The Warrior's Bond (Einarinn 4) (28 page)

Startled, Allin stopped. Temar promptly bumped into her. Allin managed to stifle her exclamation, but as she moved her cloak pulled her up short. Temar realised he was standing on the hem and hastily lifted his foot.

“Fair Festival, my lady,” said one of the recognised men guarding the postern. Temar found his sly suggestiveness faintly offensive.

Allin nodded curtly to the two youths. Temar pressed close to her, holding his breath and keeping arms and elbows close, lest he nudge someone.

As he stepped through the postern his sword caught against the wood and dragged round. Balancing it on his hip took Temar a moment and he caught a brief exchange on the inside of the door.

“Been visiting the young D’Alsennin, hasn’t she?”

“What’s he see in that dumpling? He’s got his pick of the Demoiselles.”

“To marry maybe, but what about a little Festival jig? I’ll bet a wizard wouldn’t have cold hands for your fiddlestick.”

Temar strode hastily after Allin, feeling his cheeks burning with a colour every bit as fiery as her habitual blush.

She had halted to look vaguely at a gig trotting round a distant corner. “Are you all right?” she whispered.

“Quite, yes.” Temar gratefully realised the invisibility hid his embarrassment.

“You’d better stay behind me,” she murmured as she walked slowly down the long slope towards the conduit house.

Temar did as he was bid, careful he didn’t step on Allin’s cloak again. At least there were precious few people out walking and those mostly looked to be liveried servants intent on their own tasks. The last daylight was fading now, and the dusk beneath the shade trees made Temar’s feet even more indistinct to his straining eyes. He stopped, rubbing his eyes, taking a deep breath then hurrying after Allin.

Turning at the conduit house, she headed north and west along the circular road. Coaches swept past them, but hardly anyone else was on foot. Allin strode on, ignoring superior glances from passing carriages until she finally turned down into a busy thoroughfare. The air was cooling now but the stone buildings all around were casting the remembered heat of the day back into the night sky along with the exuberant clamour of the crowd.

Temar had to press close behind Allin, their progress increasingly awkward, Temar looking up and down at every other step, searching for his feet no darker than wisps of smoke. The lesser moon rose over the rooftops, golden circle all but full and unchallenged by the merest arc raised by her greater sister. But Temar had no time for such fancies as the moonlight cast queasy shadows through the hazy darkness that was all he could see of himself. Something in the back of his mind was protesting ever louder that what his eyes were telling him couldn’t possibly be the truth.

He caught Allin’s elbow, steering her irresistibly into a noisome alley. “You have to undo the magic, else I will be sick.” He swallowed hard on nausea thickening his throat.

Allin immediately spread her hands in a decisive gesture. Sapphire light came and went at the edge of Temar’s vision like a jewelled memory of the day and he could see his hands again. “My thanks,” he said with heartfelt sincerity.

“If you’re done, move on, will you?” A man about Temar’s age shifted impatiently from one foot to the other at the entrance to the alley, a slightly older woman on his arm, eyes cynical in her painted face.

“Did they see anything?” whispered Allin.

“There’s nothing I’ve not seen, blossom,” said the woman with a coarse chuckle.

Temar drew a mortified breath, uncertain how to respond. Allin giggled and slid her arm inside his. “We’re nearly there.”

As the road forked either side of an ancient shrine, Allin led Temar up an avenue of lime trees spreading a moist green scent. Mismatched buildings jostled a run of tall, narrow houses with proudly precise gables looking down on the six-sided chimneys of lower dwellings with narrow leaded windows and uneven rooflines.

“It should be down there,” said Allin uncertainly. Bright lights beckoned at the bottom of a small entry, too short to be a street, too wide to be an alley. Lively chatter lilting with unmistakably Lescari accents echoed from an open window.

“Yes, look.” Allin pointed with relief at the great half-circle lock hanging from a sturdy chain above the door. It was all that distinguished the building from its neighbours, each with irregular windows beneath a dishevelled roof of stone slates, oaken beams set for no readily apparent reason in walls crumbling with age and inattention.

Temar drew his arm close to his side to shield Allin with his greater height. “I have not spent any great time in taverns,” he said cautiously. Not this side of the ocean, not since waking from enchantment, he amended silently to himself. Riotous evenings carousing with Vahil so long ago, not a care between them, counted for nothing now.

