She decided to put him to the test. “Pardon me, goodman,” she said mildly, “but Blanca doesn’t care much for being crowded.” She smiled. “And I would just hate it if she mussed your pretty red cloak.”
Next to her she heard Sharryn’s startled gasp, quickly repressed. In response to a discreet heel, Pedro turned to face opposite from Blanca and stare down the menacing crowd. Crow’s attention remained focused on the dandy. His face had darkened at her words and his hand went to the hilt of his sword. Crow gazed at him steadily, her face expressionless, waiting.
She saw the exact moment when he decided not to push it, anticipated, then saw the scornful shrug. He spat again and said something in an undertone to his friends. They laughed, a jeering, heckling kind of laugh that had nothing of true mirth to it, and fell in behind when he turned with a swish of his pretty red cloak and stalked away.
“Shall we go then?” Crow said, still in that mild tone of voice, and nudged Blanca forward.
“Have you completely lost your mind?” Sharryn said beneath her breath. “He could have brought that whole mob down on us.”
Crow thought of the hatred she had seen in the dandy’s eyes, so strong it was almost palpable. Hatred that intense, that concentrated, was a force to be reckoned with, something anyone who had been present when Nyssa burned knew first-hand. “And isn’t it interesting that he chose not to?”
The Hecates rose behind Pylos on the southern horizon, high, bleak and sharp-toothed. None of the buildings of the town were more than two stories high, most built of wood that had been too long from the tree and fashioned with too little care to begin with. “This place looks like it’d fall over at the first puff of a dragon’s breath,” Sharryn said, surveying it with disfavor.
The men of Pylos were tall, dark-eyed, dark-haired, and built like whips, all long bone and tensile muscle.
“Spooky,” Sharryn said. “They look so much alike.”
“Years of inbreeding will do that,” Crow said.
In addition, the men of Pylos were dressed alike, in cloaks of dark red, each clasped at the throat with a miniature shield, made of various metals and each stamped with a different design. She saw several designs repeat themselves on different wearers. Separate cohorts, perhaps. The social structure of Kalliope was organized on military lines.
Of women they saw none, all the windows and doors of the houses they passed closed firmly against the road. No female children, either, and very few male children.
On the outskirts of town they found the inn, a long, low building made of solid, well-dressed blocks of stone beneath a sturdy thatched roof. The sign hanging over the door was a wooden man in a red cloak leaning against a spear with his eyes closed.
Their host was a tall, burly individual, polite even as he kept his face averted, refusing to meet either woman’s eyes after the one swift glance of recognition at the crests on their shoulders. He was able to offer stalls in a snug stable for Blanca and Pedro, and a small, clean room at the back of the house for them.
Crowfoot dropped her saddlebags on one of the two narrow beds and went to unbar the shutters and swing them wide. “What time is dinner served below, goodman?” Sharryn said behind her. Stars were winking into existence in the night sky. The cold air had a bite to it, not unpleasant, just crisp on the inhale, clearing one’s lungs and head in equal measure.
The innkeeper coughed. “In an hour, Seer. But why bother yourselves with coming downstairs again this evening? I could serve your meals here, in your room, where you can be quiet and private.”
Crow turned in time to see Sharryn give him her sunny smile. “I find I have no liking for my own company this evening, goodman. We will take supper in the room below.”
He didn’t look happy but he didn’t argue, and with an inclination of his head delivered impartially between the two of them, he was in the hall and the door was closing gently behind him.
Crow raised an eyebrow at Sharryn. “Perhaps we should dine armed.”
“Certainly not!” Sharryn said bracingly. “We are Seer and Sword, the King’s Justice in Mnemosynea, welcomed in any of the nine provinces as the personification of the Great Charter and the Treaty of the Nine. There is no need for arms.”
And so, Crow keeping her inevitable misgivings to herself, Sword and Staff remained behind in their room when they descended the stairs to the common room at the front of the house. It was large, with ceilings high enough that it felt almost airy in spite of the well-aged oak wainscoting and the stripped and sanded tree trunks holding up the roof. It was furnished with large round wooden tables sliced from the trunks of larger trees, attended by low-backed stools, all filling up rapidly.
