wouldn't dream of bringing him back headless."
"Glad to hear it," Farlan said without looking like he was glad about anything. "Brevik's fussy about that sort of thing."
Miro leaned an elbow on the counter, peering over the clerk's ledger with a speculative air. "Hazard premium if the wine casks are heavier than advertised?"
"Hazard premium if the wine casks try to bite you," Farlan said. "Otherwise you get the rate on the parchment. And before you ask—no, you cannot sample the goods. The last man who tried spent a week guarding the outhouse."
"Upholding the realm's most vulnerable seat," Miro said, solemn. "A noble posting."
Kaelen scrawled his name with the flourish of someone who didn't often get to sign things. Farlan dried it with a sprinkle of sand, flicked the grains back into a small jar, and counted out their first payment with a clink that sang to mercenary hearts everywhere. He slid the coins across. "Departure after the noon bell. South Gate. Brevik's caravan—four wagons, two teamsters who can't agree on anything, and a guard who thinks whistling keeps bandits away."
Kaelen palmed his share, weighed it, then tucked it into the safety of his inner pouch. "We'll be there."
"Try not to gamble those away before you leave the room," Farlan said, eyeing Miro.
"Wouldn't dream of it," Miro echoed, already jingling the coins to see how musical they sounded. "Maybe hum a little."
They drifted from the counter, letting the Hall swallow them for a few more minutes. A young scribe at a side table tested a self-filling inkwell that hiccuped like a nervous frog. Someone at the hearth was arguing that trolls could be reasoned with if you learned their river-laws; the person beside him held up a hand missing two fingers and said, kindly, that perhaps not. Darrin and Osric's game had devolved into singing old marching songs out of key.
"See?" Miro said, contentment cozy around his words. "You'll miss this when we're far away, eating stew that tastes like bark."
"Some bark stews are excellent," Kaelen said. "If the bark is money."
They stepped back into daylight and the world's louder breathing. Sun slid along the Guild Hall's stone like a blessing. The noon bell had not yet rung; there was time to eat something that wasn't bread, to sharpen edges, to say a few hellos before the road claimed their feet.
"Food," Miro said decisively. "And then the South Gate."
"Food," Kaelen agreed. "And Serenya, if she's about. Farlan said she'd been asking."
They crossed to the tavern door that opened off the Hall's far end—the same building, different mood. Inside, the light was honey-amber, filtered through stained glass panes that drowned the scuffs and nicks in soft color. The common room smelled of stewing onions and spiced cider, and the heavy tables bore the scars of a hundred tiny wars: knife-gouges, spilled-wine constellations, initials cut by bored hands.
Kaelen's eyes found her almost at once. Serenya sat with her back to the wall, a habit she claimed was about clean lines of sight but Kaelen suspected was really about peace. Silver hair fell in a smooth curtain to one shoulder, catching the fire's glow with a subtle sheen. Her bow rested upright between her knee and the chair, one hand on the shaft as though it were a companion listening in. She was threading new fletching onto an arrow, fingers deft and sure.
"You always make it look like embroidery," Miro said as he slid into the bench opposite her. "Deadly embroidery."
"Hello to you too," Serenya said, not looking up. The corner of her mouth held a smile. "The trick is to do it the same way every time so you don't have to think about it when it matters."
Kaelen took the seat beside Miro. "We signed a caravan escort," he said. "South Road. Merchant named Brevik."
Serenya's eyes flicked up, bright and cool. "Fairmere?"
"That's the one."
"Bandits like that stretch," she said mildly. "And the ale isn't worth the trouble once you get there."
"Lucky for us it's wine," Miro said. "And we're not allowed to drink it."
"That must be agony," Serenya said, deadpan.
A serving girl set down three bowls—thick potato stew studded with onions and a few noble carrots brave enough to show themselves—plus a platter of fried cakes that steamed when torn open. Miro eyed the cakes with reverence, picked one up, and tossed it from hand to hand, hissing. Serenya snagged it in midair and set it on his plate with two fingers.
