They laughed again, the moment behind them, and headed down the ravine, angling northeast.
They traveled the rest of the day, mostly walking. Near dusk, they descended a low ridge. The distant hum of a river rose into the forest, a soothing, familiar strain. The ravine descended to a river running south. They led their mounts to drink. An orange sun reflected its double in the glossy surface, river flies and other insects darting to and fro over the calm water. The ripples of fish surfacing to feed briefly interrupted the languid smoothness. Near the shore, the river tapered gradually, the water clear enough to see the sands in the shallows.
Tahn looked out over the river with relief; this, at least, was good fortune—rivers meant food and water, and always rejoined a road if you followed them far enough.
“See,” he said. “Just stick with me.” He swelled his chest with a lungful of air and inclined his chin toward the rising moon in a heroic pose.
Sutter caught him off guard while he was striking his pose, shoving him into the river before Tahn could catch his balance. The chill of the water bit at his skin, but not unpleasantly.
Tahn got his feet under him and turned on his friend. “Bad foot or none, Nails, you’re going to gulp your share of river water in a moment.”
“You should take the opportunity to bathe,” Sutter said, laughing. “I’ll cut you some peppermint leaves to perfume your delicate skin.”
Tahn rushed him.
“Now, Woodchuck, you really ought to accept your wetness like a man.” Sutter barked laughter, allowing Tahn to grab him around the waist and hold him up. “This won’t help either,” Sutter sputtered through laughing lips. “I’m not baring my shoulders for you.”
Laughing, Tahn pulled Sutter back into deeper water, both of them submerging for a moment. Tahn let go, welcoming the soothing cold on his foot and slowly floating to the surface. He heard Sutter splashing toward him, no doubt preparing to take up their bout. Just as he was about to surface, a hand grasped the nape of his neck and thrust his head deeper under water.
As he went down again, he smiled at the impetuous, tireless antics of his friend. The same prank had been shared between them endlessly on the banks of the Huber. He waited a moment, determining whether to counter, or simply to wait for Sutter to let him up and continue the contest. The hand did not relent, but grew tighter, pinching savagely around the base of Tahn’s skull and thrusting him deeper.
A dark certainty filled him. This hand did not belong to his friend.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
Dust on the Boards
The day after the fire on the riverboat, Jastail and Wendra rode slowly north. Two hours after meridian, Jastail turned off the road toward the east. Flat land stretched into the distance, broken occasionally by undulating hills. Wendra noticed the roll of wagon tracks in the soil, though they trod no established road. Jastail took them into unmarked territory for yet another hour before they crested a knoll, where Wendra looked down upon a makeshift town with no real roads. A sudden feeling of despair stole over her as Jastail walked their mount slowly into Galadell.
Not a single man or woman failed to take note of them as they came. A few nodded to Jastail, but did not verbally greet him. He nodded in return, an air of authority in the angle of his head. Something bothered Wendra about the place. It felt impermanent, as though it could be abandoned at a moment’s notice. She sensed no sort of commitment, or community, or tradition here.
Then it hit her.
The silence.
Merchants did not bark their wares, men did not argue prices, women did not wag their tongues at their husbands, and the few children she saw swept or carried or lifted in the performance of some chore. This accumulation of life did not have the vibrance of towns she’d recently visited: the rapid exchange of insults in jest, or tales of the road, or arguments about overpricing; the raucous play of children under the feet of their parents. None of it lived here. The town itself did not feel like a town so much as a huddling of disparate folks all engaged in some dark, illicit business.
Jastail led Wendra to a ramshackle establishment near the center of town. Beside the door hung a weathered sign nailed to the wall announcing the OVERLAND BED AND CUP. Jastail looked both ways along the street before entering into the dimness beyond the door. Wendra shot a glance over her shoulder at the passersby, catching one of them in a long, appraising gaze; the man continued to unabashedly stare at her. Quickly, she followed Jastail inside.
