Shadows Return

tending the goats for you before the next full moon.”
    “That may be, but I still don’t like the look of your little one, there. I’ve never seen a natural child do such things, or look like that. He’s a demon, sure enough. How do I know you’re not a pack of necromancers, come for my soul?”
    Seregil held up his hands in a gesture of peace. “No, we’re not. I swear it by Sakor.”
    “What does it matter what they are? He healed our Saria!” his wife cried, clinging to her daughter’s hand. The younger girls had retreated to a corner and were clinging to each other there, watching Seregil and their father with wide, frightened eyes.
    “What now?” Alec murmured, staying close to Sebrahn; he didn’t have to understand the words being spoken to tell that the situation was going sour.
    “Let me handle it,” Seregil muttered back in Skalan. “Master Karstus, we’ve done you a good turn tonight, and we ask nothing in return but a scrap of food and some directions. We’re making for the coast.”
    The man’s eyes narrowed. “So that’s how it is, is it? If I was to look at your right arm, what would I see, eh?”
    Seregil glanced at the bruised and fearful wife. “You were a slaver yourself?”
    “Never!” Karstus pushed back his right sleeve and showed Seregil a large double brand, gone white with age. Then he shifted on his pallet and stuck out his left leg. It was just a stump. “I was born to slavery, me, and kept until I was no use anymore. I found my woman starving on the road after her kind master freed her and turned her out with nothing.” He pushed himself up on his good leg with the help of the cudgel. “Do you think you’re the first escaped slaves to break for the Strait?”
    Seregil looked sharply over his shoulder at Ilar. “Did you know?”
    “No, I swear it.”
    “For what that’s worth,” Alec muttered.
    “How far is it to the coast?” Seregil asked the man.
    “Two or three days, maybe.”
    “Any towns?”
    “Just steadings like this one, far as I know. Goats are the only things that thrive out here. Goats and freedmen.”
    Seregil retrieved his bundle from Ilar and took out a few pieces of the silver jewelry he’d found in the attic, and one of the little gold lockets. “If slavers come by here, will this be enough to make certain you never saw us?”
    “That sword of yours is enough,” Karstus replied, scowling.
    Seregil tossed the trinkets on the closest pallet. “For your girls, then. And any advice you’d give.”
    “Due south should bring you to the coast. There’s a little port along there somewhere, called Vostaz. Slave takers’ll be thickest there. South and west will get you to the ocean in three days or four, maybe. There are some fishing villages ’round there. If you’re handy at stealing and sailing, you might get off. The takers’ll be watching there, too, but there’s less of ’em.”
    “Is there no better way?” Ilar demanded.
    “Not for any purebloods like you two, or that yellow-haired boy. Or that.” He made another sign at Sebrahn.
    Seregil held out his branded arm. “Do you know anyone who can fix this?”
    Karstus shook his head. “There ain’t enough money in that pack of yours to buy that of anyone in this part of the world. We’ve seen too many drawn and quartered who tried.”
    His wife leaned close and whispered in his ear. He scowled at her, then shook his head. “Do what you will, woman!”
    Tiel went to the makeshift kitchen at the back of the room and placed a loaf of coarse bread and some sausages into a clean rag.
    Alec went to her and held out the cheese they’d stolen. “I’m sorry we took this without asking.”
    But she only raised an eyebrow at him, then cut half and added it to the bundle. Knotting it, she put it in Alec’s hands. “We’ve enough to spare, brothers. Thank you for saving my daughter. I’ll always be grateful, and so will she.”
    “What clan are you, sister?” asked Seregil.
    “Akhendi.”
    “I know the khirnari there. Can I bring any word to your people?”
    She gave him a sad smile and shook her head. “Tell them that Tiel ä Elasi is dead.”
             
    Her words haunted them as they set out again.
    “They’re so poor. I feel guilty, taking their food,” Alec said, though the smoky aroma of the goat sausage in Seregil’s bundle was already making all of them hungry.
    “We gave them back their daughter,” Seregil said with a shrug.
    “And you think that