But they’d never have come to such a sober house, little changed from the dwelling it had once been. Two casks of ale were set on trestles in a parlour furnished with cast-offs from people who could have had precious little to start with. There were no potmen or maids that Temar could see, just an unhurried matron filling a steady flow of jugs brought by men and women in sombre, well-worn clothes who either sat near by or disappeared into the back of the building.

Four newcomers pressed past Temar and Allin as they hesitated on the threshold. Greeting the mistress of the house in Toremal-accented Lescari, two lads took tankards from a rack beside one door for their ale while the others helped themselves to glasses and a flat-bottomed greenish bottle, dropping silver and copper coin into an open box. A crone sewing a slow seam by the table nodded, her smile shrunken around toothless gums.

“Can I help you?” The woman drawing the ale looked over at Allin, polite but cool. Her clipped words carried echoes of the mercenaries Temar knew in Kel Ar’Ayen.

Allin fumbled beneath her cloak for the handbill. “I was looking for Mistress Maedura?” Her own accent was stronger than Temar had ever heard it.

The woman nodded, indifferent. “Out the back.”

Allin smiled uncertainly. “May we see her?”

The woman glanced, incurious, at Temar. “Please yourself, lass.”

“Come on,” he encouraged Allin, doing his best to sound like the Lescari mercenaries he knew back home. Digging a few coins from the purse tied to his belt, he pointed at a bottle of wine inky dark inside emerald glass. “How much?”

The old woman chuckled, revealing a baby pink tongue, and said something Temar didn’t understand. Allin held out some silver of her own, talking hastily in Lescari.

“She says we should wait our turn through here,” she said tightly to Temar.

He picked up a bottle and two thick glasses with uneven rims. “What did I do?” He was used to struggling with the indecipherable mysteries of female disapproval from Guinalle and Avila, but had thought he’d made a fresh start with Allin.

“Tried to pay her about ten times what that wine’s worth.” A faint smile was tugging at the corners of Allin’s mouth. “I said you thought she was taking money for the seer.”

People were waiting on chairs beneath an unshuttered window and by a door opening on to a small yard. A second door, cut through the wall to give access to some afterthought of an outbuilding, was firmly closed, though faint sounds of conversation filtered through to the expectant room. Everyone looked at Allin and Temar, some curious, a few defensive, but all with unspoken determination to protect their place in the line.

“We have some time in hand.” Temar rattled the coins in his hand absently.

“Don’t do that,” Allin reproved him. “Hasn’t anyone told you what an Empire Crown buys?” She moved two rickety chairs to a small table with a dull, much wiped surface.

“No.” Temar looked at the thick white-gold coin. “Camarl only gave me a purse today. I remembered what that handbill says, so I asked.”

“Did he ask why you wanted it?” Allin looked like a child caught in mischief.

Temar grinned. “I said it was because Tor Kanselin’s surgeon said I probably only took that knife yesterday by way of payback for having nothing to steal.”

Allin frowned. “Don’t you use coin in Kellarin?”

“Odd copper and silver, but the mercenaries brought most of the coin, so it comes from all manner of places.” Temar set down the glasses and wondered how he was supposed to get the cork out of the bottle. “They only seem to use coin for gambling anyway. We mostly deal between ourselves by swapping work on a man’s barn for a share in his corn, half a sheep for a side of beef and suchlike.”

Allin took a small knife from her purse and chipped at the wax sealing the wine. “Camarl doubtless thinks an Old Empire Crown is a trivial enough sum, but round here three of those would feed a family for a week and leave table scraps to fatten the pig.” She worked the cork out of the bottle with the point of her knife. “Get Ryshad or someone to change those Crowns for some common coin if you don’t want everyone eyeing your purse.”

“How does common coin differ?” Temar took the bottle from Allin and poured them each a measure of wine.

“I’m not surprised they don’t want you going out on your own.” Allin narrowed her eyes. “Old Empire coin is noble coin, purer metal than anything minted these days, less of it to be had. Common coin is what we commoners use, what the various cities and powers mint for themselves.”

Temar fell silent for a moment. There was still so much he didn’t know, wasn’t there? “Why would Camarl give me Old Empire money?”

“I don’t suppose he thought you’d be spending it in places like this.” Allin was unconcerned. “And you’re a noble, aren’t you? If you can get it, it’s the best coin to carry.”

