The market square of Ban Glean was loud and crowded and smelling of a dozen different kinds of poverty. Fishmongers bellowed over tubs of silver-grey pike, a ratcatcher swung a string of limp corpses from his belt like a bizarre trophy, and a gaggle of children ran squealing between the stalls, one of them clutching a stolen apple and pursued by an apple-seller with a ladle. Somewhere near the well a street preacher was warning anyone who'd listen about the wages of sin, and a dwarf at a nearby stall was haggling over a bolt of cloth.
Seb and Ciri threaded through it side by side, cloaks drawn close against the damp. Their swords rode across their backs, wrapped in oiled canvas and knotted with slip-cords, so that a single tug would free either blade but no passing glance would tell what they carried.
"It smells like a fish got into a fight with a privy," Ciri muttered.
"That's Kaedwen in winter."
"That's Kaedwen, in general."
"Sharp tongue today."
"It's the cold and the ale. And the fact that I can't draw my sword in front of three hundred people."
"Nobody's asking you to draw it."
The notice board stood at the far end of the square, in the shadow of the town's barracks, a weathered slab of oak the size of a barn door, bristling with nails and layered so thickly with parchment that the older notices had begun to fuse into a single yellowed crust. A cluster of people had gathered before it: a farmer with his hat in his hands, an old woman reading aloud to two squinting neighbors, a trio of mercenaries arguing over a bounty, and a lanky young guard in a too-large helmet pretending very hard not to be listening to any of them.
Seb and Ciri slid in at the edge of the crowd. The old woman glanced at Seb's face, then at the shape of the hilt behind his shoulder, and carefully shifted her bundle of firewood to the other side of her body. Nobody said anything.
"Let's see what we've got," Ciri said.
The notices were mostly what Seb had expected. Drowners had infested the millpond east of town, and the miller was offering eighty marks and free flour for month, an offer that had clearly been tacked up weeks ago and gone unclaimed. A ghoul had been digging in the old graveyard behind the chapel. Sixty marks, the priest's note read, in cramped, embarrassed handwriting, and a blessing, if wanted. Someone's prize bull had gone missing, with a hastily scrawled addendum below: if monster, tell me. If thief, still tell me.
Higher up, pinned at an angle as though everyone had been too nervous to hang it straight, hung a larger, official-looking notice with a wax seal.
"'Wyvern,'" Ciri read aloud. "'Nesting in the eastern crags. Four hundred marks for the beast's head, delivered to the garrison.'" She leaned in. "There's a note at the bottom, in a different hand. 'Third posting. No takers, maybe we should take this one.'"
"Nobody wants to touch it, it seems rather strange though." Seb said.
"Strange or not, it is still four hundred marks." Ciri said again.
One of the mercenaries behind them barked a laugh at his own joke. The young guard in the oversized helmet cleared his throat and looked studiously at the sky.
Ciri's eyes drifted across the board, past the bull and the ghoul and a pinned-up poster for a traveling troupe of acrobats, and then stopped. She went very still.
"Seb."
He followed her gaze. Near the bottom edge, half-hidden beneath a curling flap of the acrobats' poster, was a small, grubby square of parchment, its corners already softening from the damp. The handwriting was uneven, the letters pressed hard into the page, as though whoever wrote it had been shaking.
'MISSING. Halvar, son of Oskar the woodcutter, aged fourteen. Dark hair, a limp in the left leg from a fall as a child. Last seen entering the eastern woods at dawn, six weeks past. Reward: twenty marks for his return, living or otherwise.'
Below it, in an entirely different hand, crisp and clerical and stamped with the seal of the town reeve, was a second note.
'Any party wishing to search for the boy must first apply to Reeve Aldous Marn at the town hall. The eastern woods are closed to unlicensed persons by order of the garrison. Violators will be fined.'
Ciri read it twice and then stepped back, frowning. "Twenty marks."
"Yes."
"This must be the one that old man told us about."
"That's what it says."
