Up and coming short stories
A boy learns what he is worth to the people who feed him — some sixty summers before The Trader's Reckoning.
Yuland turns eighteen, and the Crown stops feeding him and starts using him. The work is under the poor quarter, the master is a man called Valan, and there is an earring at the end of it for those who last. Most of the counting is done in the dark.
Rough read time 8 minutes
Rough read time 8 minutes
A mare is left at the stable against unpaid lodgings, and what she is worth is the foal inside her. The new lad is set to raise it, and given one rule to keep along with the animal. He has already broken it, and nobody has told him yet.
A Crown scout is paid to see clearly and to go unseen. Across the valley something shines, and by the time he knows what it is, the slope behind him will not let him climb back. Twice the border almost keeps him. Twice he comes the whole way home, to a woman he has never met.
Rough read time 6 minutes
Rough read time 25 minutes
An inquisitor of the Lucent Order walks his rounds, and the town closes its shutters as he passes. Under a loose stone in the dormitory floor is a bundle of letters he is not permitted to keep. He has been careful with them. He has not been careful enough.
Rough read time 10 minutes