The room stood weakly lit by a few sparsely placed candles inside glass lanterns, and by a bit of daylight that crept through cracks in the poor carpentry along the outer walls. The smell of stale bitter hung in the air, and that of boiled roots and a meat odor unfamiliar to Wendra. The tables sat empty save for two nearest the back where a set of wine barrels had been fastened to the wall. Drips fell at long intervals from spigots into cups placed on the floor to catch them. A man in a long leather apron sat beside the barrels with a short-brimmed hat drawn low on his brow. His chair stood tilted back against the wall and his chest rose and fell in the slow, steady rhythm of sleep.
Jastail moved soundlessly across the floor and made as though to take up one of the cups catching the spillage. With immediate swiftness, the chair legs came down and the man’s hand latched onto Jastail’s before he could lift the glass.
“You’re slowing down with age, Himney,” Jastail said.
The other laughed. “Of course I am,” Himney replied. “But the land has yet to produce a thief swift enough to take bitter from me without me knowing and stopping him.”
Jastail put the cup back under the drip, and pulled Himney to his feet. They clasped each other by the wrist and shook in two deliberate up and down motions.
“And I don’t suppose there will ever be a thief who can cut your profits.”
“Not till I go to my earth.” Himney let go of Jastail’s hand and nudged the cup the highwayman had attempted to take so that it could receive the drops in its exact center.
Jastail dug into his cloak and pulled out a coin, walking it along his knuckles with deft skill. The coin danced as though flipped, passing back and forth from one finger to the next. When he had apparently satisfied himself, Jastail tossed the coin up. Before it could finish rising, Himney snatched it out of the air. The little man licked the coin, running his tongue over its surface and along its edge, then rolling his eyes up as he concentrated and wagged his tongue just behind his teeth. Seemingly satisfied, he hid the coin so fast that Wendra wasn’t sure where it went. He then picked up two fresh cups from a shelf between the wine barrels and filled them for Jastail and Wendra.
“Still the best nose in open land,” Jastail said with bemusement.
“Can’t run risks with the dreck that scuttles through these parts, my friend.” He led them to a table away from the few patrons and put their cups on one side, positioning himself on the other with a clear view of his wine barrels. Once seated, he eyed Wendra with a long, hard look, making her feel as though she were a coin held between the little man’s sweaty lips. “You’ve been busy lately, friend. The open country is treating you well.”
Jastail took a long drink from his glass. He wiped his mouth and leveled his gaze at Himney. “Must be my honest face.”
The two chuckled over the jest.
When their chuckles had faded to smiles, Jastail said, “Tell me the most recent news. Things have not been”—he looked at Wendra—“easy. Tell me all you’ve heard, Himney, and leave the garnish for the next man. I’ve no patience for tales, and no money for lies or rumors.”
The other man raised his hands before him and waved them to shush Jastail. “I understand. Earth and dust, but you do go on. Drink your bitter and let me do some talking.” Himney leaned forward in his seat and rested his elbows on the table, one eyebrow cocked upward quizzically in preparation to speak. His tongue lashed out in a quick motion, licking the sweat from his lips. He then drew a breath, paused dramatically, and began in a cautious vo
ice.
“Dust is up, dust is up,” he said. “Men come into Galadell two and three a day, north out of Ringstone, south from Chol’Den’Fas, even from the east they come from as far as the coast of Kuren. But you,” Himney said, pointing at Jastail, “you go to the west. What do you know that the others don’t?” He pondered for a moment, then went on. “Some say that the order is aware. Others are not convinced. But less than a handful know what business they trade in, Jastail. Not like you.”
“Know the seasons, do they? When we come to the lowland?” The highwayman waved a hand in a tight circular motion to indicate Galadell.
“We haven’t seen any sign of a three-ring here. But rumors are loose on the tongues of my clients. Some say the dust belongs to the Quiet.” Himney nodded dismissively. “Nothing new there. But most of the newcomers have no sense of what they do, only itchy palms for coin.”
Wendra noted the way this man Himney looked when he used the word dust. Something about it unnerved her. It sounded somehow like something dark that she wasn’t sure she wanted to learn.
“A different breed entirely,” Jastail mocked, looking directly at Himney’s waist belt, from which hung several leather purses.
