10
At the Dolphin, Ruffo had moved half a dozen small tables out onto the cobbled square before the glass-windowed sitting room. All tables were in use, by locals and a handful of sailors whom Rowan recognized from Graceful Days, all enjoying lunch or tea out in the pleasantly warm autumn day. Some customers were observing with blatant interest a lone patron of the gracious parlor, who sat twirling a glass of wine in his hand, pretending not to notice the scrutiny.
One of the outside tables was occupied by Bel.
Rowan sought for and failed to find another chair: all had been confiscated for adjacent tables. The Outskirter considerately relinquished her own seat, and perched herself on the low brick window ledge nearby. “Were the gardeners useful?”
“Extremely,” Rowan said, and prepared to relate her experiences, but asked first, “Is Will still asleep?”
“No. He’s gone off to retrieve his gear.” Bel shifted. “I think it’s a good thing he met up with us. I’m not sure he’s safe traveling alone.”
Rowan became disturbed. “Was there more trouble?” Someone appeared at her elbow: the handkerchief boy, with a fistful of cutlery, which he shyly placed in front of Rowan, in no particular configuration. At the common room door, Beck stood watching in parody of stern supervision.
Bel waited until the boy had departed. “No. But he’s hard to wake up. I tripped over him twice, on my way to and from the outhouse, and he never stirred.”
Rowan had been arranging the cutlery; now she hesitated. “You tripped over him?”
Bel nodded. “He slept on the floor. He absolutely refused to share the bed. I think he’s secretly a prude.”
Will had also slept on the floor in Rowan’s room, but that bed was hardly large enough for one person. “Perhaps he simply prefers privacy.”
“Maybe. But if he slept that hard on the road, then he was lucky. Any thief or bandit could have made off with his possessions, or even cut his throat, and he’d never have noticed at all.”
“Then he probably slept lightly, for all that time.” The boy arrived again, with a single plate that he placed before Rowan with an air of ceremony. The act so delighted him that he stood for a moment, regarding the result with a sort of gleeful self-satisfaction, and then departed. “And,” Rowan continued, “now that Willam is finally someplace safe, his body is probably catching up on what it’s missed.”
Bel made a noncommittal sound. “And he has nightmares.”
Rowan stopped short. “Really?”
The Outskirter nodded again, thoughtful. “Not the sort where you wake up screaming. But did he make enough noise to wake me.”
The steerswoman leaned back in her chair. “Well,” she said, “I do hope that you tried to wake him.”
“Yes, but not very hard. When I shook him the first time, he didn’t wake, but he did settle down, so I let him go on sleeping. The next time it happened I noticed that all I had to do was rest my hand on his shoulder. He went quiet right away.”
Rowan found that this small detail saddened her deeply. Bel went on: “I asked him later, but he wouldn’t talk about it. He changed the subject.” She glanced about cautiously: no one was attending the conversation, but Bel leaned closer to Rowan, to speak more quietly. “He’s worried about that woman he killed.”
Rowan was immediately concerned. “Is he expecting some repercussions?” she asked. “Does he think that—” She was stopped by a look from Bel.
“No,” Bel said. “He’s sorry that he did it, and it’s weighing on his mind. He wonders if she had family.” Rowan was suddenly ashamed; she had dismissed both the woman and the man, she now realized, as merely a problem solved. Even wizard’s minions did not deserve such indifference. “And he wishes there had been some other way to handle it,” the Outskirter continued. “He agrees that it’s probably safer that she’s dead. But it still bothers him.”
Rowan recovered. “I believe that speaks well for him.”
Bel nodded, waited while the boy brought a tall glass of lemonade, which splashed over his hands with every step. Rowan took it from him, and placed it on the table herself. “Interestingly,” Bel went on when the boy had left, “he’s not as bothered by the man you killed. You were defending someone, the man turned his attack on you, you stopped him. You were justified.”
“But, Bel—very similar circumstances also held in the woman’s case.”
The Outskirter nodded broadly. “But in that case, it was Willam who did it.”
Rowan considered. “Then he’s holding himself to different standards.”
