Chacerly waited for her by the door of the inn house. “Hurry,” he said as she approached. “The evening meal's almost ready. Go clean up.”
She was tired from the long day, sore from the miles on horseback, and wanted nothing more than to sit in quiet to brood. “Can't I eat in my room?”
“No,” he said. “Get moving.” He followed her into the inn, caught up to her shoulder where the narrow passage widened just enough, and said in a low voice, “One thing I'll tell you again is that you ought to have brought maidservants.”
“I don't like servants,” she said. “All they ever did was spy and tattle, and the ones that didn't were hurt for it. I'd rather take care of myself.”
He grunted. “It looks bad. One woman with all these men. Not even women in the guards. I don't like it.”
“I'll be fine,” she said, pushing the door to her room open, and shut it in his face before he could argue further.
It didn't take her long to strip out of the dusty leggings and tunic, sponge off road grime, and slip into a dress. Managing without servants had given her a certain impatience for lingering over simple tasks like dressing.
She turned, examining herself in the long mirror. The fabric hugged her narrow shoulders and arms just enough to show line, not bone; the squared scoop of the neck showed her collarbones but nothing lower. A thick band of gold and silver thread brocade wound around the waist, and the skirt hung long and fully pleated. Thin red and gold shoes, little more than slippers heavily worked with a brocade that matched the waist pattern, and a long, thin gold chain with a single hematite marble finished the outfit. Her hair she left loose and brushed out carefully until it lay in a silky cape over her shoulders and back.
Satisfied both by her appearance and how quickly she'd managed it, although her mother would have been horrified at her “unseemly haste”, she gave the mirror one last warm smile, practicing the expression, then turned to the door.
Chac, waiting outside, looked her over critically as she stepped out of the room. After a moment, he nodded and produced a thin beaded bracelet.
“Right hand,” he said, and fastened the string of beads around her wrist. “Don't take it off.”
It seemed simple enough; small, round pieces of some dark green gemstone interspersed with squared off, unevenly sized pieces of thick white shell, threaded on a thin golden wire.
“What does it mean?”
“It means you're wearing a bracelet,” he said, his expression closed and hard. “It means you're not a servant. Now mind you don't toss and flutter like you're the prettiest in the room. You'll get yourself a name you won't like later on.”
“I don't,” she started, indignant.
“I've seen you do it,” he cut her off. “Quiet. Modest. Eyes down. And use your ears and eyes before your mouth.”
“It's only a way-stop,” she protested.
“No such thing as only,” he said. “Not anywhere south of Bright Bay. Everything is important, here, and everyone could be. Pay attention.”
“All right,” Alyea said, feeling thoroughly rebuked. Trying to move in a properly humble manner, she followed the old man down the inn passage. “What should I be looking for?”
He waited until they'd left the narrow corridor and emerged into the open air before speaking again. As they walked across the rough ground towards the dining hall, she regretted her choice of thin slippers. Even the raked-out sandy path, lit now with pole lanterns to either side, held numerous pebbles and sharp rocks. She stepped with care and tried to divide her attention between Chacerly's quick, low voice and the path ahead.
“Deiq of Stass is here,” the old man said. “He's a big man, big and dark.”
“Thanks for the warning,” Alyea said, her heart sinking.
“You know him?”
“I don't think we've been introduced, but I've seen him in court now and again. He always made me uneasy.”
“With good reason. Stay away from him.” Chac seemed about to say more, then shook his head, his lips pressed tight. “Just . . . just stay away from him,” he finished at last. “And don't make him angry.”
“Gladly,” Alyea said fervently. Deiq's dark stare always seemed to be sizing up everyone around him for their value to his own personal amusement; she had no interest in speaking with him or drawing his attention in any way.
“He's the only one of real status I've seen—not rank, he's no noble, but he has influence.” The old man grimaced and changed the subject. “Remember that you have to earn respect. Your family blood means much less here than it did in Bright Bay. Stay quiet until you're spoken to.”
“And if nobody speaks to me?”
“Then you enjoy a meal in silence for once in your life. It won't kill you.”
Alyea snorted, annoyed at Chac's brusque reply, but they entered the dining hall without a single suitable retort coming to her mind.
The dining hall was a long, low building with five bench-seat tables. The center table, set with silver salt-cellars and a thickly embroidered, linen table-covering, was obviously for the most important guests; the outer tables, by similar indications, sat successively less worthy folk. Guards and servants were placed at the outermost tables, which had only bare wood and small, rough wooden bowls of coarse salt. Chac steered her to the center table, close to the door; after a quick, assessing glance up the mostly empty table, he said, “Sit at the end here, my lady. I'll take a table over.”
She settled obediently on the wide, wooden bench just as a deep, brassy note from a hidden gong filled the air: once, twice, a third time. People began to stream into the room and sort themselves out into seats; Alyea noted several subtle clashes over the seats at the center and flanking tables by newcomers. There were few enough people and more than enough seats, however, so the disputes faded away with little more than an evil glare here and there.
