Turning back to Rune, he added, “It also won’t take as long to heal. I warn you, the scrubbing will leave you sore and aching for a good week at least. It’s not a pain free experience, it’s just relatively painless.”
Rune shrugged, the amount of pain not fazing him. “It’s fine. I just want ya ta take it off.”
“We can do that tonight. It won’t take more than an hour or so, I think.” Pointing at the porch, Conli directed, “Sit here. I’ll fetch what I need.”
“Do you need more light?” Siobhan asked his retreating back.
In a slightly muffled voice, he responded, “Please!”
It didn’t take more than a few minutes for the preparations to be complete. Siobhan fetched three lanterns, one of which hung from the porch’s roof, the other two elevated by some chairs so that Conli had plenty of light to work by. Rune sat on a bench, Conli side-straddling the bench right next to him with an array of tools on another empty chair brought out for that purpose.
Siobhan, having been treated for a skin disease before with a method that sounded suspiciously similar to what Conli planned now, knew how this would feel. In sympathy, she sat on Rune’s other side, one of her hands holding his.
Rune kept stealing glances at her, obviously unsure what she was doing.
“Conli will apply this salve to deaden the pain around your arm,” she explained to him, knowing what would happen next because of past experience. “But it still feels odd. Uncomfortable, almost. It’s tingly and feels like needles are poking underneath your skin. When that happens, it’s best to squeeze someone’s hand, take the pressure off.”
“Geta,” he said with a nod of understanding.
Markl, as if appearing by magic, came out of nowhere. “What was that?”
Siobhan turned to give him a wry look. “How is it that whenever someone uses a word not in the Robarge dialects, you can appear out of thin air?”
“It’s a gift,” he told her mock-seriously. His ever-present leather notebook came out of his side pouch, a small pencil tucked into its pages. “Rune, what did you say?”
“Geta,” Rune repeated in bemusement. “Languages ya thing, Markl?”
“I like to study them,” Markl explained, eyes lit up in an enthusiastic gleam. “They’re fascinating. What does ‘geta’ mean, exactly?”
Rune paused and thought about it. “Got it, understand, know what ya mean?”
“So basically a way of giving affirmation,” Markl noted as he scribbled this down. “Something like the Teheranian vahh, perhaps.”
Seeing Rune’s growing confusion, Siobhan had pity and explained, “Markl is actually a scholar, you see.” Rune’s look at her said that no, he didn’t see anything of the sort. She had to bite back a smile, remembering her own reaction when Markl had introduced himself. “He’s traveling around with us learning cultures, languages, and such. He wants to use that knowledge to improve trade relations between the four continents.”
“Oh.” Rune blinked, turning this over in his mind before he offered a ginger nod. “Not a bad thought, that one.”
“I rather thought so.” Markl gave them a brief, small smile. “Rune, this word strikes me as being pure Wynngaardal, almost of the old form of the language. Are there any other words like this one?”
Rune lifted one shoulder up into a shrug. “Hard ta think of one if ya ask me all of a sudden. Hmmm.”
Fei, sitting somewhere up on the roof and out of Siobhan’s line of sight, offered, “The man we met today said something to you.”
“Eh? Ahhh.” Rune nodded, remembering. “Sameign vi hofuo. De soemd lan risna.”
…come again?
He grinned at seeing two blank expressions. “Don’t ask me what it means exactly. Couldn’t tell ya. But it’s what ya say traditionally when ya make a meet with someone important from another guild. It means, roughly, that ya’ll only meet with the head of the group and that if they’ll pay, ya’ll host the meeti’n.”
Markl requested, “Say that one more time. Slowly.”
Rune obliged, repeating it twice so that Markl was sure he was recording it right, before adding, “The ‘soemd’ bit is the most important. If ya don’t hear that, hightail it out of there. Soemd means they will deal with ya fairly. But if they don’t say that, ya should keep a close eye on the wallet.”
Siobhan made a mental note of that for the future. Not that she intended to deal with the dark guilds in Wynngaard after this, but one never knew.
