“Burek still doing well?”

“Very well. And I found out what Andressat has against him. He may be a bastard grandson of the old man, and he chose not to take the job the count offered him. That would be enough with Andressat; he’d think it ingratitude. His foster father is a horse master at the count’s stud.”

Talking to Stammel the way he always had eased the strangeness; Stammel sat the same way, held his hands the same way, had the same expressions on his face. Arcolin tried not to look at his eyes.

“The thing is,” Arcolin went on, “there are more brigands—or whatever they are—in the woods around here than can possibly be supported without regular resupply. You know that village we camped near at first?” Stammel nodded. “They came down on that village, destroyed a couple of the cottages, killed some of the villagers and took the rest—left a trail a blind—sorry—anyone could follow across the grain. We stayed there the night after I left Cortes Vonja. No attack. We went as far as the deserted village beyond the one where we found the merchant.”

Stammel scowled. “Is that the one just south of a stretch of woods?”

“Yes. I remembered it when I rode out into what had been fields; we passed that way coming up from Sibili, last year of Siniava’s War. The cottages are all collapsed now, but someone’s tending the well. Flowers, and that.”

“And the merchant came that way …” Stammel said.

“Yes. There’s a ford in the woods, well out of sight or hearing of either village if they were both occupied. In the old days, it had stones laid down—they’ve been moved, to make a hole—wagons can’t get through without risking an axle unless you unload and load them. And there’s a footpath—a wide one, with bootmarks—along the stream to the east.”

“So the merchant could deliver the food and money there. Why did he have it still when we found him?”

“I think the brigands gave him the money,” Arcolin said. “It’s backward, I know, brigands giving money to merchants instead of robbing them, but if you wanted to put counterfeit money in circulation, who better than a merchant going to trade? As for the food, I think that’s farther from their camp, wherever it is.”

“I suppose,” Stammel said. “But it only makes the merchant richer, doesn’t it? I mean, if it weren’t discovered? And if it is, he’s dead and they don’t have a supply line.” He shook his head. “I don’t see the gain for them—or whoever hired them.”

“If the coins aren’t discovered, then with more silver or gold—or what’s taken for gold—I suppose that would spread somehow … but I can’t figure out if prices would go down or up.”

“Up,” Stammel said. “They always go up.”

Arcolin laughed. “Seems so, indeed. But scarcity always makes them go up more, and sometimes they go down in a good harvest year.”

“One of the conversations I heard,” Stammel said, “one man said if the Guild League cities started adulterating their coinage, there was no use to have a Guild League at all. He said … he said there was only one reliable mint in all the south. The others laughed at him and called him a fool.”