'That's true,' Tamlin admitted. 'Still, Zarrin rolled over so easily, agreeing to everything I said, I thought she'd been melted by my charm.'
Vox walked behind, watching the street to both sides, signing nothing. Escevar stumped beside his charge, muttering, 'I don't have any great head for business, Deuce, but even haggling in the marketplace you never pay the first price asked. You agreed to Zarrin's proposal in an eye-blink, then moved on to celebrating!'
'True, true. Still, I'm new at this 'work' stuff. So far it's dreadfully dull. What shall we do?'
'Find Zarrin, according to your father.' Escevar's voice dripped acid. 'It's hard to believe you are his son sometimes. Or most of the time.'
'Find Zarrin… hmm…' Tamlin's cape whipped around his shoulders while frozen snow pinged his cheeks. Vox's bearskin had begun to frost over. Escevar cursed the gods of snow, winter, storm, and a few others. 'Where do you think she might be?'
Escevar counted to twenty rather than thump his friend's head. The trio had already tried the Foxmantle homestead. The gatekeeper wouldn't admit them, it being enemy territory, but a maid admitted Zarrin had gone to the stockyards earlier and not yet returned.
'If Zarrin's not home,' Escevar chided, 'she's probably carousing in a pub, feet propped up by the fire and a hot caudle in her hand, toasting her success in selling you down the river!'
'Right.' Tamlin nodded, then turned so abruptly he banged into Escevar. 'Sorry, old chap. Let's try some pubs. I'm dry anyway. All this negotiating makes one thirstier than sword practice.'
Escevar blinked snow off his eyelids as Tamlin drove for a lighted doorway. 'Hey, I was joking!'
From behind, Vox voiced a single grunt that said, The last time you two had sword practice, candles drooped in their sockets from the heat.
Sarn Street was more commonly called 'Souse Street.' Sixteen pubs lined the north side of the avenue alone, and over the hours the determined adventurers hit every one. In each tavern, Tamlin greeted friends and strangers, bought rounds of drinks, told droll stories, hooked his arms around laughing women and, at Escevar's prompting, asked if anyone had seen Zarrin. As the night progressed and the pub count climbed, Tamlin made more friends, groped more women, and told longer stories, and even Escevar had forgotten Zarrin. Vox went along dutifully to each pub, drank little, watched everywhere, and tapped his foot in disgust.
Eventually Tamlin and Escevar stumbled into The Black Stag, the last pub on the street, and collapsed onto benches. Unlike most pubs, where the furniture was too heavy to throw and the room stood wide open so barkeepers could see what went on, the Stag had high-walled booths and shadowed nooks and dim lights, which made it a favorite meeting place for flesh-pushers, pawners and fences, poisonous apothecaries, slavers, smugglers, second-story thieves, and other 'servants of the underclass.' Still, frequenting such a dangerous place made visitors feel dangerous, so noble youngsters in the form of toffs, simps, bawds, and fops congregated. Naturally, many were Tamlin's friends, or at least friendly. Barely had the Uskevren heir plunked down than he called for a round of Stag Stout for his best friends, some of whom he could even name.
'This is a great place to ask for-whatever it is we look for,' Tamlin babbled. 'The Stag's famous for-trouble and-strangers. Best place for the worst things, what? Barkeep, where's that stout?'
'You might lighten up with the golden touch, Deuce. Even your allowance only stretches so far.' Blearily Escevar, who always handled the money, upended a purse. Silver and copper plinked and plunked across the table and floor as booze-soaked Selgauntans cheered! Escevar bent to pick up coins and fell off the bench to more cheers. Some friends helped pick up coins while others pocketed them. Groggy, Escevar counted, getting a new total each time.
'Never mind, Es. I've got credit!' Tamlin called for more stout, though he hadn't yet touched the first one. Drinking, slopping down his doublet, Tamlin tried to focus as Vox made a cutting stroke across his throat. 'Cut? Throat? What, there's a cutthroat behind me? Oh, cut! You mean, my father cut off my allowance? Oh, I don't think he means it-Hey, where's everyone going?'
At the deadly words 'cut off my allowance,' the heir's new-found friends vanished for other reaches. Within seconds, Tamlin, Escevar, and Vox sat alone. No one in the pub, not even dung shovelers and grave robbers and tax collectors, would sit with them.
