The village was farther than he remembered, or he was even weaker than he knew. It was a difficult ride, even on a level road on a pleasant day, with the bright slash of the river to the south. He was genuinely afraid of outlaws here. Too many stories told. He didn’t have much, but he had a horse, and he was alone. An easy target for brigands, or a party of the Jacquards themselves—who were known to be hereabouts, because wealthy people were. They could kill him for his horse.

He found proof of them when he finally reached the village.

It shaped a plan or, better put, a semblance of a thought in a tired mind. Good or bad thinking, he didn’t know. But he’d seen the discreet marker—two vertical lines scratched and a diagonal crossing them, higher on the right—on a tree near the first houses here. Then on another, other side of the road. If the first had been missed, he thought.

And then a third, beside the door of the village inn, which was called The Harvest. It wasn’t easy to see: high up, mostly hidden by an oak tree branch in the courtyard. But he’d been looking for it by then. People who saw this would be looking, he thought. He paused, checking for a memory, to see if he still had it. He thought he did. If the words hadn’t changed. He handed the horse to a young stable hand with orders to feed and water it. Offered a coin.

It occurred to him that the young man was probably his own age. He felt old. Wondered if he always would now. If a passage in your life, an interlude, could make a forever demarcation. Before this, I was still young. Now…

He said it to himself again: They have not broken me. He entered The Harvest.

A village inn by the main road through the Livraise Valley would be for travellers as much as for people living around here, he knew. But the markings he’d seen identified it as serving a third group. He remembered being a student, encountering that man who knew (claimed to know) Jacquard signs and passwords. Thierry Villar had thought this was the most interesting thing imaginable. He’d had a romantic image of outlaws in the countryside (even if he hated the countryside).

He’d been young, ignorant. Only excuse, really. But he’d made a point of memorizing the things the man had told him in a tavern in exchange for many cups of wine through a long night.

The person behind the counter in The Harvest was not your usual innkeeper. Very tall, big-chested, huge hands. A scar on one cheek, and a cold glance where a welcoming one might have been expected for someone entering to spend money.