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storeroom that provided them shelter and she followed, shutting the door behind him.
    “Ma! I can’t see.”
    “Hold on to your breeches.”
    She reached up to the shelf mounted beside the door, found the taper and lit it. The dancing flame bounced light around the small room, across the disheveled blankets spread in the corners upon which Bieta and her son slept. A table with splintered edges sat in the middle of the room, a wooden crate and a chair with one leg too short pulled up to it. An empty pot hung over the cold hearth.
    “Put him there,” Bieta said, waving her hand toward the far corner.
    “But that’s where I sleep, Ma.”
    She raised her hand, showing him the back of it. Stirk made a display of flinching, but they both knew the days of the mother striking her son had long since passed.
    “Do as yer told and stop arguing. You can sleep somewhere else.”
    With a frown on his lips, Stirk stalked the few paces to the corner.
    “Put him down gentle.”
    Her son grunted and crouched, setting the man on the heap of blankets with all the care a man his size could muster. The fellow groaned and Stirk jumped back a step, staring at him as though he thought a Small God might burst out of his stomach.
    “Why do you wanna keep him?” he asked finally, satisfied no creature intended on finding its way out of the man’s gut. “We ain’t got enough food for the two of us.”
    Bieta dipped a cloth in a bowl of cloudy water set in the center of the table and wrung it out. She kneeled beside the lad and drew the damp cloth across his forehead; breath sighed out between his lips.
    “You didn’t see him, Stirk,” she said. “Didn’t see him when he saved me.”
    Her son’s feet scraped on the dirt floor as he shifted, dissatisfied with her answer.
    “You wanna give him my bed and food because he acted brave? What kinda—”
    “No, you fool,” she snapped and fixed him with a gaze that was always more effective at straightening him out than the threat of a backhand. “Yer only seeing a fellow in his underpants. Before they got to him, he wore fancy clothes, like a merchant. And you should have seen his sword.”
    “Aw, Ma. You don’t have to tell me about his cock.”
    “Not that sword.” Bieta laughed despite herself. “His sword sword. Its blade was etched and it had gold on the handle.”
    “It’s called a hilt, Ma.”
    She shook her head and returned to wiping the greasy cloth across the lad’s forehead.
    “Don’t matter what it’s called if it was made of gold.”
    “Gold, huh? What happened to this gold sword?”
    “The one-armed man had it, but that don’t matter, neither. Don’t you get what it means?”
    Stirk scratched his stubbly chin, long nails grating in the tough hair.
    “Not only do I lose my sleeping place and half my meals, but a fellow with one arm got himself a nice sword?”
    “It means he has money, and people who have money have friends.”
    Bieta raised her eyes to her son and saw his blank expression. Stirk had never been one for planning or figuring things out, which explained why he lived in a tiny storeroom with his mother and had to sleep facing the wall when she brought her work home. She stood and went back to the table to dip the cloth.
    “People who have money and friends will be missed,” she told him, watching the turbid water run between her fingers. “When people with money are missed, someone’s willing to pay to get them back. Understand?”
    Bieta raised her head and watched comprehension creep across Stirk’s expression. He grinned and nodded once.
    “We’re gonna ransom him.”
    “Aye, we are.” Bieta leaned over the poor lad, dabbing the wound in his gut with the cloth and prompting a near noiseless groan. “But he won’t be worth nothing if we let him die.”

III Horace - A Change o’ Mind
    While runnin’ through the forest—walkin’ fast, really, because Birk’s too-small boots was pinchin’ his feet—Horace kept thinkin’