The watchmen straightened as he neared, and Murtagh let his cloak fall open to show that he was unarmed.

  A clink sounded as the watchmen crossed their pikes. “Who goes?” asked the man on the left. He had a face like a winter rutabaga, with a fat nose cobwebbed with burst blood vessels and a yellow bruise under his right eye.

  “Just a Maddentide traveler,” said Murtagh in an easy tone. “Come to purchase smoked bergenhed for my master.”

  The man on the right gave him a suspicious once-over. He looked as if he could be the cousin of fat-nose. “Says you. Where do you hail from, traveler? An’ what name might you use?”

  “Tornac son of Tereth, and I hail from Ilirea.”

  Mention of the capital put some stiffness into the watchmen’s backs. They glanced at each other, and then fat-nose hacked and spat on the ground. The gob melted a patch of snow. “That’s an awful long way on foot w’ no pack an’ no horse fer a few bushels of fish.”

  “It would be,” Murtagh agreed, “but my horse broke her leg last night. Stepped in a badger hole, poor thing.”

  “An’ you left yer saddle?” said the right-hand man.

  Murtagh shrugged. “My master pays well, but he’s not paying me to lug a saddle and bags halfway across Alagaësia, if you follow.”

  The watchmen smirked, and fat-nose said, “Aye. We follow. Have you lodging secured? Coin fer a bed?”

  “Coin enough.”

  Fat-nose nodded. “Aight. We’re not wanting strangers sleep’n on our streets. We find you mak’n use of ’em, we’ll see the backside of you. We find you mak’n trouble, out you go. From midnight t’ the fourth watch, the gates are closed, an’ they’ll not open for aught but Queen Nasuada herself.”

  “That seems reasonable,” said Murtagh.

  Fat-nose grunted, and the watchmen moved their pikes aside. Murtagh gave them a respectful nod and passed between them to enter the city.

  * * *

  Murtagh scratched his chin as he moved deeper into Ceunon.

  He had grown a beard at the beginning of the year, to help conceal his identity. He thought it was working; so far no one had accosted him. The beard was itchy, though, and he wasn’t willing to let it get long enough that the hair became soft and pliable. Untidiness bothered him.

  Trimming the beard with his dagger had proved impractical, and he was reluctant to resort to magic, as shaping the beard with nothing more than a word and an imagined outcome was an uncertain prospect. Besides, he didn’t trust a spell to remove the hairs but not his skin, and there was a craftsman-like satisfaction in attending to the task by hand.

  He’d bought a pair of iron clippers from a tinker outside Narda. They worked well enough, as long as he kept them sharp, oiled, and free of rust. Even so, he found maintaining the beard almost as much trouble as shaving.

  Maybe he would remove it after leaving Ceunon.

  The main street was a muddy strip twice the width of the southern road. The buildings were half-timbered, cruck-framed structures with lapstrake siding between the wooden beams. The beams themselves were stained black with pine tar, which protected them against salt from the bay, and many were decorated with carvings of sea serpents, birds, and Svartlings. Iron weather vanes sat idle atop every shingled, steep-sided roof, and a carved dragon head decorated the peak of most houses.

  Murtagh forced himself to stop scratching.

  He could have recited the whole history of the city, from its founding until the present. He knew that the carvings were in the style commonly called kysk, which had been invented by some anonymous craftsperson over a century past. That the blackstone in the outer walls came from a quarry not two dozen miles northeast. And that the good folk of Ceunon had a deathly fear of the elves’ forest, Du Weldenvarden, and went to great lengths to keep the ranks of dark-needled pinetrees from encroaching on their fields. All that and more he knew.

  But to what end? He’d received the finest education in the land, and then some, and yet his life was now one of rough travel, where sharpness of hearing and quickness of hand meant more than any scholarly learning. Besides, understanding what was and what one should do were two very different things. He had seen that with Galbatorix. The king had known more than most—more even than some of the oldest elves or dragons—but in the end, his knowledge had brought with it no wisdom.