It wouldn’t be fair to say that conversation ceased when they entered the room, but there was certainly a momentary pause, followed by a somewhat self-conscious resumption. Heads turned when they walked by, but away, not toward.
The landlord emerged from a door at the back, through which Crow caught her very first glimpse of a feminine Kalliopean face. Inquisitive eyes caught hers for a brief moment before the landlord shut the door firmly and without haste behind him. “Here is your table, goodwomen,” he said, gesturing.
“Thank you, goodman.” Sharryn rustled forward, her nose very much in the air, and accepted the seat offered in the darkest corner of the room with a regal nod. Crow went around her to a seat with its back toward the wall, and the third person at the table coalesced out of the gloom.
“Goodman,” the third person said. “A light for the table, if you please, so I may see my dining companions.”
A lamp was brought and set alight with a snap of the landlord’s fingers, and their new companion was revealed to them. “Seer and Sword,” he said, inclining his head.
Crow felt a smile spread across her face. “Bard,” she said.
Sharryn noted the wristband with the translucent bone pick tucked into the back of it. “Bard,” she said, a little belatedly.
He was a tall, angular man with weather-beaten skin and deep-set eyes, and fair enough of hair and skin to be of the Hesperides. His leathers were neatly made and well kept for all the leagues on them. His movements were studied and graceful, his voice deep and resonant. A lutina stood against the wall behind his chair, its wood polished to a high gloss and its six strings evenly taut from bass to treble.
The landlord brought a pitcher, and the Bard poured. He raised his stein in a toast. “To the King.”
“The King,” they echoed and drank. The lager tasted of tart apples, and autumn mists, and deep-running mountain streams. As with most innkeepers, the landlord’s Talent must be for brewing.
Crow said, “So, Bard, what brings you to Kalliope?”
“Why,” he said easily, “like you, I serve at the pleasure of the King.”
“Just spreading the news,” Sharryn said.
He inclined his head.
“And gathering it,” Sharryn said in a lower voice.
He inclined his head again. “As you say, Seer.”
Crow watched Sharryn make up her mind. “My name is Sharryn, Bard, and this is Crowfoot.”
He inclined his head a third time. “I’m honored.”
Sharryn waited. The Bard said nothing more. Crow felt a tickle of laughter begin at the back of her throat, and coughed to cover it. Their host arrived with dinner, and Sharryn maintained a dignified if indignant silence while they worked their way through a selection of hard cheeses, crusty rolls warm from the oven, and a savory venison stew. The pitcher of lager refilled itself, and for a while silence settled in around the table.
When the food was nothing but a memory—the Soldier’s Rest had a Talented cook, and Crow wondered if the eyes she’d seen peering through the door belonged to her or if women weren’t allowed to have Talent in Kalliope—the three of them settled back around large mugs of tea sweetened with honey. Like everything else they had eaten and drunk, it was excellent, with a smoky aftertaste that lingered pleasantly on the tongue.
“We would,” Sharryn said, very much on her dignity.
“Ah.” The Bard drank tea.
Goaded, Sharryn said, “And of your goodness, Bard, would there be news as to the cases awaiting the King’s Justice there?”
He considered his mug in silence for a moment. “There would,” he said, and raised his eyes. His expression and his voice both were grave, and Crow felt her spine straighten. “The son of the heir to the count of Ydra has been murdered.”
It seemed to Crow as if the room in back of them had stilled. “I see. And who has been held responsible for this crime?”
The Bard meditated on the contents of his mug for a moment, then raised his eyes again. “His aunt.” He drank. “The heir’s sister, and daughter to the king by his first wife.”
A deferential clearing of throat broke the silence that followed his answer. They looked round and beheld one of the townsmen, his eyes fixed firmly on the Bard’s face. “Yes?” the Bard said.
“Of your goodness, Bard, we were wondering if you would be singing for us this evening,” the man said.
