had.
The innkeeper was a stout, healthy woman old enough to be our aunt. She smiled warmly on us in the way older women do when you remind them of their daughter. 'Och, no, lass. Word just came round early today, that tomorrow morning, the Northgate Poet means to go sit on the council steps and refuse to eat until the city council agrees to seat council members elected from the populace.'
'That's a radical notion,' Bee said, eyes widening with real surprise.
'No different than what happened in ancient days, in old Rome, so the poet has declaimed. Them who can read, can read if on broadsheets being posted. Maybe you saw the one we nailed up by the door. In old Rome, plebeians had their own
tribunes and their voices were heard. So you can sure we in the city mean to go picket by the steps in support of the poet's hunger strike. It's just that the prince does not like crowds and is threatening to call a curfew. He'll not touch the poet, of course. But he may strike at us! So folk are building up their courage for tomorrow's picket by drinking, and drinking men are like to have wandering hands, if you take my meaning.'
'That's just what happened, maestra,' Bee agreed with the smiling alacrity that made people adore her. I kicked her beneath the table, to warn her that she was overdoing it, and she trod so hard on my foot the pressure brought tears to my eyes. 'We sneaked out because we wanted to see the protest. But now we're frightened, and it's too late to walk home.'
'Phoenician girls, aren't you?' asked the innkeeper with a sigh of resignation that made her ample bosom heave beneath the stained apron she wore over her winter jacket and skirts. A man called a name, possibly hers. She glanced toward the door that opened into the common room and flagged the man standing there, husband or brother perhaps, with a wave. 'How like your sort to educate their girls in books and neglect common sense. What are your families thinking to let you go walking alone? I suppose it's just as possible you climbed out the window and never asked permission.'
I choked down a mildly hysterical laugh, thinking of our flight into the garden. But then I thought of Rory and covered my eyes.
'There, there, lass,' she said pettingly. 'All will be well. You come back with me into the kitchens. My kitchen girls share a bed in the scullery. They'll be up all night, for I don't expect this crowd will leave until dawn, and then for the council square. You can sleep there.'
'That's very kind of you.' Bee reached into her sleeve for our coin. 'How much for your trouble?'
The woman had a frown so deep and unexpected on an otherwise good-natured face that it was like a hard frost falling in the middle of summer. 'You paid already for drink and meal. This other I do for my daughters' sake, so it would fall poorly if I took payment. I only ask you go straight home in the morning and give up this rash adventure. Bad things happen to girls out on the streets on their own. Anyway, it's no good for my reputation to have you sitting here. I've had more than one drunken man ask me about the pair of you in that leering way men have. As if I manage the sort of establishment where I offer up girls as well as ale!'
'We ask forgiveness if our presence here has caused you any sort of trouble,' said Bee in her most unctuous tone. 'We never thought we'd run into men who… who put their hands where they aren't wanted!' Her blushing innocence would have shamed the most persistent suitor. I rolled my eyes, but the woman melted as rivers thaw beneath a glowing spring sun.
'Best come now. The drunker men get, the less likely they are to hear you say no.'
I gathered my ghost sword, and Bee took up the knit bag, and with our coats and cloaks over our arms and the eyes of half the men in the room on us, we meekly followed the woman into the back, past the ale room where a lad was pumping out ale from barrels into pitchers and setting them on a table for the servers, and on into the steaming clatter of a kitchen at full boil.
Two kitchen girls were chopping and grinding at a big wooden table, while the cook was managing the fireplace and its joints and kettles. All were too busy to do more than nod at us with the glancingly curious expressions of people who would find you a seven nights' wonder if they were not so tired. I was chastened by their industry, and they still had more than half the night ahead of them. A lad hurried in lugging a bucket of coal and set it down by the fireplace.
'Is there anything we can help with?' I asked.
'Och, no,' the innkeeper said, not unkindly. 'You'd just get in the way. Go on through into the scullery'
The scullery had a cheery fire blazing in the fireplace and a fair amount of heat radiating from the copper where water was heated in a huge tub. The stone sink with its big wooden bowl for washing sat unattended. Most of the sideboard was taken up by stacks of dishes, but at the far end rested six painted masks almost ready for the solstice festival. Bee went to look at them as I crossed to the curtained alcove to the right of the fireplace and peeked in to the bed behind. It looked amazingly inviting, with sheets recently laundered and ironed, an unexpected nicety.
'All ready for solstice night except for the blessings,' said Bee.
I went over to examine the masks. One was a fox, and one was a cat with whiskers sticking out from the wood, and the other four were round, humanlike faces with two painted black and two painted gold and decorated with snake-trail patterns in white and red. The shapes were decently done by a craftsman, bought in the market, but the decoration showed more enthusiasm than artisan's skill.
'We can paint in the charms,' she went on. 'It would be a small gesture of thanks, for the offer of a bed on this cold night.'
'Would that be right? Usually people go to a temple scribe to have it done.'
'Why would it not be right? Usually they go because they cannot write. Maester Lewis once told me that anyone who knows the proper act can make the offering.'
She fished out a little pot of ink and the quill pen we had purchased earlier with a blank journal book and other necessities. She bad a neat hand, and 1 watched in fascination as she tucked the blessing symbols in among the cat's whiskers and almond
eyes, and the fox's big triangular ears and whitened muzzle, and flowed the charms like ribbons through the more crudely painted patterns on the faces.
''There,' she said. 'Now I feel I have not taken without leaving something in return. It binds you, you know, to take without giving.'
'Unless they plan to turn us in to the constabulary for a handsome reward.'
'Have you heard any criers on the street announcing our escape? Now that I see these crowds, I wonder if they can even risk it. The crowds are; already agitated at the prospect of the Northgate Poet going on a hunger strike, so how do you think the mob will react to news that the militia and cold mages have allied to hunt down two young women? If I were the prince, I would send out spies and seekers to hunt very quietly.'
'You would hire Barahals, you mean.'
She grimaced as she cleaned the tip of the quill pen. 'Yes, exactly. Barahals to hunt Barahals. Then they would close in and take us without anyone being the wiser that we were being hunted.'
'Maybe. But I admit, I'm very tired. I'm willing to take the chance to rest tonight. We'll take turns on watch.'
But after we took off our boots and crawled into the alcove bed and decided on a turn of watch each, the clangor and bustle from the kitchen lulled us. Or maybe it was the sound of ink drying. We must both have fallen hard asleep, for I woke to silence and no idea how much time had passed. I heard not even the pop and rustle of fire. With the curtain drawn, we lay in darkness except for a line of light where the curtain's edge did not quite meet the wall. Day had therefore come, but the inn, it seemed, now slept.
No. Someone waited in the scullery, a presence notable for its measured but not precisely calm breathing. A chair scraped
softly as it was moved. Bee lay between me and the wall; I hooked a finger at the curtain's corner and twitched it back just enough to see out.
Andevai Diarisso Haranwy sat in a chair with his back straight, his feet flat on the slate floor, and his hands in loose fists on each thigh. He looked like the kind of academy student who pays close attention in class not necessarily because he is actually interested but because he is determined to do well. There was no fire; I heard no sounds of life, nothing. Just him, sitting there with his greatcoat slung over the chair's back, and Bee's steady breathing behind me, and a cat's questing meow from out of doors.
'I was raised in a hunter's village,' he remarked to the dust motes swirling in the frigid air, 'and furthermore,
