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and around the backside of Montclaire’s hilly terrain, a much longer and rougher route to the village.
    “Whatever are you doing?” I said, clinging to the seat lest I be bounced out altogether. “Duplais will have apoplexy!”
    “No’m. He paid me to take you down by Jaugert’s and meet him at Vradeu’s Crossing.”
    “In the name of sense, why?”
    Remy shrugged and bawled insults at the mule, while the wind caught our plume of yellow dust and rolled it back over us.
    Goodman Jaugert owned a ramshackle stable just north of Vernase. Unfortunately, anyone desiring to avail themselves of his tender hands with horseflesh or the healthy grazing of his pasture had to travel five kilometres upstream to Vradeu’s Crossing and back again, or risk fording Pelicaine Rill, which was more kin to a rapids than a rill alongside his property. Only Montclaire’s food baskets kept his seven children from starving.
    Such a circuitous route made no sense at all.
     
     
    “ANI! ANI! ANI!” A FULL hour after leaving Montclaire, five dirty-faced urchins with near-white hair chased the donkey cart into Jaugert’s yard, swarming onto the step and the box before we had rolled to a stop. A gangly girl held back and dipped her knee, while at the same time snatching the collar of a freckle-nosed boy trying to climb my skirt. “Divine grace, damoselle.”
    “Divine grace, Kati. I’m so sorry I’ve brought nothing today.” I patted several warm white heads and told myself guilt was irrational, which did nothing at all to cure it.
    As Remy went off in search of Jaugert and the noisy swarm dispersed, I motioned Jaugert’s eldest up close. “Kati, you must get up to the house tomorrow early and tell Melusina I said to fill you as many baskets as she can. I’m called to the city, and there will be a new lord at Montclaire. A new family. Do you understand?”
    “Aye, damoselle.” Though her shy flush died away, her proud manners held.
    A child of eleven should not have to understand what I’d just told her. But her mother had died birthing the baby that clung to Kati’s hand, and her father was waiting for a charm singer to cleanse his house before considering a new wife to care for his brood. Unfortunately, the Camarilla, the council of master mages who supposedly protected Sabrians from magical charlatans, had the habit of branding charm singers on the forehead and hanging them up in the public markets until they confessed their false practices—or starved.
    I never knew who to despise the more: the lackwit grannies and hedge wizards who perpetuated these superstitions, the brutal mages who insisted people hold faith in—and pay for—only their particular variety of charms and spells, or the believers like Jaugert who allowed magic to impoverish their lives.
    “Damoselle Anne, divine grace be with thee this sweet even’,” said Jaugert from the barn door. “Guess me fair who I’ve got fer ye.” The wiry little man led out a bright-eyed little silver-bay mare, who nickered and bobbed her head in greeting.
    “Ladyslipper!” The happy surprise almost destroyed my hard-won composure. Holy saints, how I detested such sentimental weakness.
    “The laird what sent you here paid me sum enow to fetch one of yer own beasties from the hostelry in Tigano. Shall ye ride her down to the crossing, or would ye rather stick with Remy and his balkish ass?”
    So Duplais had intended me to ride all along. Why hadn’t he told me? I doubted he’d done it from generosity.
    Ladyslipper nuzzled my shoulder. I stroked her neck and apologized for my empty pockets. Though she looked a little thinner, her brown coat was glossy, her pale mane combed, and her hooves well trimmed.
    “I’ll ride,” I said, throwing my arms around the bony hostler—which was entirely unlike me. “Thank you, Jaugert. Such a kindness you’ve done me.” He could have used Duplais’ coin to hire me a bone-racking hack and pocketed the difference.
    Jaugert