The inn he’d been told of was indeed downhill and to the right, handy to a grange where a Marshal and a yeoman-marshal stood in the open door talking to three men who looked like farmers. Good Loaf the inn was called, and the buxom woman who welcomed them into the common room was indeed named Pia. She wore a Girdish-blue shirt over a darker blue skirt. After establishing that Helfran had sent them, she grinned broadly and led the way upstairs to a large corner room with a window out to the yard behind. The rate seemed fair, the room clean. Arvid secured the room for a tenday. He was sure they would be in Fin Panir at least that long.

Downstairs, they ate lunch—slabs of cheese, that day’s bread—it explained the inn’s name—pickles, and a bowl of thin green soup that tasted surprisingly good. After that, Arvid took the boy with him back up the street to check on the horses. The Good Loaf had only four stalls, all filled, in its stable, but he planned to sell at least two of the horses anyway. Young Arvid no longer needed the beginner’s mount on which he’d perched so warily, and it should sell for a good price here. They would need the money if they must live in an inn; he had no trade he could ply legally.

Their tack still hung in the tack room. Arvid pulled out currycomb and brush and went into the small enclosure where their horses were. He and the boy groomed them and tossed in fresh hay. Arvid wondered what they would bring, and whether he could sell them himself or would be required to work through a horse dealer. That brought back the memory of his first time in Fin Panir, more than a year before, when he’d found his stolen horse in a market in the low end of the city.

“Will you keep them all?” the boy asked, rubbing the nose of his favorite, a bay with a narrow stripe down its face.

“I can’t,” Arvid said. “I don’t have enough money to feed them. I must sell at least two, possibly all.”

“Rowan would pull a cart, I’m certain,” the boy said, as the horse butted his chest.

“If we had a cart,” Arvid said. “Lad, I know you like that horse, but…” He thought of his favorite mount, stolen from him twice, recovered only once, and somewhere in Aarenis now with another owner who might not even know the horse had been stolen. He’d looked, in the Valdaire horse markets, on the off chance but hadn’t found him.

“Maybe the Marshal-General needs horses,” the boy said. “Then I could come pet him.”

“You’re back.” It was Helfran, this time with a truss of hay. He tossed it into the enclosure. “Find the Loaf all right?”