by Martin Davey
Landros put the stopper back in the waterskin and threw it back into his saddle bag with a sigh. He pulled his gloves on tighter. “We’ll see what she has to say first. She might want to go back to Katrinamal.” He didn’t believe the words himself. He remembered the pouring rain and the woman’s screams. He remembered Clerk Killian’s smile that wasn’t a smile. Kerona shook her head at a passing cart stacked high with potatoes. Landros nodded at the driver and the man looked back at him from creased eyes, jaws bunching as he chewed on something.
Landros sighed and kicked Kerona into motion, walking slowly down the road past an inn with a table and benches sitting under a weeping willow. More than a few people stood at the side of the road to watch them pass and, despite himself, Landros rode with a straighter back. It couldn’t be often people in uniform came to visit Yerotan.
Dorian rode side by side with him. “You think she looked like a woman willing to be taken back to the Clerk when we saw her?”
Landros looked back at the inn they had just passed, the one with the weeping willow in the yard. He ran his hand through his hair as he looked back at the men. “Rather than have us all racing around the village, we’ll stay there while one of us asks around for Ysora.” The name sounded strange on his lips, familiar in some way.
Torra smiled from his horse, his hair unruffled despite the ride from Katrinamal. “Which one of us will be looking for the lady?”
“Wes will,” Landros said without stopping to think. Though even if he had paused to think, he didn’t think he’d have come to a different decision. Good to give the lad some responsibility. Good to keep Torra and Dorian where he could keep his eye on them. He turned Kerona about to face Wes. The lad looked even more awkward on his horse and he swallowed as Landros looked at him. “You going to be alright with that, Wes? Leave your horse here with us, and just have a walk around the village. I don’t want a big scene, just ask a few people if they’ve heard of Ysora Siran.”
“Sounds easy enough,” Wes said, trying to sound confident and failing miserably. His hair was cut short and it stuck up at the back. He made Landros feel old. He smiled at the boy and turned Kerona away back to the inn. A fat man was standing in the doorway watching them and wiping his hands on a dirty rag.
Landros swung his leg and hopped down from Kerona, good to be on his feet again after the long ride. Good to be away from Katrinamal and strange Clerks and dead things that whispered from dark corners. He could imagine never returning there, leaving Ysora in peace, and jumping on Kerona and never looking back. If only it wasn’t for Elian. He pulled his gloves off and smiled at the fat man. “You open?”
The man looked at them all in turn, his vest straining about his shoulders and his loose shirt open at the front. He was quiet enough for Landros to think about turning away and looking elsewhere.
Finally the man moved, revealing a gloomy room. The floor was dirty, hay and crumbs and other things littering the floor. Some chairs were placed around tables and others were on top of the tables, looking as though somebody had been readying to sweep the floor. This place made the Fiddler’s Tree look like a haven.
The man finally swung his filthy rag onto his shoulder. “My boy there can see to the horses for you,” he said, looking at their uniforms as though already wondering how much he could charge them for their drinks. “Ale is it?” He turned back into the inn without waiting for an answer.
Landros turned and found himself facing the innkeeper’s ‘boy’. He didn’t look much younger than Landros himself, if not older, with long brown hair hanging to broad shoulders. He handed the lad his reins and flipped a coin which was deftly caught. “Wes, can you help him with the horses and then have a look about the village?” Strange to be the one giving the orders, he could feel Dorian’s eyes piercing his back but he ignored them. This was not the work of the Watch. Landros had heard variations on that theme all the way from Katrinamal and he didn’t want to hear any more of it. Think of Elian, think of getting her away from the Clerk and then try his best to forget this whole business. Try and forget the woman with the wild hair and the beautiful song in the clutches of Clerk Killian. Ysora. Ysora Siran. A familiar name he had never heard before. He didn’t even like thinking of it. He scrunched his gloves in his fist and followed the innkeeper into the room, his men following him.