“That’s right. And he should.” Bel spoke definitely.
“I believe you’re right.” Someone with power beyond the scope of common folk ought not use it by whim, ought not impose it on weaker persons. “He’s a good—” Rowan nearly said He’s a good boy, but realized that throughout the entire conversation she had in her mind substituted the younger Willam, the stocky, awkward, earnest, copper-eyed boy. She corrected the image. “He’s a good man. He’s managed to hold on to that.”
“Yes.” And Bel added quietly, “But I’m glad he got away from Corvus.”
The steerswoman sighed. “So am I.”
Rowan’s meal arrived: a bowl of soup delivered, wisely, by Beck himself. Rowan thanked him distractedly, and the young man departed.
Rowan was about to begin on the soup when she noticed Bel’s attention caught by something; the steerswoman followed Bel’s gaze.
A young, dark woman, slightly disheveled and wearing a harried expression, was making her way through the tables, oblivious to the complaints of persons she jostled. Once at the door of the Dolphin’s common room, she peered inside, and apparently found no satisfaction. Looking about in annoyance, she sighted a serving girl attending a group of sailors, went to her, asked a question. The server immediately indicated Rowan, and the woman hurried over, with a distinct air of exasperation.
Rowan and Bel observed her approach with perplexity. Arrived, the woman spoke politely enough. “Excuse me, the steerswoman Rowan, is it?” She seemed someone who had quite a lot to do, and was not pleased to be doing this.
“Yes . . .”
“Here.” She passed over an envelope. “From Marel. Will there be a reply?”
“I really must read this before deciding,” Rowan pointed out. She untied the ribbon and unfolded the paper. Bel spied a vacated chair nearby and fetched it, pulling it close beside Rowan to read over the steerswoman’s shoulder. The messenger, less than pleased, scanned the area, found not a single free seat, and resigned herself to perching on the window ledge.
There was no greeting or preamble; Marel got down to the matter immediately.
After our conversation, I recalled that one of my previous employees had the regular assignment of delivering to Kieran any items of his shipped through our establishment. It seemed to me that the fellow might have had opportunity to observe the wizard’s or Slado’s daily doings, so I invited him to tea.
In fact, he had seen very little, other than two occurrences that struck him as odd.
When delivering packages, the procedure was to place the item in front of the door, and wait. (One never knocked.) By some means, the wizard, if he was present, always knew when someone was at his door, and would arrive in short order.
On this occasion, the wizard did not arrive, which was of itself not unusual, as he was occasionally out of town, dealing with the dragons. The door was opened by the apprentice Slado, who accepted the package without a word, and took it into the house.
One would not necessarily regard this as remarkable; it seems quite reasonable to me. But apparently— and here Rowan had to turn to the second page; Bel snatched up the first, which she had not finished reading— on the next delivery, three weeks later, the same thing occurred. And Kieran had not been seen at all between those two events.
After the conversation, I sent one of my clerks to look through our old files, which are stored in another building, and it seems that
those two deliveries were the last ever to Kieran. Marel provided the exact dates. About three weeks later, Jannik arrived—which I remember distinctly, as I was in the Dolphin chatting to a rival of mine whose business I was attempting to acquire at a frankly cut-throat rate (I was successful), when the news made its way through the room. Marel had added the date of the acquisition.
“Excuse me?”
Rowan found herself regarding a thin, graceful woman of late middle age, wearing fine attire and an expression of suppressed outrage. “I heard you were asking about Slado?”
The steerswoman was bemused. “Yes . . .”
A diner nearby vacated a chair; the woman appropriated it instantly, pulled it over to Rowan’s table, and sat. She said, with no preliminaries: “I slapped him.”
“What?”
“And you survived?” Bel asked.
“As you can see. But it was a near thing.”
Rowan’s astonishment was immense. “You slapped him? Was he taking liberties with your person?”
“He was doing exactly that, and I endure such effronteries from no one, not even at the age of seventeen!”
“Were you leading him on?” Bel wondered.
