“Cellars?” Gaborn said, sensing that this was the place. This was where the earth would lead him.

“In the summer, Binnesman lays up herbs for sale, and at the festival the King buys others. The cellar is full now, with many boxes. It’s up the hill, above the stables.”

Gaborn wondered. They wouldn’t have to go far into the city, and would merely be doubling back on their own trail, confusing the scent. “What about guards? Spices are valuable.”

Rowan shook her head. “The cook’s boy sleeps in a room above the cellars. But he—well, he’s been known to nap through a thunderstorm.”

Gaborn picked up the little bundle of forcibles, struggled to put them in the wide pocket of his robe. The cellars seemed to be the kind of place he needed. Someplace secretive, someplace where his scent would be covered.

“Let’s go,” he said, but he didn’t head directly back uphill. Instead, he picked up Rowan in his arms, carried her down to the river, and began creeping upstream in the shallows, hunching low, trying to cover his scent.

He headed upriver, hugging the reeds. Ahead of him, the waters grew fast. A millrace split off from the river, fed into the moat. The banks along the race had been built high, so that when Gaborn reached it, he was able to wade through the shallows with good cover, until he came right up under the thundering waterwheel, splashing and grinding. To his right was a stone wall, dividing the millrace from the main course of the river and its broad diversion dam. To his left was the mill house and a steep trail up to the castle.

Gaborn stopped. He could go forward no farther, needed now to climb the banks of the millrace, then take the trail up through the trees, to the castle wall again.

He turned, began climbing the bank of the millrace. The grass here was brown and dying, tall rye stubble.

Ahead he spotted a ferrin, a fierce little rat-faced man with a sharp stick to use as a spear, outside the mill house. He stood guard over a hole in the foundation, his back to Gaborn.

As Gaborn watched, a second ferrin scooted out from the hole, carrying a small cloth by its ends. They’d stolen flour from the floor of the mill, probably nothing more than sweepings. Yet it was dangerous business for a ferrin. Many had been killed for less.

Before standing in plain view and frightening the creatures, Gaborn searched downstream for signs of pursuit, his eyes just level with the tops of the grass.

Sure enough, six shadows moved at the edge of the water, under the trees. Men with swords and bows. One wore splint mail. So Raj Ahten’s scouts had found his trail again.