The innkeeper shuffled past tables, some of them still with last night’s tankards on them, circles of ale staining table tops, spilt ale and other fluids pooled in corners. Landros followed the man, picking up a chair and righting it under a table. Dust motes danced in the shaft of grey sunlight as he moved. “A busy night, was it?” he asked.
The innkeeper reached the bar and whipped his rag off his shoulder and onto the counter. It slopped into more spilt ale. “Every night is a busy night at Len’s inn,” he said with a wide smile, his cheeks shining. “So, four ales is it?” Without waiting for an answer he turned about, reaching down to the tankards, his hips bulging and the tip of the crack of his arse showing as he bent. Landros turned away, raising an eyebrow at Dorian. No response.
“So, four such fine men coming to Len’s for refreshment at such an hour, already my place is beginning to thrive. The whore’s house won’t last another month with all the customers coming here. They know quality when they see it, the fine people of Yerotan, they’ll be leaving the whore’s house in droves, they will.” He held up a tankard to the parched light, and finding something on the rim, a pudgy hand reached for the rag on the bar, but seeing Landros’s eyes following it, Len shrugged and placed the tankard back on the counter with a pudgy smile.
Torra leaned against the bar with a casual elbow, somehow managing to avoid the spilt ale and crumbs. “I’d say you might want to tidy this place up a bit if you really want to make a go of it, Len.” He looked around the inn, screwing his nose up, “People can be put off coming to a place like this if they have to step through last night’s shit to get to their table, you know.” His eyebrows raised and his eyes wide, no insult in his words.
Len nodded sadly, agreeing with every word. “That, my fine young man,” his cheeks and chins bunched as he spoke, “Is a sore subject at the moment. My cleaning woman, I hired her not more than two weeks ago, I could have turned her down, yes? She wasn’t the prettiest or the brightest. Pretty women bring the patrons to Len’s.”
Torra nodded in sympathy.
“Yes, I could have kicked her arse for her cheek, asking me for a job and not being pretty enough to make any man want to come here more than once. Now her friend, she was a pretty one, with that long yellow hair...” Len looked up to the ceiling at the memory of the cleaning woman’s friend, absently reaching for his rag and wiping at the tankard with it. “Beautiful, she was, if only she could have worked here, then the whore’s place would have been empty in a week.”
Dorian was standing well away from the bar, his hands clasped behind his back. He looked severe and formal even in his stained vest and open coat. “She doesn’t seem to be much of a cleaner, either. You wouldn’t stay open a week in Katrinamal with a place in this state.”
Len nodded again, “That’s the tragedy of it.” He spread his palms out wide, rag back on the bar. “I took pity on the woman, gave her a job despite my misgivings, despite her messy hair and her gangly legs. Took pity,” he shook his head. “I’m too nice to people, take pity, not good for a businessman, not good at all. Chosen by Keeper Liotuk to come here and run this place and look what I do—take pity on people not so fortunate and look how they repay me.”
Landros nodded in vague sympathy and tried to swallow the sigh rising to his lips. Innkeepers and their cleaning women and their problems seemed a very small thing after being visited by the Nameless One, after watching a Clerk be murdered by his mother’s corpse. When people talked like this, he wanted to shake them and tell them all he had seen and then ask them if their problems could ever matter again. Now he did sigh, long and loud, and looked out the window, saw Wes talking to Len’s boy
before he left, heading out into the village. Maybe he should have sent Pascal with the lad, but then it would be good for Wes to feel Landros trusted him. Trusted him? Or that Landros wanted as little to do with the taking of the woman as possible? He shook his head again, started to lean on the bar, saw a pool of stale ale and stood up straight again. Seeing the bar reminded him of Elian, of the night before when he had found her talking to Torra and she had chosen Landros. A strange mixture of pain and comfort at the memory.
“What she do? Steal from you?” Pascal seemed to be interested in the fate of this woman.
“Steal?” Len finally seemed to remember their drinks and began to pour. “Steal?” He chuckled, pushing one full tankard to Torra, the ale splashing over the sides and joining the pools on the counter. “Stealing I could have understood, I would have had her hand cut off by the Council, but I could have understood it. She was penniless, maybe a baby on the way, she needed the money?” Len shrugged, cheeks bunching as he raised his shoulders at the rhetorical questions. He pushed another drink across the bar, this one to Pascal.