The woman turned the Outskirter an evil glare. “I was conversing with him in a somewhat flirtatious manner,” she said stiffly, “but with no particular intensity. No person of normal social perceptivity would have mistaken my behavior as bawdy.”
“Maybe Slado lacked normal social perceptivity,” Bel remarked to Rowan.
“Or considered it irrelevant,” Rowan said. “But,” she continued to the woman, “I’m frankly amazed that you didn’t, say, immediately catch fire. Or vanish in a flash of light.”
“Or get turned into a weasel,” Bel said.
“Well, he would have done that to me, or some such, I’m sure; but Kieran arrived instantly, pulled Slado aside, and gave him a serious talking-to.”
“I see,” Rowan said and, with no effort on her part, her information began to interlock. It was rather an interesting internal process, which she observed with pleasure. “This would have been at the celebration at Saranna’s Inn?”
The woman seemed surprised that Rowan knew this. “In fact, yes. The occasion was the mayor’s inauguration.”
“Was that Nid?”
“Nid? No, the council had just voted him out. The wizard would never have been invited to any function Nid held. This was Elena’s.”
“Is Elena still living?” A possible new source of information.
“Who knows? They left, she and her husband, when the council put up Joly in her place, twelve years ago.”
“And that would be the dark fellow with all the hair,” Rowan said, recalling Eamer’s and Lorren’s comments.
The woman eyed her. “Yes . . . he keeps a lot of it. Elena was so distressed, she left the city altogether. They bought a caravan, of all things.”
Rowan could not help enjoying herself. “And their daughter is a bricklayer?”
A disparaging sound. “A general laborer. When she’s not gaming in the back rooms. It’s her debts that keep her from rising in life.”
Bel was observing the conversation with something like pride; apparently she found Rowan’s performance impressive. The steerswoman went on. “Then, that night, Kieran’s attention lapsed briefly, and Slado immediately caused a problem.”
“Well, the old wizard kept him close, generally, that’s for certain.”
“For a period of time. Later, Slado moved freely again.”
“I wouldn’t know. I generally steered clear of both of them. I didn’t trust that wizard.”
Rowan hesitated. “You mean Slado.”
“No, I mean Kieran. It made no sense; first he’s cruel and dangerous, and then suddenly he’s getting invited to social events, protecting innocent maidens, and playing with little children. People don’t change overnight like that.”
Rowan said, musingly, “Apparently, Kieran did . . .”
Bel noticed her tone, became curious. “Literally overnight?”
“So it would seem . . . I believe I possess the exact date.” Across the street, Rowan saw Willam arrive, carrying an unstrung bow in one hand and a knotted burlap sack in the other. A bedroll was slung across his back, to which a quiver of arrows was tied. He studied the group at Rowan’s table, hesitated, then placed the bow on the ground, and the sack—using no great care with it, Rowan noted. Then he sat down beside them in the dirt, his back against one of Ruffo’s lampposts.
Rowan returned to the woman. “I don’t suppose you managed to overhear the substance of Kieran’s remarks to Slado?”
“No, I went off in a huff, found a nicer dancing partner, and married him that year.”
“Thank you, you’ve been very helpful . . .” Rowan realized that the messenger was still waiting, slouched back against the windowpanes, arms crossed, eyes narrowed to a squint. Rowan said to her: “No reply, other than ‘Thank you.’ ” The messenger threw up her hands, emitted an inarticulate noise of frustration, and departed. The middle-aged woman remained in place and waved at Beck, apparently planning to dine. With no other tables available, Rowan could hardly chase her off. Instead, she set to her own neglected lunch.
Chicken soup, now nearly cold. Bel considered it with amusement. “Are you going to tell the staff that you haven’t been sick after all?”
“I suppose I should. But frankly, I’m finding all this concern rather flattering.”
“Ha. Deception by omission.”
“I’m not required to volunteer information.”
“You steerswomen draw a fine line sometimes.” Bel glanced past the tables. “Finish your lunch. I think I’ll chat with our friend over there.”
