The strong heavy scent of beer and sizzling meat made Wess' mouth water. She sought out the man behind the bar.
"Citizen," she said, carefully pronouncing the Sanctuary language, the trade-tongue of all the continent, "are you the proprietor? My friends and I, we need a room for the night, and dinner."
Her request seemed ordinary enough to her, but the innkeeper looked sidelong at one of his patrons. Both laughed.
"A room, young gentleman?" He came out from behind the bar. Instead of replying to Wess, he spoke to Chan. Wess smiled to herself. Like all Chan's friends, she was used to seeing people fall in love with him on sight. She would have done so herself, she thought, had she first met him when they were grown. But they had known each other all their lives and their friendship was far closer and deeper than instant lust.
"A room?" the innkeeper said again. "A meal for you and your ladies? Is that all we can do for you here in our humble establishment? Do you require dancing? A juggler? Harpists and hautbois? Ask and it shall be given!" Far from being seductive, or even friendly, the innkeeper's tone was derisive.
Chan glanced at Wess, frowning slightly, as everyone within earshot burst into laughter. Wess was glad her complexion was dark enough to hide her blush of anger.
Chan was bright pink from the collar of his homespun shirt to the roots of his blond hair. Wess knew they had been insulted but she did not understand how or why, so she replied with courtesy.
"No, citizen, thank you for your hospitality. We need a room, if you have one, and food."
"We would not refuse a bath," Quartz said.
The innkeeper glanced at them, an irritated expression on his face, and spoke once more to Chan.
"The young gentleman lets his ladies speak for him? Is this some foreign custom, that you are too high-bred to speak to a mere tavern-keeper?"
"I don't understand you," Chan said. "Wess spoke for us all. Must we speak in chorus?"
Taken aback, the man hid his reaction by showing them, with an exaggerated bow, to a table.
Wess dumped her pack on the floor next to the wall behind her and sat down with a sigh of relief. The others followed. Aerie looked as if she could not have kept on her feet a moment longer.
"This is a simple place," the tavern-keeper said. "Beer or ale, wine. Meat and bread. Can you pay?"
He was speaking to Chan again. He took no direct note of Wess or Aerie or Quartz.
"What is the price?"
"Four dinners, bed—you break your fast somewhere else, I don't open early. A piece of silver. In advance."
"The bath included?" Quartz said.
"Yes, yes, all right."
"We can pay," said Quartz, whose turn it was to keep track of what they spent. She offered him a piece of silver.
He continued to look at Chan but, after an awkward pause, he shrugged, snatched the coin from Quartz, and turned away. Quartz drew back her hand, then, under the table, surreptitiously wiped it on the leg of her heavy cotton trousers.
Chan glanced over at Wess. "Do you understand anything that has happened since we entered the city's gates?"
"It is odd," she said. "They have strange customs."
"We can puzzle them out tomorrow," Aerie said.
A young woman carrying a tray stopped at their table. She wore odd clothes, summer clothes by the look of them, for they uncovered her arms and shoulders and almost completely bared her breasts. It is hot in here, Wess thought. That's quite intelligent of her. Then she need only put on a cloak to go home, and she will not get chilled or overheated.
"Ale for you, sir?" the young woman said to Chan. "Or wine? And wine for your wives?"
"Beer, please," Chan said. "What are 'wives'? I have studied your language, but this is not a word I know."
"The ladies are not your wives?"
Wess took a tankard of ale off the tray, too tired and thirsty to try to figure out what the woman was talking about. She took a deep swallow of the cool bitter brew. Quartz reached for a flask of wine and two cups, and poured for herself and Aerie.
"My companions are Westerly, Aerie, and Quartz," Chan said, nodding to each in turn. "I am Chandler. And you are—?"
"I'm just the serving girl," she said, sounding frightened. "You could not wish to be troubled with my name." She grabbed a mug of beer and put it on the table, spilling some, and fled.
