Brom drank. We seemed to drink. Brom’s face cleared like a misted window under the caress of the sun.
“Oh, that’s very good!” And it was, for that which had gone into his cup, and only into his, was a Wize-ard brew that guaranteed both calm and truth a good deal of the time. Bless herbary. It’s so useful.
“Why do you want us to wear your festival clothes?” I asked him in a friendly voice.
“They’re out of fashion,” he said, suddenly desirous we should understand. “Last year’s. Last season’s. So, if you wore them, the arbiters might pick you up, you know, and sentence you to service for being out of style. They might elect one of you to be Merchant’s man. Then you could deal with the garbage and the roads. And the Cloth Merchants’ Council, and the festival board. And the distribution of the crystals. More cloth coming every day, all to be made something of before tomorrow. More crystals arriving every day from Fangel and all to be sold before the next lot comes. I’m tired of it all. I want to ride away, down Tan-tivvy, you know, titty-tup, titty-tup, going north.”
“Oh, I see. You were sentenced to the duty for being unstylish? Well, why haven’t you become stylish? Surely they could find someone less stylish than you?”
“Bribes,” he muttered. “They bribe the costume makers. My outfits are never right. Never. Too big, too small, too red, too green. Whatever.”
“And you can’t bribe the costume makers?”
“With what?” he cried, anguished. “Being Merchant’s man takes every coin. Who pays for the street sweepers? Eh? Who pays for the parade horses, the musicians? All of that falls on Merchant’s man. And nothing coming in but taxes on cloth, and that never enough!” He put his head between his hands with a gesture of despair.
“What would happen to you if you simply went away?” asked Queynt, tapping his glass with a fork to make a tiny, jingly sound in the room, an obligate to Brom’s moans.
“Death. Death sudden and horrible. So they say. Merchant’s man who’s derelict in his duties or goes without leave is taken by the shadow. So they say. I don’t know. So far it hasn’t been bad enough to risk it.”
Me, eyebrows halfway to my hair, nostrils narrowed in disbelief. “So what was in the tea you gave us, Brom? Not healthful stuff, that.”
“Zizzy stuff was all. No worse than a bottle or two of wineghost to make you happy with life. So you’d wear the clothes and not realize how old-style they were. Oh, Devils and dung-lice, I’ve done it now, done it, and no other naifs coming to town soon enough. FinaggyBum tomorrow, and that’s the last chance, for after that I’ve been summoned to Fangel. I’ve no time. No time.”
“Shhh.” Me once more, sorry for this unfortunate, ineffectual fellow. Poor thing, caught in some trap or other. Well, he bore the name of dream and dream we sought. “We’ll stay a while,” I said. “Perhaps we can think of a way to help you.”
“You’re crazy,” Peter said to me affectionately. I knew I was a sometime enigma to him, the oath standing between us like a perforated screen, half hiding, half disclosing, driving him wild sometimes, wanting to see what was really there. He was not sure of the true shape of me, even now, even after months of traveling together. This was merely one of my new insanities. “Quite crazy. You go ‘round and ‘round.”
“ ‘Round and ‘round,” said Chance, making hypnotic circles with his head. “’Round and ‘round. If the rest of you are as near to sleep as me, you’re talkin’ through your ears. I’m for findin’ a bed.”
“As we all should be.” Peter dabbed his mouth with the napkin and rose from the table. “We’ve been riding all night, after all, and lucky to do so. I thought we never would escape those brigands on the slopes above Zog.”
“Children,” said Queynt sleepily. “Mere children.”
“Children with crossbows,” said Peter. “And poisoned arrows. Deadly children. Thank you, Jinian, for the whatever-it-was-you-did! I thought we’d die there, late supper for the owls.”
“It was nothing.” I shrugged. It had been the hiding spell, Egg in the Hollow, done masterfully quick in time to save our lives, a good deal more than nothing, but Wize-ards didn’t talk about that. “Come, Brom. Take us to a room we may share for sleeping. We’ll keep watch, as we would in any unfriendly territory, but that won’t stop us trying to help you.”
The man’s face, as he rose, was a study in halfness. Half disappointment we had found him out. Half hope the finding out would come back to his own advantage.
CHAPTER THREE
Brom gave us his own rooms in the tower, trying to court our favor, I suppose, but kindly meant for all that.
There was an inner room with a wide bed, which the menfolk allotted to me, and an outer room full of great soft couches, which they took for themselves, barricading the outer door against intrusion with several items of furniture. Perhaps we were overly cautious, but I had no quarrel with the barricade. More than once on this trip we’d been awakened to danger in the middle of the night.
Then Queynt got out one bottle of wineghost and Chance another. Queynt, I knew, would try to give me at least two glasses. He found me very funny when I had had several. “Serious as an owl when sober, silly as a duck when zizzy,” so he said, pretending to think it a good thing for me to be unserious from time to time.
This time I gave him no room to get started. “We have a bargain,” I announced.
