IN THE END ODOSSE DID NOT go out at all. She had no stomach for facing anything like the tanners’ conversation again. She had the inn’s servants bring up a roast and fresh bread, then spent the evening telling stories from her own childhood to the babies. Aubry seemed to like the ones about Sir Auberand and the Winter Queen the best, perhaps because the knight’s name sounded like his own. Those were her favorites as well; she’d named her son for the knight of the tales. Watching him smile, Odosse promised silently that he would, someday, have the chance to reach greatness to match his name.
Eventually Aubry let himself be soothed back into slumber, and Odosse was left with nothing to do. She went to the window, hoping to watch the life of the town beneath her, but her window overlooked the stables and there was nothing to see.
Her eyes fell on Brys’ saddlebags, heaped carelessly by his pallet. She knew so little about her companion. He had barely spoken to her on the road. They’d spent days with no one else for company, and at the end of it she knew little more than she’d learned that first night in the broken tower.
It was not in Odosse’s nature to pry … but, she told herself, this near-stranger held her life and Aubry’s in his hands, and she owed it to her son to learn more about the man to whom she had trusted their safety. With that thought, and a wary glance at the door, she unlaced the first of his bags.
There wasn’t much in it. Dirty clothes, spare socks, a dice cup. A small leather-bound book that she recognized as a prayerbook by the sunburst etched on its cover. Knives and a sharpening steel. A ball of tough waxed thread with two needles stuck inside.
The second bag held more of the same. And, wrapped inside a torn shirt, a small pouch of red silk exquisitely embroidered with gold and ebony vines. The embroidery was stained and fraying, but the quality of the thread still shone through, and the fineness of the stitches bespoke a master’s hand. That pouch, Odosse thought, must have been stitched by a highborn lady. Who else could possess such skill?
Inside the pouch was a medallion of deep blue enamel edged and backed with gold. A proud black unicorn reared at the center of the emblem, and there were words in flowing script on the back. The medallion hung from the same leather thong that she had glimpsed around Brys’ neck when they passed through the gate.
That was a knight’s medallion, Odosse knew, although the mark was foreign to her. Knights received them from their lords when they swore their oaths of fealty and were anointed to the sun; they were noble gifts, passed from father to son or won by great valor. All the stories made mention of the emblems their heroes wore, and many tales concerned the grave dishonor that befell a knight who lost his medallion.
Brys didn’t seem terribly concerned about his, but then he didn’t seem to think himself much of a knight, either. Odosse put it back carefully, wondering whose sign the rearing unicorn was. Her fingers brushed something else beside it.
She drew out a silver locket adorned with filigree in the same design of vines and flowers as that on the pouch. A tiny latch secured its cover. She eased it off with her fingernail and opened the locket to reveal a miniature portrait inside.
The portrait was that of a young woman. Candlelight distorted the painting’s colors, casting them all in a sheen of rich gold so that Odosse could not tell the true shade of her hair or skin. The woman in the picture wore jewels, and around her shoulders was a dress edged in lace fine and frothy as cream. She was beautiful, whoever she was, but unless the painter’s brush lied, there seemed to be a quiet sadness about her eyes.
Odosse did not think Brys would keep a portrait that lied. She snapped the locket shut and slipped it into the pouch, then wrapped the tattered shirt around it and stuffed it all back into the saddlebag.
The locket left her feeling vaguely melancholy. So he really was a knight. Presumably the woman in the painting was his lady-love; she was beautiful enough to be. As Odosse was not—but that was a ridiculous thought. She’d never expected anything like that anyway. Not of Brys.
Still, it stung a little to think no one would ever carry her portrait in a locket. Beautiful women inspired such devotion. Ugly ones did not. That was a simple truth of the world.
She kissed Aubry on his brow and lay beside her son on the bed, but sleep refused to come. The candles burned low and died one by one. Outside the moon rose, casting ripples of light through the poor glass. Wind rattled at the eaves and whistled through gaps in the panes, bringing a whisper of winter into the room.