"Wait until it stops trying to burn you," she advised.
"We were just at the board," Miro said around his first careful bite. "He wanted wolves."
"I said I wanted a job that wasn't a half-day walk that ends with no wolves," Kaelen corrected. "Or worse: wolves who have schedules to keep."
Serenya's laugh was a soft bell. "There have been rumors near the north woods," she admitted. "But the millers' guild posts those notices the moment a goat sneezes. The last 'pack' was three half-starved dogs and a very rude badger."
Miro pointed his spoon like a general with a plan. "See? Fun."
"Fun is not short for funeral," Kaelen said. "We leave at the noon bell."
Serenya set the finished arrow aside and slid the next shaft from her quiver. The new fletchings were a pale gray. "Storm gull," she said to Kaelen's raised brow. "Or so the vendor swore. I liked the grain."
"Do they make the arrow sing?" Miro asked.
"Only if you do," Serenya answered.
They ate, letting the tavern's hum lay a friendly weight across their shoulders. A pair of traveling minstrels tuned a lute and something like a small harp strung with hammered brass. At another table, a mage's apprentice was explaining to a long-suffering friend why his bottled light kept winking out. "Because you corked it," the friend said. "You suffocated it." The apprentice looked aghast, as if he had murdered a firefly.
"Seen Brevik?" Kaelen asked when the bowls were mostly clean.
Serenya nodded toward the window. "Passed him near the gate on the way in. Stout fellow with a nervous hat."
"Nervous hat?"
"It tried to run away when the wind caught it. He chased it like it owed him money."
"That's our man," Miro said cheerfully.
"Do you want company?" Serenya asked, tone deliberately casual.
Kaelen glanced at Miro, then back. It was an easy decision. "Always."
"Then I'll fetch a new bowstring," she said, rolling her fletching kit closed with precise motions. "And I'll meet you at the South Gate."
"Before the bell," Kaelen said.
"Before the bell," she agreed, shouldering the bow with the unconscious grace of someone who had slept and woken with it since childhood.
They left the tavern together, Serenya veering toward the bowyer's stall that shared a wall with the Hall, Kaelen and Miro angling back into the square. The sun had climbed, bright and methodical; shadows under awnings were sharp as cut cloth. A troupe of performers was staking out space near the southern road, dragging a painted wagon into place. Their banner fluttered: THE GREAT PIETRO & COMPANY: FIRE, FOLLY, AND FEATS.
"Think they'll have fire-breathers?" Miro asked, squinting as a wiry man in scarlet tried to teach a plump boy how to somersault without injuring passersby.
"Probably," Kaelen said. "That's how they get people to spend coin after a long day."
"Maybe after we come back," Miro said. "Assuming Brevik's head remains attached."
"Ambitious," Kaelen said. He slowed as they passed Garron posted at the South Gate, helm off, hair plastered damp to his head where the strap lay. Garron lifted two fingers in greeting.
"Heard you pulled Brevik's contract," the guard said. "He's a worrier, that one. Counted his casks twice this morning in case numbers changed at night."
"We'll keep a third count," Kaelen said.
"Fourth," Miro added.
Garron eyed them, fond in a way He tried to hide. "And there've been whispers—strange folk moving through after dark. Might be nothing. Might not. Keep your eyes," he tapped his own, "facing different ways."
"We'll borrow a few more if we need them," Miro said, and Garron snorted.
They moved aside to let a pair of teamsters rumble through the gate, shouting contradictory advice to their oxen. Beyond the walls the South Road stretched between wheat fields the color of old coins, then dipped toward a stand of alder and willow where the river bent close. A hawk circled on a thermal, looping lazy figure-eights against a sky so blue it looked like it might ring if struck.
"Time?" Miro asked.
Kaelen tilted his head, listening; the city has its own clocks if you know them. The fishmonger's bell clanged four times from Wharf Row. The tanners' paddles thumped in slow rhythm. And then, clear as a knife tapped to glass, the noon bell began to toll from the clocktower, each note rolling out across rooftops and lanes in even strokes.
