Once they arrived, Abi saw that the “houses” were mere facades; the actual buildings were dug out of the rock of the hill itself. And the rock was granite. It made her mind spin to think how long it must have taken to chip out decent-sized dwellings up here.

She’d been afraid that there would be no place for their wagons, but it turned out that there was room for them. Barely. Abi prayed she would not need to get up in the night. She’d probably misstep and fall to the road beneath the village if she needed to use the wood-shielded, stone bench over the cliff that was the village “outhouse.”

The needs of this village proved to be very simple; they wanted some sort of system to bring water down out of the cistern so people didn’t have to carry it down twice a day. Master Padrick worked out a simple system for them using a minimum of metal parts involving a bucket-chain worked from below and clay pipes; two days later—most of which time was spent teaching them how to trouble-shoot any problems—and they were on their way.

It was at the third town that things turned . . . odd.

This was a walled town, with guarded entrances and exits that were closed at night. And instead of being greeted with smiles when Master Vance announced who they were and why they had come to the gate guard, they were met with scowls.

“Wait here,” the grizzled, heavily armored guard told them. “I’ll send a runner to the mayor. We’ll see if he wants to see you.”

“The mayor sent to the King of Valdemar expressly—” Master Vance began indignantly.

“That’s as may be,” the guard cut him off. “I don’t take the word of a lot of scruffy strangers.” And the man retreated into the guardhouse, making further speech impossible.

“What on earth . . .” Master Vance said, with exasperation.

Jicks shrugged. “Maybe this lot only went along with the delegation because the others urged it on them. Look at these walls! They probably think they don’t need protection from your Guard and army.” She snorted. “They’ve never seen a siege engine either, I’ll be bound, or they wouldn’t be so smug.”

Abi examined the walls, which were stone, and pretty impressive to her mind. At least two stories tall, they had enough room at the top for guards to walk up there, protected by a parapet. There were four guard towers too, two of them visible from where Abi stood.