Landros looked to the window, a man and a woman, farmers by the look of them, walked past carrying a basket each full of those red flowers. Would he recognize the woman if she walked past? He remembered the vision Clerk Lovelin had given him, but that was on a cliff with the wind whipping in her hair. Would he recognize her on a grey, dreary, windless day walking through a village in different clothes? Had the Clerk sent him on a fool’s errand just so he could be out of the way as he did what he wanted with Elian?
“But no,” the innkeeper prattled on. Dorian and Torra glanced about the room, Pascal now seeming to be the only one listening to him, “No, this woman came to Len asking, begging for a job. Begging! So out of the goodness of my heart,” he lifted a damp hand to the stained vest, “I give her a job, and then she leaves me! She worked here for what, a week? Two weeks, and then without a word she leaves me!” I come down in the morning after a hard night’s work to find the place in the same mess I left it.” He shook his head at the unfairness of it all, the oil in his dark hair glinting in the grey light. “It will be a long time before I trust again, before I take pity on the likes of such a woman again after what Ysora did to me. Took my money she did, got what she wanted and then left me to clean up my own mess. The th...”
“What did you say?” Landros turned away from the window.
Len grimaced at the interruption. He was a man who liked telling the world of his troubles and had been beginning to get into full flow. He passed another tankard of ale across the bar. “She left me, Captain. Left me without a word. Three days since I saw her, and there was I giving her a job when I could have chosen someone prettier, someone—“
He was getting in full flow again. Landros raised a hand, the fact that Len had known he was Captain not escaping his notice. “No, the cleaning woman, what was her name?” Dread and hope thrummed through his veins. He knew Len had said the woman’s name, and only when he heard it did he realize that he had hoped he wouldn’t be able to find the woman.
“Ysora,” Len said, confirming Landros’s fears. “Ysora Siran. That name will be etched on my heart for always as a reminder of the faithlessness of women.”
Torra laughed. “Relax, Len. She’s probably just sick for all you know. Have you been to her lodgings?”
Despite himself, Landros found himself silently thanking Torra. It was a good way of finding out where Ysora was staying without letting everybody know they were looking for her. He caught Pascal’s eye, “Go and find Wes,” he whispered, leaning close to his red-headed friend. Pascal nodded and left the inn.
Len shrugged and pushed the filthy rag around in a pool of ale on the bar. “Ill? No such thing. Do I ever take a day off when my back is sore or the thing in my stomach bleeds?” He looked around at them all as though they knew about his medical history. “No, Keeper Liotuk came to me in my dreams, told me to come to this place. I will be on my way to Insitur before you ever find me taking a day off, my friends. This Ysora, she begged me for a job and this is the way she treats me.” He shook his head again at the unfairness of it all.
“But you do know where she lives?” Torra pressed.
The question made Len stop moving the ale around the counter and look up, piggy eyes narrowing as he saw them all standing before the bar and looking at him. “Friends of hers are you?”
The sudden change in the man made Landros step forward. “Not exactly friends of hers, no. But we’d like to meet her if we could.”
“It’s like that, is it?” Len said.
Landros had no idea what that meant. He could only offer the innkeeper his best smile. Smiles never seemed to come as easily to him as they did Torra. “We don’t wish her any harm.” The lie came more easily than the smile.
Len sniffed as though disappointed. “I don’t know where she was staying. Kept herself to herself she did. Think she thought she was better than everyone else. She did leave something though, been littering the place.” He looked around the mess of the room as though daring Landros to make a comment.
Landros only raised an eyebrow. “Oh, she left something?”
“I’ll get it, not any use to me.” Len pushed himself away from the bar, waddled through the door to the back.
An old woman came into the inn as he left, her hair brittle and grey, her smile crack-toothed as she found herself under the scrutiny of three men of the Watch in red coats. She found a seat in a corner and watched them from unblinking eyes. Landros was the first to look away.