Odosse lay restless under linen and thick wool and thought about Aubry’s father, the boy she’d once believed she loved. The boy she’d once believed loved her: Coumyn, the wheelwright’s second son. In the summer of her sixteenth year he had courted her with flowers and stolen kisses behind his father’s workshop. No one had ever given her flowers, or wanted to kiss her, before.
She thought about how sweetly shy he’d been when they crept into the hayloft together, his hands shaking as he undid the laces of her blouse and his breath smelling faintly of milk when he gasped atop her. And how cruel he’d been, after, when her belly began to swell and the entire village gossiped about who the father might be. Who could have been so desperate, so low-reaching, as to get a baby on the baker’s ugly daughter?
Odosse wondered which was the real boy: the one who whispered sweet promises in private, or the one who jeered her in public, telling his friends that her baby would surely be born half pig, because no man would have her.
She’d hated him for a long time after that. She’d never named the father, not to her parents or the village solaros or anyone, because it was better to raise the child alone in shame than be yoked to someone like Coumyn in marriage. Bastards were hardly unknown in the village, but a girl who found herself pregnant with no husband on the horizon could expect mockery, ostracism, maybe beatings from her angry parents. It hurt her marriage prospects, and Odosse’s prospects had never been good. But being alone was better than being with someone who didn’t want her.
The love her parents had shown her then, and the shame they hid, broke Odosse’s heart to remember. Her mother had dusted off her old cradle, and her father had whittled wooden toys in the scant slow moments at the bakery, and neither of them had ever asked her again, after the first time, what she intended to do about the father. They’d simply accepted, with a grace and generosity that few others in Willowfield would have shown, that their grandson would have none.
She’d hated Coumyn for that too: for putting such strain on her parents’ love because he had none of his own to give her.
Now, though, that hatred was gone. He was dead by no fault of his own, and it was a crueler fate than he deserved. Remembering Coumyn felt like probing at a sore tooth that had fallen out and finding only a gap where the pain had been: an instant of surprise, even though she’d known the hole was there, and a curious sense of desolation at missing the sting. Thoughtless and spiteful as he’d been, he’d given her moments of tenderness, too, and his death left her that much more alone in the world.
No, she couldn’t hate him. He was gone, and his sins were for the gods to judge. Odosse touched Aubry’s tiny hand; he stirred in his sleep, closing chubby fingers around her thumb. She whispered, kissing his head: “It doesn’t matter. I have a good son.”
6
That night Brys set out to get robbed.
He didn’t want it to happen too close to the Broken Horn. If he was lucky, his robber might know something about what had happened in Willowfield. If he was very lucky, the robber might actually have been there.
Though most of the killers were probably from Ang’arta—few except Baozites were willing to work with the Thorns—the ambush itself showed the touch of a local hand. How else could they have known exactly which tiny hamlet Galefrid would choose to pray in, or approached without alerting the knights? Someone local had to have helped them. It wasn’t too far-fetched to think that a man desperate enough to sell his village to Baozite reavers might seek refuge across the border in Oak
harn for a while, and once there might waylay the odd traveler for money.
Brys didn’t expect to be that lucky. But if he was, he didn’t want to drag Odosse or the children into the firestorm that would surely follow. The girl was braver and tougher than she realized, but she wasn’t made for the kind of trouble he meant to find.
So he turned away from the Broken Horn and followed the river wall until he came to another knot of taverns in the shadow of Tarne Crossing’s shining bridges.
They looked vaguely familiar, though Brys wasn’t sure that he’d set foot in any of them before. After a while, one raucous pit of ruffians looked much the same as the next. What mattered was that they were raucous vice-pits, and therefore exactly what he was looking for. Brys sauntered through the nearest door, whistling an old war song and jangling a handful of dice.
He’d left his honest dice in his saddlebags. These dice were for cheating.
The tavern was a smoky den of laughter and curses, rank with the smell of soured dreams. He didn’t see many locals, which was a promising sign: this place was for strangers and those who preyed on them. Most of them were armed but not wealthy, outfitted in battered leather and the scroungings of a half-dozen battlefields. Brys’ good boots and the gleaming glass gems on his brooch immediately marked him as rich, at least compared to these men, but not enough to be high-born or otherwise troublesome.
