I’d been wondering if I might have the chance to heat up Livak’s sheets for her but it didn’t look likely. I sighed; it would have been one way of guaranteeing a sound night’s sleep, if nothing else.
We trooped up the stairs after Viltred like the dutiful descendants we weren’t and all followed him into his room.
“I think we should know just what these Ice Islanders took from you,” I began.
“Things get traded in places like this,” commented Livak. “If someone offers me a two-Mark ring that should be worth ten, I’d like to know if it could be one of yours.”
“That’s a good point,” Shiv agreed.
“So what did you and Azazir steal from the Elietimm?” asked Halice.
The old wizard bridled at the implication that he was a thief but shut his mouth on a retort, smoothing the front of his faded velvet jerkin for a moment instead. “There were four swords, two rapiers for court wear and two broadswords; a couple of dress daggers; a chatelaine’s key-ring; some plain gold signet rings, a necklet of pearls, several goblets and tankards with family insignia; a gentleman’s note-tablet; an ink-well—”
I held up a hand. “That’s enough to be going on with, isn’t it, Livak? Let’s eat.”
We ate an excellent meal from a table of ten or more dishes and lingered a little while over some fine porter. I bathed and shaved off the stubble of the last few days with considerable pleasure and was still in bed before the chimes of midnight sounded faintly over the water from South Varis. Inevitably I slept poorly again, though I couldn’t say if that was down to Shiv’s interminable snores or frustration as I thought about Livak asleep on the other side of the lath and plaster wall.
The sound of more traffic in the yard woke me and I opened the shutters for a breath of fresh air as I dressed.
“I wouldn’t mind giving that redhead a few turns on the spit.” A lone voice echoed up from a group of stable lads idly tossing runes, resonant in one of those unpredictable silences that open up especially for embarrassing remarks. I looked to my right to see Livak leaning on the sill of her window.
“Shall we find some breakfast?” I laughed. “Or do you want to take him up on his offer?”
“You can stop smirking,” she growled, but I saw she was failing to keep her own face straight as she drew back from the open shutters.
“One of these days I’m going to take the Great West Road and search those unholy woods until I find someone who can tell me if Forest Folk really are as insatiable in bed as all the stories say,” she muttered as we went down the stairs. “It’s a cursed inconvenient reputation to live with, you know.”
“Oh, I’m not so sure. You might be able to acquire some useful information if that lot are more interested in watching your bodice buttons than what they’re saying.”
“It wouldn’t be the first time,” she admitted with an unabashed smile.
We watched the comings and goings in the tap-room over fresh bread better than any I’d had since leaving home and potted fruit my mother would have been ashamed to serve to her pigs. After a while we sauntered out to take the sun on a bench facing the stableyard and entertained ourselves trying to guess the origins and destinations of the various vehicles and pack animals. A varied collection of local merchants and independent traders came up from the south some while later and I saw a trader with Relshazri wheels to his wagon set down a dark-haired girl in a low-necked dress at the gate and drive through to the barns without stopping. After all, a ride for a ride is the usual deal, no more, no less, and that meant the girl was the type I was looking for. I watched as she headed for the rear of the inn without a backward glance.
“I think I might start asking a few questions.” If we were hunting, it was time we started trying to find a scent. I stood up and Livak nodded her understanding, casually unlacing the neck of her shirt a little and adopting an effectively deceptive guise of big eyes and little brain.
“I’ll see what I can find out from the wagoneers who came in this morning.” She sauntered off, hips swaying just enough to catch the eye.
I walked around to the rear of the inn, treading carefully around a suspicious hound chained to a post and grimacing as I caught the scent of the midden. Voices at the door came around the corner of the building and I stopped, hoping the dog didn’t decide to object as it watched me with pricked ears.
“I’ll work for broken meat and bread, just until I get a ride out of here.” There was no pleading in the cart girl’s voice, which I had to admire.
“We’re not hiring.” The glossy-haired wench who’d served us was sharp with disdain.
