Magic in Ithkar (13 page)

Three days went by with no word, and Corielle kept to her stall, anxiously awaiting anything concerning Lamok, or any occurrences that might involve wizardry. Niall said nothing had come to the attention of the fair-wards but added, “If it’s priestly business, we’d not know in any event.” With that she had to be satisfied.

Then, on the morning of the fourth day, when Corielle was returning from a brief visit to the fairground’s edge, Daramil the baker rushed up to her. “Look what came to you by way of a temple serving-lad!” she cried, pressing two sheets of parchment and a small heavy bag into the jeweler’s hand. The bag felt and sounded as if it contained coins. “I swear, he was just waiting for you to be out of the way before he came,” the baker exclaimed.

Corielle felt the bag wonderingly and touched the parchment. “My daughter has a little learning,” Daramil went on eagerly. “Shall I have her read it to you?”

Corielle smiled a little at that, certain that the baker’s daughter had read it already, to everyone in sight! “Please do,” she said.

“To the woman at the jeweler’s stand,” the letter began.

It grieves me to see a decent woman brought so low, so I have commissioned from you a work described on another page, to be finished at your discretion. Your payment will be twenty temple coins, from which you may buy whatever material you please. What is left, taken together with the value of the tools you use, should leave you a respectable
dot.
I have sent an advance so you can buy yourself a pretty dress and find yourself a man. May your quest be successful.

Ynet, son of Komal.

Corielle frowned as she puzzled over the wording of the letter. But its import was clear: he was financing her search, even to hiring a bravo to aid and protect her. As the realization sank in, joy spread over her face. She shouted, and leaped high in the air, and laughed. Then she thought to ask, “What is this work like that he has asked me to do?”

The baker’s daughter rustled the parchment, then whistled. “It is like lacework, but in metal,” she said in awe. “A pendant, two bracelets, and a pair of ear-bobs, all very delicate, and even the ear-wires are of the finest.”

“Metal lacework is only another technique,” Corielle said joyously, still singing at the thought of having an ally. “I can use a silver-gold alloy; I will have to buy molds and wax.”

“Your patron spoke of a gown,” the baker reproved her. “He seemed to consider it to be of first importance.”

Corielle sobered. Well, true enough, she looked like a beggar, and people valued her work at the worth of her gown and not her talent. She whistled for Pawky and sent him again to the bird-tent with the message, “Rumara, be my eyes.” As he left, she said with a smile, “Strange, how the gods have given him the gift of speech, but not the wit to say anything of any worth.”

“I know some priests of Thotharn in the same case,” the baker answered with a sniff.

As time went by and neither Rumara nor Pawky came, Corielle remembered that her niece had a hawk in hand to train and, unable to wait any longer, found her way with the aid of a stick to the tent of Ryeth the tailor. “I have a commission and a patron,” she said, singing with the news, “and need a gown. An artisan’s gown in the old style, utterly simple, for my work is to be its only ornament. Rare is the tailor who can make one, since the wars; can you?”

“And be delighted not to have to pay seamstresses to make and tack on all those frills and furbelows the conquerors’ wives loved so,” Ryeth said, a queer catch in her voice. “Besides, you call me
tailor,
not
sewing-woman,
so a tailor’s work you shall have of me. Dark red goes with your coloring, but green with your bronzework; what do you say to a mix of colors?”

They were deep in measurements and fitting when a shrill, heartbroken cry of “Aunt!” split the air, and Rumara thrust her way into the tent, sobbing. “Oh, Aunt, where have you been? I have been looking all over for you,” she accused, and laid a small feathered body, soft and still, in Corielle’s hand. “Someone’s murdered Pawky!” the child cried, and wept until the tailor handed her something on which to blow her nose.

“A cruel blow to strike,” Corielle whispered, stunned, as she felt the arrow protruding from the little bird’s back. “Very well.” She got down from the tailor’s stool. “We go hire that bravo now, with no more delay. Rumara, tell Niall the fair-ward. A bird’s life may be nothing to the great ones, but violence is forbidden in this precinct.” Vengeance sang in her voice. “You go lay the accusation before Niall; I will be at the warrior’s wineshop.”