“Here.” Len tossed a faded book onto the bar, somehow managing to avoid the spilled ale. “She left it a couple of days before she vanished.”
They all looked at the book for a while before Landros picked it up. He turned it over in his hands, the leather soft and warm. No writing on the spine of the book so he opened it and looked at the title page. Maronghavian, A History: Travels with Keeper Liotuk And the War of the Gods he read. Feren would have loved the book. The book would be no use in finding Ysora, though. “This is all she left?”
“That and a lot of mess and a man who will never trust again,” Len said, raising a hand to the old crone in the corner. He stooped to grab a tankard from another pile behind the bar. This one looked cleaner than the rest, making Landros wonder if the man kept the cleaner tankards for the regular customers. He put his drink down.
“And she had no friends, never mentioned any names?”
Len sighed as he poured the ale, “Friends, that one? Only the beauty with the long yellow hair that shone in the sun. I even offered her a job. She would have—“
“And did she have a name?” Landros interrupted.
“Len finished pouring the ale and looked at Landros, unhappy at the interruption. Landros met the look without blinking. “Addison,” the innkeeper finally said. “When you hear the name of a woman as beautiful as that, you remember it.” His cheeks shined fatly in the grey light as he remembered Ysora’s friend.
Landros tossed the man a copper. He didn’t feel like finishing his drink anymore. “Thanks for your time, Len.” It might be easier to find the woman than he had thought and he wondered at the sense of disappointment.
“Maybe she heard we were coming and ran off again,” Torra smoothed his red coat down, patting the sleeves with either hand as they left the inn, the sun barely breaking the thick grey clouds overhead. The weeping willow hung limply in the heavy air.
“She hasn’t been there for three days, though,” Dorian said. “And unless the Captain knew about this before he told us, then she can’t have heard we were coming.”
The fact Dorian had called him Captain didn’t escape Landros’s notice. “No, the Clerk only told me about this last night. Maybe she just tired of working for such a man.” A cleaning woman? That wasn’t how he pictured the woman on the cliff, with her beautiful singing and wild hair and skirts. The way the innkeeper had spoken of her, he made it sound as though she was ugly. The woman on the cliff ha
d been beautiful enough to make his heart ache and his breath catch in his throat. Maybe they were speaking of different women?
“So what now?” Dorian ran a hand through his thinning grey hair. He looked old, and only a week or so ago, Landros couldn’t have imagined asking him asking such a question. Dorian would always have decided what the next course of action would be. It was a little worrying how easily he had accepted his new position.
Landros looked both ways down the road. A busy village, it seemed, with people staring at the men in the red coats. Dogs and chickens ran free, the chickens flapping wings and the dogs sniffing at the dirt. Quieter and more relaxing than Katrinamal with its dark alleys and whores shouting from windows and fights in the streets. He wanted to go back and forget he ever came here, forget what he had been asked to do. Ysora had fled the rapist at the farm, come here to this quiet village with its small inns and weeping willows and children and dogs running around the roads, and now he had to come here and drag her back to Katrinamal and Clerk Killian? He shivered at the thought. If only he had taken her when Clerk Lovelin had asked him, though would that have been any better?
“Now?” Torra smiled and Landros wondered if anything bothered the man. “Now we walk around the village looking for a beautiful blonde woman. Look, there’s one now.” A pretty yellow haired woman walked past them glancing their way and then quickly looking away again as she saw them all looking at her.
Torra had meant it as a joke, Landros knew, but he couldn’t think of a better plan at the moment. He watched the woman pass them by, her hair long and straight and yellow. Everything seemed so much quieter here, so much more peaceful and relaxed than Katrinamal where people hurried about with hunched shoulders and concerned expressions and dark, dead things whispered to him from dark corners. He looked down at the book in his hands, “Maronghavian, A History: Travels with Keeper Martuk and a History of the War of the Gods. A rare book, and precious, even Landros knew that. Not the kind of book a cleaning woman or a farmer’s wife was likely to own. “We’ll try the temple,” he said.