Conli interrupted the language lesson by pushing a finger into Rune’s shoulder. “Do you feel that?”
“Ya not hurti’n me,” Rune assured him.
The older man lifted his eyes to the heavens in a clear bid for patience. “Rune. I realize you’re new, so I’m going to explain to you what I’ve had to explain to every other fight-loving idiot in this guild.”
Siobhan, knowing what was coming, choked on a laugh.
“Pain is not your friend,” Conli said in a tone that brooked no nonsense. “Pain is not a simple byproduct of a fight. Pain is the way your body tells you that something is wrong, something that needs to be fixed. I don’t want you to ignore it when your body is in pain. I want you to come to me so that I can help address the issue, whatever that is.” Showing that he had been paying attention earlier, Conli asked, “Geta?”
Rune’s eyebrows shot up in surprise, but a grin took over his face. “Geta.”
“Excellent.” Conli shot a look at the hovering Wolf, who was ostensibly polishing his sword and not paying any attention to what everyone else was doing. “If you really do understand me, then you just proved yourself to be more intelligent than Wolf.”
Quite a few people started laughing at that. Wolf put his sword down and turned to give the physician a dirty look.
“Ahhh, they picki’n at ya, wolf-dog?” Rune couldn’t resist rubbing it in, smile wide in challenge.
“Don’t start with me, kiō,” Wolf growled at him. “You won’t like the result.”
Rune’s challenging smile didn’t falter but his hand suddenly tightened around Siobhan’s. She tilted her torso a bit to see around his shoulders and saw that Conli had taken something that looked a great deal like a wire scrub brush and started in on the tattoo.
“Wait, kiō?” Markl interjected. Perhaps fortunately, as it headed off a fight.
“Child, or kid,” Wolf translated.
“Although I’m not that much younger,” Rune added, lip curling at the insult.
“Ten years, give or take.” Wolf lifted a shoulder in a nonchalant shrug. “Close enough.”
Rune blinked. He’d apparently thought Wolf younger.
What Siobhan wanted to know was, when had they developed nicknames for each other?
Rune’s hand on hers tightened to a stranglehold and he let out a slow hiss between clenched teeth.
“Sorry, sorry,” Conli apologized, not stopping in what he was doing. “I know it stings, but this will clear out the last of the ink and keep it from getting infected. Bear with it a minute more.”
“Ahh, that stuff,” Siobhan said in recognition. Even without Rune’s reaction, the sharp smell was enough to tell her what he was using. It was a mixture of Conli’s that, as far as she could tell, was almost pure alcohol. “The only time I’ve ever seen Tran yelp was when Conli poured some of that on an open wound.”
“I can see why,” Rune gritted out. “It stings a mite.”
Siobhan searched for a topic to take his mind off things. “Rune, your hair is actually quite long, huh. Do you like to keep it past your shoulders like that?”
“Eh? Oh, no.” He sounded distracted as he responded. “Actually, it’s a bit of a pain that long. But I haven’t had much time ta get it cut.”
“Denney can do that for you after this?” Siobhan offered.
He gave her an amused smile, although it looked strained around the edges. “Ya not offeri’n to do it yerself?”
“You don’t want me cutting hair,” she assured hi
m dryly. “Trust me.”
“She gets it crooked every time,” Conli tacked on. “You should have seen what she did to Wolf’s hair the last time she tried.”
“Took Denney two haircuts to really straighten it out again,” Wolf remembered with a grimace.
Denney put her head around the doorframe to say, “I don’t mind. How short you want it, Rune?”
“Bit shorter than Markl’s, here.”
“Oh, that’s easy.” She paused and really looked at him for a moment. “I saw a man in Quigg that had an interesting hair style…it was shorter on one side, a little longer toward the front. It looked sharp.”
Rune asked in an undertone, “Do ya trust her ta play with a man’s head?”
“She’s never made a hash of it,” Siobhan assured him.