He took a moment to gauge which of the dice games had the most money on the table, drew up a chair without asking, and tossed a silver sol into the pot to forestall any complaints. Then, methodically, Brys set about losing money.
While he gambled away copper threepence and silver solis on bad rolls, he listened to the talk at the table. Cross-eyed Ludd was bemoaning the loss of his father’s sword at the card table—an old complaint, judging by the groans that met his story—while baby-faced Renshil, gifted with a disarming smile and too-quick fingers, swore up and down that he’d never had such luck with the dice. Liars and fools, all of them, telling the same stories as liars and fools the world over.
When he asked about Willowfield, feigning an idle interest in finding mercenary work there, he got more lies and foolishness.
“Bloodmagic,” Renshil said, spitting into the rushes. “Who knew the Langmyrne were that depraved? They say it’s his wife, that Ardasi witch, she’s the one who practices the dark arts. Put Lord Inguilar under her spell and bent him to even blacker deeds than he’d have done on his own. She used her sorcery to murder Sir Galefrid and stole his baby to sacrifice on her altar … to Kliasta, or Maol, or some southern fiend-god.”
“If I had my father’s sword, I’d show them what for,” Ludd said.
“I thought it was the ironlords who used bloodmagic.” Brys tossed another sol into the pile of coins and watched Renshil short-roll the dice to take it. The man wasn’t even a subtle cheat. He was drunk, too, and getting sloppier as he drank.
“You think the Golden Scourge is the only one who can bring a witch over the sea?” Renshil snorted as he swept the coins into his pouch. He set a single sol back in the center to start the next round. “Anyway, you’ll find no work in Bulls’ March. You might be the best swordsman this side of Nhrin Wraithborn, but Weakshanks isn’t looking for local swords. Oh, no. Not good enough for him. He’s emptied his treasury on a pack of white wolves.”
“Any good?” Brys asked.
“Exiles, I heard. Criminals, most likely. Makes you wonder why Weakshanks needs to put his trust in a lot like that instead of his own sworn knights, eh? Makes you wonder.”
“What I’m wondering,” Brys said, “is why my luck’s so bad at this table.”
Renshil squinted at him, but seemed to decide after a moment that the words weren’t an accusation. He shrugged and tossed the dice, honestly this time. “The Gilded Lady’s a fickle love.”
“That she is.” As Brys had expected, the hint of a threat kept Renshil from cheating on the next few rounds. He took the opportunity to win back most of his silver, upping the stakes on each round as he set the dice between his fingers, angled them just so, and released them in quick, controlled spins. “Speaking of fickle loves, any places around here you might recommend?”
“Mistress Merrygold’s the one to see—if you can afford her prices. Ardasi training don’t come cheap. Lilli Redskirt runs a fine house for the rest of us.” Renshil squinted at the spinning dice. Plainly he suspected Brys of cheating, and just as plainly he couldn’t work out how.
Brys could almost pity the man. Instead he pushed the tavern’s dice aside and pulled out his own. “I don’t like these dice. They’ve been turning against me all night. Think I’d rather play with my own.”
Renshil licked his upper lip nervously when he saw the new dice. They were carved from soft golden copal, and they shone like burnished gemstones in the torches’ glow. Brys had sweated them under a sunlit glass to weight them to a winning hand, and he’d deliberately done so clumsily enough to make the fraud apparent. Any novice cheat would know to look for that trick, and even one who didn’t know about copal would suspect something amiss about the exotic, jewellike dice that always seemed to turn up lucky eights.
“Lost your stomach for the game?” Brys asked, staring steadily at the other man.
“No.” Renshil’s tongue darted out and touched his upper lip again. “No. Let’s play.”
They played three rounds, long enough to force out the handful of honest players at their table and for even dim-witted Ludd to realize that something was wrong. Renshil’s expression grew darker with each throw of Brys’ that came up lucky eights.
“Might accuse you of cheating,” the baby-faced man said after losing the last of his night’s winnings and half his own stake on yet another turn of eights.
