Busy people still stopped and stared at me. One small boy shouted into the open door of a house, “Come see the fat man on a horse!” and a gaggle of children rushed to the threshold to watch me pass. The boy trotted along behind me for some way, gawking at me in amazement. I tried to ignore him. I’d have skirted this warren if I could, but the King’s Road went right through the mongrel settlement. The road passed a roughly paved square centered on a well and bustling with commerce. The buildings that fronted it were painted ochre and white and yellow-brown, with roofs of baked tile. In an open-fronted building, workers were lifting long swathes of fabric from dyeing vats. Men were unloading sacks of grain from a heavy wagon and carrying them into the warehouse like a trail of ants. I dismounted to allow Sirlofty to water at the animal trough by the well.

Almost immediately, I drew attention. Two women who had been filling their water jugs homes giggled and stared at me, whispering like girls.

One gangly old man from the grain warehouse was even ruder.

“How many?” he shouted at me as he approached. I suspected he shouted because he himself was deaf.

“How many what?” I asked him as Sirlofty lifted his muzzle from the water.

“How many stone, my man? How many stone do you weigh?”

“I’m sure I don’t know,” I replied stiffly. I tugged at Sirlofty’s bridle, intending to lead him away. But the old man seized my sleeve. “Come to my warehouse. I’ve a grain scale there. Come on. This way. This way.”

I tugged my arm free of him. “Leave me alone.”

He laughed loudly, pleased at my reaction. Workers gawked at us. “Look at him!” he invited them loudly. “Don’t you think he ought to come to my grain scales for a weigh?” One woman grinned and nodded widely.

Another looked away, embarrassed for me, while two young men laughed heartlessly. I could feel the heat rising in my cheeks. As I set my foot in Sirlofty’s stirrup, it felt higher than it had that morning, and every aching muscle in my body screamed at the prospect of remounting.

One of the young men guffawed. “Look! His horse doesn’t even want to stand for being mounted by him.”

And it was true. The ever-mannered and deeply trained Sirlofty shifted away from me. He was clearly favoring one leg now.

“Ye’re goina lame him!” the other young man warned me in a sneering, city accent I recognized from Old Thares. “Pity the poor beast. You should carry him for a ways, gutbag.”

His warning was a true one. The only reason that Sirlofty would behave in such a way was if he were in pain. I stubbornly mounted him anyway. I rode away from the well and the square, ignoring the catcalls that followed me. As soon as I was out of sight, I dismounted and led my horse. He was not limping yet, but he was moving gingerly. My horse, my fine cavalla steed, could no longer bear my weight for a full day’s ride. If I rode him again tomorrow, he’d be lame before the day was out. And then what would I do? What was I going to do now? I was scarcely a day’s ride from my father’s estate and already into problems. The hopelessness of my situation suddenly crashed in on me. I was pretending that all would be well, that I could provide for myself away from my father’s largesse. Yet in reality, I’d never done that.