“Four copper pennies still make a bronze?” Temar looked for some reassurance. “Ten bronze pennies to a silver and four of those make a silver Mark?”

Allin shook her head. “No one’s used bronze pennies since the Chaos. Ten copper to a silver penny and when six silver Marks make a gold Crown that’s an end to it. Only the Old Empire used gold Marks.” She smiled but this time without humour. “Don’t take Lescari Marks off anyone. If any of the Dukes mint a coffer of coin, they add enough lead to roof a moot hall.”

She paused as a young woman carrying a baby on her hip came out of the far door, her expression half hopeful, half puzzled. The low murmur of conversation stopped and all eyes turned to the girl. The only one not looking was an old man in much mended homespun who hurried in, heavy boots clattering on the floorboards. The girl lifted her chin, hoisted the child more securely inside her shawl and strode out of the room.

“She looks as if she got something for her coin,” commented Temar in low tones.

“I don’t think she’s quite sure what she’s gained though.” Allin drank her wine. Silence hung heavy between them for quite some moments.

Temar rolled a sip round his mouth thoughtfully. “This is far from—”

A cry from the seer’s room silenced him, a hoarse sob hastily stifled. The old man came stumbling out, one shaking hand hiding his eyes, the other groping blindly in front of him. Four of those waiting jumped to their feet, a sturdy woman in serviceable maroon offering resolute comfort in fast, unintelligible words. A gaunt man with one empty sleeve to his coat reached his good arm round the old man’s shaking shoulders, while a pretty girl with haunted eyes supported an elderly female in rusty black, whose face had gone as white as her shabby lace cap. At brisk words from the stout woman, the family walked out with fragile dignity.

Everyone avoided everyone else’s eyes as an apprehensive youth walked slowly through the door.

“What are we going to say to this seer, whoever she is?” Allin turned beseeching eyes to Temar.

“Have you some question you already know the answer to?” asked Temar thoughtfully.

“I could ask about someone still alive.” Allin nodded reluctantly. “If she gets that right, I ask about someone I know to be dead?”

Temar looked at her in some concern. “Does this distress you?”

Allin looked down, her hands knotted in her lap. “We’d best find out, now we’ve come all this way.”

New arrivals prompted Allin to move hastily to one of the vacated seats, to claim their place in the queue. Temar grabbed the wine and moved after her. Hemmed in on either side, they exchanged silent glances over their glasses. The second chime of night was sounding by the time the portly man who’d been before them came back out, face dark with stubborn resentment.

Allin stood up, brushing decisively at her skirts. “Let’s see what’s to see.”

Clutching the wine bottle for lack of anywhere to put it, Temar followed the mage girl into a bare room. All they saw was an iron-bound chest set on an unwieldy table in the middle of a rug woven from strips of threadbare cloth, two females sitting on stools beyond it. Tallow candles in sconces lit damp stained walls, smoky flames briefly fluttering to add more soot to the dirty lath ceiling.

Allin said something courteous and the older woman stood up. Her white hair was all but invisible beneath a pale blue kerchief, and she wore a full, shapeless skirt and sleeveless bodice of the same material laced over a loose linen blouse. No one in Tormalin dressed like this though Temar had seen some of the mercenary women in Kel Ar’Ayen wearing such garb. Poldrion’s touch had whitened this woman’s hair unduly early, he decided. Her firm face suggested she was still in her middle years but the lines that furrowed her brow hinted those years had been hard.

“Mistress Maedura.” Allin gestured to Temar. “My companion, Natyr.”

“All who seek answers are welcome,” said the woman in passable Tormalin. Her shrewd eyes rather unexpectedly lacked the hard calculation Temar expected from a trickster. They were also the colour of a rain-washed sky and he realised how seldom he’d seen anyone with light eyes since arriving here.

“Your questions?” Mistress Maedura prompted.

“Of course,” said Allin nervously.

Temar looked at the younger woman sitting silent beside Mistress Maedura. She had the same pale eyes but hers were as empty as a summer noon, staring fixedly at the wall behind Temar. She was dressed in a soft green weave, skirt spotted with spilled food, and her sparse dull hair was cut short in a ragged crop. The laces of her bodice pulled unevenly over a mature figure yet her face had the unlined vacancy of a child.