She rose and departed; her chair was instantly claimed, and occupied. “Ah, there you are!” It was Naio. “I was looking for you in your room. Sherrie told me you were under the weather.”
The steerswoman was bemused. “Sherrie?”
“My niece. She’s a chambermaid. Here.” He placed on the table a slim cardboard folder.
Rowan took two more spoonfuls of soup before setting down the silverware and taking the folder. “More of Ona’s work?”
“Yes. We had quite an interesting discussion, after you and Reeder left.” He seemed pleased, and deeply amused. “You know, it’s amazing what you can not know about your own wife. But Ona and I never really knew each other at all until, oh, our forties. I wonder, sometimes, what she was like as a girl. A whole history that I never knew about.”
Their tablemate made a disgruntled sound. “I was under the impression that you were one of those fellows who didn’t notice the girls at all. Had I thought otherwise, I’d have given you a run for your money.”
He beamed at her. “I’m sure you would have, Irina. You were the prettiest thing in town, and knew it well.”
“You should properly be saying that about your own wife.”
“My own wife has other fine qualities, which I’ve come to find I cannot live without.”
“Ah!” This from Irina, as Rowan opened the folder. “There’s the nasty little man!”
“He was short?” Rowan asked.
“Yes.”
“No,” Naio said. “Irina, you forget how tall you were.”
Irina gave him an arch look. “It merely added to my grace.”
“So it did,” Naio assured her.
Rowan considered the drawing. Slado was not its subject, or rather, had not been planned to have been. It was a scene on a wharf, with lobster pots piled artfully askew. Ona had apparently been fascinated by the complexity of the inner workings of the traps, and the knotted strands were shown with that luminous clarity that Rowan had come to love in Ona’s work.
A handful of bystanders were sketched in the background, and it was clear that Ona had shifted her focus. Among other persons composed merely of outline and shadow: young Slado, depicted with obsessive detail, his face in light, his left shoulder shadowed by the overhang of an adj
acent building.
Rowan called to mind the various wharves in the harbor, identified which one was shown, and found that she knew exactly where the apprentice had been standing, and by the shadow, the time of day.
“Hmph,” Irina said. “Felicia.”
“Felicia?”
“That girl he’s talking to.” Irina indicated the shadow-shape of a buxom figure with wild curls. “A much better subject for his attentions than myself, I assure you. A wanton little thing she was.” Rowan found Slado’s expression interesting: evaluative, as in the tea-cup portrait, but with a shade of intensity perhaps understandable under the circumstances. A young man, after all, with natural inclinations and urges.
“I don’t think I knew her,” Naio said.
“You hardly would. A much lower class of person. I was certain she’d end up in the bawdy-houses; she had no other talents to speak of.”
“But she didn’t?” Rowan asked. “End up in a bawdy-house?”
Irina sniffed. “Well perhaps she did after all, but not one in this city. Wild girl that she was, she wandered off one day, probably following a sailor or caravan worker or some such riffraff. No one ever—” And she stopped.
Silence at the table.
Eventually, Rowan said: “In other words, she vanished.” On the page, the young apprentice regarded the shadow-girl, and his intensity seemed to have acquired a darker cast. “I believe,” the steerswoman said, “that you had a much closer call than you’d thought, Irina.”
Irina sat very still. “My word,” she said quietly.
“And so did Ona,” Naio said. His eyes were wide in his dark face.
Irina turned to him, astonished. “Your wife had an interest in this creature?”
“A girlish infatuation. She was hardly more than a child.”
Rowan said, “Perhaps it was her youth that saved her.”
Later, Rowan crossed the street to where Bel and Willam waited.
Will looked up from his seat on the ground. “Were the gardeners helpful?”
“Yes, very.” Rowan leaned back against the lamppost. “And Naio seems to have become interested in the subject, as well. He’s promised to ask around, and about Latitia, as well. I’m starting to feel like information is seeking me out, instead of the reverse.” She considered the burlap sack beside Willam. “And either you’re not carrying any of your destructive charms, or you’ve learned to make them less unstable. You practically dropped that sack on the ground.”
The Language of Power Page 15