in Darine’s going to be more interested in staying alive than he’ll
be in killing us.’
And so it was that in the late fall of 4068 we packed some ‘sensible’
clothes, closed up the manor house, and went on up to the port city
lying on the Gulf of Cherek, posing as relocating tradesmen. We took
lodgings in a comfortable inn far enough back from the waterfront to
avoid the characteristic odor of the harbor, and Davon and Alten
went exploring almost before we were unpacked. I knew them well
enough to know that it’d be useless to forbid their exploration, but
I did manage to get them to wear nondescript clothing.
‘It’s awfully cramped, isn’t it?’ Alten observed when they
returned. ‘Are all these northern towns so jammed together?’
‘No cows,’ I explained.
‘I didn’t follow that, Aunt Pol,’ he confessed.
‘Muros has wide streets because Algars drive herds of cattle
through town from time to time. The houses in northern towns are
built next to each other in order to save money. When you build
your house between two others, the side walls are already in
place-All you have to build is the front and back – and a roof, of course.’
‘Are you teasing me, Aunt Pol?’ he accused.
‘Would I do that, Alten?’
Davon was quite enthusiastic about having a house built for us,
but I advised against it. ‘We’re fugitives on the run, dear,’ I reminded
him. ‘Any time there’s a danger of discovery, we have to take flight.
When you build a house, you get attached to it, and that attachment
can be fatal. When the time comes to run, you don’t want anything
holding you back. This inn will serve until we can find a suitable
house that’s already standing.’
‘I’ll nose around a bit, Aunt Pol. I’ll be out and about anyway.’
‘Oh?’
‘I need to find something to do.’
‘Another shoe factory?’
‘I’m not sure. I suppose I can fall back on that if I have to, but it
might not be a bad idea for me to try something new. That inquisitive
Murgo back in Muros probably found out about the family business
and passed the information on to Ctuchik.’
‘I’m sure he did.’
‘We’d probably better stay away from tanneries and shoe shops
then. Wouldn’t that be the first place a Murgo would look?’
‘Almost certainly. You’ve learned your lessons very well, Davon.’
‘You’ve spent enough time pounding them into us, Aunt Pol. We
can live as other people do – up to a point. About the only difference
is that we have to keep our eyes and ears open and not go out of
our way to attract attention.’
‘That sums it up fairly well, yes.’
‘I probably shouldn’t say this, but father wasn’t really very good
at that. Sometimes he seemed to forget that we didn’t want to be
noticed.’ He held up his right hand and looked at the pale splotch
on his palm. ‘Should I hide this birthmark, Aunt Pol?’ he asked.
‘Does Ctuchik know about it?’
‘I’m not certain. He might.’
‘I’ll hide it then. I’m a tanner, so I know all about dyes that change
the color of skins.’ He stood up. ‘I think Alten and I’ll take another
turn around town. I’m getting fidgety.’
‘Oh?,
‘I need something to keep me busy, Aunt Pol. I haven’t made
any money for years now, so I’d better get at it before I forget
how.
‘You sound like a Sendar, Davon.’
‘I am a Sendar, Aunt Pol. Isn’t that the idea?’
I think that of all the heirs to Iron-grip’s throne, Davon had the
clearest idea of just exactly what we were doing.
He and his son Alten wandered around Darine together for a
week or so, but then Alten caught cold, and I made him stay home.
Damon went out alone several times, and then one snowy day he
came back to the inn with a small bundle under his arm. Alnana,
Alten, and I were sitting by the fire when he came in, his cheeks
ruddy from the cold. ‘What do you think of this?’ he asked us,
unwrapping the fur he was carrying.
‘Oh, Davon, it’s lovely!’ Alnana exclaimed, touching the jet-black
fur. ‘It’s so soft! No cow ever had fur like that. What is it?’
‘It’s sable, dear,’ Davon replied. ‘It comes from a large weasel
that’s common in the mountains of Car og Nadrak. I know quite a
bit about animal skins, but I’ve never seen anything like this.’