They all looked at each other, but then the tavern-keeper came with platters of meat. They were too hungry to wonder what they had done to frighten the barmaid.
Wess tore off a mouthful of bread. It was far better than what they had been eating on the trail.
"Not as good as yours, though," she said to Chan in their own language. He grinned.
The meat was hot and untainted by decay. Even Aerie ate with some appetite, though she preferred meat raw.
Halfway through her meal, Wess slowed down and took a moment to observe the tavern more carefully.
At the bar, a group suddenly burst into raucous laughter.
"You say the same damned thing every damned time you turn up in Sanctuary, Bauchle," one of them said, his loud voice full of mockery. "You have a secret or a scheme or a marvel that will make your fortune. Why don't you get an honest job—like the rest of us?"
That brought on more laughter, even from the large, heavyset young man who was the butt of the fun.
"You'll see, this time," he said. "This time I'm going all the way to the court of the Emperor. When you hear the criers tomorrow, you'll know." He called for more wine. His friends drank, and made jokes, both at his expense.
The Unicorn was much more crowded now, smokier, louder. Occasionally someone glanced toward Wess and her friends, but otherwise they were let alone.
A cold breeze thinned the odor of beer and burning meat and unwashed bodies. Silence fell suddenly, and Wess looked quickly around to see if she had breached some other unknown custom. But all the attention centered on the tavern's entrance. The cloaked figure stood there casually, but there was nothing casual about the aura of power and self-possession.
In the whole of the tavern, not another table held an empty place.
"Sit with us, sister!" Wess called on impulse.
Two long steps and a shove: Wess was rammed back against the wall, a dagger at her throat.
"Who calls me 'sister'?" The dark hood fell back from long, gray-streaked hair. A blue star-shaped tattoo blazed on the woman's forehead.
Wess stared into the tall, lithe woman's furious eyes. Her jugular vein pulsed against the point of the blade. If she made a move toward her knife, or if any of her friends moved at all, she was dead.
"I meant no disrespect—" She almost said "sister" again. But it was not the familiarity that had caused offense: it was the word itself. The woman was traveling incognito, and Wess had breached her disguise. No mere apology would repair the damage she had done.
A drop of sweat trickled down the side of her face. Chan and Aerie and Quartz were all poised on the edge of defense. If Wess erred again, more than one person would die before the fighting stopped.
"My unfamiliarity with your language has offended you, young gentleman," Wess said, hoping the tavern-keeper had used a civil form of address, if not a civil tone. It was often safe to insult someone by the tone, but seldom by the words themselves. "Young gentleman," she said again when the woman did not kill her, "someone has made sport of me by translating 'frejqjan,' 'sister.' '
"Perhaps," the disguised woman said. "What does frejojan mean?"
"It is a term of peace, an offer of friendship, a word to welcome a guest, another child of one's own parents."
"Ah. 'Brother' is the word you want, the word to speak to men. To call a man 'sister,' the word for women, is an insult."
"An insult!" Wess said, honestly surprised.
But the knife drew back from her throat.
"You are a barbarian," the disguised woman said, in a friendly tone. "I cannot be insulted by a barbarian."
"There is the problem
, you see," Chan said. "Translation. In our language, the word for outsider, for foreigner, also translates as 'barbarian.' " He smiled, his beautiful smile.
Wess held Chan's hand under the table. "I meant only to offer you a place to sit, where there is no other."
The stranger sheathed her dagger, and stared straight into Wess's eyes. Wess shivered slightly and imagined spending the night with Chad on one side, the stranger on the other.
Or you could have the center, if you liked, she thought, holding the gaze.
The stranger laughed. Wess could not tell if the mocking tone were directed outward or inward.
"Then I will sit here, as there is no other place." She did so. "My name is Lythande."
They introduced themselves, and offered her—Wess' made herself think of Lythande as "him" so she would not damage the disguise again—offered him wine.
"I do not drink," Lythande said. "But to show I mean no offense, either, I will smoke with you." He rolled shredded herbs in a dry leaf, lit the construction, inhaled from it, and held it out. "Westerly, frejdjan."
