They reached the city in the morning.
Four days of road and there it was. The walls were old stone, the kind that had been standing long enough to stop looking built and start looking like it had always been there. The gate was open and already moving — merchants with carts, farmers with loads, travelers coming and going in both directions like the city was breathing them in and out.
Zein slowed as they got close. Not because he was nervous. Just because it was a lot after four days of nothing.
Hinro had pulled the hood forward before the walls were even properly in sight. Head down. Hands in his sleeves. He moved beside Zein without a word and Zein didn't say anything either and they joined the line at the gate and waited.
It moved steadily. A guard at the front working through people with the efficiency of someone who had done this so many times it required nothing from him anymore. Wave through, wave through, stop, question, wave through.
They reached the front.
The guard looked at Zein. Then at Hinro — just a glance, the hood and the lowered head apparently enough — then back to Zein.
"Two Drel each," he said. "Four total."
Zein looked at him.
The guard waited.
"I don't have it," Zein said.
The guard's expression didn't change. Not annoyed. Not sympathetic. Just the face of a man who had heard this before and had a system for it.
He pointed to the left of the gate. "Merchants over there always need hands in the morning. Do a job, get paid, come back." He was already looking past Zein at the next person in line. "Move aside."
Zein stood there for a half second.
A demon prince. Son of the Demon King. Move aside.
He moved aside.
Hinro came with him without being asked.
---
The merchants were easy to spot — three carts sitting off to the left, their owners talking amongst themselves about something. A fourth man stood apart from the others staring at a cart piled high with cloth bolts and wooden crates like the cart had personally offended him.
Zein walked up to him. "You need help."
The man looked him over. Young, worn clothes, moving slightly carefully — Zein's ribs were still showing in how he carried himself whether he wanted them to or not. Then the man looked at Hinro. Hooded. Standing back. Not offering anything.
"Just you?" the man said.
"Just me," Zein said.
"Six Drel. Warehouse inside the east quarter. Heavy work, few trips."
"Eight," Zein said.
The man looked at him.
"Two people need to get through that gate," Zein said simply.
The man glanced at Hinro again. Hinro looked at the ground. The man looked back at Zein and did whatever calculation he was doing and apparently came out the other side of it quickly enough.
"Eight," he said. "Let's go."
---
Heavy work was right.
The cloth bolts were dense and the crates were denser and the warehouse was far enough inside the city that Zein's ribs had opinions about every trip. He ignored them. Four trips back and forth, the city opening up around him as he walked — streets filling with morning noise, vendors setting out their things, the smell of bread from somewhere close enough to be cruel.
He kept his head down and worked and didn't think about what this would have looked like to anyone who knew who he was six months ago.
When the cart was empty the merchant counted eight Drel into his palm without ceremony.
Zein looked at the coins. Small. Dull copper. Heavier than they looked.
"Good," the merchant said, already turning away.
Zein walked back to the gate where Hinro was exactly where he'd left him — against the wall, hood forward, watching the crowd without looking like he was watching anything.
Zein held out four coins without explaining.
Hinro looked at them. Then at him.
"Gate," Zein said.
Hinro took them.
---
The guard didn't even look up properly the second time.
Zein put four Drel on the ledge. The guard swept them off. "Move through."
Hinro kept his head down as they passed and then they were inside and the gate was behind them and Caldris spread out in every direction loud and alive and not remotely interested in the two of them standing just inside the entrance not knowing where to go.
Zein stood still for a moment and just looked at it. Streets going off in every direction. Buildings packed close, two and three stories high, laundry strung between windows. A market somewhere from the sound of it. People moving with the particular confidence of people who knew exactly where they were and where they were going.
Hinro's head came up slightly now that they were in the crowd. His nose moved. Taking it all in the way he took everything in — sorting, filing, reading the city through senses Zein didn't have.
"Busy," Zein said.
"Mm," Hinro said.
They stood there.
"We need somewhere to sleep," Zein said. Four Drel left. He had no real idea what that was worth here.
Hinro looked down a side street to their left. Narrow, quieter than the main road. A hanging sign above a door further down.
He started walking toward it.
Zein followed.
---
The inn was what it was.
Low ceilinged. Dim. Old wood smell with something cooking in the back that could have been good or bad — hard to tell from the doorway. A handful of tables in the front room, most of them empty this early. A woman behind the counter who looked up when they came in with the expression of someone who had seen every kind of traveler and stopped finding any of them interesting.
Her eyes went to Hinro's hood. Stayed there a moment.
Came back to Zein.
"Room," Zein said.
"How many nights."
"One. Maybe more."
"Three Drel," she said. "Shared room upstairs. Two beds. Privy's out the back. Breakfast is extra."
Zein put three Drel on the counter.
She took them, set a key down, went back to what she was doing. That was apparently the whole transaction.
Zein took the key and they went upstairs.
---
The room leaned slightly. Not enough to matter, just enough to notice when you stood still. Two narrow beds, a small window looking onto the alley below, a table with nothing on it. The blankets were thin. The floor had history.
Zein sat on the nearest bed and his ribs said something he chose not to acknowledge out loud. He sat there and looked at the window and the grey morning light coming through it.
Hinro sat on the other bed. Pushed the hood back. His ears came out and he rolled his shoulders once and put his elbows on his knees and looked at the floor.
Neither of them said anything for a while.
Four days of road. Slavers and blood in the dust and hiding in trees and a dream that woke Hinro up with his hand on a blade and a trader who saw through the hood and a gate guard with no patience and eight copper coins earned with someone else's heavy crates and now this. A room with a leaning floor and one Drel left between them.
But a door that locked.
Zein turned the key over in his fingers. Put it on the table.
"We need more coin," he said. Not urgently. Just as a fact.
"Yes," Hinro said.
"Tomorrow."
Hinro nodded once.
Outside the window Caldris kept going the way cities do — loud, indifferent, full of people who had their own problems and no awareness of anyone else's. Zein lay back on the bed and stared at the ceiling which had a crack in it running from one corner almost to the middle and he looked at that crack for a while and then he stopped looking at anything.
He hadn't slept somewhere with a locked door in a long time.
It took him longer than he expected to actually feel it.
But eventually he did.
Quick note on currency since it came up this chapter. There are three coins in circulation. Drel — copper, the everyday coin. Bread, a cheap meal, a bed for the night. Veth — silver, for bigger transactions, traders, decent equipment. Aurek — gold, rare, most people never hold one in their life. That's it. Simple system. Cruel when you don't have any of it. — STPHN