'Point taken,' he admitted. 'Though, I'll warn you, I do pay tax; I've been paying both our shares. If you want decent government, you have to be prepared to pay for it.'
He saw a shadow of something-some remembered pain-pass across her face. 'Point taken,' she said, quietly. 'Tonno-felt the same way as you, and lectured me about it often enough. But the tithe serves no damned purpose at all. If it got into the hands of Priests like your cousin, that would be different. Most of the time, though, it ends up in the hands of men that are no better than thieves.'
He snorted, and tried not to think too hard about most of his dealings with the Church-those that hadn't involved Ardis seeking out someone specific for him to speak to. 'I've known thieves with more honor-and Ardis would be the first to agree with you. But we weren't talking about Ardis.'
'No, we weren't.' She leaned forward, intently. 'Talaysen, what do you intend to do with the Free Bards?'
'Do?' Was she really asking what he thought she was asking? 'What exactly do you mean?'
'What I said,' she replied. 'What are you going to do with them? Oh, it was enough to form them, to keep the Bardic Guild from getting rid of them when there were only a handful of you, I'm sure. But there are nearly fifty of you now-not counting the ones that didn't come to the Midsummer Faire. And there are more joining every year! They think of you not only as the founder, but as the leader-now what are you going to lead them to? Or is this just going to be a kind of Gypsy Clan with no other purpose than to live and play music?'
Of all of the Free Bards, Rune was the only one that had asked him that question, the question he had been asking himself for about three years.
'There are a lot of things I would like to do,' he said, slowly, 'but all of them involve having more power than we do now. That's why I've gotten the rest involved in trying to ingratiate ourselves with the Sires and Guildmasters outside the big cities.'
'So that when you come to demand a change, there will be someone backing you.' She nodded enthusiastically. 'What's the change?'
'Mostly, we-I-want to see some of the privileges and monopolies taken away from the Bardic Guild,' he replied. 'I want them put on a completely equal footing with us. I don't want to set up the Free Bards in place of the Guild, but I want any musician to be free to take any place that's been offered him. I want the Sires able to hire and fire members of the Guild the same way they can hire and fire Free Bards and traveling minstrels. And there are some abuses of power within the Guild that I want looked into.'
She sat back on her heels, and smiled. 'That'll do,' she replied. 'That's enough for anyone's lifetime. Let your successor worry about the next step.'
'Are you going to marry me now?' he asked, trying to sound plaintive, and actually sounding testy. She laughed.
'Since you ask me so romantically, I think so,' she said, tossing a shirt at him that he had forgotten. 'But don't think that you can go back to being aloof until the bonds are set.' She bared her teeth at him, in a playful little snarl that was oddly erotic. He restrained himself from doing what he would have liked to do. For one thing, he wanted a more comfortable bed than the boulders of the stream-bank, sun-warmed though they were. . . .
'I don't know why I shouldn't,' he replied provokingly. 'After all, you've been hurt, your head probably aches and I'm sure you couldn't possibly be interested in-'
She pounced on him, and proved that she could, most definitely be interested in-
And he found that the rocks weren't as bad as he had thought.
Rune would have laughed at her lover, if she hadn't been so certain that she would badly hurt his feelings by doing so. Now that they were lovers, she was perfectly content. But he was heading them into Brughten, despite the fact that there was no Faire there and the pickings would be slim, because he wanted to find a Priest to marry them. Immediately. Incredible.
Well, there was a Priest and a Church, and the town was at least on the road. It wasn't the road they had left; this one they'd struck after following the stream for a couple of days rather than backtrack over the elven- king's territory. And they might be able to get lodging and food at one of the town's two inns. . . .
Talaysen left her at the marketplace in the center of the town, and she was grateful for a chance to find some fresh supplies. The storm had washed away or ruined most of their food, and they had been living off the land thanks to the fish in the stream and her scant knowledge of forest edibles. That had been mostly limited to the fact that cattail roots could be eaten raw, knowing what watercress looked like, and recognition of some bramble- bushes with fruit on them.
Their money hadn't washed away, but it was hard to get a squirrel to part with a load of nuts in exchange for a copper penny.
She had just about completed her final purchase, when she turned and caught sight of Talaysen striding towards her through the light crowd. Most people wouldn't have noticed, and he was being quite carefully courteous to the other shoppers as he made his way past and around them-but she saw the set jaw, and the stiff way that he held his head, and knew he was furious.
'What's wrong?' she whispered, as he reached her side. He shook his head.
'Not here,' he said quietly, and she heard the anger in his voice. 'Are you done?'
'Just a moment.' She turned back to the old farm-wife and quickly counted out the money for another bag of traveler's bread without stopping to bargain any further. The old woman blinked in surprise, but took the coins-it wasn't that much in excess of what the real price should have been-and gave her the coarse string bag full of rounds of bread in exchange.
'All right,' she said, tying the bread to her belt until she got a chance to put it in her pack. 'Let's go.'
He led her straight out of town, setting a pace that was so fast she had to really stretch her legs to keep up with him, until he finally slowed when they were well out of sight of the last of the buildings. She tugged at his arm, forcing him to slow still further. 'All right!' she exclaimed, catching sight of the rage on his face, now that he was no longer having to wear a polite mask. 'What happened?'
'I was told by the Priest,' he said, tightly, 'that we were vagabonds and tramps. He told me that trash such as you and I weren't fit to even set foot on sacred ground, much less participate in the sacrament of marriage. He further told me that if we didn't want him to call the Sire's watch to have us both pilloried, even though you weren't even there, that we'd better take ourselves out of town.' He took a deep breath, and let it out in a long sigh. 'There was a great deal more that he said, and I won't repeat it.'
The look on his face alarmed her. 'You didn't do anything to him-'
'Oh, I wanted to throw him into the duck pond on the green,' Talaysen replied, and the rage slowly eased out of him. 'But I didn't. I did something that was a lot worse.' He began to smile, then, and the more he thought about whatever it was that he'd done, the more he smiled.
She had a horrified feeling that he had done something that really would get them pilloried, and her face must have reflected that, because he tossed back his head and laughed.
'Oh, don't worry. I didn't do anything physical. But it will be a very long time before he insults another traveling musician.' He waited, the smile still on his face, for her to ask the obvious question.
'Well, what did you do?' she asked impatiently, obliging him.
'I informed him that he had just insulted Master Bard Gwydain-and I proved who I was with this.' He reached into his pocket and extracted the medallion of Guild membership that she had only seen on satin ribbons about the necks of the Guild Masters at the trials. This medallion was tarnished, and it no longer hung from a bright, purple satin ribbon, but there was no mistaking it for the genuine article.
A Master's medallion. The Priest must have been just about ready to have a cat.
He handed it to her; she turned it over, and there was his name engraved on it. She gave it back to him without a word.
'I don't think it ever occurred to him to question the fact that I had this,' Talaysen continued, with satisfaction. 'I mean, I could have stolen it-but the fact that I had puffed myself up like the proud, young, foolish peacock I used to be probably convinced him that it, and I, were genuine. He started gaping like a stranded fish. Then he went quite purple and tried to apologize.'
'And?' she prompted.
'Well, I was so angry I didn't even want to be in the same town with him,' Talaysen said, with a glance of apology to her. 'I informed him that if he heard a song one day about a Priest so vain and so full of pride that he fell into a manure-pit because he wouldn't listen to a poor man's warning, he would be sure and recognize the