“Of course, goodman,” the Bard said courteously, and reached for his lutina. A place was made for him in the middle of the room, a stool drawn up, an attentive circle assembled.
He knew his audience, but then Bards always did. He began with a march, a brisk beat that had his listeners stamping their feet and beating their hands together and, after the first repetition, joining in the chorus and erupting into cheers at the coda. The Bard inclined his head gravely and gave them a moment before launching into a ditty about a Yranean farmer’s wife and a traveling tinker from Aerato that verged on the pornographic and left everyone winking and nudging one another, because everyone knew about the deplorable moral laxity of Yraneans.
He played for an hour, lullabies, love songs, ballads, more marching songs, then made as if to rise. He was shouted back onto his stool. He raised a hand for quiet. “Very well, goodmen, one more song.” He looked around the room, lingering for a moment on Crow’s face. His fingers hit the strings in a sudden jangle of notes that had everyone sitting up, alert, uneasy.
And attentive, Crow saw. She smiled to herself.
The encore, the song his listeners had demanded of him, was the history of Mnemosynea, beginning with the Wizard Wars, those eleven hundred interminable years when the country was torn and fractured by the struggle for power between the provincial lords and the mage class. Kings died bloodily on the battlefield or were assassinated in their beds. White wizards held dark wizards at bay until the dark wizards triumphed, then turned on each other, laying waste to everything between them. Dark chords played almost with violence, a dissonant rhythm that was jarring and at times almost shocking, and over it all the Bard’s voice harsh, abrasive. Many of the faces watching the Bard were stunned and staring.
At the precise moment when the music became a burden to the audience, a subtle refrain crept in beneath the martial rhythm, a repetitive, almost plaintive minor chord that grew until it took over the melodic line. The Bard’s voice blended with it seamlessly, the previous callous disharmony giving way to a more gentle and more easily understood rhythm, and a much more hummable melody.
The Bard sang of a child named Loukas, born of a forced marriage between the heirs of Mnelpomenea and Kalliope—which pleased the audience in the Soldier’s Rest, Crow saw—who was spirited out of his cradle by his mother, some said by man but most said by magick. Aegina, after all, had been born in Oetatia of a fey line descending from the white wizard Eneas, who at puberty manifested not just one Talent but all the major Talents combined, the only wizard ever to do so.
Loukas grew to manhood attended by Armonea, the white wizard who was sister to his mother. Some say they lived in the Dryad Forest in Pthalea, some say on one of the unnamed isles of the Hesperides, some say in one of the tiny, anonymous seacoastal villages of Aerato. In the outside world the dark wizards continued their struggle for supremacy, until only three were left, one of them Nyssa, greatest and most terrible wizard of them all.
In that year in the temple at the foot of Mount Oeta, the god of the mountain revealed herself and came forth to raise up one of the pilgrims come to worship at her shrine. This pilgrim she revealed to be Loukas, son of Aegina of Mnelpomenea and Ophean of Kalliope. Armonea stood forth and with her staff rallied to his cause what white wizards were left, joined almost immediately by the lords of the southern provinces, Palihymnea, Yranea, Aerato, and, of course, Mnelpomenea. Kleonea soon followed. The northern provinces came more slowly into the fold, Pthalea first, then Pthersikore, then Euterhepe. Kalliope alone resisted. Two years of pitched battles later, the dark wizard Nyssa lay siege to the very walls of Hestia itself, and was defeated due in great part to the last-minute defection of Kalliopean forces to Loukas.
A solemn, stately procession of chords, as the Bard sang of the writing and the ratification of the Treaty of the Nine, swelling to a grand finale with the election of nine Lords and Ladies Governeur, assembled in a Hestia newly and most resplendently restored, to fix their seals to the Great Charter. The focus had shifted, Crow noticed, from King Loukas to the individual rulers of the provinces. That was well-done, and typical of Loukas’s attention to detail. His Talent for governing all and governing well was truly, well, magickal.