“I’m not looking for a permanent place, just something to eat in return for giving you an easier few days.” The girl’s instincts were good, I noted, making a reasonable offer rather than just begging. “The house looks pretty full to me.”
“Oh, all right. You can help out tonight, but you sleep in the stables.” I heard quick steps on the kitchen flagstones then the scrape of a heel as the maid turned back with an afterthought. “You do your business in the yard, I don’t want you bothering customers in the tap-room. Any thieving, I’ll send to Varis for the Watch and they can flog you in the market square.”
I leaned against a water butt until the dark girl came back around the corner.
“Are you heading north?” She looked me up and down and stayed out of arm’s length.
I shook my head. “South, and I’m looking for information about the road.” I tucked my thumbs into my belt and the coin in the purse hanging from it chinked softly as I nudged it.
“What sort of thing, exactly?” She looked cautious as well she might. Axle-greasers, harness brasses, call them what you will, these girls live a dangerous life; Dastennin only knows what the rewards are. She had the usual mongrel looks of the breed, thinner than she should have been, with a face older than her years should have given her.
“I’m Ryshad.” I held out a hand.
“Larrel.” She kept her arms folded defensively.
“I’m interested in finding a handful or so of men traveling together, black-liveried probably, all yellow-haired. We think they’re on the road south of here.”
“What’s it worth?” Her eyes told me she had seen them.
“That depends how much you can tell me.” I folded my own arms and smiled at her, not so pleasantly.
“There were six of them, all walking, one with a long cloak and no pack, the rest loaded like troopers who’ve lost their horses.” Her own smile told me she was no fool and more importantly, no liar, not about this at any rate.
I reached into my purse. “A Mark for the name of the nearest village and a Mark for how many days since you saw them.”
“Formalin Marks, not Caladhrian,” she countered. “Five pence to the Mark, not four, I’m not stupid, you know.”
“Fine.” I shrugged. The two extra coppers meant nothing to me but would buy someone like her a welcome hot meal.
“They were half a day’s walk south of Armhangar, the day before yesterday.”
She held out her hand and I passed her the coin. “My thanks.”
Surprise flared briefly in her eyes as she tucked the coin into a purse at her waist. I watched her go, found a bone in the midden to toss to the dog and went to see what I might find out from the kitchen staff in the lull between breakfast and the noon rush. It wasn’t much of a surprise to find none of them had seen so much as a polished stud off an Elietimm livery; the Ice Islanders didn’t strike me as the type of travelers to put up each evening at the nearest inn to share an idle ale and a joke. I frowned as I went in search of the others.
The stableyard was surprisingly quiet but a rising level of noise led me to a crowd gathering on the far side of the barns. I found the rails of an empty paddock lined with a mixture of locals and traveling men. Shiv saw me and waved, so I headed over to him.
“So, have you heard tell of any black-liveried travelers?” Shiv leaned on the fence rail and ran a hand through his hair.
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br /> I told him what I had learned and then looked around for the others. “Where’s Viltred?” I asked.
“Resting in his room.”
Shiv and I watched as two men climbed over the fence, one carrying two polished staffs over his shoulder, the other with a bundle of inflated bladders dangling from one hand.
“He’s not going to get much sleep with all this going on.” Fatigue betrayed me and I heard a slight sneer in my tone.
“He’s an old man, tired, stiff and sore,” said Shiv mildly. “Be fair, he’s only a handful of years off his third generation festival.”
I looked at Shiv in some surprise and tried to think if I’d ever known anyone that old before. We would have to make some allowance for Viltred if he was carrying seventy years or more in his purse. I supposed Messire D’Olbriot’s uncle, who had been Sieur before him, must be about that age and I had to allow he was hardly in any shape to go riding any distance, let alone day after day.
We watched as the men lashed together frames for hanging a bladder at each end of the field.
“This is spit-noggin, isn’t it? Is it as hard a game as I’ve heard?”
