Kellin gaped. "My granddame is Ermnish, with hair red as yours—redder! I have her eyes—"
"Your granddame—and your mother to boot—was likely a street whore, brat ... no more chatter from you. Into the room. We're not here to harm you,'just keep you." The red-haired giant pushed Kellin through another door as Gap-tooth unlocked it. He was dumped unceremoniously onto a thin pallet in a small, stuffy room, then the door was locked.
For a moment Kellin lay sprawled in shock, speechless in disbelief. Then he realized they'd stripped the rope from his wrists. He scrambled up and hammered at the door.
"They won't open it. They won't."
Kellin jerked around, seeing the boy in the corner for the first time. The light was poor, admitted only through a few holes high up in the walls. The boy slumped against the wall with the insouciance of a longtime scofflaw. His face was thin, grimy, and bruised. Lank blond hair hung into his eyes, but his grin was undiminished by Kellin's blatant surprise.
"Urchin," the boy said cheerfully, answering the unasked question.
Kellin was distracted by newborn pain in his cut hand, which now lacked Rogan's bandage. He frowned to see the slices were packed with dirt and other filth; wiping it against his jerkin merely caused the slices to sting worse. Scowling, he asked, "What kind of a name is that?"
"Isn't a name. Haven't got one- That's what they call me, when they call me." The boy shoved a wrist through his hair. His eyes were assessive far beyond his years, "Good leathers, beneath the dirt .. . good boots, too- No thief, are ye?"
Kellin spat on the cuts and wiped them again against his jerkin. "Tell them that."
Urchin grinned. "Won't listen- All they want is the copper."
"Copper?"
"Copper a head for all the thieves they catch."
Kellin frowned, giving up on his sore hand.
"Who pays it?"
Urchin shrugged. "People. They're fed up wi’ getting their belt-purses stolen and pockets picked."
He waggled fingers. "Some o' them took up a collection, like . ,. for each thief caught during Summerfair, they pay a copper a head- Keeps the streets clean of us, y'see, and they can walk out without fearing for pockets and purses." Urchin grinned. "But if you're good enough, nobody catches you."
"You got caught."
"Couldn't run fast enough with this." Urchin extended a swollen, discolored foot and pufty ankle.
"Dog set on me." He was patently unconcerned by the condition of foot and ankle. "If you're not a thief, why're you here?"
Kellin grimaced. "I was running. They thought it was because I was stealing."
"Never run in Mujhara," the boy advised solemnly, then reconsidered. "Unless you be a fine Homanan lord, and then no one will bother you no matter what you do,"
Kellin glanced around. On closer inspection, the room was no better than his first impression, a small imprisonment, empty save for them. "Not so many copper pieces today."
Urchin shrugged. "The other room is full. They'll put the new catches in here. You're the first, after me."
Kellin peeled a crust of blood from his chin.
"How do we get out?"
"Wait till someone pays your copper. Otherwise we stay here till Summerfair is over, because then it won't matter."
"That's three days from now!"
Urchin shrugged, surveying his injured foot. "Be hard to steal with this."
Kellin stared at the swollen limb, marking the angry discoloration and the streaks beginning to make their way up Urchin's leg. It was a far worse injury than the few slices in his hand. "You need that healed."
Urchin's mouth hooked down. "Leeches cost coin.”
Morbidly fascinated by the infected limb, Kellin knelt down to look more closely. "A Cheysuli could heal this, and he would cost nothing."
Urchin snorted.
"He could," Kellm insisted. "I could, had I a lir."
Urchin's eyes widened. "You say you're Cheysuli?"
"I am. But I can't heal yet." Kellin shrugged a little. "Until I have a lir, I'm just like you." The wound stank of early putrefaction. "My grandsire will heal you. He has a lir; he can." And he will heal my wounds, too.
Urchin grunted. "Will he come here to pay your copper?"
Kellin considered it. "No," he said finally, feeling small inside. "I think Rogan will do that, and I doubt he will like it."
"Few men like parting with coin."
"Oh, it is not the coin. He will not like why he has to do it, and it will give him fuel to use against me for months." Kellin cast a glance around the gloomy room. "He would say I deserved this, to teach me a lesson. But it was the Lion—" He looked quickly at Urchin, breaking off.