Out of politeness Wess tried it. By the time she stopped coughing her throat was sore, and the sweet scent made her feel lightheaded.
"It takes practice," Lythande said smiling.
Chan and Quartz did no better, but Aerie inhaled deeply, her eyes closed, then held her breath. Thereafter she and Lythande shared it while the others ordered more ale and another flask of wine.
"Why did you ask me, of all this crowd, to sit here?" Lythande asked.
"Because. . . ." Wess paused to try to think of a way to make her intuition sound sensible. "You look like someone who knows what's going on. You look like someone who might help us."
"If information is all you need, you can get it less expensively than by hiring a sorcerer."
"Are you a sorcerer?" Wess asked.
Lythande looked at her with pity and contempt. "You child! What do your people mean, sending innocents and children out of the north!" He touched the star on his forehead. "What did you think this means?"
"I'll have to guess, but I guess it means you are a mage."
"Excellent. A few years of lessons like that and you might survive, awhile, in Sanctuary—in the Maze—in the Unicorn!"
"We haven't got years," Aerie whispered. "We have, perhaps, overspent the time we do have." - Quartz put her arm around Aerie's shoulders, for comfort, and hugged her gently.
"You interest me," Lythande said. "Tell me what information you seek. Perhaps I will know whether you can obtain it less expensively—not cheaply, but less expensively—from Jubal the Slavemonger, or from a seer—" At their expressions, he stopped.
"Slavemonger!"
"He collects information as well. You needn't worry that he'll abduct you from his sitting-room."
They all started speaking at once, then fell silent, realizing the futility.
"Start at the beginning."
"We're looking for someone," Wess said.
"This is a poor place to search. No one will tell you anything about any patron of this establishment."
"But he's a friend."
"There's only your word for that."
"Satan wouldn't be here anyway," Wess said. "If he were free to come here he'd be free to go home. We'd have heard something of him, or he would have found us, or—"
"You fear he was taken prisoner. Enslaved, perhaps."
"He must have been. He was hunting, alone. He liked to do that, his people often do."
"We need solitude sometimes," Aerie said.
Wess nodded. "We didn't worry about him till he didn't come home for Equinox. Then we searched. We found his camp, and a cold trail ..."
"We tried to hope for kidnapping," Chan said. "But there was no ransom demand. The trail was so old— they took him away."
"We followed, and we heard some rumors of him," Aerie said. "But the road branched, and we had to choose which way to go." She shrugged, but could not maintain the careless pose; she turned away in despair.
"Apparently we chose wrong," Quartz said.
"Children," Lythande said, "children, Trejojans—"
"Frejdjani," Chan said automatically, then shook his head and spread his hands in apology.
"Your friend is one slave out of many. You could not trace him by his papers, unless you discovered what name they were forged under. For someone to recognize him by a description would be the greatest luck, even if you had an homuncule to show. Sisters, brother, you might not recognize him yourselves, by now."
"I would recognize him, Aerie said.
"We'd all recognize him, even in a crowd of his own people. But that makes no difference. Anyone would know him who had seen him. But no one has seen him, or if they have they will not say so to us." Wess glanced at Aerie.
"You see," Aerie said, "he is winged."
"Winged!" Lythande said.
"Winged folk are rare, I believe, in the south."
"Winged folk are myths, in the south. Winged? Surely you mean ..."
Aerie started to shrug back her cape, but Quartz put her arm around her shoulders again. Wess broke into the conversation quickly.
"The bones are longer," she said, touching the three outer fingers of her left hand with the forefinger of her right. "And stronger. The webs between fold out.'
"And these people fly?"
"Of course. Why else have wings?"
Lythande shook his head and fell silent. He blew smoke toward the ceiling. The ring spun, and sparked, and finally dissipated into the haze.
