mathematics.
Kalan looked at Damin expectantly. Although neither the eldest nor the biggest of the Krakandar children, he was their natural leader and the others would usually go along with whatever he suggested.
Except Starros. He was probably the only one among them who didn’t follow blindly wherever Damin led.
“We could go fishing,” the young prince suggested after a moment.
“Only if Uncle Mahkas doesn’t find out,” Starros warned. “He told Rodja we weren’t to go near the fens without an escort.”
“We’ll take Travin,” Kalan declared. “Then Uncle Mahkas can’t say we didn’t have an escort.”
That seemed to satisfy even Starros. The others looked at each other and nodded their agreement. Kalan jumped down off the fence with a satisfied sigh. It’s a perfect day. I’m going fishing in the fens with the boys and Travin is coming along as my escort .
Life didn’t get much better than this.
Chapter 4
In the poorer sections of Talabar, particularly among the hovels belonging to the free labourers of the city, life had plenty of room for improvement. For Rory, son of Drendik, son of Warak, life could take a turn for the better any time it was ready, as far as he was concerned.
Now would be good.
Yesterday would have been better.
Rory’s troubles all started when he began to suffer unbearable headaches, which at first both his father and grandfather had put down to hunger. It wasn’t an unreasonable assumption. Things had been bleak recently, work harder and harder to come by. It had something to do with the completion of a major undertaking far from Talabar, Rory knew, somewhere in the Sunrise Mountains. According to Grandpa Warak, once the construction of the Widowmaker Pass was finally completed, all the workers formerly employed on the project had suddenly flooded the market. There was a glut of able-bodied slaves available for purchase and they were going cheap. Ship owners across Fardohnya were snapping up bargains, crewing their ships—in some cases almost entirely—with slave labour. That meant free sailors like his father and uncles couldn’t find work unless they were willing to sign on as bondsmen, which was just a polite way of signing yourself into slavery.
Everyone went hungry as Rory’s father and uncles tried to scrape up enough to put food on the table for their large clan, and the headaches got worse by the day. It wasn’t unreasonable, he knew, to think the two events were connected. He even stopped complaining about them after a while. The look of despair his father wore most of the time made his own pain seem insignificant.
And then Rory’s cousin, Patria, came home one morning, after staying out all night, with enough money to feed the family for a week.
Older than Rory by three years, Patria was fifteen and Uncle Gazil’s only daughter, a pale, fair-haired, waiflike girl with a shy demeanour that hid a will of iron. She claimed the money came from working in one of the taverns along Restinghouse Street, washing tankards and cleaning up after the drunks. Rory didn’t understand why all the grown-ups had seemed so upset. To Rory and his six younger siblings, any food on the table was welcome—they weren’t too concerned where it came from. But his father, his uncles and even Grandpa Warak all wore dark looks for days afterwards and Patria cried a lot.
They were no longer going hungry, so Rory couldn’t understand why everyone was so upset.
Thinking it would blow over after a while, Rory was distressed to discover the situation getting worse as time went on. The whole house grew more and more tense, to the point where even the youngest children could feel something was amiss. Nobody said anything, though. They just stormed around the house and ate the food they could suddenly afford and never mentioned Patria’s unexpected wealth or what she was doing when she left the house each evening in her one good dress and why she didn’t come
Kalan looked at Damin expectantly. Although neither the eldest nor the biggest of the Krakandar children, he was their natural leader and the others would usually go along with whatever he suggested.
Except Starros. He was probably the only one among them who didn’t follow blindly wherever Damin led.
“We could go fishing,” the young prince suggested after a moment.
“Only if Uncle Mahkas doesn’t find out,” Starros warned. “He told Rodja we weren’t to go near the fens without an escort.”
“We’ll take Travin,” Kalan declared. “Then Uncle Mahkas can’t say we didn’t have an escort.”
That seemed to satisfy even Starros. The others looked at each other and nodded their agreement. Kalan jumped down off the fence with a satisfied sigh. It’s a perfect day. I’m going fishing in the fens with the boys and Travin is coming along as my escort .
Life didn’t get much better than this.
Chapter 4
In the poorer sections of Talabar, particularly among the hovels belonging to the free labourers of the city, life had plenty of room for improvement. For Rory, son of Drendik, son of Warak, life could take a turn for the better any time it was ready, as far as he was concerned.
Now would be good.
Yesterday would have been better.
Rory’s troubles all started when he began to suffer unbearable headaches, which at first both his father and grandfather had put down to hunger. It wasn’t an unreasonable assumption. Things had been bleak recently, work harder and harder to come by. It had something to do with the completion of a major undertaking far from Talabar, Rory knew, somewhere in the Sunrise Mountains. According to Grandpa Warak, once the construction of the Widowmaker Pass was finally completed, all the workers formerly employed on the project had suddenly flooded the market. There was a glut of able-bodied slaves available for purchase and they were going cheap. Ship owners across Fardohnya were snapping up bargains, crewing their ships—in some cases almost entirely—with slave labour. That meant free sailors like his father and uncles couldn’t find work unless they were willing to sign on as bondsmen, which was just a polite way of signing yourself into slavery.
Everyone went hungry as Rory’s father and uncles tried to scrape up enough to put food on the table for their large clan, and the headaches got worse by the day. It wasn’t unreasonable, he knew, to think the two events were connected. He even stopped complaining about them after a while. The look of despair his father wore most of the time made his own pain seem insignificant.
And then Rory’s cousin, Patria, came home one morning, after staying out all night, with enough money to feed the family for a week.
Older than Rory by three years, Patria was fifteen and Uncle Gazil’s only daughter, a pale, fair-haired, waiflike girl with a shy demeanour that hid a will of iron. She claimed the money came from working in one of the taverns along Restinghouse Street, washing tankards and cleaning up after the drunks. Rory didn’t understand why all the grown-ups had seemed so upset. To Rory and his six younger siblings, any food on the table was welcome—they weren’t too concerned where it came from. But his father, his uncles and even Grandpa Warak all wore dark looks for days afterwards and Patria cried a lot.
They were no longer going hungry, so Rory couldn’t understand why everyone was so upset.
Thinking it would blow over after a while, Rory was distressed to discover the situation getting worse as time went on. The whole house grew more and more tense, to the point where even the youngest children could feel something was amiss. Nobody said anything, though. They just stormed around the house and ate the food they could suddenly afford and never mentioned Patria’s unexpected wealth or what she was doing when she left the house each evening in her one good dress and why she didn’t come
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