With that, the vizier Philomen had disappeared through the curtains into his inner chambers, leaving Remy with the box he dared not open and a letter to present at the stable just inside the Undergate, in return for which he would be given a horse. Toradan was a week’s ride. Perhaps ten days if he made excellent time and encountered no trouble along the way.

Remy woke to the smell of stew. The odor of cooking fat hooked him and hauled him up from the depths of his fever into waking life. He shivered and opened his eyes, confused at first by the angle of the sun. Long shadows lay across the wastes and behind he heard conversation in low voices. He rolled over, legs tangled in a blanket that was not his. He blinked the sleep from his eyes and pinpointed where the voices where coming from.

Like most residents of Avankil-or any of the settlements along the Dragondown Coast-Remy had only seen a few dragonborn. They kept to themselves, by and large, and their travels-for the dragonborn were a rootless and wandering race-tended to pause only in the company of other dragonborn. From time to time, Remy had seen them on board ships that docked Quayside. Once he had run a message from one such seafarer to the dragonborn clan enclave upstream of Quayside, near the Outer Wall in the oldest quarter of Avankil. On the whole, dragonborn didn’t spend much time in the settled coastal cities, preferring to spend their time in places more likely to yield adventure.

And there was one-a female, no less, armed and armored-stirring a small pot over a campfire off the road between Avankil and Toradan. She looked over at the motion and said, “Ah. So you did live. Praise to Bahamut.”

“Or to Keverel’s medicines,” cut in a halfling woman sitting at the dragonborn’s left. She nodded at a human wearing the holy symbol of Erathis and the sunburn of someone who spent most of his time under a roof.