Wine of the Gods 08: Dark Lady (2 page)

Monday, February 16, 3493 AD

Jeramtown, Kingdom of Arrival

Liz had always considered herself a practical s
ort of girl. Young woman, now.
Perhaps I should have been a different sort of practical
, she thought, seeing the rejection before tavernmaster Cordes even opened his mouth.

"
Now, Liz, we all know why you were turned out of the baron's house, and I can't have that sort of thing in here. The customers would be treating all the lasses like tarts."

She unclenched her jaws.
"I was dismissed for complaining about improper advances, not for accepting them!"

He gave her cheek
a pitying look, but looked up at the grit of stone under shod hooves.

"
I need a job. Any job." She turned as she spoke.

They both stood the
re amazed, staring at the horse that had walked into the stable yard. The stallion was a good seventeen hands tall, both muscular and elegant. And absolutely black. The rider was wearing a riding suit of fine charcoal gray wool, with just a bit of blue showing at the neck. A woman. A very young woman. And the bundle in her arms was a baby.

The rider looked down at the ground in perplexity, then looked at Liz.
"Could you hold this baby for a moment?"

Liz walked up to the stallion warily, but he pricked his ears in a friendly fashion. He might look like a warhorse, but he'd never been trained to be aggressive. Liz took the baby and the woman swung off and dropped easily to the ground.

"Thank you. Phantom's so tall I've been having trouble getting up and down with the baby and all. Can't just sling her in to a saddlebag, after all." She looked back at the tavernmaster, "Is this your Inn?'

"
It is," Cordes hesitated. "M'lady. Er . . . "

Liz tucked a smile away. How can you ask someone with a horse like that if she has any money?

"I've been traveling and don't have any local currency." The lady told him, and held out a coin. "Can you accept such as this?"

Liz blinked at the flash of real gold.

Cordes swallowed. "Certainly M'lady. I'll have my wife spruce up a room, a suite, right away, and have Harv take your horse . . . " the poor man looked like he wanted to run in three directions at once.

Liz squirmed as she came under the Lady's gaze.
"Do I understand you are looking for a position?"

"
Yes Mum, M'lady." Liz eyed the horse wistfully. "I know babies, I have eight younger brothers and sisters."

"
Good. You are hired. We'll figure out how much I'm paying you after we figure out how to convert my money to the local coinage." She turned to her horse and reached up to unbuckle the saddle bags. "Show me your stables . . . "

"
Tavernmaster Cordes, M'lady . . . "

"
Quicksilver. From Ash in the Kingdom of the West." The Lady frowned suddenly.

"
I don't reckon I've ever heard of a kingdom in the west, M'lady, just the high desert and the ocean." The tavernmaster was backing into the stable as he spoke.

"
It's a long ways away, and everyplace is west of someplace else. I see that you do know how to keep a stable." As Harv scurried up, wide-eyed at the sight of the horse, she rubbed the animal's forehead. "Go with him, Phantom."

She let the
tavernmaster take the saddlebags and lead the way. Liz followed, still carrying the baby. It was a tiny thing, a few weeks old.

"
We've two rooms in the back, M'lady, they'll make you a nice quiet suite, even if we get a troop through and the front gets a bit rowdy. And a private privy."

"
Thank you." The lady took the saddle bags from him and slung them over one of the straight chairs around the table, as he unlocked the door between the rooms and bowed and scraped himself out. It was quite an indecent amount of space, even for a lady with actual gold coins.

The baby woke then, and the l
ady unbuttoned her fine wool jacket, and the linen blouse under it. She wore a rather odd contraption around her breasts instead of a corset.

"
I'm sorry," she said. "I just grabbed you because I have trouble getting on and off a horse while carrying a baby, and didn't even ask your name."

"
I'm Liz, M'lady. Elizabeth Hinton."

"
That's a nasty cut on your cheek. I heard you say something about rejecting advances, did he hit you?"

"
No, his father whipped me for complaining."

"
Hmm, yes, I've met men like that . . . somewhere." She frowned uncertainly, and pulled a fluffy white diaper from the saddle bag to throw over her shoulder and burp the baby. "How do you name babies, hereabouts? Are there rules about it?"

Liz shook her head in confusion.
"No, well if the baby is legitimate, he or she will have the last name, the family name, of the father. Bastards have their mother's family name, or no last name at all."

"
Umm, where I came from they went through the alphabet, and, and themes? I . . . have trouble remembering, sometimes . . . Q . . . I had an Aunt named Question."

"
That's a name? I mean, it's very interesting, but, we mostly just use . . . names for names." Liz jumped to take the baby and change her. The cord was dried but hadn't fallen off yet, the baby couldn't be more than three or four weeks old. She snuck a look at the Lady. Her stomach looked pretty flat, in the trousers she was wearing for riding. She was in pretty good shape for four weeks after giving birth. She looked like she'd been out in the sun a lot, recently, the skin on her nose and ears was peeling a bit.

Liz finished pinning the diaper and handed her back after the Lady had readjusted her contraption.

"So, is Quail Quicksilver an appropriate name for my daughter, or would you recommend calling her something else?"

"
Oh, no, birds are good names for girls, I know Robins, and Sparrows and Wrens. Flowers are good, and sometimes both girls and boys are named after the month they were born in."

"
Hmph, so if I was from here I'd have been named Winter Solstice?"

Liz giggled.
"December, maybe." She looked around at a tap on the door. At a nod from the lady she opened it.

Madam Cordes herself, with a girl carryin
g a tray. "The master said the lady might like a bite, and some tea?"

