He separated the two parts a few inches to reveal a gleaming blade. “Nearly two feet of Keltish steel. Discreet protection for a gentleman. But I’m not sure that for your simple purposes you would want such a costly . . .”
Zedd pushed the thin blade away and gave a twist, the finely worked mechanism emitting a soft click as the parts locked together. “It will do nicely. I like its looks. Not too flashy. Add the cost to my tally for the room.” Wealthy gentlemen weren’t supposed to ask the price.
Master Hillman bowed his head up and down. “Of course, Master Rybnik. Of course. And a fine choice, I might add. Quite dashing.” He wiped his clean, meaty hands on the apron’s corner and then held an arm out to the room. “May I offer you a table, Master Rybnik? Let me clear a table for you. I will have someone move. Let me see to it . . .”
“No, no.” Zedd gestured with his new cane. “That empty one in the corner, near the kitchen, will do splendidly.”
The man looked with worry to where Zedd had pointed. “There? Oh no, sir, please, let me get you a better table. Perhaps near the bard. You would like to hear a lively tune, I’m sure. He knows any tune you could name. Let me know your favorite and I will have him play it for you.”
Zedd leaned close and gave the man a wink. “I much prefer the wonderful aromas coming from your kitchen to the singing.”
Master Hillman beamed with pride and then swept his arm in the direction of the empty table, ushering Zedd toward it. “You do me such honor, Master Rybnik. I have never had anyone swoon over my cooking as do you. Let me get you a plate.”
“Ruben, please. Remember? And I would be delighted to sample a slice of that roast I smell.”
“Yes, Master Rybnik, of course.” Wringing the corner of his apron, he leaned over the table as Zedd sat against the wall. “How is Mistress Rybnik? I hope she is feeling better. I pray for her every day.”
Zedd sighed. “Much the same, I’m afraid.”
“Oh dear, oh dear. I’m so sorry. I’ll continue to pray for her.” He started through the kitchen door. “Let me get you that plate of roast.”
Zedd leaned his new cane against the wall and removed his hat after the man had left, tossing it on the table. The balding bard sat on a stool on a small platform, hunched over his lute as if permanently deformed around it, strumming with vigor and singing a spirited song about the adventures of a wagon driver; his journey along bad roads from one bad town to another with bad food and worse women, and how he loved the challenge of steep hills and twisting passes, driving rain and blinding snow.
Zedd watched one man, alone in a booth against the wall across the room, roll his eyes and shake his head as he listened to one improbable adventure after another. A whip lay in a neat coil on the table before him. Other men, at tables, thought the song a proper tale, and thumped their mugs as they sang along. Some of the drunker men tried to pinch the smiling serving girls that swept past, but caught only air.
At other tables sat nattily dressed men and women, probably merchants and their wives, talking among themselves and ignoring the singing. Fashionable nobility, wearing gleaming swords, sat at a few tables off to the quieter side of the room. In an empty area between the bard and the lone man in the booth, couples danced; some were serving girls and men who had paid them for the turn. Zedd noted with pique that while there were many men with hats, all the hats looked to be functional, and none were embellished with a feather.
Zedd reached into a pocket to count the gold coins. Two. He sighed. It was expensive playing the part of the wealthy. He didn’t know how even the wealthy could afford it. Well, he would just have to do something about that if he was to get transportation all the way to Nicobarese. He couldn’t have Adie riding that horse anymore; she was too weak.
Springing on light feet, Master Hillman swooped through the kitchen door. He set a gold-rimmed white plate heaped with roasted lamb in front of Zedd, pausing before he straightened to return a finger to each edge of the plate and turn it just so. Quickly producing a clean towel, he buffed a spot off the tabletop. Zedd decided that although he was hungry, he had better eat carefully, lest Master Hillman whisk out to wipe his chin for him.
“May I bring you a mug of ale, Master Rybnik? On the house?”
“Please call me Ruben, that’s my name. A pot of tea would be splendid.”
“Of course, Master Rybnik, of course. Anything else I could do? Besides the pot of tea?”
