While Percy stood staring at the breads, Beltain took Jack around the back where quite a few empty stalls were available in a small stable structure adjacent to the tavern. He spent some time there taking care of the great warhorse himself without allowing either of the two tavern stable boys to come near. And so, by the time he came around to the front, Percy was ready to start gnawing her own knuckles in hunger.
They entered the eatery, a dark parlor with a wooden beam ceiling, furnished simply with a long, narrow table with benches. Two or three men in plain or dingy clothes were eating, hunched over soup bowls. A plump country-faced woman greeted them with a curtsy and a slightly nervous smile, and told the knight to sit anywhere he liked. “We don’t have much today, Your Lordship, but there is fresh barley and turnip soup and a whole lot of good bread from next door. For you, I might be able to also cut up a bit of pepper liverwurst sausage that’s blessedly old and decidedly edible. None of that horrible newly butchered stuff that’s indigestible, as you know—”
“Yes, I know,” said Beltain, seating himself at the table and removing his gauntlets. “Bring it out. And have you any decent beer or ale in the house, good woman?”
“By all means, Your Lordship, we have a wonderful brew that my husband made himself a while ago, and it’s aged well, and will refresh you!”
Percy paused before sitting down, considering, then took a spot for herself across the bench from him, so that they faced each other across the short width of table. She took off her mittens and placed them in her lap. It was all so strange—well, just a little strange, or maybe a whole lot of strange—to be sitting thus in a distant tavern, directly across the table from the black knight, facing him, as though they were equals, having an ordinary mid-day meal. What a notion indeed, it suddenly struck Percy. How impossibly strange this whole thing was!
“And what would you have, dear?” the proprietress asked Percy gently, seeing that the girl was with the knight—in whatever capacity, was unclear.
How in Heaven’s name did a person ask for a meal at a public tavern? Percy had never been at an eatery before, not with Pa and Ma, not with anyone.
“Whatever’s not too much trouble, Ma’am,” Percy replied, wondering suddenly if it was right for her to go and help with the dishes in the back. “Maybe some soup and bread would be all right?” And she looked up at Beltain with a questioning expression.
He was looking at her very closely, and did not say a word. Oh, but his eyes! Up close like this, they were so clear, so rational, so impossible to look at. . . .
Percy again felt the familiar flush-heat rising in her cheeks that seemed to come at her out of nowhere. And so, she looked down instead of looking directly across at him. And she considered her present situation.
A few minutes later, the plump woman brought out a pitcher of warm water and a small copper basin with a towel for the knight to wash his hands. Then she returned with a tray with two large bowls of steaming soup and a tall tankard of frothing beer. Next to her came a small boy, of no more than seven, with sweet light curls and a pale serious face, and he carried a large basket of fresh bread loaves and a trestle cutting board.
“Right here, André, put the bread right there before His Lordship, and set out the basket near the board. That’s right!” The woman directed him while unloading the contents of her tray. The boy nodded and set down his burden, then bowed lightly and very properly before the knight.
Beltain’s mouth started to turn up in a smile at the sight of the boy’s diligence.
“Good, now run along and bring the rest of it, and be careful not to spill!” the woman instructed him.
“A smart boy,” the knight commented, taking a loaf of bread and cutting into it with the knife.
The proprietress, apparently the boy’s mother, broke out into another proud but nervous smile, and curtsied. “Why, thank you, Your Lordship, yes he is, my André!”
Percy watched the boy walk very carefully to the back, and with a sorrowful pull at her gut she eventually saw the slight little billowing sentinel shadow follow the child closely.
Little André was dead. And it was unclear whether his mother knew it or not.
The chunk of bread that Percy had started hungrily chewing a few seconds ago suddenly lost its flavor, replaced by a lump in the throat.
Soon the boy came back out, carefully carrying a plate of liverwurst sausages. His little white hands held the sides of the plate precisely right, and when he came back up to their table, he again bowed, moving so effortlessly for a dead one that it was no wonder he was not immediately apparent as such. Even his face, Percy noticed, seemed to have a residual glow around his cheeks, and there was not a sign of blemish or lifeless fixation in his limbs.
