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leaf.”
    Crow leaned to the right and dropped his voice to a whisper. “The care you take with that leaf, and the fact that Predator couldn’t see it there on your belt, is probably what has kept Resolute from using you as frostclaw bait. You want that leaf because the leaf wants you.”
    Then the white-haired man straightened up and asked a series of quick questions, forestalling any questions Will might have asked in return. “Now, the things that you’ve learned here, have they hurt you or helped you? Has the labor been that hard, or just different from what you’re used to? Is Resolute any harder on you than your former master?”
    Will answered each question in his mind the second it was asked, and he didn’t like the answers. The stuff he’d learned … Well, just knowing aboutmetholanth was a help; and the other stuff would make it easy to figure out what to steal from a herbalist. Getting water and wood, cleaning up; those chores weren’t as hard as ones he’d outgrown in Marcus’ family. And Marcus as a taskmaster, well…
    He snorted and decided to say nothing instead of letting Crow know he was right. That really annoyed Will about the two of them. When Resolute was right, he would hammer Will with that fact, over and over. But Crow, he’d just kind of slip it in like a stiletto. You wouldn’t feel it going in, he wouldn’t even twist it, but you’d know it was there when you moved against it.
    They rode on, the only sounds coming from the creak of leather, the clop of hooves, the jingling of tack, or the crunch of a horse chewing a bit. Around the curve and on down they went, riding in Resolute’s wake. Ahead of them, the Vorquelf had stopped his horse in the middle of the road. Beyond him, by a hundred yards or so, a bonfire burned on the road. The fire silhouetted three men facing the Vorquelf, and Will counted five others standing on the village side of the fire.
    The village itself sat astride the road. At the far end, another fire burned, cutting off the western route. Fences of stone or split rails guarded the village perimeter, but none of them came even close to being as strong as the walls of Yslin. Most of the buildings were low affairs made of sod, with thatched roofing—though the tallest, a two-story house, had a tile roof and light blazing out through sloppily hung shutters.
    Resolute let the other two pull parallel with him before they continued in toward the fire. Will quickly recalled one of Resolute’s road lessons and glanced down and away from the flames. The men behind it would have no night vision, so if the trio chose to ride around it, their pursuers would be blind. Only the three men facing them would be able to see what they were doing. One wore a sword, the other two carried pitchforks.
    The man with the sword raised a hand. “Hold there, strangers.”
    Crow rode up toward him slowly, stopping five yards back. “Strangers? I thought the men of Alcida greeted travelers as friends.”
    “Might in some other times. Who be ye, and what be you wanting in Stellin?”
    “We’re just travelers, my friend, my nephew, and I. We’re heading into the mountains.” Crow kept his voice even and light. “We were hoping to find lodging and fodder here.”
    The villager nodded toward Resolute. “He’s a Vorquelf?”
    Resolute threw back his cloak, exposing well-muscled arms covered in dark tattoos. “That should be obvious.”
    “Well, we’ll not be wanting your kind hereabouts.” The villager dropped a hand to the hilt of his sword. “You can push on and tell your mistress we’re not gonna be taken like Ingens was. We may not be big, but…”
    One of the other men stepped forward, squinting, then rested a hand on the speaker’s shoulder. “I remember this one. Come through about twenty year ago. Had a woman of his kind with him, and a young fella with them. That would be you?”
    Crow nodded. “We were bound into the mountains, as we are now. Has it really been twenty years?”
    “Close enough, right afore