The Homanan boy frowned. "What lion?"
"Nothing." Kellin left Urchin's side and retreated to a pallet near the door. He pressed shoulder blades into the wall. "He will come for me."
"That tutor?" Urchin's mouth twisted. "I had a tutor, once. He taught me how to steal."
Kellin shrugged. "Then stop."
"Stop." Urchin stared. "D'ye think it's so easy? D'ye think I asked the gods for this life?"
"No one would ask it. But why do you stay in it?"
"No choice." Urchin picked at his threadbare tunic. His thin face was pinched as if his leg pained him. "No mother, no father, no kin." His expression hardened. "I'm a thief, and a good one."
He looked at his swollen ankle- "Sometimes."
Kellin nodded. "Then I will have Rogan pay your copper, too, and you will come back with me."
Urchin's dirt-mottled face mocked. "With you."
"To Homana-Mujhar."
"Liar."
Kellin laughed. "As good a liar as a thief."
Urchin turned his shoulder: eloquent dismissal.
With his pallet nearest the door, Kellin awoke each time a new arrival was pushed into the room throughout the night. At first he had been intrigued by the number and their disparate "crimes," but soon enough boredom set in, and later weariness; he fell asleep not long after a plain supper of bread and thin gravy was served, and slept with many interruptions until dawn.
The commotion was distant at first, interesting only the few recently imprisoned souls who hoped for early release. That hope had faded in Kellin, who found himself reiterating to a dubious Urchin that indeed he was who he said he was, and was restored only when he heard-the voice through the door: the red-haired man, clearly frightened as well as astonished.
Kellin grinned at the young thief through pale dawn. "Rogan. I told you, Urchin."
The door was opened and a man came in. It wasn't Rogan at all, but the Mujhar himself, followed by the giant.
Kellin scrambled hastily to his feet. "Grandsire! You?"
The giant was very pale. "My lord, how could we know? Had we known—"
Stung by the outrage, Kellin turned on the man. "You knew," he declared. "I told you. You just didn't believe me." He looked at his grandfather. "None of them believed me."
"Nor would I," Brennan said calmly. He arched a single eloquent brow. "Have you taken to swimming in the midden?" Yellow eyes brightened faintly, dispelling the barb- "Or was it an entirely different kind of Midden?"
Kellin recalled then the whore's words, her mention of the Midden. It basted his face with heat. Such shame before his grandsire! "My lord Mujhar . . ." He let it trail off. Part of him was overwhelmed to be safe at last, while the other part was mortified that his grandsire should see him so. "No," he said softly, squirming inside filthy leathers. "I fell ... I did not mean to get so dirty."
"Nor so smelly." Brennan's gaze was steady. "Explain yourself, if you please."
Kellin looked at the giant. "Didn't he tell you?"
"He told me. So did the other man. Now it is for you."
Kellin was hideously aware of everyone else in the room, but especially of his grandfather, his tall, strong, Cheysuli grandfather, whose dignity, purpose, and sense of self was so powerful as to flatten everyone else, certainly a ten-year-old
grandson. The Mujhar himself, not Rogan, standing in the doorway with the sunrise on his back, ^r-gold gleaming brightly, silver in his hair, stern face even sterner. The wealth on his arms alone would keep Urchin and others like him alive for years.
In a small voice, Kellin suggested, "It would be better done in private."
"No doubt. I want it done here."
Kellin swallowed heavily. He told his grandsire the whole of it, even to the woman.
Brennan did not smile, but his mouth relaxed.
Tension Kellin had been unaware of until that moment left the Mujhar's body. "And what have you learned from this?"
Kellin looked straight back. "Not to run in Mujhara."
After a moment of startled silence, the Mujhar laughed aloud, folding bare bronzed arms across his chest with no pretensions at maintaining a stem facade, even before the others. Kellin gaped in surprise; what was so amusing, that his grandsire would sacrifice his dignity before the others without hesitation?
"I had expected something else entirely." Brennan said at last, "but I cannot fault your statement- There is truth in it." Amusement faded. "But there is also Rogan."