"A drowner nest is eighty. A bull is probably more than that." She turned to him, and the anger in her face was clear. "Twenty marks, Seb. That isn't a reward, it's an insult. It's what you'd pay someone to look for a pet, and I'd pay more for that actually."
"I know."
"And look at this." She jabbed a finger at the reeve's note. "'The woods are closed.' Closed by whom? For what? If a child went missing in the woods, you'd want every sword you could get in those woods. Why would you need permission?"
"That's the question, isn't it?" Seb murmured. He tilted his head, studying the two notices side by side, the shaking handwriting beneath, the polished seal above. "That guard at the gate said there was plenty of work for anyone who could swing a sword. He didn't mention this."
"He was under your Axii."
"He was under a gentle Axii. He'd have mentioned it if he thought of it. So either he didn't think of it, or he didn't know, or someone told him not to say."
"Which one do you think?"
"I think," Seb said slowly, "that we're going to ask a lot of questions."
Ciri reached out and plucked the little notice free of its nail, folding it carefully and tucking it inside her jacket. A nearby mercenary shot her a disapproving look. She met it with a flat stare until he turned away.
"We're taking it," she said.
"We are."
"Even though it pays almost nothing."
"We were always going to take it. You decided the moment you read it."
"I did not."
"You went very quiet. You only do that when your mind's made up."
She glared at him, but there was no heat in it, only a soft look. "Fine. I did."
They moved away from the board, drifting along the edge of the square to buy bread from a stall and let the crowd close behind them. Seb accepted a warm loaf from a flustered baker's boy, paid with a Temerian crown and refused the change, and tore the bread in half, handing Ciri the bigger piece. She bit into it and chewed thoughtfully, watching the people drift past.
"We're being followed by the way," Seb said quietly.
Ciri didn't turn her head. Her chewing didn't even change its rhythm. "How many?"
"Three. They picked us up the moment we left the tavern. One's behind the fruit stall on our left, with a green hood and a crossbow case slung over his shoulder. Another's by the well, scarred brow, pretending to look at a pot of boiled sausages. The third's the one near the preacher. Big man, bald, sword on his hip. He's trying very hard to look bored."
"Are they good?"
"Not very. They're keeping their distance, which is smart, but they've changed positions four times in the last ten minutes and haven't coordinated once. And the one with the crossbow has been checking the string every few minutes. He's nervous."
"Whose are they?"
"I don't know yet."
"Philippa's?"
"Wouldn't make sense, this must be someone who recognized me in the tavern after all, and sees an opportunity. Or someone who's heard a witcher and a girl are asking about work." He shrugged slightly. "There are too many options. I'd rather ask than guess."
Ciri swallowed her bread. "So what's the plan?"
"We lead them somewhere quiet. Somewhere we can talk without a crowd watching, and without a guardsman wandering by to ask what we're doing. Then we find out exactly what they want."
"Talk."
"Talk."
"With the blades right?"
"Only if the talking goes badly."
She smiled, an entirely unfriendly smile that Seb had last seen on her during a very bad night in Kaer Morhen. "And if it goes well?"
"Then we go back to our contract."
"I'm not about to let some third-rate cutpurses get in the way of my first contract," Ciri said. She tore off another piece of bread with ferocity. "Twenty marks or not."
"I'd expect nothing less."
"Where do we take them?"
Seb let his eyes drift across the skyline of the town, past the rooftops, the smoke, the leaning buildings pressed shoulder to shoulder along the narrow streets. "There's a tannery by the river," he said. "I saw it on the way in. Abandoned, from the look of it, and it's got only one door on the street side. The smell will keep most people away."
"A tannery."
"It's the perfect place for a quiet conversation."
"Alright." Ciri brushed the crumbs from her fingers and straightened her cloak. "Lead the way, Seb. Slowly. Let's give them a nice, long walk."
"After you."
They drifted back into the stream of the market, unhurried, two travelers with nothing in the world to be afraid of, past the fishmongers and the ratcatcher, past the preacher shouting about fire and mercy, past the baker's boy waving them off with another loaf they hadn't asked for. And a careful distance behind them, one by one, three men peeled off from the crowd and began to follow.
/-\
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