It was not that easy, of course. Rumara had to know what she was doing ordering a gown, and how she had gotten the money. She must read the letter, for Corielle had seen to it she learned her letters. She must sniff at the design; “overfancy,” and ask, “What’s a
dot?”

Corielle felt herself blush. “It is a gift of money to a man to be your man. My patron is telling me there should be enough left over for me to—’’

“To get your bed warmed,” the child said impatiently. Well, she had been reared on the fairground, and before that among drudges. Besides, she was right. Corielle, blind and impoverished, was still a woman with a woman’s needs.

“Or a good meal in a wineshop,” she said indifferently, knowing she did not fool Rumara but impelled to show some pride.

She stroked Pawky’s feathered corpse again. “Poor little bird,” she said with tears in her eyes. “Now how sorry I am I so often called you ’birdbrain.’ ”

It was not often that a woman came into the tent where the men who lived by the sword were drinking. Many looked up and choked; some of their rough speech died in midword. Those closest to the entrance, seeing she was blind, called out to her that she was in the wrong place. Others in back whispered and laughed, only because a woman was among them. The owner, a one-eyed veteran, hastened over. “How may the swordsmen of this place serve you, mistress, or do you seek elsewhere?”

“I need a swordsman,” she said, uncertain how to go about this business. “To seek out an old enemy, see if my sister is held captive by him, and avenge the murder of a harmless bird, through whose eyes I last saw him.”

A bold voice called out, “What do you offer in payment, mistress? We are poor men, with our own livings to earn.”

“Name your fees,” she said impatiently, “and I will tell you if I can meet them.”

She barely remembered anything of the rest of the day but the noise and confusion, the clamoring voices, the smell of wine and man-sweat, and the nagging wish that she could read their faces. Some she dismissed readily as too expensive, or stupid, or cruel-seeming, or whining, or half-mad. Many could not be told from any other. The old bartender kept order; she thought she heard Niall the fair-ward in the back of the tent enforcing it, for which she blessed him.

Then, as if in counterpoint to her thoughts, came a soft and tired voice with the accent of the border holdings along Galzar Pass. Just so had Lord Rumagh, border-born, spoken. “You are the jeweler with the bird,” he said gently. “Murdered as an eyewitness to villainy, as so many are?”

“Just so,” Corielle said, swallowing hard. “May I know your name, swordsman?”

“Rumal,” he said in the local speech, the single name marking him as without house or clan. “And if you need a strong and handsome youth, I would not deceive you. But forty years on the battlefield have taught me something, I like to think, and old warriors come cheap. Mistress, I am in sore need of your commission, and besides, your bird’s death angers me.”

He could be telling her what she wanted to hear, to earn a few coins from her; somehow she didn’t care. “How did you come to this, Rumal?” she asked instead.

He laughed a little bitterly. “Shall I tell you I was once lord of a great house? Or that I have had the chance, and would not, for my honor’s sake? Na, what chances I had I threw away, for one reason or another. Tell me of this enemy, and of your sister’s plight.”

Some of the bravos started to drift back to their pursuits as they decided the strange, ragged woman had chosen her man. A few whispered that they made a good pair, for age and his enemies’ blades had marked Rumal deeply. Corielle talked on, oblivious to all of this. At one point the mercenary started. “Lirielle,” he whispered. “I once knew a Lirielle. We were lovers. Go on with your tale, mistress.”

Without realizing it, Corielle found herself telling the mercenary all that had happened in the house of Ingnoir since the conquest and after. “And when our soldiers came through,” she concluded, “I took Rumara and fled, leaving Dunca the horse-master dead with a house warrior’s dagger in him, and made my way here. I tried to learn what had happened to Lirielle, but never found anyone who knew her, or had ever heard of her. I sang her spirit down to death, wept, and took her child to be my own, as I dared not before.”

She could smell cooking and found herself suddenly hungry. “I have forgotten,” she said. “It must be mealtime. Let me buy you whatever you please, and I will have the same.”

The meal, when it came, was soldier’s fare, a stew of beans and strong-flavored vegetables and roots, with tidbits of odd meats, all served with a heaping plate of coarse, flat cakes. She ate with a hearty appetite and puzzled over his concern for strange housefolk in those years. “I dared not,” she answered a question, “because I did not trust Dunca around anything weaker than I was, least of all a maidenchild. He cultivated brutality as other men sharpen their swords.”