  Few people were out on the streets. It was late, and the days following Maddentide were full of feasting, and most of the citizens were inside, celebrating another successful harvest of bergenhed.

  A trio of laborers staggered past, stinking of cheap beer and fish guts. Murtagh held his course, and they diverted around him. Once they turned a corner, the main thoroughfare again fell silent, and he didn’t see another person until he crossed the city’s market square and a pair of feathered merchants burst out of a warehouse door, arguing vociferously. A short, bearded figure followed them into the square, and his voice bellowed loudest of all.

  A dwarf! Murtagh ducked his head. Ever since the death of Galbatorix and the fall of the Empire over a year ago, dwarves had become increasingly common throughout human-settled lands. Most were traders selling stones and metals and weapons, but he’d also seen dwarves working as armed guards (short as they were, their prowess in battle was not to be underestimated). Murtagh couldn’t help but wonder how many of them were acting as eyes and ears for their king, Orik, who sat upon the marble throne in the city-mountain of Tronjheim.

  The backlit dwarf seemed to look his way, and Murtagh reeled slightly—another Maddentide drunk on his way home.

  The ruse worked, and the dwarf returned his attention to the squabbling merchants.

  Murtagh hurried on. The spread of the dwarves had made travel even more difficult for him and Thorn. Murtagh had nothing against the dwarves as a race or culture—indeed, he quite liked Orik, and their feats of architecture were astonishing. However, they held a deep and abiding hatred of him for killing King Hrothgar, Orik’s predecessor…and uncle. And dwarves were known for the tenacity with which they held their grudges.

  Could he ever make amends to Orik, his clan, and the dwarves as a whole? Were it possible, Murtagh had yet to think of the means.

  Unfortunately, his situation with the dwarves wasn’t unique. The elves maintained a similar animosity toward him and Thorn, on account of the role they had played in killing Oromis and Glaedr, the last surviving Rider and dragon from before Galbatorix’s rise to power.

  Murtagh could hardly blame them.

  The average human was no fonder of them, as it was widely believed they had betrayed the Varden to Galbatorix during the war. Traitors earned only contempt from both sides in a conflict, and rightly so—Murtagh himself had no sympathy for snake-tongued oathbreakers like his father—but that did not make it easy to be falsely branded as one.

  No safe harbor for us, thought Murtagh. A hard, humorless smile formed on his lips. So it had been his whole life. Why should it be any different now?

  The stench of fish, seaweed, and salt grew stronger as he moved along the wharves and past rows of drying racks set beside the street.

  He glanced up. Midnight was still three or four hours away. Plenty of time to conclude his business and depart Ceunon. After so long spent out of doors, in the wild reaches of the land, the closeness of the buildings felt uncomfortably constraining. In that, he was becoming more and more like Thorn.

  Music and voices sounded ahead of him, and he saw the common house that was his destination: the Fulsome Feast. The low, dark-beamed building had crystal windows set in its front-facing wall—a rare luxury in this part of the world—and petals of yellow light spread across the paving stones on the street: a welcome invitation to enter, rest, and make merry.

  Sarros had picked the place as the location of their next meeting, and that alone made Murtagh wary. Still, the Fulsome Feast seemed innocuous enough—just one more disheveled, hard-run establishment like so many others. Aside from the crystal windows, the common house could have been in any seaside town or village throughout the land. But then, Murtagh had learned long ago that appearances were rarely to be trusted.

  He steeled himself against the noise to follow and pushed open the door.

  CHAPTER II

  The Fulsome Feast

  The inn was a warm, homey place, neat and well tended. Fresh-cut rushes covered the floor, the tables were clean, and the casks, bottles, and mugs behind the polished bar were arranged in mannered rows. A crackling fire warmed the great room from behind a blackstone hearth free of soot, and by the fire, a goateed man with extravagant, double-belled sleeves was plucking at a lute.

  Whatever he sang was hard to hear over the clamor of conversation rising from the packed room. Maddentide was over, and the folk of Ceunon were happy of it.