Zedd leaned a little toward the center of the table. Master Hillman did the same. “What’s the current gold to silver exchange ratio?”
“Forty point five five to one,” he answered, ticking the numbers off without hesitation. He cleared his throat. “I believe. At least, that’s what I seem to remember.” He smiled apologetically. “I don’t keep track. But that’s what I believe it is. Forty point five five to one. Yes, I think that’s right.”
Zedd made a show of considering this. At last he pulled out one of his two gold coins and slid it with one finger across the table toward the proprietor.
“I seem to be short of smaller coinage. If you would be so kind, could you exchange this for me? And I would like it divided into two purses. From one take one silver and exchange it for copper, and put that in a third purse. And please keep the odd bits for the house?”
Master Hillman gave two quick, deep bows. “Of course, Master Rybnik, of course. And thank you.”
He swept the coin off the table so fast Zedd could scarcely see it go. After he left, Zedd dug into the lamb roast, watching the people and listening to the singing as he chewed. Near the end of the meal, Master Hillman was back, placing his broad, round back between Zedd and the crowd.
He set two small purses on the table. “The silver, Master Rybnik. Nineteen in the light brown one, and twenty in the dark.” Zedd slipped them into his robes as the other set a heavier, green purse down, sliding it across the table. And the copper in this.”
Zedd smiled his thanks. “And the tea?”
The big man slapped his forehead. “Forgive me. In handling the exchange, I forgot.” One of the noblemen was waving a hand, trying to get his attention. He snagged the arm of a serving girl coming from the kitchen with a tray of mugs. “Julie! Fetch Master Rybnik a pot of tea. And quickly, dear.” She gave Zedd a smile and a nod before rushing on with her tray. Smiling, Hillman turned back. “Julie will see to it, Master Rybnik. If there is anything else I can do, please ask.”
“Why, yes. You could call me Ruben.”
Master Hillman chuckled absently and nodded. “Of course, Master Rybnik, of course.” He rushed off toward the nobleman.
Zedd cut another piece of lamb and stabbed it with his fork. He liked the name Ruben. He shouldn’t have told the man any more of it than that. While he pulled the meat off the tines with his teeth, he watched Julie cross the room, weaving between the crowded tables.
He chewed as he watched her plunk down mugs around a table of raucous men all wearing longcoats. As she set the last one before the last man, he said something to her. She had to lean over to hear above the din. The men suddenly burst into laughter. Julie straightened and thumped the man on the head with her tray. As she strutted away, he pinched her. She yelped but hurried on.
As she went past Zedd’s table, she leaned toward him and smiled. “I’ll be getting your tea for you right now, Master Rybnik.”
“It’s Ruben.” He flicked a finger toward the table of noisy men. “I saw what happened. Do you have to put up with that all the time?”
“Oh, that’s just Oscar. He’s harmless, for the most part. But he has the foulest mouth I’ve ever heard, and I’ve heard my share. Sometimes, I wish that when he opened his mouth to spew some of his filthy talk at me, he’d get the hiccups instead.” She huffed a wisp of hair back off her face. “And now he wants another mug. I’m sorry. I talk too much. I’ll get your tea, Master Ryb . . .”
“Ruben.”
“Ruben.” She gave him a pretty smile before hurrying off.
&nbs
p; Eating while he waited, Zedd watched the table of noisy men. A small wish. What could it hurt? Julie returned with the tea and a cup. As she set them on the table, Zedd crooked his finger, urging her to bend closer.
She leaned over, tightening the apron strings behind her back as she did. “Yes, Ruben?”
The wizard gently touched a finger to the underside of her chin. “You are a very lovely woman, Julie. Oscar shouldn’t speak to you in foul language, or touch you again.” His voice lowered to a slow, powerful whisper that almost seemed to make the air sparkle. “When you give him his ale, speak his name, and look him in the eyes, as I look into yours now, and you shall have your wish as you have spoken it to me, but you won’t remember asking it, or that I have granted it.”
Julie blinked as she straightened. “I’m sorry, Ruben, what did you say?”
Zedd smiled. “I said thank you for the tea, and I asked if anyone here has a team of horses, and perhaps a carriage for hire.”
