“Yes.” Arvid looked around the entrance hall of the house, which was lit by oil lamps carved of alabaster, and spotted a padded bench a few strides on. “We will wait here,” he said, moving past the servant and waving at Regar. The look on the faces of both Regar and the servant was, he decided, delicious. His conviction that the Marshal would not have approved of all this made it even better.

Regar sat on the edge of the seat. “You’ll lose me the contract,” he said in a hoarse whisper when the servant had left again.

“No, I won’t,” Arvid said. “We’re here on legitimate business. You will assure him the work will not suffer.”

“But it—”

“It will not suffer,” Arvid said. “Hate me if you will, but I do not break my word.”

Far down the passage a door opened. The servant, hovering outside it, bowed; the man who came through it turned, saw them, and came forward. Neither lean nor fat, neither old nor young, he wore a merchant’s robe open over a thin white pleated garment belted at the waist with links of silvery metal.

Arvid rose, and beside him Regar lunged upright.

“I have seen you,” Invarr said to Arvid. “You’re that merchant attached to Fox Company. You were at the grange, my servant said. Are you Girdish?”

Arvid bowed slightly. “Indeed I am, sir, and my name is Arvid Burin—a northern name, as you will recognize, from Tsaia come last fall.”

“Ser Burin.” Invarr bowed in return, equal to equal. “And you, Master Regar,” he said to Regar. “You both have business with me? I hope you have not been hired away by this man because he is a Girdish comrade.”

“Not at all,” Regar said.

“It is a grange matter,” Arvid said. “Marshal Porfur, whom I’m sure you know—”

“Indeed I do. He has more than once urged me to join his grange.”

“Well, tonight at drill he bade Regar and me to spend ten days no farther from each other than an armslength and to alternate the days of work—both of us on each man’s task, day by day, so that neither’s work would suffer.”

“Why would he do that?”

“It is a long tale,” Arvid said. “And more my fault than Regar’s, but in short—we quarreled, and as Regar has such distinction in the grange—which he of his modesty would not tell you—the Marshal chose to make an example of us to the others.”

“You quarreled … and I see no marks on you,” Invarr said. “Regar is—you will pardon me—a man more strongly built than you.”

Arvid smiled. “I am perhaps quicker. Of tongue as well as body, and therein lies my fault. It is a northern thing; I do not know customs here as I ought.”

“It is not all your fault,” Regar said. “Marshal knows I have a temper.”