Kellin's belly clenched. He nodded and stored at his boot toes. "Rogan," he echoed. "I meant not to make him worry."
"Tell him that."
"I will."
"Now."
Kellin looked up from the ground and saw Rogan in the doorway just behind his grandsire.
The man's face was haggard and gray, his eyes reddened from sleeplessness. Kellin thought then of the aforementioned repercussions, Rogan's own question regarding what would become of him and the Mujharan Guard if harm came to Kellin.
"I am unharmed," Kellin said quickly, grasping the repercussions as he never had before. "I am whole, save for my lip, and that I got myself when I fell down."
"And your cut hand; Rogan told me." Brennan extended his own. "Let me see."
Kellin held out his hand and allowed his grandsire to examine the cuts. "Filthy," the Mujhar commented. "It will want a good cleaning when we return, but will heal of its own." His yellow eyes burned fiercely. "You must know not to test others, Kellin. No matter the provocation. If you had not been so quick—"
"But I knew I was," Kellin insisted; couldn't any of them see? "I watched him. I watched the knife. I knew what it would do,"
Brennan's mouth crimped. "We will speak of this another time. For now, I charge you to recall that for such a serious transgression as this one, you endanger others as well as yourself."
Kellin looked again at Rogan. He tugged ineffectually at his ruined jerkin. "I am sorry."
The tutor nodded mutely, seemingly diminished by the tension of the night. Or was it the Lion, biting now at Rogan?
"Well." The Mujhar cast a glance around the room. "It is to be expected that you smell like the Midden, or a midden—though I suppose it is less your own contribution than that of everyone else."
Kellin nodded, scratching at the fleas that had vacated his pallet to take up residence in his clothing.
Brennan considered him. "I begin to think you are more like my rujholli than I had believed possible."
It astonished Kellin, who had never thought of such a thing. "I am?"
"Aye. Hart and Corin would have gotten themselves thrown into a room just like this, or worse, for about the same reason—or perhaps for a crime even worse than thievery—and then waited for me to fetch them out." He looked his grandson up and down. "Are you not young to begin?"
Ashamed again, Kellin stared hard at the ground.
Softly, he said, "I did not expect you to come."
"Hart and Corin did. And they were right; I always came." Brennan sighed. "You did expect someone."
"What else?" It startled Kellin. "You would not leave me here!"
Brennan eyed him consideringly. "I did leave you here. I knew where you were last night."
"Last night It was preposterous. "You left me here all night?"
Brennan exchanged a glance with Rogan. "In hopes you might profit from it, albeit there were guardsmen—and a Cheysuli—just across the street."
His eyes narrowed. "You said you have learned not to run in Mujhara . .. well, I suppose that is something." His tone was ironic. "Surely more than Hart or Corin learned."
"Grandsire—"
"But whether you learned anything is beside the point. Your granddame made it clear to me that if I did not fetch you out at once come dawn, she would have my head." He smiled slightly. "As you see, it is still attached."
Kellin nodded, not doubting that it was; nor his granddame's fiery Erinnish temper.
"So Rogan and I are here to fetch you, very much as you expected, and will now take you back to Homana-Mujhar, where I shall myself personally supervise the bath just to make certain the body in it is that of my grandson, and not some filthy street urchin masquerading as the Prince of Homana."
"Urchin!" Kellin cried, turning. "We have to take him with us!"
"Who?"
"Urchin. Him." Kellin pointed to the astonished boy. "I told him you would pay his copper and bring him with us—well, I said Rogan would—"
Kellin cast a glance at his tutor, "—so you could heal him."
"Volunteering my services, are you, you little wretch?" But Brennan crossed the room and knelt down by the boy thief. "How are you hurt? Ah, so I see. Here—"
"No!" Urchin jerked away the infected foot.
"There is no need to fear me," Brennan said quietly. "I will look, no more; if you are in need of healing, it shall be done in Homana-Mujhar."
"I can't go there
"Why not?" Brennan examined the infected bite. "Walls and a roof, no more .. . you are as welcome as Kellin."
"I am?"
"For now. Come. Trust me."