“Men and women such as these, taking to the highways on the merits of rumor and the lucre of gold shining in their eyes. They’re dangerous. They come in here to drink when the dust has settled, their stomachs tender to the trade.”
“And what of that?” Jastail asked. “How does it go?”
“Little change, my friend, except…” Himney bent forward toward them and talked so low that many of his words were nothing more than the movement of lips. “There is talk that a full collough is down out of the Hand as far south as Reyal’Te.” Himney swallowed. “And rumors that the Velle lead them.” He stopped, thinking about what he had just said.
“There are those who have seen it with their own eyes?” Jastail asked.
“One,” Himney said. “The others relate only what they have heard. But as for myself, I take the talk as truth. The skies are not as friendly as they were ten, nay five years since.”
“Your barrels empty sooner with less copper in your purse,” Jastail said without humor.
“No!” Himney barked, immediately quieting himself. “I mean that the night holds longer upon the land, and the cycles seem confused of their purpose, winter coming early, spring coming late, summer falling upon the earth like the heat of the smithy’s forge. It feels like an ending in every turn.”
“Dreadfully poetic for a bitter salesman in a leaky tavern nestled in the lows of Galadell,” Jastail said, the mockery still dark.
“Fah. You ask for the recent news. This is it. We do our business in the spaces in between, you and I,” Himney said, pointing a finger at Jastail. “But private though it is, most of us never go into the north, nor near the west. Never near the Hand. But now the Hand reaches south and east, escaping the detection of nations and kings as if it had some direct purpose. It’s all changing, Jastail, a shift in the way of things, and I don’t mean just for the cities and regents and nobles, who, you might like to know, have called for a running of the Lesher Roon.”
A grim look tugged at the lines in Jastail’s weathered face. Wendra could not place the look. Her captor’s usual cynicism remained, but now it appeared broken, tentative. She thought about the Bar’dyn swimming toward the riverboat and their confrontation near the banks of the Lesule River. Perhaps Jastail understood more of the truth in the rumors than he let on. And he already thought that Wendra was keeping something back from him. Sooner or later he would force the issue: why Bar’dyn seemed to chase a girl with nothing of apparent value; why such a girl fled unprotected, and sought to rescue a boy.
Jastail turned his narrow eyes toward her, scrutinizing every pore of her face. Still looking at her, he asked, “Has the dust gone up today?”
“Not yet,” Himney said. “You’ll know when. The tables fill with men who take a cup before heading to the boards.”
Wendra looked at Jastail and the serious tavern keeper, and finally had to ask. “What is the dust?”
Himney’s gaze shot to her, and he retracted his head the way a turtle does when it feels threatened. Jastail’s brows lowered, a simmering look roiling in his stare. Wendra met the look squarely. He may not honor it, but he owed her the debt of his life. No longer would she remain silent. Whatever his intentions concerning her, he had proven at the gambler’s table how he viewed her. He continued to speak of Penit, drawing her farther along, tempering her instinct to flee. Abandoning that tactic would not serve him, whether Penit was alive or dead, so Wendra would not stay still anymore. Nor could she. Some new feeling inside her grew stronger each hour, insisting on release.
“Shut her up,” Himney said emphatically. “She has no business uttering such foolishness.”
“Calm yourself, Himney,” Jastail replied, darting a threatening glance at the shopkeep. He returned his attention to Wendra. “Lady, this, too, is something that you’ll understand when you meet the boy. I must ask you—”
“Ask me nothing!” Wendra cried, rising from her chair. “You will not treat me this way any longer! I played your game, highwayman, from the north face to the river, accompanying you so that I might help Penit. I sat in ridicule and blasphemy as a token for your gambling.” She glowered with menace. “And I saved you from the Bar’dyn because I believed you knew where Penit was. Now take me to him! If he is in this place, then now! If not here, then let us go. But you haven’t any idea what game of chance you play by holding me and putting my life at risk!”
Jastail regarded her passively. His perpetual look of apathy, so deeply rooted in him, did not change. But something else surfaced in his aspect, though Wendra could put no name to it. And as she noted it, something began to surface inside her. It began with her fury, but took a new form as she began to hear it in song inside her mind. Merely thinking of it made her skin tingle in expectation; it emboldened her. She stepped closer to Jastail in clear defiance.