“Put it down, André, right there—now, serve His Lordship.”
“Yes, Ma.” Even his voice seemed at first glance that of a normal healthy seven-year-old. It was only the slight delay before inhaling, and then the overly even speech, that hinted at something not exactly normal. . . .
Percy looked at him, stunned. And the boy and his little shadow, also seemed to sense her. As all the dead did in her presence, he eventually turned to her, and looked up in her eyes with his earnest green-blue ones.
“Say hello, André!” said his proud mother, wiping her round pudgy hands against the front of her apron. “There, speak to His Lordship first.”
“Hello, Your Lordship,” the boy said, looking away from Percy momentarily, and again bowing before Beltain.
“How old are you, André?” Beltain asked kindly.
“Will be seven in three weeks, Lordship.” And the boy, having unburdened himself from all the plates, now dug his hand into his breeches pocket and took hold of something.
“What’s that you have there in your hands, little man?” While taking a deep draught of his beer, Beltain had noticed his movements.
“My horse and cavalry man.” And the boy turned out his pocket and pulled out a small, carved wooden figurine of a horse and rider, with the rider holding a tiny little shield and pike.
“I see. That’s a very handsome soldier. Well armed too.”
“Yes, Lordship.”
“Oh, now, don’t bother His Lordship at his meal, André,” his mother spoke hurriedly, suddenly looking in the direction of the outside door and unshuttered front windows showing the street. “You run along now! Go in the back and wait for me!”
“Yes, Ma.” And the boy ran slowly, holding the wooden toy soldier in his hand.
The next moment, the outside door opened, and two very large men came in, moving stiffly with the telltale awkwardness of the dead. They had grim cynical faces, the look of mercenaries, and a shabby quality to their clothes. Percy noticed a few belted weapons on at least one of them. Their death shadows moved alongside, large and menacing, she saw.
Beltain sat with his side partly turned from the entrance, but there was not a moment of doubt he saw everything, including the new arrivals, with his sharp peripheral vision. He was dipping bread in the barley soup and bringing the ladle up to his mouth, but for some reason she noticed a subtle quality of relaxation in his muscles, like a coil loosening, ready to spring.
She redoubled her efforts to slurp her own soup and stuff her cheeks with the bread, keeping her head down over her bowl, even though now the flavor was gone, and her pulse was in her throat.
The proprietress of the tavern however, did not waste any time. The woman took a few steps, putting her hands on hips, and said loudly to the dead man who entered first. “What do you want, Jared? What now?”
“And a good day to you, Mistress Saronne,” spoke the dead man, dark haired and bearded, with heavy overhanging brows and a deeply rutted pale face. The act of ballooning his lungs caused a crackle of breaking ice on the inside of his chest cavity, which indicated that he’d been out in the cold without speaking for some time. “Need a man have a reason to come inside a public establishment?”
Percy heard that crackle, an
d continued staring into her bowl. Everyone else in the room heard it too, as a few of the townsmen paused eating and glanced warily at the newcomers.
“You’re no longer welcome here,” Mistress Saronne replied in a firm voice. “I’ve asked you before not to come in any longer, and now I ask you kindly to leave, both of you.”
The two dead men slowly looked at each other, and their fixed eyes did not change but the mouths shaped themselves into grotesque versions of smiles.
“Why so uncharitable to an honest dead man?” said the second man, leaner and also dark, with a long gash scar running up his neck and jaw, its wound edges frosted over and crystallized with pallor.
“Because, Hendrick, you are dead, and a rude villain to boot. You were a right horror when you were alive, and I can just about tolerate that kind of thing if you’re living flesh and blood and can pay me with coins for your supper. But no longer! You don’t belong here, where honest folk are trying to have a meal. You are scaring the customers!”
