says he can do nothing until we police our own. Last year, Falling Stars House sent soldiers to sweep through the Levels, rounding up outlaws and villains. Some of our lads joined up just for the summer. We thought our boy would be home after Hallows, but he never did come back.'
'My condolences on your loss, maestra,' I said politely.
Someone in the back muttered an imprecation, and people shook their heads with a frown.
'Ach, nay, lass,' she replied, touching an amulet that hung from a cord around her neck. 'He's not passed. The House captain liked his measure and how he sat a horse, so they took him into the company. We hope for some good to come of the connection. He's not been allowed to visit home yet, but he sent money and a steer for his sister's wedding.'
'He said he'd send for me,' said Emilia tartly, 'but I've not heard one word since he rode off all high and proud. I suppose he's too good for the likes of us now.'
'The lad will do what's right,' said the innkeeper sternly.
'Until the House soldiers run afoul of radicals and he finds himself staring down a musket held by one of his own kins-men!
'That's enough, Emilia!' said an older man standing in the back. With an expression that betrayed how ill used she felt, she stepped back as he went on. 'Lads will make promises to lasses. You know how it is. Drink, duel, and dally. And a bit of livestock raiding when they're bored. I don't suppose you lost any cattle, did you, Maester Rarr?'
This lame joke forced a lew chuckles.
'Only the horse,' replied Roderic. As his grin widened, I was sure he was about to say something that would annoy and embarrass me. 'And a very fine and handsome horse it was, to be sure. A glossy creature, more brown than bay, and exceedingly well groomed and ornamented.'
He was laughing at me with his cursed eyes as my cheeks went up in flames, although I was sure I did not know why.
'That reminds me of a song,' said Emilia.
The women laughed; the men groaned. But the fire was blazing and the night was long, and folk will want entertainment after the tedium of a day's work. Emilia's song detailed the amorous adventures of a water horse who fell in love-if love was the right word-with a series of young women who passed beside the lake in which the creature dwelled and from which he emerged in the form of a good-looking young man of exactly the right sort to catch a young woman's fancy. She had a clear Vei‹ e and.1 pleasing timbre, and every local knew the chorus, whose' euphemisms about mounting and galloping embarrassed me. We did not sing these sons of songs in the Barahal house. Rory caught right on and sang the chorus as if born to it.
In the laughter and pounding of tables that followed, I said, to no one in particular, 'I thought kelpies drowned and then devoured their victims!' The words, innocently spoken, only caused the gathered folk to laugh even harder until I am sure my face was as red as if burned.
I retreated to the bartender's domain as Emilia-like Bee, she enjoyed being the center of attention-began another song, (his one mournful and dreary and containing numerous references to summer rain, sodden flowers, and dead lovers. The bartender was a young man who smiled sympathetically as I rested against the bar. He slid a mug of ale down to me, and I sipped, savoring the brew. Two men with distinctly foreign features approached the bar and asked for a drink. They spoke, haltingly, the formal Latin of the schoolbook, hard for locals to understand here in the north where three languages had been thrown into the same pot and stirred. They were obviously not southerners like the woman Kehinde whom I had met with Chartji; she'd been from Massilia, and whatever other languages she might speak, she'd spoken Latin with the flawless casualness of the native speaker. So had the trolls, now that I thought about it. Only Brennan had used the local cant.
'Salvete,' I said to the men as I set down my mug. Greetings.
'Salve' replied the elder. The younger made a gesture of greeting, cupped hand touched to chest, but said nothing and kept his gaze lowered.
'You are come a long way,' I said politely, for they both had long straight black hair not unlike my own and complexions something like Rory's, but with features so distinctive that I wondered where on Earth they had come from. They were not from around here.
'A long way,' agreed the elder. He seemed about to say more but stopped. From his expression, I thought it likely he was stymied by the language.
'You are from Africa,' I said to encourage him.
He shook his head. 'From Africa, no. From Africa, we are not.
'From beyond the Pale? In the east?'
'This I know not, this pale. My apologies, maestra.'
The younger addressed words to the elder in a language I did not recognize. Some of the words rang familiarly, but its cadence had a music of its own, entirely new to my ears.
The elder shook his head again, then turned to receive two mugs of ale from the barkeep. With a smiling nod to seal the end of our conversation, he took himself and his young companion away. I shifted to watch their progress and caught a glimpse through the crowd of a table half hidden by the big
brick hearth in the corner of the room closest to the blazing fire. A clean-shaven and rather light-skinned young man sat there, hands on the table and a cap held in slim fingers; he had Avar-ian eyes, slant-folded, and an oval face with broad cheekbones. After a moment I realized, with a start, that he was a woman, older than I had first thought, with black hair cropped short and an old scar on her left cheek, and in all ways dressed exactly as a man.
The bartender leaned across the bar to follow my gaze with his own. 'Foreigners,' he said. 'Five of 'em. They're staying at the Lamb, across the way. Got here yesterday with ten mules and twenty bundles of wool cloth from Camlun. But the warden's sure they were smuggling rifles. He meant to take them before Lord Owen, but then a lad come in this morning with the cry of sheep stealing and off the warden must go. He told this lot to stay put until he come back or he'd ask Lord Owen to sei the militia after them.'
'Rifles!' 1 thought of the rifles the eru and coachman had claimed to have destroyed in Southbridge. The men pursuing Andcvai: It's time the mages feel the sting of our anger.
'You heard of them? It's a new kind of musket, like.'
Emilia finished her song to a burst of acclaim and cries for a new song. Someone said he'd go for his fiddle, and another pair left to get drum and lute. Emilia leaned over Roderic, flirting as he sipped ale and imbibed her attentions.
The bartender glanced once around the room as if fearing eavesdroppers, then bent closer. I bent closer as well, his mouth close to my ear and his breath strong with ale as he whispered, 'Mages hate rifles, anything like that. And foreigners are usually radicals, aren't they? Still.' His hand brushed mine. 'If there's no illegal merchandise, there's no proof, is there?'
'Where would rifles be coming from?' I asked, wondering what he would answer.
'I wouldn't know about that,' he said with a grin. 'Still, she's a fierce-looking woman, isn't she? Seems a shame to me for a woman to go cutting her hair all short like a man's, though. Yours, for instance. You have hair as black and lovely as a raven's wing.
Fiery Shemesh! The man was flirting with me. 'Uh, my thanks.' I shifted my hand away as surreptitiously as I could and ponderously veered back to the subject. 'That woman looks Avar, or something like Avars would look, I would think. I've only ever seen one. In Adurnam.' And him an albino, but I was not about to mention the headmaster's assistant here or my ties to the academy college.
'City girl, eh? Thought I heard it in your speech. They do look strange, I'll say that. Though they haven't made trouble since the warden told them to stay put. Very quiet folk. And one's sick with a flux or some such. Says he's too sick to travel, anyway, like to die. They've set him alone in a room and change off tending him.'
'Who wants to run from the law in the middle of winter? Even radicals can freeze to death. Or get sick and die.'
He offered to top off my mug of ale. 'You fancy radicals, there in the city?'
'I don't fancy anyone,' I said in my most quelling tone. 'I am'-hard to imagine I would ever be glad to have an opportunity to say this! — 'married. But an emergency called me home, and my brother came to fetch me. Then we had that trouble with brigands, so while I'm sure you're a fine young man, I'm not in a mood to flirt even if I were unmarried.'