  The innkeep was a short, balding man with a dirty apron and a sweaty forehead who bustled from table to table, delivering drinks and plates of smoked herring. Not, Murtagh noted, smoked bergenhed.

  They must have eaten enough of it to last the year, he thought.

  He shook a scattering of snow from his cape and moved toward the one open table by the fire. As he sat, the innkeep hurried over and said, “Sigling Orefsson at yer service, Master…”

  “Tornac son of Tereth.”

  Sigling wiped his hands on his apron. “Honored, t’ be sure. An’ what might I get fer you?”

  “Something hot from your kitchen. My stomach is stuck to my spine.” Murtagh wasn’t about to miss an opportunity for a hot meal, not when he didn’t have to cook it for once.

  “An’ fer drink?”

  “A mug of ale. Not too strong, if you please.” And Murtagh pressed three copper coins into the innkeep’s hand.

  Sigling was already moving toward the back room. “Won’t take more ’n two shakes of a lamb’s tail, Master Tornac.”

  Master Tornac. Hearing the name said back to him always gave Murtagh pause. He hoped his old fencing instructor wouldn’t have minded him using it, given how tarnished Murtagh’s reputation was at the moment. He only meant to honor Tornac’s memory, same as when he’d given the name to his stallion after Tornac died during their escape from Urû’baen….

  Annoyance caused Murtagh’s brows to narrow. He never had found out what happened to the horse when Galbatorix had arranged for him to be ambushed and kidnapped in Tronjheim.

  He looked around the room. The dockworkers, fishers, and other inhabitants of Ceunon were a boisterous lot. Many an absent father returned from weeks at ship and sea to celebrate the Maddentide bounty. They seemed friendly enough. Still, Murtagh made sure he’d worked out the shortest path to the front and back entrances.

  It never hurt to be prepared.

  Sarros was nowhere to be seen, but Murtagh wasn’t concerned. The trader was the one who had decided on the day of their meeting, and Murtagh knew Sarros would sooner cut off his own hand as miss a chance to earn more of Murtagh’s coin.

  A pair of laborers—masons, if their leather aprons and thick, mortar-smeared arms were anything to go by—bumped into the chairs on the other side of Murtagh’s table. They pulled the chairs out, and he said, “Sorry, but I’m expecting a friend.” And he smiled in what he hoped was an inoffensive way.

  One mason looked like he wanted to argue, while the other seemed to see something he didn’t like in Murtagh’s face. He tugged on his friend’s arm. “Comeon, Herk. Lemme get you a beer a’ the bar.”

  “Ah, fine. Aight. Hands off.” But his friend kept tugging on his arm until the other man followed him toward the bar.

  Murtagh relaxed slightly. He really didn’t want to get caught in a meaningless brawl.

  Then a name leaped out at him from the general hubbub of the common room: “—Eragon—”

  Murtagh stiffened and twisted in his seat as he searched for the source of the word. There. The goateed troubadour plucking on his lute. At first the words of his song were hard to make out, but Murtagh watched the man’s lips and concentrated, and by and by, he made sense of them.

  And the troubadour sang:

  —and so to dread Urû’baen.

  Rejoice! Rejoice! The dauntless Dragon Rider flew to fight,

  To free our land from danger and fright.

  Then mighty Eragon faced the king in bloody conquest,

  In a great and terrible contest.

  And with flaming blade and blinding light,

  He slew that horrid tyrant, that ageless blight,

  Galbatorix, bane of dragons and Riders alike.

  Murtagh’s lip curled, and he felt an urge to throw a boot at the man. Not only were the verses badly composed and badly sung—no bard would have dared sing so off-key at court for fear of being beaten—but they were wrong.

  “He would have lost if not for me,” Murtagh muttered, thinking of Eragon. And yet, aside from those who had been present in Galbatorix’s throne room at the end, no one knew and no one cared. He and Thorn had quit the capital following the king’s death, preferring to remove themselves from civilization rather than contend with the hostility of an ignorant public.