“Come now, why so mean, Mistress Saronne? No one here is scared.” The first man slowly walked into the room, stiff-limbed yet managing to saunter insolently. He walked up to the table edge and stopped next to a man having a bowl of soup. “Well, am I a bother to you, good fellow?” he asked.
The man shook his head silently, but his eyes were troubled, and he’d stopped eating and put down his ladle.
“Jared Gaisse, begone!” Mistress Saronne exclaimed, in a rising voice.
“See, there, he ain’t bothered.” And the dead man called Jared moved away from the eating customer and sauntered over along the table, moving deeper into the room.
Meanwhile, the other dead man also began edging into the room from the other side of the long table. Slowly they were moving nearer to Percy and Beltain who were close to the middle of the long table, across from each other.
The black knight calmly chewed bread and sausage, picking up the next slice with the end of his knife, then taking a long pull of the beer. He did not even look up or around.
Percy gave him a series of hard looks, widening her eyes, then raising her one brow meaningfully, and then the other. He did not seem to notice her antics at all, and was completely engrossed with his meal.
The dead man called Hendrick stopped on the side near Percy and leaned to stare at a small balding townsman who was timidly eating right next to her. “What’s that you have there, my friend?” he drawled, ice crackling in lungs. “Any good, this swill? Wish I could taste some, but I don’t remember how that works any more. How does eating and drinking, and pissing work?”
Percy glared at Beltain . . . who pointedly ignored her. And when she finally caught his eye, she could have sworn there was a bare shadow of a smile around his eyes and near his lips—that is, if they would only stop moving long enough between chews and swallows.
“Ah! And, look here, we’ve got us a comely little thing, with a fat little arse! Stuffing those fat round cheeks, are yah?” Hendrick had stopped behind Percy. Had he been alive he would have been breathing down her neck. Instead, there was only crackle in the inside of him and creaks of settling limbs.
“You ought to leave now,” said the black knight softly. He wiped his mouth and jaw with its newly sprouted growth of beard with the back of his hand and put down his tankard of beer.
“What’s this?” Hendrick looked past Percy’s back and at her dining companion. “Is this a mighty knight I see? Your Lordship, what, with your fancy mail and a sword belted on, are yah?”
“You are a dead idiot,” said Beltain, looking up at Hendrick with his very clear slate-blue eyes. “I will overlook your insolence, your crude words to the girl, even your lack of courtesy to the good woman whose establishment this is. Simply turn around and go.”
“Or you’ll do what, Lordship?”
“He is not going to do anything,” Percy said suddenly. And without getting up, she turned around and took the dead man’s ice-cold hand.
It was as if out of nowhere a windstorm moved inside her, entering with a hard snap, filling her, swelling, rising, rising. . . .
And suddenly the entire tavern rang.
Percy felt it with her mind, the homogeneous blanketing pressure of raw power, resonating among the rafters of the high wooden ceiling, and echoing to the beaten rush-swept floor and the winter-hardened earth below. And it made her cold and hard and full of knife-edge clarity. She held the animated corpse by the hand and saw his death-shadow, long and billowing like a torn sail, come to attention before her as she took it by its gossamer filaments into a chokehold.
The dead man called Hendrick went perfectly still before her, immobilized by her touch.
“This,” Percy said. “This is what I am going to do.”
Everyone in the tavern was also taken by a stillness—by something they had no words for, even though they could not feel the electric coursing of power all along the room.
“And you—” Percy said to the other dead man across the room, reaching out through empty mind-space and taking his death shadow’s thread of energy into a similar hold. He froze also, completely immobile, watching her with suddenly obedient fixed eyes. “—You can feel it also. I hold you both now.”
“What . . . are you?” Hendrick’s voice creaked.
“I am your end,” she replied. “Would you like to know it now? Or would you like to stay in this world a while longer?”
“Please . . .” the dead man called Jared croaked, “I want to stay . . . here . . . in this world.”