Turning his head, he gave her a nod. “Do as ya like, then.”
“Oh good.” She ducked back inside, her words floating on the air. “Let me find some scissors.”
“Well, Rune, you’re going to look like a brand new man by tomorrow,” Siobhan observed. “Conli, are you going to wrap the arm?”
“To keep it from being infected,” Conli responded without looking up. “Alright, Rune, the worst is over. I’ve got some salve I’m putting on—you like that? Yes, it has a cooling effect. Feels quite good, but it also promotes healing. In three weeks, no one will tell by looking at your arm a tattoo was ever there. But for now, we’re going to change that bandage once a day, keep things clean, with lots of this salve on it. Geta? Good man.”
Rune finally let go of her hand with a sigh of relief. She tousled his hair, playfully, before getting up. “He’s all yours, Denney!”
“Oh good, a new victim!” Denney caroled back, appearing with a towel, scissors, and a comb.
Rune eyed the two women with growing alarm, although he smiled, as if knowing they were teasing. “Ah…is it too late ta take it back?”
“Yes,” Denney informed him seriously.
“Just do a man a favor and leave me my ears?”
Denney cackled like a mad crone.
While they had been waiting in Vakkiod, Grae had been busy. Siobhan didn’t want to travel for hours at a time if they didn’t need to, especially with wounded people. In fact, as soon as they were well enough to sit in a wagon, she wanted them out of this village and in a safer place. The question was, where was that mythical place of safety?
Anticipating the need to go into Iron Dragain, she’d directed Grae to build a path to Sateren. If she didn’t get the confirmation she expected to, she’d have him build another path toward Quigg from there. Several people in the guild had had nothing but time on their hands, so they’d helped him search for stones. That said, he was building a snowflake pattern, as it was large enough to carry their whole group, and that took 35 stones per stepping stone. According to Grae’s calculations, it took 1,400 stones to build a path. And that was only one direction! He’d build another, smaller path near Sateren that would lead back to the village at her request.
In this cold earth, digging up rocks had not been the most pleasant of jobs.
But Grae had finished it, and Siobhan took full advantage of that the next morning so that she didn’t have to travel three hours just to reach Sateren. She rose leisurely, had a calm and unhurried breakfast, not in the least bit worried about getting an early start.
From the rafters above her head, Rune cleared his throat. “Ah, ya do remember the meeti’n is at noon?”
“I do,” she responded calmly, tugging on her boots. “Worried we’ll be late?”
“A mite.”
“Don’t be. Grae will take us.”
“Ah, ya mean by path?”
“Yes.”
There was a ruminative silence for a second. “If ya had a path made toward the city, why did Fei and me go the long way?”
“Grae didn’t actually finish it until yesterday before dinner,” she explained. “You were on your way back by then.”
“Ehh.”
Siobhan got to her feet and then bent long enough to scoop a cleaning rag off the side of the wash bucket. Without looking, she tossed the rag up toward the rafters. Rune handily caught it. “While you’re up there,” she informed him dryly, “you might as well put your time to use.”
Rune chuckled. “Yes ma’am.”
Judging it about time to leave, she went out onto the porch, calling people as she moved. “Wolf, Fei, Grae, you ready?”
“Waiting on you,” Grae responded wryly, standing on the road leading out of the village. He did indeed look ready, as he had a flask of water hanging from one shoulder, a book tucked under his other arm. He planned to just sit and wait for them, eh? Well, not a bad thought. If something went wrong, and they needed to retreat in a hurry, she’d prefer to have him standing by.
Wolf and Fei just looked ready for a fight. Well, Wolf always looked ready for a fight, but even Fei seemed to expect trouble of some sort. They both had weapons bristling from every limb. In this northern city, Wolf and Rune would stand out the least, as they clearly hailed from here. Or near here. It would be Siobhan and Fei, with their unusual coloring, who would attract unwanted attention. Maybe she should reconsider having just her twin swords….
As she cleared the door, she felt the floorboards vibrate under Rune’s landing. He followed her out without a word.