"Frejqjani," Lythande said. "Jubal—and the other slavemongers—parade their merchandise through the town before every auction. If your friend were in the coffle, everyone in Sanctuary would know. Everyone in the Empire would know."
Beneath the edges of her cape. Aerie clenched her hands into fists.
This was, Wess feared, the end of their journey.
"But it might be . . .-"
Aerie looked up sharply, narrowing her deepset eyes.
"Such an unusual being would not be sold at public auction. He would be offered in private sale, or exhibited, or perhaps even offered to the emperor for his menagerie."
Aerie flinched, and Quartz traced the texture of her short-sword's bone haft.
"It's better, children, don't you see? He'll be treated decently. He's valuable. Ordinary slaves are whipped and cut and broken to obedience."
Chan's transparent complexion paled to white. Wess shuddered. Even contemplating slavery they had none of them understood what it meant.
"But how will we find him? Where will we look?"
"Jubal will know," Lythande said, "if anyone does. I like you, children. Sleep tonight. Perhaps tomorrow Jubal will speak with you." He got up, passed smoothly through the crowd, and vanished into the darkness outside.
In silence with her friends, Wess sat thinking about what Lythande had told them.
A well-set-up young fellow crossed the room and leaned over their table toward Chan. Wess recognized him as the man who had earlier been made sport of by his friends.
"Good evening, traveler," he said to Chan. "I have been told these ladies are not your wives."
"It seems everyone in this room has asked if my companions are my wives, and I still do not understand what you are asking," Chan said pleasantly.
"What's so hard to understand?"
"What does 'wives' mean?"
The man arched one eyebrow, but replied. "Women bonded to you by law. To give their favors to no one but you. To bear and raise your sons."
" 'Favors'?"
"Sex, you clapperdudgeon! Fucking! Do you understand me?"
"Not entirely. It sounds like a very odd system to me."
Wess thought it odd, too. It seemed absurd to choose to raise children of only one gender; and bonded by law sounded suspiciously like slavery. But—three women and one man? She glanced across at Aerie and Quartz and saw they were thinking the same thing. They burst out laughing.
"Chan, Chad-
love, think how exhausted you'd be!" Wess said.
Chan grinned. They often slept and made love all together, but he was not expected to satisfy all his friends. Wess enjoyed making love with Chad, but she was equally excited by Aerie's delicate ferocity, and by Quartz's inexhaustible gentleness and power.
"They're not your wives, then," the man said. "So how much for that one?" He pointed at Quartz.
They all waited curiously for him to explain.
"Come on, man! Don't be coy! You're obvious to everyone—why else bring women to the Unicorn? With that one, you'll get away with it till the madams find out. So make your fortune while you can. What's her price? I can pay, I assure you."
Chan started to speak, but Quartz gestured sharply and he fell silent.
"Tell me if I interpret you correctly," she said. "You think coupling with me would be enjoyable. You would like to share my bed tonight."
"That's right, lovey." He reached for her breast but abruptly thought better of it.
"Yet you speak, not to me, but to my friend. This seems very awkward, and very rude."
"You'd better get used to it, woman. It's the way we do things here."
"You offer Chan money, to persuade me to couple with you."
The man looked at Chan. "You'd best train your whores to manners yourself, boy, or your customers will help you and damage your merchandise."
Chan blushed scarlet, embarrassed, flustered, and confused. Wess began to think she knew what was going on, but she did not want to believe it.
"You are speaking to me, man," Quartz said, using the word with as much contempt as he had put into "woman." "I have but one more question for you. You are not ill-favored, yet you cannot get someone to bed you for the joy of it. Does this mean you are diseased?"
With an incoherent sound of rage, he reached for his knife. Before he touched it, Quartz's short-sword rasped out of its scabbard. She held its tip just above his belt-buckle. The death she offered him was slow and painful.
Everyone in the tavern watched intently as the man slowly spread his hands.
"Go away," Quartz said. "Do not speak to me again. You are not unattractive, but if you are not diseased you are a fool, and I do not sleep with fools."
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