"Time," Kaelen said.
They didn't have far to go to find their merchant. Brevik stood beside the first of four wagons, already fussing with the tarp ropes for the third time. He was a barrel of a man whose clothes seemed to fit him reluctantly. Each time he checked a knot, his hat jittered like a frightened small animal.
"You must be the escort," he said when he saw them, as if he'd ordered a particular brand of guard and was relieved the delivery matched the picture in his head. "Brevik. Brevik Aeron of Fairmere. Wine and dried plums. Mostly wine. I counted—forty casks. Forty-two, if you include the two small ones I don't advertise, not that I said that."
"Brevik," Kaelen said with the gentleness one uses on skittish horses. "We're Kaelen and Miro. Serenya will join us shortly."
"Ah," Brevik said, visibly recalculating the odds of survival with each name. "And you've done this before?"
"Escorts?" Miro said. "Yes. Counting? Occasionally."
Brevik made a sound that was probably meant to be a laugh. "There's been talk. Of… well. Bandits. And wolves. And… men who whistle." He shuddered. "I hate whistling."
"Noted," Kaelen said. "We'll keep whistling to a minimum."
A whistle piped behind them like a delighted bird. Serenya strode up, a fresh bowstring looped over one forearm, her silver hair braided back. She took in the wagons in a glance—the wheel rims, the oxen, the teamsters, the way the last cart listed faintly to the left.
"Hello, Brevik," she said, voice warm enough to smooth splinters. "We'll see you to Fairmere."
Brevik's hat nearly fled again. He grabbed it with both hands and nodded, eyes shiny with gratitude he hadn't yet earned the right to feel. "Bless you," he said, though whom he was blessing it was hard to tell.
One of the teamsters, a stringy man with arms like ropes, spat neatly into the dust. "We leaving, then?" he asked. The other—a rounder fellow—answered without consulting anyone, "After I check the axle grease," and they launched into a murmured argument about grease that sounded like a marital dispute.
Kaelen swung up onto the rear step of the second wagon to check the tarp lashings himself, testing knots, easing tension where it would chafe. Miro drifted along the line of wagons, introducing himself to the oxen in a low murmur that was absurdly effective; one flicked an ear and leaned subtly toward him. Serenya spoke quietly with Garron for a moment, then returned to take her place at the caravan's flank.
The bell's last chime trembled out and hung in the air like a held breath. Beyond the gate the road waited, ordinary and full of possibilities—the good kind, for now.
"Shall we?" Kaelen said.
Miro was already walking. "Last one to Fairmere buys the stew."
"Brevik's paying for the stew," Serenya reminded him.
Miro brightened. "Then we're all last," he said, and Kaelen laughed despite himself.
The oxen leaned into their collars. Wheels turned. The city's walls fell behind at an unhurried pace. Harrowick slid away by inches rather than leaps: the gatehouse, the moat whose water glimmered with duckweed and coins, the low cottages clustered like chicks around their hen of a granary. A girl standing on the ditch's far bank waved so enthusiastically her hat went flying. Brevik flinched at the hat's escape, then, seeing it wasn't his, relaxed a little.
Kaelen walked beside the second wagon, hand resting lightly on the timber rail. The weight of the coin in his pouch was pleasantly distracting; the weight of the sword at his side was the opposite, a reminder that coins liked to change hands. Serenya's footfalls were soundless in the dry dust. Miro had fallen back to walk a way with the last wagon, trading insults with the round teamster and winning.
The road stretched ahead—the wheat, the willows, the shy glitter of river glimpsed between trunks. Birds stitched the hedgerows with song. For a while there was nothing to do but breathe and be where they were, the simple luxury of a day that had made its plans and politely asked them to come along.
They came to the first bend and the city disappeared behind a curtain of trees. Somewhere in the distance, a hawker's call faded to a memory. Kaelen glanced once over his shoulder at where Harrowick had been, then faced forward again, the set of his mouth easing.
A good day, he thought. He knew better than to trust them—but he knew how to walk inside them all the same.
And the caravan rolled on.