She blinked again. “Oh. Well . . .” She looked around as she pulled her bottom lip through her teeth. “Half the men in here, well, half the men who aren’t dressed as fine as you, are drivers. Some hire out. Some haul freight and are regulars, just passing through.” She pointed at a few tables. “They . . . and they, might hire out. If you can sober them up.”
Zedd thanked her and she went to get the ale. He watched as she carried it back across the room and set it in front of Oscar. He leered up at her with a drunken grin. She stared into his eyes. Zedd saw her lips speak his name. Oscar opened his mouth to speak, but hiccupped instead. A bubble floated from his mouth, up into the air. It popped. Everyone at the table erupted in laughter. Zedd’s brow pulled together in a frown as he watched. That’s odd, he thought.
Every time Oscar opened his mouth to speak to Julie, he hiccupped, and bubbles floated up. The men roared with laughter, accusing her of soaping his ale. They all agreed that if she had, it would serve him right. She left the men to their laughter when the lone man in the booth caught her attention. She nodded after he asked for something and then headed for the kitchen.
Julie paused at Zedd’s table, giving a nod back toward the lone man. “He might have a team. He smells more like a horse than a man.” She giggled. “That wasn’t kind. Forgive me. It’s just that I can’t get him to spend any money on ale. He wants me to bring him some tea.”
“I have more than I can drink. I’ll go share mine with him.” He winked at her. “Save you a trip.”
“Thanks, Ruben. Here’s another cup, then.”
Zedd put the last large piece of roast in his mouth as he surveyed the room. The men had quieted down, and Oscar had stopped hiccupping, as they all listened to the bard singing a sad song about a man who had lost his love.
Zedd picked up the teapot and cups, and started from his table. He cursed under his breath when he remembered his hat, and swept it up, noticing the cane and snatching that up, too. He deliberately passed close to Oscar, looking him over carefully. He couldn’t figure out why he had hiccupped bubbles. Zedd gave a mental shrug. The man seemed normal enough, now, if a little too drunk.
The wizard paused next to the booth with the single man. He held up the pot and cups.
“I have more tea than I can drink. Could I share it with you?”
The man watched with a forbidding scowl from under bushy eyebrows. Zedd smiled. The man did indeed smell like a horse. He unfolded his huge arms, slid the coiled whip to the side of the table, and pointed for Zedd to sit before folding his arms again.
“Well, delighted, thank you. I’m . . . Ruben.”
Zedd tossed his hat on the table and lifted his eyebrows in invitation to reply.
“Ahern,” he said, in a deep, resonant voice. “What do you want?”
Zedd placed his cane between his knees with one hand and with the other tugged at the heavy robes as he sat on the bench, trying to pull a thick fold from under his bony bottom. “Well, I just wanted to share my tea, Ahern.”
“What do you really want?”
Zedd poured the man tea. “I thought perhaps you might need some work.”
“Got work.”
Zedd poured tea for himself. “Really? What sort?”
Ahern unfolded his arms and sat back in the booth, appraising his new table companion’s eyes, and nothing else. He wore a longcoat draped around his massive shoulders, over a dark green flannel shirt. His thick, mostly gray hair was long enough to nearly cover his ears, and looked to be infrequently pestered by a comb. His deeply creased, weatherworn face was splotched with pink, windburned patches.
“Why do you want to know?”
Zedd shrugged as he took a sip of tea. “So I can gauge if I can make you a better offer.” Zedd, of course, could produce any amount of gold the man could ask for, but judged that not to be the best tack. He took another sip of tea as he waited.
“I haul iron from Tristen, down here to the smiths in Penverro. Sometimes over to Winstead. We Keltans make the finest weapons in all the Midlands, you know.”
“I heard differently.” Ahern’s frown darkened. Zedd folded his hands over the silver-topped cane. “I hear them to be the finest swords in all the three lands, not just the Midlands.” The bard started a new song about a king who lost his voice and had to command by written instruction, but had never allowed any of his subjects to learn to read, and so lost his kingdom, too. “Heavy loads to haul, this time of year.”