Alyea recognized a few faces, high-blood merchants and low-end nobles who had swirled through Bright Bay her whole life. One or two, catching sight of her, smiled and nodded brief greeting; she returned the amiable gesture in kind.
Deiq of Stass sat high at the other end of her table, watching the room with lazy interest. Alyea managed to lean over and adjust her slipper just before his searching gaze reached her area of the table, and took her time about sitting back up. A quick glance reassured her that his attention had fixed on a plump woman at the next table over; she let out a thin sigh of relief.
She risked looking around the room herself, trying to keep her gaze casual. Micru, still in rough but clean trail clothes, had chosen a spot among the servants, laughing and joking as if he were nothing more than a low-born himself. Chacerly, at the next table, already seemed deep in conversation with the people around him, merchants by the look of them.
Wide wooden doors opened at the far end of the hall. Alyea had assumed they led outside, but a rich, savory smell filled the air as servants marched in carrying huge platters of food.
The richest dishes were brought to the center table, the simplest to the sides; roast pheasant and puff-bread on silver platters for nobles, roast chicken and black bread on wooden slabs for lesser men. The servers placed the food on plates for the more powerful, left the platters on the outer tables for the servant-classes to argue over.
Servants placed delicately-arranged helpings of white beans and feathery greens, thin slices of roast pheasant and puff-bread, small globes of creamed rice balls, and long strips of steamed black mushrooms on the silver plates. Alyea applied herself to her food silently, keeping a pleasant expression on her face. After the long day of riding, she wanted thick food, not this fluffy stuff. Hopefully Chac could get her some dark bread and cheese from the kitchens later.
“Beautiful, aren't they?” a thin voice to her left said.
Alyea turned her head, relieved that she wouldn't have to sit silent all through dinner, and smiled at the woman sitting a bit more than arm's length away. “It's all lovely.”
“The mushrooms, I m
ean,” the woman said. She was short and wellfed, with greying brown hair framing a contentedly round face. “I've never seen them quite so large.”
Black mushrooms from the Horn were often the size of a dinner plate and, although a delicacy, weren't all that uncommon in Bright Bay. Alyea took a closer look at the woman, noted the northern roundness to her face, the simple cut of her dress, and the lack of jewelry, and tried not to wince.
“Everything's so much larger here,” the woman went on. “It's lovely. I imagine you grow your gardens all year round, here, don't you? I wish I could. You can keep basil going all year, I imagine—am I right?” Her smile was open and innocent as she waited for an answer.
Alyea stared, taken aback. Did this woman think nobles gardened? “I . . . I wouldn't know.”
The woman seemed to take in Alyea's dress for the first time.
“Oh, dear,” she said, her round face flushing. She glanced around the room, seeming uncertain and flustered. “I'm sorry. Have I sat at the wrong table?”
“No,” Alyea said after a moment, ashamed of her initial, snobbish reaction. Everyone could be important, Chac had warned her; Alyea decided, a bit impishly, that those words should apply to an ignorant northern as well as anyone else in the room. Let him rebuke her for overfriendliness; she'd throw his own words back in his face.
“Are you sure? I could . . . move. . . .” The woman glanced over her shoulder, visibly reluctant to leave the good food in front of her for the lesser meals on the further tables.
“Absolutely,” Alyea assured her, flashing the warm, practiced smile. “You're fine. There's plenty of room here, no reason to move, and you've already got food on your plate. Please, stay and talk to me. I'm Alyea, of Bright Bay. You're from the northlands?”
“Well . . . yes,” the woman admitted, relaxing. “I'm Halla of Felarr.”
“What brings you all the way through the Forest and into the Horn, s'a Halla?” Alyea asked, interested now. Most northerns, and especially women, didn't travel this far, and definitely not alone, as Halla seemed to be.
The woman picked at her food uncertainly for a moment before answering.
“My son,” she said finally. “He wanted to travel to Bright Bay. I couldn't stop him, and my husband's dead five years. Rebon went off with a merchanting caravan, hired on as a clerk; he's a good boy, a smart boy.” She swallowed hard. “He never came back.”
“How long has he been gone?” Alyea asked.
“Three years,” Halla said. She stared at her plate, took a listless bite. “The merchant he worked for is dead two years back, killed in a riot in Bright Bay. I don't know where my son is. I've spent the last four months in Bright Bay, trying to find a trace of him; the only word I gathered, finally, is that he might have been seen going into the desert with a group of southerners, as a slave.”
Alyea nodded, unsurprised, and said nothing.
Halla shook her head and poked at the food on her plate.
“Everything is so strange here,” she said after a moment. “I don't know what to do. I ought to turn back now, to get home on what money I have left.” She laughed, a sharp humorless bark. “Not that I'll have much to return to. All my savings are in this venture, and I have no man to help bring in more.”