"
Certainly," the lady had the baby's blanket tossed over her shoulder, covering the baby. "Come in, won't you?"

"
Well, I wouldn't want to presume . . . "

"
Oh, not a bit. I'm new here, and don't know anything about your town. It looked quite substantial as I rode up. How many people live hereabouts?"

"
Oh, nearly three hundred in town, at the last king's census, and ten times that on the farms around here." Her eyes slid to Liz. "We're a respectable establishment, here."

"
Yes, you looked substantial and prosperous, that why I stopped here first. Now, Liz mentioned a Baron?"

"
Baron Christian Weigh. A very fair man, very letter of the law." She shifted uncertainly.

"
Who does he answer to?" the lady asked.

"
Well, the king, of course."

"
Of course," the lady smiled a little, but her forehead was creased. She eased the baby out from under the blanket and handed the sleeping infant to Liz. She tugged at her blouse, and rose to move her saddle bags. "Please sit, if you have a moment. I need to learn about the truly important things." Mistress Cordes looked alarmed, and the lady smiled impishly. "What is fashionable, hereabouts? I suspect my riding outfit is scandalous."

"
Oh, no, not for
riding
but . . . "

Mistress Cordes went on
about dresses for a quarter of an hour before remembering her other duties and hurrying off.

The
lady had picked at the food, and as soon as they were alone offered the rest to Liz. "Since she treated the girl like she was invisible, I thought I ought to as well. Is that right?"

"
Oh yes, if you'd invited me to table you'd have been implying that she was no better than I am." Liz tossed her head, dismissing Madam Cordes.

"
Well, we're not so odd where I come from, sit and eat, and I have some wine . . . with some medicinal herbs in it. It will do wonders for your cheek."

Liz touched the hot crusted slash carefully. She'd only looked in a mirror once, before her parents kicked her out, fearing for her father's position. It was going to be a disfiguring scar, inches long under the cheekbone.

"Sacrilege in a tea cup, but that's all we've got. Now, it has a number of side effects. You really need to stay in tonight, until it wears off."

The wine tasted like
the sort the baron bought, real quality. She sipped it, and nibbled at the cheese and bread. The lady prowled between the two rooms, then started digging around in her saddle bags. She pulled out an amazing amount of clothing; it must have been crammed in to the bag.

"
These aren't fashionable at all are they?" She shook out a light linen shift with lace at the collar and hem, and a heavier gown, open all the way down the front, like a coat and then an embroidered belt.

"
Oh, no, M'lady. Not at all. Now if the bodice was buttoned closed, and the skirt a bit fuller, and a few more petticoats . . . Umm, we usually wear vests like mine or a corset underneath, not a . . . contraption like you have. And ladies, well, their skirts are usually close to ankle length."

"
I see, just long enough to not get muddy if you're lucky. Well, looks like I'd better get some sewing done, doesn't it?"

Liz helped the l
ady sort through her improbable wardrobe, and the bright red over robe was sacrificed in the name of fashion. Its elaborate embroidery was turned into a yoke, front panel and waist band on the black robe, the deep blue robe received a brilliant contrasting band all around the neck line, wrists and hem line and a broad belt of the same material. The dark red sleeveless robe, cut off under the arms, was long enough for a skirt that would look good with the lady's white blouse and dark jacket, much too straight to be fashionable, yet somehow business-like. One of the shifts was cut down for an extra petticoat, and the lace from the sleeves and neckline added to the bottom for extra fullness. The lady's stitches were small precise, quick. She was obviously accustomed to fine handwork. The results were impressive.

"
It's not
stylish
so much as obviously rich." Liz snipped off the thread at the end of a long seam, and contemplated the odds and ends. "Proper Ladies don't go about without hats, but it doesn't take much to qualify as a hat, these days." A bit of embroidered edging with a bit of lace, for the black dress, and a poof of red to go with the other two . . . "We'll have to keep our eyes open for feathers, M'lady. A pair of pheasant feathers would be perfect for this."

The
lady yawned. "Oh. Today started very early for me. Do you need to tell your parents that you've got a job as, well, whatever sounds good? Ladies maid? Nanny? Companion?"

Liz crossed her arms stubbornly.
"No." She softened slightly. "I'll send them a note, so they don't worry, but father is the baron's horsemaster, and, well, they pretty much had to throw me out so they didn't get tossed out themselves. Did I mention eight little brothers and sisters?"

Lady Quicksilver gave a jaw cracking yawn.
"Yes, well, I suppose that's understandable, once one swallows the general unfairness of the whole thing. Get some dinner sent in if you're hungry, I'll mind my little bird tonight, she'll just be hungry and need a diaper change, after all."

Liz helped her clear away the remains of the sewing session, and slipped into the next room. They'd left the baby sleeping there while they sewed, and she hated to wake her, moving her. She could just slip back
to the kitchens and get a bite—her hand brushed her cheek, no one would see the ugly . . . the scab flaked off in her hand, and the skin was smooth beneath it.

There was a mirror in the alcove outside the main room of the
tavern.

Liz glanced back into the other room. The lady was asleep. She slipped out her own door and locked it behind her.

The rooms were at the end of an ell, an addition to the original building. Liz was surprised by the no
ise as she reached the corner.
Troops. Drat.
But there weren't any in the front by the desk. Liz slipped around the corner to peer into the mirror. Her cheek was smooth, just a pale streak to mark where the whip had fallen. If it didn't tan she could just use a little powder . . . she pushed back her sleeves. The welts and cuts where she'd protected her face after that first unanticipated slash were also healed. Her hands went to her hair, that she'd braided back seeking a modest appearance.