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“That settles it,” I mused as I readjusted my position in his arms. “We’re going to have to visit that place sometime soon.”
“Before the stables?” he teased me.
“Afterthe stables, but maybe before Rookwood,” I admitted as I watched a small troop of travelers pass us. They had heavy leather bags on their backs and their skin was well-tanned by the sun. Their clothes were light in color and cloth heaviness. “Where are they from?”
“The sand kingdom to the south,” Ben told me as he, too, studied them. “I’m surprised to see such a troupe. They don’t often travel to these shores more than four times a year, and they came to Validen only last month.”
I lifted an eyebrow at him. “You know a lot about their habits.”
He grinned. “I try to keep an ear to the ground about all of those who venture into the city, whether under the brilliant sun or in the shadows of the moon.”
I snorted. “The city’s own dark night.”
His eyes widened a little and his smile widened. “I quite like the sound of that.”
“Too bad, it’s been taken,” I warned him as I sat up straight and stretched my eyes to the horizon ahead of us. “So how far are these stables again?”
“We should arrive there by midday.”
CHAPTEREIGHT
True to his word,as the noon hour approached so, too, did we find ourselves approaching the famous stables of the emperor. The peak of a large structure rose out of the horizon on our right and about a half mile from the road. I craned my neck and glimpsed dozens of fenced pastures, each filled with too many horses to count.
I turned to look at the bemused Ben. “Are all those the emperor’s horses?”
He nodded. “They are, but this is only a small portion of his animals. There are other stables located throughout the empire where the rest of his horses are stabled.”
I leaned back against the seat. “That can’t be easy to feed.”
Ben swept his eyes over our surroundings and nodded at the green pastures. “These are all owned by the emperor, as are most of the fields behind the stables.”
I twisted around and could barely see the outskirts of Validen. “These are kind of far from the city.”
Ben smiled at me. “The name isn’t quite accurate. These stables actually house the contingent of guards which protects the port and the March. The other stables around the empire also protect other pivotal locations, such as trade routes and sources of food.”
I whistled. “This emperor of yours must be filthy rich.”
My local guide chuckled. “Some would say fabulously so, but he would be nothing without the famed guards who protect his wealth and that of his subjects.”
We rolled on and more of the stables came into view. The building I had first seen revealed itself to be a huge arena with a single gabled roof. The walls had been built from stone and wood, and a shimmering whitewash covered the clapboards. Two dozen stable doors lined the wall that faced us and led out into the pastures.
The large arena was not alone, however, as other buildings appeared on the horizon. These were smaller in scale but more plentiful in number, and they, too, had single-gabled roofs. The other buildings congregated around their big brother in a haphazard fashion as if they were an afterthought, and a labyrinthine mess of dirt roads wound between them.
We were about five miles from the turnoff road when I glimpsed the shimmering metallic bodies of the thunders. Row after row of the machines were parked in several long lines starting from the road and stretching toward the main arena. Mass production obviously hadn’t become a thing yet because every single one of them was different from one another. There were pudgy ones and long ones, short ones and tall ones, and all the shapes and sizes of metal paneling you could conjure up in a steel mill. The wheels were all round, but some had spokes and some were a ball of rubber or even strips of wood.
“Wow,” I breathed as I stretched my neck to take in the full view. A steady flow of people traveled back and forth between the car park and the large building. “I didn’t expect to see so many thunders.”
“This was the first tract ever created,” Ben told me as he watched me with a soft smile. “Many come here to pay homage to the men who first dared race on wheels without a horse. The soldiers, too, took a fancy to the sport, and that’s one reason it’s held at their barracks.”
I lifted an eyebrow at him. “And another?”
He chuckled. “None of the other residents would host the forum. It is quite noisy, and the impromptu track does make a mess of things on the ground.”
I furrowed my brow. “What track?”
A sudden roar of engines interrupted us, and I glimpsed a half dozen thunders as they dashed across the fields behind the arena building.
“That track,” Ben told me.