Alyea ate quietly for a time, considering, then said, “I'm headed south, and I could use a maid, s'a, if you've the interest in a job.”
The round face brightened. “That would be perfect, s'a,” Halla said. “I've been a merchant's wife for most of my life, but I've done my share of serving the wealthy. Would you take me on?”
“I will,” Alyea said.
“I'm so grateful—”
The northern woman's voice stilled as a male tenor interrupted softly, “My lady?”
Alyea turned to look up at the man standing behind her. He wore the colors of the way-stop, grey and black, and the slash embroidered on his sleeves marked him as a dining-hall servant. A bracelet on his right wrist ran through a gamut of grey hues, in three rows of precisely-matched beads.
“Yes, s'e?”
He bowed briefly. “S'e Deiq asks the favor of your presence closer to his hand.”
Startled, she glanced up the table. The big man's brooding dark gaze had fixed directly on her; not the best of manners but a clear sign that he'd take refusal of the offer poorly.
Don't make him angry, Chac had said.
Alyea stifled an annoyed sigh.
“We'll discuss this more after dinner,” she told the woman. “Wait for me outside when the tables clear, or speak to Chacerly; he's the oldest man at that table—see?” Reassured by Halla's quick, bobbing nod, Alyea stood, schooled her expression to neutrality, and walked towards the head of the table.
As she moved, conversations ebbed; heads turned to watch her. Then, politely, the noise resumed. She sat across from Deiq, inclined her head in greeting, and waited. A fresh plate was placed in front of her and swiftly filled, along with a clean cup of water and a small goblet of white wine.
“I believe I've seen you before, Lady,” Deiq said once the servants withdrew. “In Bright Bay.”
“I grew up there,” she said.
His eyes narrowed. She smiled and turned her attention to her food.
“What brings you to the Horn?” he asked.
“Scratha.”
A thin line of broad teeth showed briefly in a slight smile. “Busy man.”
She gave him the full weight of a direct, emotionless stare for a few seconds, and went back to eating, leaving the prompt unanswered.
He chuckled. “You're more than Scratha's worth. Come with me instead.”
“I've business with Scratha,” she said without looking up.
“You're not the first,” he said. “Nissa of Sessin went through here wailing over him not long ago.”
She stayed quiet, trying to keep her chewing slower than the sound of her pulse hammering in her ears. Close up, Deiq was disturbing in a way she couldn't quite place. And he seemed to be the only person at this table not wearing a beaded bracelet; she resisted the urge to study him for other jewelry, not wanting to give him the wrong impression.
“Mm,” he said after a brief silence. It sounded thoughtful, and she glanced up to see him looking at her with narrowed eyes. A wider smile than before curved his mouth. The moment showed her that he wore no earrings or necklaces. “I remember where I've seen you before. You were always wandering about behind that skinny nothing.”
“Who is now king,” she said without taking offense. Oruen had been a gangly, unremarkable man until Chacerly's tutoring had straightened his stance and paced his movements.
“What's the king's woman doing headed down the Horn?”
“Do you call every woman you befriend yours?” she countered.
“What are you doing headed down the Horn?” he said with no visible annoyance or contrition. His gaze rested on her thin bracelet of green and white; his lips shifted as though resisting a smile.
Alyea shrugged. “King's business,” she said, and cursed herself silently for answering that way; she'd intended to say “my business.”
“King's business,” he repeated, and grinned. It wasn't a particularly friendly expression. “Must be important or he wouldn't have sent such a good friend.” When she didn't rise to that bait, he nodded as if satisfied and said, “You know, you really are far too smart for Scratha. Or for Oruen. You're wasted on them. I'm headed south in the morning, out to the east road. I'd be honored for you to travel with me, Lady. I think I'd like to get to know you better.”
She felt a pressure behind her eyes, a velvet not-quite headache.
“I take the King's Road,” she said, wishing she knew a more tactful way to refuse.
“That's a longer way,” he said, “and a harder one. You'll get seasick from all the hills you'll travel over. The coast road is smoother, and beautiful. And from the lovely port of Stass I can arrange a ship to take you to Agyaer, no charge, and so much less riding.”
&n
bsp; “The King's Road is a shorter way,” she said, not looking at him, “and a neutral road.”
“Ah,” he said, as if she'd said a great deal in few words. They finished their food in silence.
The dinner dishes were being cleared away and replaced with bowls of clean sand before he spoke again. Scooping up a handful of sand and rubbing it briskly between his palms, letting the grains drizzle onto the floor at his feet, he said, “Do you know what neutrality means, lady?”
She shook her head as she cleaned her own hands, tucking away the thought that he also displayed no rings on his large hands. Did the lack of decoration mean no status of note—or too much to mention? She'd have to ask Chac, and hope for a straight answer.
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