—from One Hundred Considerations
out of the Qar’s Book of Regret

EVEN WITH HER INJURIES, Briony knew she should put as much distance as she could between herself and Landers Port, but instead she stayed close to the walls of the city in the two days after the attack, sheltering where she could and eavesdropping on the conversations of other travelers, trying to find out for certain what had happened to Shaso. The destructive fire that had taken the life of one of the city’s wealthiest merchants was on everyone’s lips, of course, and all seemed to agree that except for the one lone manservant she’d seen, only the women of Dan-Mozan’s house had survived the night’s terrible events.

Her last unlikely hopes finally dashed, Briony realized that if the baron’s guards knew that more than one fugitive had taken refuge in the Dan-Mozan hadar, they would be looking for her. Young man’s clothing was an indifferent disguise, especially when it was a young Tuani man’s clothing and she no longer had the tools to make herself look like someone of that race. She daubed her face and hair with dirt, trying to make herself less noticeable, but she knew her disguise would not survive real scrutiny for more than a few moments. She had to leave Landers Port, that was all: if she was caught mooning around the town gates Shaso would have died for nothing—a bitter thought, but the only one that moved her when her own desires were muted by grief and rage. She missed the old man fiercely. Had Effir’s nephew Talibo stood before her again, she would gladly have killed the little traitor a second time.

Foolishly thinking she had already lost everything, Briony was learning daily that the gods could always take more from you if they wished.

She quickly discovered that she was not suited for life as an outlaw—in fact, all the tales of romantic banditry she had ever heard now began to seem like the cruelest lies imaginable. It was impossible to live out of doors in even as mild a winter as this, even with the gods-sent gift of the woolen cloak she had taken from the hadar when she ran; Briony spent a large part of each day’s travel just searching for unguarded barns or storehouses where she could sleep without freezing. Even so, after only a few nights she found herself with a wracking cough.

The cough and her sore mouth (still tender from where Talibo had struck her) made it difficult to eat, but she soaked bread in the little pot of wine so it would soften, then chewed very slowly and carefully so as not to pain her loosened teeth and split lips any more than necessary. Even so, her small cache of food was gone in a couple of days.

The only thing that saved her at first was the number of small towns and villages dotting the hillsides along the coast road west of Landers Port. She moved from one to the next, taking shelter where she could and finding an occasional scrap of untended food. She dared not attract attention when her enemies were doubtless searching for her, so she could not beg for help in public places. Despite her hunger, though, Briony did her best to avoid real theft—not for moral reasons so much as practical ones: what good to have escaped an attempt on her life only to be caught and imprisoned in some goatyard village in the middle of nowhere?