The gambler stared back, unconcerned. “You may be right, lady,” he began. “But haven’t you learned that chance is all that matters to me? If what you say is more than a desperate threat, then I will have less inclination to be civil than before. And in either case”—he sat forward in his chair, so that his face was directly beneath Wendra’s—“you could be dead long before any risk presents itself.” He smiled calmly. The look of it was the most natural thing Wendra had ever seen on his rough face. “Hold your tongue and you’ll have your answers soon enough.”
Wendra’s song stirred inside her, and she shuddered under its intensity. She grasped the table’s edge to stop herself from collapsing and eased herself back into her chair. “Do you have a wet cloth?” she asked Himney.
Himney looked to Jastail, who nodded. The barkeep stood and scurried to the back of the room, where he found a table rag and dipped it in a bucket that sat against the far wall. Wringing the cloth out as he came, he extended it toward her. Though it smelled of a thousand wiped spills, Wendra took it graciously and leaned back, placing it over her face. Slowly, she blocked out the continuing conversation, focusing on the thrumming in her head, a pulse that emanated from every part of her and reminded her of the sound she’d heard when a musician’s bow was drawn slowly across the strings of a bass fiddle. The low register sang in her flesh like a mournful requiem.
An hour later the tables filled, just as Himney had predicted. The tavern remained quiet, with low chatter or none at all as people took one cup, drank it quickly, and left the way they had come. When the tables emptied, Jastail stood and shook Wendra from her self-induced trance. She started at the intrusion, but got to her feet with the expectation of finding Penit. Jastail put a coin on the table and gave Himney a watchful stare. Then out he went, not looking to be sure Wendra followed.
Into the street they strode. Men and women were running past them toward a square where all the town seemed to be gathering. Wendra could feel an ex
citement in the air, nothing spoken, but nonetheless singing in her nerves as if everyone in town knew the same secret. The crowd did not jostle for position, but found places from which to see and then waited. She noticed that many of them held in their hands colored sticks, marked with numbers. An ominous feeling crept over her, like the darkest prophecy ever spoken by Ogea from the rooftop of Hambley’s inn.
Jastail led her to a place near a raised wood platform. “The boards,” he said, indicating the single most finely crafted structure in the ramshackle town. Long slats of oak lay fitted neatly together to form the raised platform six feet off the ground. On either side, stairs ascended to the platform, which stretched thirty feet long. A short table and chair stood near the left edge, a locked ledger and quill set upon it.
Moments later the crowd parted and several individuals came in a line toward the platform led by a tall man, thick in the waist and shoulders and well muscled. Wendra could not see who they were, but the procession stopped at the foot of the stair. The tall man bent to do something before escorting a bound woman to the desk. A second man, clasping a key fixed to a chain he wore around his neck, rushed up the stairs to the right and took a seat at the table. Quickly, he put the key to a lock that sealed the book, and opened it. Dipping the quill in a reservoir of ink, he inclined his ear as the big man said something softly to him. Then the big man ushered the bound woman to the center of the platform and turned her toward the crowd.
Looking on, Wendra now knew what “dust is up” meant. The woman’s feet had been powdered with chalk, and with each step dust rose in a faint blue-white cloud.
The big man raised his hand and gestured with several fingers, whereupon Wendra watched as members of the crowd lifted their colored sticks with the painted numbers on them. No one spoke, allowing Wendra to hear the mild breeze occasionally whistle through cracks in the poorly built structures around them. The woman stared at her feet, her bedraggled hair hanging limp from her scalp and obscuring her features. She wore a shapeless smock to her knees, drawn in at her waist with a length of rope. The man pointed to one of the many sticks, then raised his hand again, performing a complicated series of hand gestures. More sticks went up, but not as many as the first time. Again the pattern was repeated, each time fewer sticks rising into the air, until but one stick rose above the crowd. The bullish man pulled the woman to the stairs at the right, where she met the woman who had purchased her.
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