‘It was highly prized by the nobility in northern Arendia quite a
long time ago,’ I told him.
‘It’d take a lot of these to make a coat,’ he said.
‘Sable coats were very rare, Davon. They were terribly expensive.
Most ladies had one or two coats with sable collars and cuffs, though.
Sable was more in the nature of an accessory rather than a garment
itself.’
‘I wonder if that custom might be revived,’ he mused. ‘I know
where I can get my hands on these, but I’d need a market.’ He
handed the fur to his son. ‘You’ve worked with leather, Alten,’ he
said. ‘Would this be very hard to sew?’
Alten, who was about twenty-seven by then, pursed his lips,
turning the pelt this way and that. ‘It’s thinner than cow-hide,’ he noted,
‘so it’s not as strong, and I don’t think we’d want to make shoes
out of it. It’d take a very fine seam, though.’
I gave him a speculative look. Alten was a handsome young
fellow, but the years of isolation in the manor house had made him
bashful, and I thought I saw a way to get him past that. ‘I know a
bit about dressmaking,’ I told them. ‘Alnana and I can come up
with some designs, and Alten can sew them up. There are rich
merchants here in Darine, and rich men’s wives love to spend money
and show off. A furrier’s shop in the better part of town might be
profitable.’ It was an innocuous enough proposal, but its real
purpose was to put Alten in a situation where he’d be around women
all day long every day. His bashfulness would soon go away, and
then I could get him married off. Bachelorhood was not an option
in this particular family.
Davon found us a house near the south gate of Darine. it was an
old house, but it was still solid, and at least the roof didn’t leak. We
moved there from the inn, and the task of finding workmen to
repair it fell to me, since Davon and Alten were concentrating their
attention on our business venture. Before we could open a fur-shop,
however, we were going to have to create a demand, so Alnana and
I drifted around Darine that winter wearing coats with luxurious
collars and cuffs, glorious turban-like fur hats, and rich-looking fur
muffs to keep our little hands warm. The fur-cuffed leather boots
might have been a little excessive, but we were walking
advertisements, after all.
Alten took a few orders that winter, and there appeared to be
sufficient demand for us to open a shop. We were swamped with
customers almost immediately, and competitors began to spring up.
I had a few qualms when Davon brought a lean, evil-looking, and
half-drunk Nadrak to our shop the following spring. The Nadrak’s
name was Kablek. He was loud and boisterous, and he didn’t smell
any too nice. ‘All right, Davon,’ he was saying as the two of them
entered the shop, ‘show me what you were talking about. I still say
that it’s the fur that matters, not the hide it grows out of.’
‘The fur isn’t worth much if it falls out, Kablek,’Davon explained
patiently. ‘Your trappers don’t take proper care of the pelts back
there in the mountains. A green, half-rotten hide isn’t worth bringing
out of the woods.’
‘An honest trapper doesn’t have time to fool around with the
pelts he takes.’
‘What’s he doing in his spare time? Getting drunk? It’s up to you,
Kablek, but you’ll get a better price for your pelts if your trappers
stay sober long enough to scrape the hides and soak them in tannin
before they rot.’
‘A trapper doesn’t have room on his pack-horse for a pot that
big,’ Kablek scoffed.
‘He’s always got room for two kegs of beer, doesn’t he?’
‘Those are just staples, Davon – part of his food supply.’
‘Tell him to drink water.’
‘That’s against our religion, I think.’
Davon shrugged. ‘Suit yourself, Kablek. Sooner or later I’ll find
some Nadrak fur-trader who can see beyond the rim of his beer
tankard. Whichever one of you figures it all out first is going to get
My exclusive business.’
‘All right, show me these pelts you don’t like.’
‘Back here,’ Davon said, leading the weaving Nadrak back into
the work-room. They were back there for about a half-hour, and
Alnana, Alten, and I could hear Kablek quite clearly. His language