“Then get the hell out of this tavern, and let us eat in peace!” Percy said, releasing the two death-shadows with a hard snap of her mind, so that they flickered like blown candle flames before resuming their pitiful vigilance next to the dead men’s bodies. She then turned her back to Hendrick and picked up a large chunk of bread, dipped it in the barley and stuffed it in her mouth.
In the sudden perfect silence of the tavern, the two dead men turned around, and walked out of the tavern, moving as fast as their frozen log-limbs would allow.
“Fat arse, indeed. . . .” Percy mumbled incomprehensibly with her mouth full. The ringing power was gone and she was suddenly ravenously hungry, even more so than she had been before she started eating.
The tavern came back to life. Customers took in big breaths, resumed their meals and conversation, and cast a few curious glances her way. But none of them of course had any idea what had just passed on the level of the mind, the kind of exchange of power that took place before their noses. All they saw was that a young peasant girl had just told off a pair of big dead ruffians and somehow sent them running.
The knight regarded her with a half-amazed, half-amused gaze. He parted his lips to speak.
But the proprietress, Mistress Saronne, came rushing up to Percy, and waved her hands about in joyful gesticulation. “Oh, my dearie! Oh, bless you, sweet girl! Whatever you’ve done or told them, oh, thank you! You have no notion how rough it’s been, with ’em coming by every day it seems, harassing the good folk here! I fear they even robbed some folk just outside the door! Now why would a dead man need to be robbin’ anyone, I don’t know! That Jared Gaisse was no good, even back when he was living, and when he got in a fight a few days ago, and got himself cut up for dead, what with the death stopping and all, now he’s been a rotten nuisance around town! And that Hendrick too! Cutpurses, both—”
Percy watched the woman speak, passionately waving her hands around. “I don’t think they’ll be back to bother you any more, Ma’am,” she said.
“Oh, bless you! I have no notion of what you said to frighten them off, and I don’t want to know, but it was sweet magic! Now, what else can I get you, dearie? Something sweet indeed! How about some tea and tarts? Would you like that? And it’s on the house, I’ll have you know!”
“Oh . . .” Percy said, with a smile. “Yes, please!” And then she snuck a glance at Beltain who was struggling to hold back his lips from sliding into a grin, and instead busied himself aga
in with chewing.
Mistress Saronne hurried away to deliver Percy’s tarts, and was back soon, with little André trailing her, carrying a round-bellied pot of tea and cups on a tray. With an almost apologetic curtsy to the knight, she served the girl first, and Percy found a large fragrant apple and pear tart swimming in honey syrup, on a saucer before her.
While André stood by dutifully, holding the tray, his mother poured two steaming cups of the amber liquid and set them down before Percy and then Beltain.
“No tart for you, little man?” the black knight said, turning to the boy once again. The child stood looking very intently, his pale blue eyes never blinking, so it was easy to mistake his manner for interest in the sweet course.
“No, Sir.”
“Want a bite of mine?”
“No, thank you, Sir.”
Mistress Saronne seemed to become flustered. “Oh, no, Lordship, don’t you be worried about my André, he has plenty to eat whenever he likes!”
“I’m not hungry,” the boy said simply.
Percy bit her lip.
“Go on, child, take the tray back now,” his mother said, starting to pile the empty dishes on the main tray in her hands, after putting just a few lighter ones on the boy’s.
When André moved away, Percy said very softly to his mother. “Begging pardon, Ma’am, but your little boy—he is—well, you do know what he is?”
The woman’s smile was instantly gone, and an expression of anxiety came to her rounded features, and the loaded dish tray in her hands clattered precariously. “Oh!” she said. “Goodness! Why, what is he? What do you mean, dear?”
In that moment Beltain looked up at them both sharply, ignoring his platter. By the serious gravity in his expression, Percy knew that at last he understood.
“Let me help you with the tray, Ma’am,” Percy said, rising from her seat. She then took the tray from the startled Mistress Saronne and went with her to the back of the tavern, walking past the table and benches.
Cobweb Empire Page 22