'Drat the dark.' Tamlin slurped stout and belched. ' 'Scuse. I wanted to ask those fellows something, but I can't think what. Allowance-Oh, hey, has anyone seen Zarrin Foxmantle? She's blonde, about this high-Oops!' Waving an arm almost pitched Tamlin off the bench, and he forgot what he'd asked. Escevar snored, facedown on the opposite bench. Vox listened to a pair of sisterly singers who'd mounted a tiny stage. Growing morose from his friends' rejections, Tamlin guzzled stout and sulked while the two girls sang sweet and high:
I forbid you maidens all,
Who wear gold in your hair,
For to go to Stillstone Hall,
For young Tam Lin is there.
Tamlin's ears perked. The song was 'Tam Lin,' a tune old as the hills, and his namesake. Muzzily he followed the words, often heard but never considered. Tam Lin, the handsome knight, fallen from his horse in a hunting accident. Caught by the fairy queen, so enslaved. Forced to serve in her midnight court, which only joined this world under a full moon. Primed for sacrifice to a bloody-handed god. Until a maiden Lyndelle, pluckier than most, entered the sacred hall to meet the ethereal Tam Lin. His only hope of freedom, he told her, was if she caught him falling from a horse. And so they arranged it, Lyndelle lunging into a chaotic raid on a hellish night to catch her new-found lover. And so Tam Lin was freed, the young pair united, and the song ended.
'Still, evil omens. What if she'd missed him? Good luck and good times can't last forever…' Mumbling to himself, Tamlin shivered. Filtered through an alcoholic fog, the sinister song droned in his brain like a dirge. Fairy curses, a young lord snared by ill luck and fate, a ghostly un-life and sentence of sacrifice-and Tamlin himself a young lord banished from home. Was his only hope an innocent maiden's rescue? No one in Selgaunt was innocent 'Milord Uskevren?'
Jumping at his name, Tamlin pulled his nose from a flagon to see a girl thin and pale as an elf. Under a threadbare cape, really a blanket, she wore only a cambric smock painted down the front, and battered clogs on her feet. Under her arm bulged a sheaf of parchments tied with a faded ribbon. Her big eyes were red from cold or weeping.
Rattled by his own superstition, Tamlin babbled, 'Uh, yes, I'm Lord Uskevren, or I shall be some day, if my father ever dies and I don't, perhaps, unless he really carries out his threat, which he might, which I doubt, or I hope… Uh, where was I?'
'Milord.' The girl licked chapped lips and launched into a speech. 'I wonder, sir, if you'd like your portrait painted. My name is Symbaline-'
'Symbaline!' Tamlin burst out. 'Like the girl in the song! Another omen! Oh, no, wait. Her name was Lyndelle-'
'S-sir?' The girl hadn't heard the lyrics, so she plowed on, 'I'm one of the finest artists in the city. I can show you samples. The smartest nobles agree they're lovely. Every lord and lady should have their portrait painted, and since you're so dashing and handsome-'
'No, no, no. No thank you.' Tamlin slugged stout to calm his nerves. 'I don't need a portrait. No one wants my face hanging on the wall, though my father'd like my carcass hung from a lamppost. I can't believe he's chucked me out like garbage…'
He stopped babbling because the girl cried. She tried to stifle her grief, but tears spilled down her wan cheeks. Shuddering, sobbing, she couldn't stop. Tamlin gawped, embarrassed. Even Vox, who habitually watched elsewhere, stared.
A barkeep bustled to the table with a billy club dangling from his wrist by a thong. He snagged the girl's pipestem arm. 'Here now, you snippet, don't be harryin' the patrons! I'm sorry, milord, I'll pitch the sauce out-'
'No!' Tamlin shook his head in a futile effort to clear it. 'Too many people have been tossed out in the cold! We're… bargaining. Sit her there. Girl, sit.'
Symbaline sat, slowly, as if she'd break. Her stomach rumbled. Tamlin squinted. 'What was that?'
Glowering in disgust, Vox flicked Tamlin's flagon off the table so stout splashed on the floor. Snapping his fingers, he mimed to the barkeep for food, enough to cover the table. Soon, a barmaid set down a tray of venison pasties, pickled eggs, ducks' breasts, watermelon rind, black-and-white bread, fresh butter, green and white