“It can be,” Shiv chuckled. “It depends if there’s anyone playing who has a score to settle with someone else on the field.”
Two teams were sorting themselves out by the paddock gate. After some toing and froing, the match resolved itself pretty much into local traders and a few farmers who’d been passing taking a line against the guards and wagoneers from the Duryea train; fourteen to each side was the figure finally agreed on.
“Is it only the man with the staff who can’t cross the throwing line, or does everyone have to stay clear of it?” I watched as the men setting the field scored a deep line in the uneven turf at either end of the playing area.
“Only the staff-holder. Don’t you play this in Formalin?” Shiv looked surprised.
“In the north, on the western borders, but don’t forget I’m from Zyoutessela. If you go any further south than that, you fall off the Cape of Winds,” I reminded him.
The first run of the game began. The wagon-train men were clearly used to playing together and soon had the staff passing smoothly between them as they ran through and around the local boys. A cheer went up as their man pitched the arm’s length of polished wood at the suspended bladder, but he missed by barely a finger’s breadth. Five men went down in the scramble for the staff but one of the grooms got it and the action came sweeping back down the field toward us.
“I’m going to see if I can find Livak.” Shiv stood up from the rail. “Are you coming?”
“I’ll hang on here.” I kept my eyes on the field. “This is quite something, isn’t it?”
Shiv laughed and slipped away through the crowd, and I concentrated on following the game. We don’t go in for these gang sports so much in Formalin; we tend to favor contests of individual skill instead. I started to wonder how my own spear-throwing talents would play in a game like this. The trick would be getting a chance to use them, I decided, wincing as a man poised to throw disappeared under a heap of dusty jerkins. One failed to get up as fast as the rest and limped off, clutching a hand to his chest. There was a short pause before another mule handler jumped the rails to take the injured man’s place.
“Do you fancy a turn in a team?”
I turned to find Nyle at my shoulder. What was it the man wanted with me?
“What about your friends?” he went on. “We could do with a decent runner.”
I shrugged. “You’ll have to ask them yourself.”
“You’re Formalin-born, aren’t you? Do they play spit-noggin in the east?”
“Not where I live. Will you be playing later?” I can do idle conversation as well as anyone else but I wondered if there was going to be any point to this.
“Oh, yes.” Nyle moved a little closer and leaned forward. “The thing is, I wanted to talk to you first. I do a little trading on the side for myself as well, weapons mainly. I noticed your sword—it’s Old Formalin work isn’t it? I wondered if you might be interested in selling?”
“Not really.” I shrugged again.
“I could do you a really good price, you know. I have a contact who is looking for just that kind of blade.”
A sudden yell from the field might have meant Nyle hadn’t heard my answer, I supposed, but the keenness in his steely gray eyes made me doubt that. Was this just a random encounter, I wondered, or did we have some hounds who’d picked up our own scent while we were nose down for another quarry?
“Sorry, friend, but it’s not mine to sell.”
I took care to color my words with boredom rather than betray any suspicion and turned back to the game. Things were starting to heat up as a dispute broke out over whether or not a muleteer had stepped over the throwing line before the staff had left his hand.
“You could make your patron a coffer full of gold. Think about it; there’d be a decent purse in it for yourself, best part of a season’s pay.”
“No thanks.”
There was a cry from the field as one of the locals threw a punch and a shout went up for Nyle. His broad nostrils flared briefly in ill-disguised irritation.
“I’ll see you later.” He tried for an affable smile but his eyes were still hard; clearly a man not about to take a refusal as final.
He vaulted over the rail and was drawn into the game, leaving me to ponder this odd conversation. A great roar went up and I saw Nyle had the staff and was running with it. He was surprisingly agile for such a big man and when some luckless turnip-herder tried to grab the wood he threw the man off with a twist of the staff that sent him spinning into the gathering crowd.