  It had been the right choice. Murtagh still believed that. But it meant they lost the opportunity to defend themselves in the court of popular opinion. And if Eragon or Nasuada or the elves’ queen, Arya, had spoken in defense of him or Thorn, to explain the role they had played in killing Galbatorix and Shruikan, word of it had yet to reach Murtagh. The fact sat badly with him. Perhaps the truth needed more time to spread among the common folk. Or perhaps Eragon, Nasuada, and Arya were content to let the world think the worst of him, to use him as a convenient scapegoat, a monster in the dark that might focus people’s fears and leave the three of them free to govern as they pleased.

  The thought made his stomach twist.

  Either way, as far as most folk were concerned, Eragon was the greatest hero who had ever lived, and none could stand before him.

  Murtagh snorted softly. Hardly. But there was no fighting a song or story once it became popular. So often the truth bent to what felt right. At least the troubadour hadn’t bothered to describe Eragon’s supposed triumph over Murtagh and Thorn. At that, Murtagh really did think he would have thrown his boot.

  “An’ there you go, Master Tornac!” proclaimed Sigling as he slid a plate and mug under his nose. “You need aught else, you shout my name, an’ I’ll be back right quick-like.”

  Before Murtagh could thank him, the innkeep rushed off to tend another table.

  Murtagh picked up the wrought-iron fork on the side of the plate and started eating. Roast mutton and turnips with half a loaf of black rye bread on the side. Humble fare, but it tasted better than anything he’d cooked in the past three months. And though, as he’d requested, the ale was hardly stronger than water, that was all right too. He wanted his wits about him in Ceunon.

  While he ate, he balanced the plate on his knee and leaned back in the chair, stretching out his legs as he would before a campfire.

  It felt strange to be around so many other people. He’d gotten used to being alone with Thorn over the past twelvemonth. To the sound of the wind and the calls of the birds. To hunting his food and being hunted. Talking to the watchmen and Sigling—and even the masons—had been like trying to play a badly tuned instrument.

  He sopped up the juice from the mutton with a piece of rye bread and popped it in his mouth.

  The door to the inn swung open, and a young girl rushed in. Her dark hair was done up nicely in a pair of curled plaits, her dress was embroidered with bright patterns, and she looked as if she’d been crying.

  Murtagh watched as the girl moved across the great room, light as feather down. She slipped around the end of the bar, and Sigling said something to her. Standing one next to the other, Murtagh saw a family resemblance. The girl had the innkeep’s mouth and chin.

  The girl reappeared around the end of the bar, carrying a plate loaded with bread, cheese, and an apple. She lifted the plate over her head and, with practiced skill, wove between the crowded tables until she arrived in front of the great stone fireplace. Without asking, she plopped herself into the chair across the table from Murtagh.

  He opened his mouth and then closed it.

  The girl was no older than ten and perhaps as young as six (he had never been good at judging children’s ages).

  She tore a piece off the heel of bread on her plate and chewed with determined ferocity. Murtagh watched, curious. It had been years since he’d been around a child, and he found himself unexpectedly fascinated. We all start like this, he thought. So young, so pure. Where did it all go wrong?

  The girl looked as if she were about to cry again. She bit into the apple and made a noise of frustration as the stem caught in the gap between her front teeth.

  “You seem upset,” Murtagh said in a mild tone.

  The girl scowled. She plucked out the stem and flung it into the fire. “It’s all Hjordis’s fault!” She had the same strong northern accent as her father.

  Murtagh glanced around. He still didn’t see Sarros, so he decided it was safe to talk a bit. But carefully. Words could be as treacherous as a bear trap.

  “Oh?” He put down his fork and turned in his seat to better look at her. “And who is this Hjordis?”

  “She’s the daughter of Jarek. He’s the earl’s chief mason,” said the girl, sullen.

  Murtagh wondered if the earl was still Lord Tarrant, or if the elves had installed someone else in his place when they captured the city. He’d met Tarrant at court years ago: a tall, self-contained man who rarely spoke more than a few words at a time. The earl had seemed decent enough, but anyone who stayed in Galbatorix’s good graces for years on end had ice in their heart and blood on their hands.