I.xii
I find myself a stable, but there’s not anything there I like, so I find the another. See, there’s three full-on selling stables here in Marsh, on account of how many merchants hire fresh horses for the voyage back. They wear them pretty thin coming up through the wastes.
At the second stable I get into, I just wander my way through the feeding area. And that’s where I see her. A smokey-skinned, silver-and-white-maned beauty. Then she looks at me, and that’s when I’m really taken. She has blue eyes. Milky blue. I ain’t never seen a horse with blue eyes before. Hells, I didn’t even know they could have blue eyes. And there’s something just … I don’t know, almost human about it. I ask the stable gal to let me take the reins, and she saddles up the girl I was looking at.
Out in the yard the stable gal hands me the ropes and asks me if I need any help into the saddle. I laugh at it, but feel my eyes go nervous as I look back to the stirrups. I’ve ridden horses, and I trust my feet sure enough, but we don’t have cause to use animals like this at home. These are path beasts, not meant for growth. Still, I manage to get my feet up in the stirrups and get onto the girl without much issue.
The way the gal feels still as stone, I feel she must be bored. Doesn’t budge an inch. Just waits for the kick. I pause there, feeling her breath beneath my legs (and yeah, spread legs, because “lady-like” don’t count for much out here).
When I kick, she trots proper slow, and there’s something almost clockwork about the way she moves. This horse is careful. That puts me off some, but then I lean down into her, kick my heels harder into her sides, and she obeys readily enough. My seat’s unused to this sort of bouncing, but I think I’ve found my balance, so I lean further in and I kick for real this time.
It’s like I can feel her boredom vanish. Like she’s got a hunger for someone willing to push her harder, and so the kick’s something right pleasant to her. She picks up heavy, and all I have to do is lean forward into her cantering and she picks up speed. I’m not judge for if she’s the fastest or the surest horse, but I like her. And that’s it. Without riding another horse, I get off and ask for the bidding price. The stable-hand gives me one, and I just sigh, roll my eyes. “Look, I’m not here for a windy negotiation. I just need the fair price. No long shrug and gamble.” Daddy taught me that one. Best way of negotiating if you’re in a hurry. So the stable gal, she quotes me fourteen blades and four helms. Even though she went down from sixteen blades (that’s eighty helms), it’s still a few bottles of brandy more than I was expecting to pay.
Let me put that in perspective for anyone who doesn’t know the system in these parts. See, a silver will buy you a good loaf of bread or a wooden trinket. Three will buy you a drink or a cut of meat. Five silvers gets its own coin, called a fist for the armored gauntlet stamped on it. You can get a solid meal or a night on the floor of an inn for that fist, though they won’t give you much in the way of bedding. Five fists has its coin, too, called the helm on account of the helmet stamped on. (You probably see how our naming goes. Not like it’s got any lace or frill.) And five helms makes a blade, which will buy you most things you could need with some coin to spare. Happens you can buy a decent sword for the cost of one blade, funny and fitting though that sounds.
They’ve got a saying on prosperity here: That those hunting after wealth are “out for a blade a day.” You make that, you’re well enough set, your pockets overflowing with coin before too long. Most make two or three helms for a full day’s labor, and that’s okay too.
Get five blades and that’s a sun or a crown: Gold coin with two stamps, sun on one side and royal crown on the other. And me? I’ve got crowns in my pouch, thanks to Crys’s generous spirit. Means Crys simply handed me … well, let me think on it … near-on as much as would take most folk two months of hard work to earn, I suppose.
“That includes your saddle, brush, and feed-bag,” says the stable-hand, interrupting my coin-inclined contemplations.
“Yeah, I figured,” I said. “How about bags?”
“You mean saddle bags?”
“Yeah, I mean saddle bags.”
“No, those cost extra.”
“What’s ‘extra’?”
“Depends on the size you need. I could get you a pair of mid-sized bags—sturdy, of course, well built—for two helms each.”
I whistle at that. “Okay, so we’re talking fifteen blades and … three helms for the lot of it?”
“Feed bag, brush, saddle, saddle-bags and all.”
I scratch behind my ear, grit my teeth some. “She’s not the cheapest horse, is she?”
“Nope. But she’s solid. Still has a lot of years left in her.”
“Well.” No telling if Daddy will be upset with me for spending this amount. But I want this horse. And he did say to trust my instinct. “Well, how about this. Fifteen blades and you include some oats for the girl. Some good oats.”
“That’s the only kind we sell,” she says. And with that we’ve got a deal. I pack it all up, put the oats and brush in one of those saddle bags. On the way out, after I’ve paid my due figures, I nod to the stable-hand. “Oh,” I say. “Her name. She got a name already?”
“Willow,” says the stable-gal. “They call her Willow.”
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