Ten: Hiring Fair

Driven by Verity’s Skill-summons, Fitz aims for the Mountains via Farrow’s interior, recognizing the risks of traveling alone without Nighteyes. He reaches Landing, where leather and pottery thrive, and trades his fine clothes for a laborer’s outfit, then sells a ring and chain for modest coin.

A jeweler offers multiple golds for his freeman’s earring—Burrich’s Butran freedom token—explaining Chalced’s slave tattoos and the earring’s necessity for true freedom. Though the gold would fund an easy passage, Fitz keeps the earring as his last tangible link to Burrich and his past, hiding it to avoid recognition.

After buying minimal supplies, he goes to the slaughteryards’ hiring fair seeking caravan work toward Blue Lake. Among drovers, Fitz listens as night gossip spreads Regal’s new proclamations: rich bounties for the Pocked Man and for the “man-wolf,” lurid tales blaming Kettricken for witchcraft, and slander that Fitz fathered her child. He notes growing resentment over a supposed Mountain trade embargo and suspects Regal is stoking hostility to justify force in the passes.

At dawn, a sheep owner, Damon, hires Fitz for a morning’s pen move. Passing a neighboring pen of diseased sheep, Fitz helps settle Damon’s flock and asks for longer hire. After breakfast with a pen-keeper woman, Damon engages him for the Blue Lake caravan, providing food and ten silvers at journey’s end. Fitz gives the name Tom.

Left to tend the animals, Fitz hauls water, feeds the flock, and does extra chores for the pen-keeper in exchange for meals. As he cleans himself and his clothes, he reflects on his vulnerability without allies and the corrosive spread of Regal’s lies. That evening, he checks the bull and horses, briefly imagining a simpler life, then hardens his resolve to reach Verity and answer the call.