They all trooped out to the path. In deference to his need for fresh water, Grae had not built his path near the village’s front entrance, but at the very back, near a spring that fed into Drahn Lake. Siobhan actually blessed that decision, as it prevented unwanted gawking by the villagers.
Grae took them through the path with only a brief warning to Rune of “Step only where I do” and to the outskirts of Sateren without mishap.
Siobhan stood staring at the front gates of the city with a vague sense of foreboding. Even though this whole thing was her idea, she didn’t care for it one bit. “Grae,” she murmured for his ears alone, “If we’re not out in three hours, send a message to Blackstone and tell them everything.”
He gave her an alarmed look. “You expect trouble?”
“Call it woman’s intuition.”
“Siobhan, your woman’s intuition is scarily accurate.”
She grimaced. “Don’t I know it.” Patting him on the shoulder in reassurance, she moved past. “Alright, Rune, lead me.”
Her assassin did exactly that, taking the front position and guiding them into the city.
Sateren strongly reminded her of Goldschmidt in some ways. The men guarding the main gate asked her the same questions, and recorded their passing in a very similar fashion. The cramped stores and buildings just inside the gate were the same, all of them offering foods and services that a traveler might be in need of. The din of noise from people going every direction, the overripe smell of too many people living in too small a space, all of it was similar. If not for the tall, sloping roofs and the grey stone everywhere, she might have thought Grae had taken her to the wrong place.
This city had been built centuries ago, when there were still formal governments in the world. According to the briefing Rune had given them last night, parts of the city were so old that no one knew who had actually built them. He’d also assured her that there was so much trade and foreign business here that two more foreigners wouldn’t warrant a second glance. Siobhan saw now that he had spoken simple truth. At least a third of the pedestrians on the street were from other continents, and her ears picked up every possible dialect as she passed different groups of people.
The main street connecting to the gate had wall-to-wall people, but Rune didn’t stay on it for long. He quickly switched to a side street that had half the traffic, flashing her a smile over his shoulder as he walked. “Less crowded here.”
“And I’m thankful for it,” she responded with a breath of relief. “At least I can hear myself think now. Will this road take us the right direction?”
“Mostly.”
“It
’s another street over,” Fei volunteered from behind her. “We scouted it out yesterday to make sure it was a good place to meet. It’s a small shop, like a miniature tavern, and sits on a corner. It gives us two ways out if we need them.”
Good to know.
Siobhan kept her eyes peeled, but really, the way that the streets crisscrossed each other at random quickly baffled her. Why did she have the feeling that this place was even more confusing than Quigg?
Rune navigated it with ease, taking them to a quaint little shop that seemed to have been there since the city’s founding. It had a fresh coat of paint on it, and someone kept it in good repair, but there was no disguising the age of the building. Siobhan liked the atmosphere of it, though.
They took a seat near the front table, which gave them good line of sight in all directions. Siobhan took a better look around, trying to see more of the place. Fei had described it fairly accurately—it looked exactly like a miniature tavern. It only had eight tables, and one long booth dominating a wall with every possible liquor known to man for sale. Not wanting anyone drunk while trying to meet with a dark guildsman, she ordered salted chips and apple brandy, one of the few non-alcoholic drinks to be had in Wynngaard. Taking their cue from her, everyone else did the same.
“Ya must be the guildmaster.”
Siobhan’s heart tried to leap into her throat. She had a hand on her sword, halfway out of her chair, on sheer instinct.
“Whoa there, didn’t mean ta startle ya.” A man with quite possibly the ugliest face she had ever seen came into view as he stepped more fully into the light. Half his right ear was missing, nose misshapen into a blob, with a lazy right eye. His clothes were in good condition, though. Or at least, she assumed they were. It was hard to tell under all the knives. He had a band of them around his waist, two on each arm, and four strapped to each leg. Even in this cool weather, he didn’t wear more than a leather vest and simple pants tucked into high boots.
Deepwoods (Book 1) Page 17