“Nicely done! That’s a Gidestan move; no wonder they haven’t seen it around here before.” Halice pushed her way through the increasingly dense crowd and leaned heavily on the rail beside me.
I wondered what Nyle had been doing in Gidesta; he didn’t look like a miner, a trapper or a logger, which is pretty much all there is to do in the northern mountains. His accent wasn’t Gidestan either. I shook it off as irrelevant.
“Where’s Livak?”
“Taking bets.” Halice pointed across the paddock and I saw Livak’s coppery head in the middle of an eager cluster of people waving purses.
“What’s she giving them?”
“Two wins five for the mule train, three wins seven for the locals,” said Halice, watching the game thoughtfully. “Better if they win by more than five heads.”
“Heads?” I was puzzled.
Halice pointed to one of the bladders swaying a little in the breeze.
“The Mountain Men are supposed to have used heads taken in battle when they invented the game. Sorgren says it’s the way they used to keep their fighting skills sharp. He swears his grandfather could remember seeing it played with the heads of some miners who’d pushed too far into the mountains, and I’ve seen pig’s heads used in western Gidesta.”
There was a suspicion of relish in Halice’s voice as she glanced sideways to see how I would react to this.
I laughed with a grimace. “Messy!”
A group of the farmers seemed to have got themselves in step at last and managed to bring the game down to our end of the paddock. Five of them concentrated on flattening any muleteer who came within grabbing range and so their man managed to send the staff curling through the air to split the bladder clean in half.
“Have you found anyone who’s come across the Elietimm on the road?”
Halice didn’t hear me so I had to nudge her in the ribs and repeat myself, trying not to speak too loudly despite the cover offered by the noise of the crowd all around.
“What? Oh, yes. Well, a couple of them said they’d seen a small group of men camping out where the Linneyway goes off from the River Road. I think that must have been them— the wagoneer said they were all white-blond, that’s why they caught his eye, all of them being so fair.”
I frowned. “What were they wearing?”
Halice caught her breath and looked annoyed with herself. “He didn’t say and I didn’t think to ask. Just ordinary clothes, I suppose; he’d have mentioned any livery, wouldn’t he?”
“Can you try and find out?”
A shout went up and I saw someone waving a large sandglass to indicate a break was due. It took a few moments to attract everyone’s attention and then there was something of a lull, the noise muted by tankards of ale downed all round.
“By the way, that guard, Nyle, was asking me about your sword,” said Halice. “He does a bit of weapons trading on the side, it seems.”
“He came to ask me himself. I’m still wondering what to make of it.”
The teams sorted themselves out and a few men evidently decided they’d had enough, limping off, cradling bruised hands or nursing bloodied noses and mouths.
“What’s he offering?” Halice cocked an inquiring eyebrow at me.
“Doesn’t matter.” I shook my head. “Messire got it from Planir and gave it to me as a Solstice gift by way of recompense for that little excursion to the Ice Islands with Livak and Shiv.”
I shivered abruptly and I heard a distant echo of my own screams at the hands of the Elietimm leader. That memory was going to fade about as fast as a pirate’s tattoos.
“Caught the draft from Poldrion’s cloak?” Halice joked, but her eyes were thoughtful nonetheless.
“Something like that,” I said shortly, looking back to the field where the fresh men were forcing the pace on as the game recommenced.
“Your Messire thinks well of you, then?” inquired Halice.
“I try to give him reason to.” That sounded a little more pompous than I had intended but Halice seemed unperturbed.
“So how did you come to swear to him? Is it a family thing? Are you following your father?”
“No,” I smiled at that. “My father’s a stonemason, and with my two oldest brothers picking up the chisels he let my next brother and myself choose our own paths.”
And in the year after the dappled fever had taken Kitria, the three of them had cut more stone and faced more buildings than any other masons in the city. My mother had spent half of each waking day either in tears or Halcarion’s shrine and Mistal had fled the city entirely. I had sought every sensation I could in a vain effort to stop myself feeling her loss.
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