She heard a snort from across the table. “I know the breed too well,” he said in disgust, shoving plate and mug away. “It is nearly dark, my lady. May I escort you to your place of business?”

“I had not realized,” she admitted, and rose. He gave her his arm so that she did not need sight to find it.

“Mother Kallille and Rumara would be in bed. Corielle went straight to her stand and stood irresolute. “I sleep under the stand, and it is the only shelter I can offer,” she said. “Nor would I have you misunderstand; I am not the sort of employer to ask you to earn your pay in bed; it is shelter. Unless you desire,” she added painfully, because she suddenly found that she did.

The mercenary stood close by her. “Not for a crust of bread or a warm place to sleep,” he agreed. “I talked of fee before my fellows, not to seem cheap, but I came with you knowing—”

“Do not be fooled by an old gown,” Corielle said tartly.

The soldier laughed. “But my lady, you ate that meal without complaint, and asked for more. Exquisite courtesy, by the gods!” His voice grew gentle. “But I do like you well, and think it has been overlong since either of us felt the touch of a lover’s hand; to do this would be my pleasure.”

“And mine, too,” she said, and shook her head. “We must both be moon-mad.”

The midnight stars were high in the sky when Corielle moved her hand from the soldier’s face and said sleepily, “My lord.”

Amusement in his voice, he whispered softly, “You are my employer; it is for me to call you
my lady.”

Just as softly she answered, “I will keep your secret, and never ask how you came to fail so low, but you should not have let me touch your face and hear your voice together. You are Rumagh, once Lord of Ingnoir. Tell me, does the Lady Mareth live?”

“She lives and is well. I will also tell you this,” he said with honest regret. “I am still her sworn man, and can give nobody more than the crumbs from her table, Corielle. But what I do give will be honestly given.”

She touched his hand in reassurance. “But how did you come to a mercenary’s hiring hall?” she asked then.

Rumagh of Ingnoir stretched and collected his thoughts. “My lady thought the evils which had befallen us since we took back our land could not be explained by natural means. Too many crops failed among our friends; too many women and she-animals miscarried, as did Mareth herself. The old healer wandered in her mind; age, they called it, but I am no younger. Those so attacked were all the conqueror’s enemies and our friends, and the priestesses called it wizardry. So I am here to seek a wizard.” He laughed a little. “One bright spot in all this blight; the cheesemaker was delivered of a fine, fat daughter, also named Rumara.”

“That, too, may be mischief,” Corielle said suddenly. “You are not supposed to want any daughter, highborn or lowborn, nor any bastard, boy or girl. Your lady was supposed to make great trouble for mother, child, and you, and the cheesemaker is supposed to be in agony that her wickedness has found her out.”

“What wickedness?” he demanded. “Taking a few cheeses home to her kin? But it does seem you know the mischief-maker’s mind. Have you found the wizard I am here to seek?”

“His name is Lamok,” she said, and began to tell him all she had learned about the wizard.

“Tomorrow I will ask about the arrow,” Rumagh said, “and you about the man. Until then, let us ask the gods to send us a dream or sign in our sleep.” He kissed her and was soon asleep himself.

They had breakfast with Kallille and Rumara, who were both full of questions. The mercenary answered them patiently and with good humor, so that when he left to recover bird and arrow from the fair-wards, the old woman said, “He’ll do.”

“He’s all right,” Rumara echoed, and tugged at her aunt’s skirt. “Come on, Aunt! The birds have been waiting since sunup!”

“What?” Corielle asked, listening to the racket from the perches under the canvas. They did seem to be unusually upset. “What do they want?”

“To look you over,” the child said, dragging her by the hand into the tent. “Just let them get to know you,” Rumara ordered, “and they’ll let you know.”

It brought back the pain of losing Pawky again, and Corielle walked into the tent grieving for a scarlet little fellow with a hooked yellow beak spotted with green, a raucous voice, and a great greed for roasted, salted flower seeds. Around her the birds squawked, shrilled, and argued, one massive predator yawning his foul breath in her face. She walked among them, trying to banish Pawky’s image by calling to mind the birds that were there. They calmed down, no longer upset, but as if conferring among themselves.