“Might accuse you of the same,” Brys replied.
Silence fell over their table, tense as the stillness before the break of a storm. Ludd edged away, muttering apologies heard by no one but himself. Renshil looked Brys over sullenly, his hands clenched under the table.
Though Brys was unarmed—ostentatiously so, having left his hatchet and hunting knife at the Broken Horn as part of his plan to get robbed—he was still a head taller than Renshil and nearly half again the smaller man’s weight, all of it muscle. The calluses on his sword hand and the scars on his knuckles left little doubt as to how he used that muscle.
Beer hadn’t given Renshil that much courage. He sank back into his chair, deflated. “No need for that. But I won’t be playing with you no more, neither. Take your dice and go.”
Brys did. He took a short walk to clear his lungs of the tavern’s smoke and relieved his bladder in a dark alley, listening all the while for footsteps behind him. But Renshil never came out to take revenge for his humiliation and lost money, so Brys went to another tavern to cheat and be cheated again.
Twice he repeated the pattern, and twice more his victims failed to confront him after he took their money, loudly accused them of fraud, and lingered invitingly in shadowed alleys outside. Finally, disappointed, Brys took his winnings and started east through the sleeping town, heading for Merrygold’s brothel. He’d won more than enough for what he needed, so the night hadn’t been a complete waste.
It was well after midnight when he reached Mistress Merrygold’s gilded doors. Glossy-leaved camellias surrounded her house, long bereft of flowers but still fragrant. Supposedly Mistress Merrygold had brought the plants with her at great expense from her home city of Amrali, where they marked the Houses of the Camellias—not mere brothels, as in the north, but shrines to beauty and sensual delight where courtesans practiced music, dancing, and the carnal arts with same dedication that Blessed devoted to their prayers. In Ardashir, courtesans began their training in early childhood and were regarded as artists to be honored, not whores to be used. Even girls from noble families visited the Houses of the Camellias for training; the Ardasi regarded it as a normal and necessary aspect of refined femininity, and looked down on those who did not cultiva
te their appreciation of the senses.
Attitudes were considerably different in the Sunfallen Kingdoms, but Merrygold had done her best to armor herself in the symbols of her homeland. In places she’d resorted to minor frauds to accomplish that. The camellias looked exotic, but they were from southern Thelyand, brought to this place on rumbling wagons instead of Amrali’s white-prowed ships. The gilded fretwork on her door looked worthy of any Ardasi palace, but it had been carved by a local artisan following her drawings, not a wizened Khartoli master. Probably she’d faked a hundred other things Brys didn’t know about.
Even knowing what he did, he had to admit the effect was impressive. Every aspect of her house and her person was calculated to convey wealth and refinement, and it worked a peculiar intimidation on her visitors. Hardened killers, walking up to Merrygold’s door, shook the dust from their boots and combed their hair into order. Nobles courted her more avidly than they did their brides. Those who didn’t care to enter her charmed circle still treated her with wary respect, because so many others did, and she exercised some degree of power through her patrons.
It was a long, strange road that had taken Mistress Merrygold from the perfumed pleasure houses of Ardashir to this rude northern kingdom. She was as out of place in Tarne Crossing as a swan in a pigpen, and he’d never thought she’d stay in Oakharn longer than a season, yet here she was, flourishing.
Despite the hour, music and laughter trickled through the diamond-paned windows of Mistress Merrygold’s house. A young guard wearing a red sash shivered outside her door. The red sash was another token of her origins; guards at the Houses of the Camellias wore them, and not much more. In deference to the northern climate, Merrygold let her guards have leathers and woolen cloaks to go with theirs, but she made them wear the sashes to signify that hers was no ordinary brothel.
“Merrygold in tonight?” Brys asked the guard.
The young man stiffened, then nodded. He was about twenty, very handsome, and obviously besotted with his mistress. Merrygold was shameless about taking good-looking young men in for “training,” and Brys couldn’t really begrudge her. It was cheaper than paying them wages, and there were worse ways for a man to spend a year or two of his youth.
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