There followed a series of mellow, descending minor chords, a complete, harmonious whole with no discordant notes. The last chord died away. There was no applause, only a prolonged, almost reverential silence that lasted some moments. One man rose to his feet and opened his mouth. He closed it again without speaking and slipped away. He was followed in twos and threes, as everyone in the room made their way silently to the door to vanish into the night.
The Bard returned to their table, drank deeply, and smiled at Crow. She smiled back.
Sharryn, who had with difficulty been containing her fury at the Bard’s unwelcome news during the concert, said with awful restraint, “A regicide? The murder of a royal?”
“Yes,” the Bard said. “And an infanticide.” He gave a grim nod at the looks of horror that crossed their faces. “The son of the viscount was a babe in arms.”
Their departure the following morning was enlivened by the unlooked-for companionship of the Bard on their journey, who rode knee to knee with Crow on a scarred chestnut stallion with alert eyes and a mouth that almost seemed to smile. For the first league, Sharryn examined the characters of Aeron and Thanos, including the doubtful competence of their tutors at the Magi Guild, their complete lack of either personal or professional honor, and the questionable status of their parents’ unions.
For the second league, she broadened her reach to include the Guild of the Magi, the King’s counselors, and the bureaucrats in the department of the King’s Justice.
As the third league ticked over, the province of Kalliope came under review. “They cull the newborns here, did you know that? They have an actual board of review that inspects the babes, and any they find to be inferior they throw off a cliff into the sea. Many,” Sharryn said, giving the word bitter emphasis, “many are girl children, because what’s one girl in the Kalliopean scheme of things, after all?”
Crow regarded the road ahead through Blanca’s ears and said nothing.
“Kalliopean women are born only to breed, to make more Kalliopeans, preferably male. They are forbidden to have money of their own, to learn to read, to own property of their own, and most especially they are forbidden to study the magicks, to enhance and exploit the Talent given them by the nine gods at the sacred moment of their entry into adulthood.”
The Bard’s stallion reached over and gave Blanca a playful nip on the neck. Blanca gave a come-hither whicker in reply, sidling so that Crow’s leg pressed against the Bard’s.
“It’s a miracle the count of Ydra’s daughter even survived to the age of twenty-five years, and now you are telling me t
hat she somehow mustered up enough magick to produce an effective death spell?”
“There are those with that Talent,” the Bard said mildly. “And we all know what happens when such a Talent is repressed, or ignored.”
“She did not do it,” Sharryn stated.
When neither of her companions said anything, she rounded on them. “Crowfoot! Are you listening to me?”
“For three leagues, Sharryn,” Crow said without rancor.
“Have you listened to what I’ve been saying?”
“Every word.”
“Aren’t you upset by what you hear!”
Crow sighed. After a moment, she said, “The only way Loukas could get all of the nine provinces to sign the Treaty was to promise that each province would be autonomous within its own borders, retaining to each province its own customs, and to respect the borders of their neighbors.”
“But they haven’t!” Sharryn said, triumphant. “They have murdered so many babies over the centuries that they have become drastically inbred. One in every two pregnancies ends in miscarriage, and one in every four—one in four!—live births produces a child with deformities or limited intelligence. There are rumors the Kalliopeans are raiding into Pthalea and Euterhepe for girl children, so Kalliopean males will have someone to mate with.” She looked across Crow at the Bard. “And you laud them in song for producing Loukas’s father, and for defecting from Nyssa’s side in the Siege of Hestia. At the last possible moment, I might add.”
“So I do,” the Bard said amiably.
Crow reined to a halt. Sharryn looked around, her lips parted on a question, when Crow’s upraised hand stopped her. Blanca was very still, Pedro no less so at her side, both with ears pricked, tense, alert.
The road had narrowed and was overgrown by demon trees. The road curved both behind them and before so that they had no direct line of sight in either direction.
The Bard brought his hand down to rest casually on the hilt of his sword. From the corner of her eye, Sharryn saw him loosen it in its scabbard. Her face a little paler, she reached up to tidy an errant curl and slid a hand over the comforting solidity of the Staff snugged against her back.
Unusual Suspects: Stories of Mystery & Fantasy Page 24
