“Geddes says I will get stronger fast with good food. And I met a boy named Brok; he has red hair, and his father is a farrier. I told him I had a horse—well, that you did—and he said if it needed shoes to come to his father. And a girl named Piri, she’s the fastest runner of all of us.” He gulped down a swallow of water. “How was your morning?”

“Interesting,” Arvid said. “But I’m glad not to be doing scribe’s work all afternoon. Let’s explore the city, shall we? I have drill tonight, and I need to walk the kinks out of my back and legs.”

That walk through the streets of Fin Panir—down to the river and the gate to the River Road through which he’d ridden more than a year ago—made clear to him how he’d changed. Fin Panir was smaller than Valdaire or Vérella and tidier than both. Most people wore something blue—shirts, aprons, head scarves, belts—but other colors also. The money changers in their Guildhouse, where Arvid went to change his remaining Aarenisian coins to Finthan, wore black gowns and stiff white collars, as they did everywhere, with only a blue band around one sleeve, but most merchants in the shops he explored wore shirt and trousers like everyone else.

Those things were the same as before, but the looks people gave to a man in similar clothes, with a lad at his side, were very different from the looks he’d had when walking through the city alone, wearing thieves’ black; they saw no danger in him now. Once that would have bothered him; he’d liked being seen as mysterious and dangerous. Now he enjoyed the friendly smiles, the nods, the acceptance.

It’s not so bad to have friends.

He managed not to jerk. This was not a crisis … was it? No answer. In the next small market, fruit lay displayed in baskets: summer apples, cherries, plums, the late summer berries. Young Arvid’s eyes rounded at the sight. Arvid bought a handbasket of cherries for them; young Arvid ate four to Arvid’s one. Then it was time to climb back up the hill to their inn and supper.

Drill here, so near the training hall for the Knights of Gird and paladins, was more advanced than in Fossnir. As he’d been warned, the grange was almost full—and this was only part of the grange membership. They began with a recitation of the Ten Fingers—even Marshal Porfur had done that once a tenday—but then Marshal Cedlin began asking one or another to give an example of that rule in real life. After that, drill with Yeoman-Marshal Vallan began.