“Of course, my lord. I’ll bring you something hot in just a little.”

Filis made a bed of his blankets and a pile of hay, and by then the headman had reappeared with a basket: a bowl of good-smelling stew, a half loaf of bread, a small jar of fruit jam, and a large jug of ale.

“It’s m’own wife’s brewing,” the headman said. “Last time you came, we was short—”

“This is bounty indeed,” Filis said. He fished coins from his belt pouch. “After the day I’ve had, this is luxury.”

“Nay, my lord, you needn’t—” Polite refusal preceded grateful acceptance.

“I must,” Filis said. “For your kindness—and if it is too much, pray help the next stranger who needs a meal.”

“Thank you, my lord,” the headman said. “And sleep sound.”

“I’m sure I will,” Filis said. “And I’ll be off in the morning.”

He ate the stew, hot with the spice mix preferred in Cilwan; smeared the fruit jam—plum and peach mixed, he thought—on the bread; and drank deep of the ale. Yes, the goodwife here had a gift for brewing. He drifted easily into sleep, deep and dreamless.

Filis woke to a nightmare that lasted days—cramped in a box in what he presumed was a trader’s wagon, jouncing on the road somewhere. He guessed east to Lûn or even Cortes Immer, but he had no way of knowing. He was allowed out once a night for necessities, which did not include a full meal or a full draft of water but plenty of knocking about by those who surrounded him. He had no chance to attempt escape—they had stripped him, bound him, and even as he squatted beside a tree, his arms were bound and his captors stood over him.

He cursed himself for the stupid decisions that had led to this. If he had brought an escort, if he had camped apart, if he had not drunk that ale … He wondered if the regent in Cortes Cilwan would search for him—if anyone would recognize his horse, any of his things—but reason told him his captors would have found ways to dispose of them. His father—he did not want to think what his father would imagine. The family hothead running off in anger to turn traitor, sell his father’s secrets to his father’s enemy? Surely not. Surely his father knew him better than that.

But every day took him farther from home, closer to the man even his father feared. He saw no chance to escape, no hope in any of the hard faces around him that one might be bribed to help him.