The Sable City
Page 43
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Lolanhi could have bartered much harder for her shop was doing very well buying up excess weapons and armor from adventurers needing to raise hard cash for the Shugak. But Tilda got the sense the older woman felt a bit bad for her for some reason. In the end Tilda gave up the long gun, Block’s broken pistols, and her riding boots. She got back two capped quivers each holding thirty yellow-fletched arrows, and a short Kantan horse bow along with a pair of archers gloves, the left with a stiff pad to the inner bend of her elbow and the shorter right glove with a draw-hook sewn into a finger. The re-curved bow was of the same sort of composite design that the Miilarkians had stolen and been manufacturing in the Islands for decades, though this one was authentic. Plain but sturdy. The string hummed like an instrument when Tilda plucked it.
Lolanhi threw in a heavily-padded but battered leather jerkin, which Tilda judged would fit Dugan. The trade done, Lolanhi heated some tea on a brazier of coals, and the two women talked a bit while they sipped. Lolanhi asked gentle questions and when it became obvious Tilda had heard no word from the Islands in months, she broke the bad news to her. Tilda paled and the tea cup almost slipped from her hand.
She was sitting out on the cold stone of the curb a half hour later when light began to touch the eastern sky. Dugan came strolling along from the direction of the Stars and Stones, saw Tilda and crossed the street to her. Tilda gave no sign she noticed him, even as he stood right in front of her. He poked the folded leather jerkin on the curb next to her with the flat toe of his marching sandal, strapped on over heavy wool socks.
“That looks too big for you,” he said.
“It is yours.”
Dugan knelt and picked the armor up, holding it out at arms’ length. The thick hide of the old jerkin was scored and hacked all over, so much so that it seemed likely to have been stripped off a dead man at some point. Possibly more than once.
“Thank you,” Dugan managed, but not by much. He set down his saddlebags and pulled the armor on, drawing up the laces that ran from the hem below his groin up to his throat. It fit well enough across his back and shoulders.
“You got this in there?” Dugan nodded his chin at Lolanhi’s door, which the woman had opened a few minutes ago while sending a long, sad look Tilda’s way. Pagette had opened up across the street about the same time, but the man gave no sign that he recognized nor even noticed Tilda.
“Yes.”
“They have any helmets?”
“Yes.”
Dugan waited a moment.
“Are you angry at me about something?”
“No.”
Dugan waited, then shrugged. He went into the store.
Tilda kept staring off at nothing, cold to the bone but hardly feeling it. She had no idea what she should do now and was suddenly too tired to even think about it.
After a time two more people appeared at the end of the block and it took Tilda a moment to recognize them as the Duchess Claudja Perforce and the Knight Sir Towsan. The knight was now clean-shaven, making his face look more emaciated than simply gaunt beneath a heavy leather skullcap. He wore a long coat of chain mail with steel greaves over knee-high boots and sleeves of the same kind, articulated at his elbows. All his armor was dirty, though not rusted nor scratched. His sword was on his hip and he carried a shield strapped to his left arm, round wood with an iron boss and a hoop around the rim. The shield was unmarked by any device or heraldry.
The Duchess did look like a serving girl, or perhaps even a young boy, in rough trousers, bulky sweater with a turtle’s neck, and a knee-length coat. A peaked leather cap rode at a somewhat jaunty angle atop brown locks that had been harshly shorn off, giving even her pretty face its present boyish look. The thought of the loss of so much lovely hair gave Tilda a sympathetic pang.
The pair carried backpacks and both had darkened their faces with dirt. When the Duchess was near enough Tilda almost smiled, for the dirt was evenly applied on both sides of the noblewoman‘s face.
Dugan had ambled out of Lolanhi’s shop wearing a metal helm with a short, conical crown and hanging cheek guards. It was a common helmet of Daulic foot soldiers and not altogether different than those worn by Codian legionnaires. Tilda stood up and Dugan stepped off the curb beside her.
“I officially have no money. Again.” he said, but Tilda made no response as the nobles arrived. Everyone looked at each other and tried not to bow from habit.
“Your Grace,” Tilda finally said quietly, speaking in Codian as that was the last language she had just been speaking with Dugan. The Duchess responded effortlessly in the same.
“That should probably be the last time you say that,” she said of her title, and Tilda nodded.
“Something you would prefer?”
“How about ‘Timmy’?” Dugan offered. He got back a cold look that told Tilda all she needed to know about the Duchess’s feelings concerning her present appearance.
“Claudja will do. And Gideon.”
Sir Towsan nodded though he did not look very pleased to be handing his first name over to the use of commoners.
“This one is Dugan,” Tilda said, and Claudja raised a fine eyebrow at him.
“A Gweiyerman?”
Dugan smirked, “Right you are, Claudja. In Correnca was I borned and breaded.”
Towsan said something in Daulic, not exactly hostile but neither pleased. Claudja nodded.
“Yes, we should. The Shugak raft awaits us below the pier.”
Towsan started for the dockside and Claudja followed a step behind, shifting the pack on her back. Tilda expected the Duchess had never carried anything on her back in her life, and quite probably but little in her hands. Dugan took a step after them, then turned and looked back as Tilda had not moved yet.
“You coming?”
Tilda said nothing. John Deskata was ahead of her, somewhere. Either in Camp Town or on his own way there. She and Block had come thousands of miles to find him and for just a moment, Tilda almost felt glad that Block was not alive to know that finding the man no longer mattered, for home had not waited on them. They were too late. They had failed. And it would cost the House of Deskata everything.
“Tilda?” Dugan said, and she looked at him. “Do you still want to do this?”
Tilda shifted the straps of her own pack on her shoulders. She was so used to them now that she hardly felt them.
“What I want has nothing to do with it,” Tilda said, and walked past the man after Claudja and Towsan.