Kellin looked at his grandfather through Urchin's eyes: tall, dark warrior with silvered hair; yellow eyes clear and unwavering as a wolf's, with the same promised fierceness; lir-gold banding bared arms; the soft, black-dyed leathers clothing a powerful body. He was old in years to Kellin, but age sat lightly on Cheysuli; Brennan was still fit and graceful, with a cat's eloquent ease of movement.
"He won't hurt you," Kellin explained matter-of-factly. "He is my grandsire."
Brennan smiled. "The highest of compliments, and surety of my goodwill."
Urchin's eyes were wide. "But—I'm a thief."
"Former thief, I should hope. Come with me to Homana-Mujhar, and you need never steal again."
The Mujhar grinned. "Where you may also shed forty layers of dirt, ten years' worth of fleas, and fill that hollow belly."
"No!" Urchin cried as Brennan made to pick him up. "You'll catch my fleas!"
"Then I shall bathe also."
"I am too heavy!"
"You are not heavy at all." Brennan turned toward the door, toward the red-haired giant. "I will have the fines paid for everyone in this room, and the other; you will see to it they are released at once. But I sympathize with those who fear for their purses; if any of these are caught again, keep them here till Summerfair is ended: in the name of the Mujhar." He smiled briefly at Kellin, slipping into the Old Tongue. "Tu'halla dei." He cast a glance at gape-mouthed faces, then settled Urchin more firmly against his chest. "The Guard has horses waiting. You'll ride behind me."
"My lord," Rogan said quietly, following his lord from the room as Kellin slipped out. "There is the matter of the fortune-teller."
"Ah." Brennan's face assumed a grim mask. He glanced down at Kellin as he carried Urchin into the street. "What did he say to you, Kellin?"
Kellin shrugged. "I couldn't understand it all. They were just—words."
"Tell me the words anyway."
Kellin squirmed self-consciously; he did not want to admit to his fear of the Lion. "Cynric."
Brennan's mask slipped, baring naked shock beneath. "Cynric? He said that?"
"A name." Kellin frowned. "And a sword, and a bow, and a—knife?"
"Gods," Brennan whispered
. "Not my grandson, too."
It terrified Kellin to see his grandfather so stricken. "Not me?" he asked. "Why do you say that? Grandsire—what does it mean'?"
"It means—" Brennan's mouth tightened into a thin, flat line. "It means we will go visit your fortune-teller—who speaks to you of Cynric—before we go home."
"Why? What did he mean?" Desperation crept in; did it have to do with the Lion? "What does 'Cynric' mean?"
" 'Cynric'?" The Mujhar sighed as he handed Urchin to a guardsman and ordered him put up on his own mount. "It is a name, Kellin ... an old, familiar name I have not heard in ten years. Since your jehan first brought you to us—"
"Before he left." Kellin blurted it out all at once; bitterness encased it. "Before he left.”
"Aye." Brennan rubbed absently at the flesh of a face suddenly grown old. "Before he left." He looked at Rogan. "Can you direct us?"
Rogan glanced very briefly at Kellin before looking back to the Mujhar: a subtle question to which the boy was not blind, though adults believed he was. "My lord, perhaps later would be better."
"No." Brennan threaded reins through his hand, turning toward his mount. "No, I think now. He has spoken the name to Kellin without knowing who he was—or so you would have me believe...."
He patted Urchin's stiff thigh, then climbed up easily. "And even if he did know who Kellin was, he also knew the name. I want to ask him how he came by it, and why he speaks of it now to a ten-year-old boy."
"Aye." Rogan moved like an old man toward his own mount. "Of course, my lord, I can direct you to him at once. Although I must warn you—" the tutor mounted with effort, as if his bones hurt,
"—he smokes husath. It is possible . .." He made a gesture with one hand that suggested such a man was unpredictable, and his employment.
Brennan's face was grim. "Aidan never did. But he knew the name, also."
"Grandsire?" Kellin stood in the street, staring up. It seemed to him Urchin had usurped his place. "Is there a horse for me?"
"Rogan's," his grandfather told him, "so you may say more privately how sorry you are for the worry you caused."
Ashamed, Kellin nodded. "Aye, grandsire. I will."
Roberson, Jennifer - Cheysuli 08 Page 5