They have their own customs, that’s all, and the customs of the country aren’t your concern. This man’s crazy horse-count is your concern.

“How many other running horses, would you say?” he asked Renfrew. “In all?”

Renfrew gazed at him shrewdly. “An honest answer’ll not come back to haunt me, will it, sonny? I’m an Affiliation man—so I am, Affiliation to the core, they’ll carve Excalibur on my gravehead, like as not—but I’d not see Hambry and Mejis stripped of all its treasure.”

“That won’t happen, sai. How could we force you to give up what you don’t want to in any case? Such forces as we have are all committed in the north and west, against the Good Man.”

Renfrew considered this, then nodded.

“And may I not be Will to you?”

Renfrew brightened, nodded, and offered his hand a second time. He grinned broadly when Roland this time shook it in both of his, the over-and-under grip preferred by drovers and cowboys.

“These’re bad times we live in, Will, and they’ve bred bad manners. I’d guess there are probably another hundred and fifty head of horse in and about Mejis. Good ones is what I mean.”

“Big-hat stock.”

Renfrew nodded, clapped Roland on the back, ingested a goodly quaff of ale. “Big-hats, aye.”

From the top of their table there came a burst of laughter. Jonas had apparently said something funny. Susan laughed without reservation, her head tilted back and her hands clasped before the sapphire pendant. Cordelia, who sat with the girl on her left and Jonas on her right, was also laughing. Thorin was absolutely convulsed, rocking back and forth in his chair, wiping his eyes with a napkin.

“Yon’s a lovely girl,” Renfrew said. He spoke almost reverently. Roland could not quite swear that a small sound—a womanly hmmpf, perhaps—had come from his other side. He glanced in that direction and saw sai Thorin still sporting with her soup. He looked back toward the head of the table.

“Is the Mayor her uncle, or perhaps her cousin?” Roland asked.

What happened next had a heightened clarity in his memory, as if someone had turned up all the colors and sounds of the world. The velvet swags behind Susan suddenly seemed a brighter red; the caw of laughter which came from Coral Thorin was the sound of a breaking branch. It was surely loud enough to make everyone in the vicinity stop their conversations and look at her, Roland thought... except only Renfrew and the two ranchers across the table did.

“Her uncle!” It was her first conversation of the evening. “Her uncle, that’s good. Eh, Rennie?”

Renfrew said nothing, only pushed his ale-cup away and finally began to eat his soup.

“I’m surprised at ye, young man, so I am. Ye may be from the In-World, but oh goodness, whoever tended to your education of the real world—the one outside of books ’n maps—stopped a mite short, I’d say. She’s his—” And then a word so thick with dialect that Roland had no idea what it was. Seefin, it sounded, or perhaps sheevin.