Sianim 01 - Masques

cloak, a pair of leather trousers, and a tunic: tough, unremarkable clothes well suited to traveling. At the bottom of the trunk, she found a pair of sturdy riding boots and a set of riding gloves. She wrapped all of her ill-gotten goods in the cloak and hurried out of the room and up the ladder to her attic room.
    She retrieved her sword from its hiding place inside the straw mattress (she generally slept on the floor, it being less likely to be infested by miscellaneous vermin). Before sliding the sheath onto her belt, she drew the sword from habit—to make sure that the blade needed neither sharpening nor cleaning. It was a sword she’d found hidden in one of the many cubbyholes of her father’s castle—the odd pinkish gold luster of the metal had intrigued her. It was also the only sword in the place that fit her, her father’s blood tending toward large and muscle-bound, which she was not. Aside from Sheen, it was the only thing she’d taken from her home when she left.
    She wasn’t a swordswoman by any means. Practice and more practice had made her competent enough to make it useful against things like the Uriah, creatures too big to be killed quickly with a dagger and not easily downed with a staff—creatures not holding swords of their own.
    She gratefully rid herself of the filthy maidservant’s dress and dropped it on the floor, donning instead the stolen garments and found that, as she expected, they were very tight in the hips and chest and ridiculously big everywhere else. The boots, in particular, were huge. If the innkeeper’s son had lived to grow up, he would have been a big man.
    Her mother’s people could switch their sex as easily as most people changed shoes, but Aralorn had never been able to take on a male’s shape. Perhaps it was her human blood, or perhaps she’d never tried hard enough. Fortunately, the boy whose clothes she’d appropriated had been slender, so that it was an easy thing to become a tall, angular, and androgynous woman—with big feet—who could pass as a man.
    Once dressed, she was satisfied she looked enough like a young man neither rich nor poor, a farmer’s son . . . or an innkeeper’s. Someone who wouldn’t seem out of place on a sturdy draft horse.
    Most of the items in the room she left behind, though she took the copper pieces that she’d earned as well as the small number of coins that she always kept with her as an emergency fund.
    She shut the door to her room and made sure that the bundle that she was carrying wasn’t awkward-looking. As she made her way down the stairs, she was met by the other barmaid. Aralorn gave the woman a healthy grin and swept past her unchallenged.
    In the stable, Aralorn saddled Sheen. The cloak and the food she packed into her copious saddlebags. She filched an empty grain sack from a stack of the same and filled it with oats, tying it to the saddle. From one of the saddlebags, she took out a small jar of white paste. Carefully, she painted the horse’s shoulders with white patches such as a heavy work collar tends to leave with time. Farmer’s plug no, but he could well pass for a squire’s prize draft horse.
    On the road, she hesitated before turning north toward Kestral. That was the direction that the messengers had been traveling. If she could find them, in the guise of a young farmer, she could question them without anyone’s taking too much notice—as the barmaid could not have. A second reason for looking north was that the mountains were the best place for someone seeking to hide from a human magician. Human magic didn’t work as well in the Northland mountains as it did elsewhere. She knew stories of places in the mountains where human magic wouldn’t function at all. Conversely, green-magic users, her mother’s brother had told her, found that magic was easier to work in the north. She’d experienced that herself.
    As Myr was from Reth, Aralorn felt that it was safe to assume that he was aware of the partial protection the Northlands offered. There were very few other places as easily accessible that offered any protection from the ae’Magi. Unfortunately, the ae’Magi would also be aware that the Northlands were the most likely place for Myr to go, hence the messengers to the otherwise-unimportant villages that dotted the border of Reth.
    Although it was still late summer, the air was brisk with the chill winds. They retained their bite this far north year-round, making Aralorn grateful for the