Ahern gave the slightest hint of a smile. “Worse in the spring. In the muck. Then’s the time we find out who can drive, and who can talk.”
Zedd pushed the full cup a few inches closer to the man. “Steady work?”
Ahern finally took up the cup. “Enough to keep me fed.”
Zedd lifted one coil of the braided leather. “I thought you looked to be a man familiar with the use of this.”
“There’s different ways to get effort from a team.” He pointed with his chin in the general direction of the room. “These fools think they get what they want by laying to with the whip.”
“And you don’t?”
Ahern shook his head. “I crack my whip to get their attention, to let them know what I want, where to put their feet. My team works for me because I trained them to work, not because they get the whip. If I’m in a tight spot, I want a team that understands what I want, not one that jumps when they feel a whip. There are enough gorges strewn with bones of man and horse. Don’t want to add mine to the lot.”
“Sounds like you know your work.”
Ahern gestured with his cup to Zedd’s elaborate robes. “What line of ‘work’ you in?”
“Orchards,” Zedd said, pointing a finger skyward. “The finest fruits in all the world, sir!”
Ahern grunted. “You mean you own land, and others work to grow you the finest fruits in all the world.”
Zedd chuckled. “You have it true. Now, anyway. It didn’t start that way, though. I started by myself, working, struggling, for years. Tending my trees day and night, trying to produce the best fruit anyone ever tasted. Many of the trees failed. Many times I failed, and went hungry.
“But I finally was able to do better. I saved every copper, and bought more land in the years I could. Planted, tended, picked, hauled, and sold it all by myself. Over time, people came to know my fruit as the best, and I became more successful. In the last few years, I’ve hired people to tend things for me. But I still keep my hand to the work, so that it lives up to what people know me for. Would you hope for any less success, in your work?”
Zedd sat back, smiling, proud of the story he had just invented on the spot. Ahern held out his cup for more tea.
“Where are these orchards?”
“In Westland. Moved there before the boundary went up.”
“And why are you here now?”
Zedd leaned forward, lowering his voice. “Well, you see, my wife is not doing well. We’re both old, and now that the boundary is down, she wants to visit her homeland. She knows healers there
who may be able to help her. I’d do anything to help that woman. She’s too sick to travel on horseback any longer, what with this weather, so I’d like to hire someone to take us to her healers. I’d pay any price, any price I can afford, to get her there.”
Ahern’s face softened, somewhat. “Sounds a fair enough journey. Where do you be headed?”
“Nicobarese.”
Ahern slammed his cup down on the table. Some of the tea sloshed out. “What!” He lowered his voice and leaned forward, the table’s edge pressing into his husky middle. “It’s the dead of winter, man!”
Zedd ran his finger around the rim of his cup. “I thought you said spring was the worst.”
Ahern grunted with a suspicious glare. “That’s back northwest, the other side of the Rang’Shada Mountains. If you came from Westland, to go to Nicobarese, why would you cross the Rang’Shada first? Now you just have to cross it back again.”
Zedd was caught off guard, and had to scramble to find an answer. At last he did. “I’m from up near Aydindril. We were going to go there for a visit to my homeland, before we went in the spring to Nicobarese. I thought to cross the mountains to the south, then go northeast to Aydindril. But Elda, that’s my wife, she took sick, and I decided that, well, it would be better we go see her healers.”
“You would have been better off to have gone to Nicobarese first, before you crossed the mountains.”
Zedd folded his hands over his cane. “So, Ahern, do you know how to undo something done in error, so I may relive my life as you suggest?”
Ahern grunted a laugh. “Guess not.” He thought a moment, finally letting out a tired sigh. “I’ll tell you, Ruben, it’s a long way. You’re asking for trouble. I don’t know that I want any part of it.”
Zedd arched an eyebrow. “Really?” He made a deliberate survey of the room. “Tell me then, Ahern, if you find the task so formidable, which of these men here would be up to the job? Which are better drivers than you?”
Ahern regarded the crowd with a sour look. “I’m not saying I’m the best there is, but this lot’s more boast than brains. Don’t think there’s a one of them that would make it.”
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