Aisling 2: Dream

by Carole Cummings

  “As you wish,” he told Wil, let go of his arm, and held out his hand. “Give it to me, then.”

  Wil frowned, peering at him curiously for a moment, then slid the strap from his elbow. He checked the safety on the rifle, and with one last glare for the guard, handed it over to Dallin. Dallin gave him a nod and a small waggle of eyebrows, slipped the gun’s strap over his own shoulder and turned back to the guard.

  “There,” he said with a pleasant smile. “No badge, no gun. We’ll be going now. Unless you’d care to go fetch your superior for that little chat?”

  The guard gawped, but Dallin nearly let a malicious little grin curl at his mouth when he heard Wil give a very quiet but very satisfied, “Ha,” behind him. The glare the guard gave them was sincere, but the flourishing gesture as he handed back the badge and papers and finally let them pass was grudging and thwarted. Dallin could feel those dead eyes between his shoulder-blades well after they cleared the gate and entered the city commons. Still seething, Dallin searched for and found a provisional livery with a post to tether the horses, waited impatiently for a call chit then flipped a gilder to the lad who tendered it with the promise of more if their saddlebags and Dallin’s crossbow were unmolested when he came back to claim 86

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  them. Tucking the receipt into his breast pocket, he pulled Wil over and around a leather-worker’s stall.

  “Sorry about the gate,” he told Wil. “Took me a little off-guard. And we need to get something very clear.” He held the rifle up. “You can’t just go about shooting people when they piss you off.”

  Wil dragged his arm from out Dallin’s grip with a bit of a sulk. “I wouldn’t’ve shot him,” he muttered.

  It would be very unwise of Dallin to snort right now.

  “You can’t point it at him, either, or wave it about, or even make threatening gestures, or look at him cross-eyed. I know he’s a great knob, but he’s got a badge and isn’t afraid to use it. You fuck with someone like that and he’ll have you in irons just because he can, and I’ll have a bugger of a time getting you back. Now, I’m hanging on to this—” Dallin held up the gun again; Wil scowled, opened his mouth. “Just until we leave Chester,” Dallin assured him quickly. “You can have it back again once we’re outside the gates, all right? But they’ve apparently got an actual law against weapons on Market Day, which makes sense, when you think about, and if you get nabbed with it, we’ll end up getting more acquainted with the local law than we want to be. And keep the damned knife in your boot. We’re lucky they didn’t actually search you at the gate.” He slipped the rifle’s strap over his shoulder.

  “Now. I smell roasting meat coming from somewhere—

  would a hot lunch lift your spirits any?”

  Wil looked down, scuffed his boot in the dirt and shoved his hands in his pockets. “Some,” he mumbled, the scowl not quite so fierce now. “A hot lunch and a beer would do better.”

  Dallin snorted and rolled his eyes. It really was true—

  feed him and he’d forgive you just about anything. “Come on, then,” was all Dallin said.

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  They were at a gunsmith’s stall, Wil ogling the small array of handguns, running careful fingers over each burled grip, Dallin haggling with the owner over the cost of shells, when Wil quietly and casually sauntered up behind Dallin.

  “Shouldn’t’ve pissed off that guard,” he murmured into Dallin’s ear, flicked a surreptitious look to the stall owner and then leaned around Dallin. Dallin thought at first that Wil was perusing the knives set out on a black velvet cloth on the table to his left, but his eyes darted a quick sweep to all points beneath the brim of his hat before he picked up a knife, held it up like he was showing it to Dallin. “There’s two of them over by the fountain,”

  he said quietly, turned the knife about in his hand and caught the light with it. “Your friend from the gate and three others are standing across the street, pretending to but not actually buying pasties from a very angry-looking cart owner.”

  Shit. Shitshit shit. Seriously. Could Dallin have possibly bungled their supposedly unnoticed entry into Chester more badly? Bloody hell, he was better than this, he knew he was. Where had his instincts gone?

  He nodded at the knife. “You like that one?” he asked Wil, a little more loudly than he needed to, but the gunsmith was eyeing them with a touch of suspicion now.

  Dallin leaned down to Wil, even slipped a serene smile to his face—just a silly smitten man, having a private moment with his companion, perhaps deciding whether or not to treat him to a new blade. “Good eye,” he said calmly. “Well done you.” He turned back to the stall’s owner. “We’ll take that and this.” He pointed to the knife in Wil’s hand, and gathered the ammunition over which he’d been arguing just a moment ago.

  Wil gave the owner a smile that was somehow shy and sly all at once. “Is there perhaps a back way out of here?”

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  He nudged Dallin then flicked his glance down to where Dallin’s purse hung from his belt. “A nice quiet…. oh, alley, maybe, where a man could say proper thanks?”

  The gunsmith pursed his lips, but when Dallin drew four gilders more than necessary from his purse, laid it all out on the bench next the purchases, the man sighed with a grimace. “Through the curtain past the longbows,” he offered grudgingly, though he swept up the coins in his nimble fingers without hesitation.

  “Have you got a sack for all this?” Dallin asked him.

  He waited for the man to turn then leaned down again.

  “You first,” he muttered to Wil. “Calm and slow, like you’ve been doing, then wait for me.”

  Wil didn’t even nod, just patted at the small of Dallin’s back, almost-intimate, like he’d been doing it all his life, then wandered to the rear of the stall, very noticeably eyeing the array of bows. The curtain was drawn, but for a narrow opening to the side; Wil made to walk past it, did a bit of a double-take, like something behind it had caught his eye, then angled himself through.

  Dallin had to stop himself from grinning and applauding the performance.

  “Don’t see too many Linders fraternizing,” the gunsmith observed, lifting an eyebrow as he loaded the sack with the ammunition for which Dallin had just paid far too much. “They’re usually in and out o’ here without much more than a Mother may I to anyone else.” His eyes narrowed—not with suspicion but with interest.

  “You one o’ them Exiles?”

  Someone driven from the village, ostracized and shunned for any number of things, the most common Dallin remembered being too much collusion with outsiders. Service in the military was the only exception.

  The Old Ones didn’t abide the thinning and dilution of their flock.

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  And how was it that he was suddenly remembering these things, when he hadn’t even realized he’d forgotten them?

  “Yes,” Dallin answered simply. It had felt like a stone in his mouth. He’d never really thought to wonder what his reception in Lind might be, or what they might think of a man who’d run away as a boy and returned as an outlander. And somehow, he didn’t like the way his reply had tasted, strangely bitter on his tongue. Still, it was the easiest answer and the fastest way to end the conversation and get out of here. The stares of the men behind him were beginning to tingle at the back of his neck.

  The gunsmith merely shrugged and handed him the sack. “I hope he was worth it,” was all he said.

  Dallin rolled his eyes, withstood the man’s attitude for another moment while he got specifics on the when and where of the livestock auctions, then thanked him politely and sauntered as casually as he could manage toward the back of the stall. With a performance that probably wasn’t half as convincing as Wil’s had been, Dallin slipped through the curtain and out through a small anteroom to the door, ducking down as he made his way through
it.

  The alley was indeed quiet, no traffic but a young woman pushing a barrow full of vegetables over the broken cobbles. Dallin gave her a bit of a nod as she passed, gaze reaching and scanning what appeared to be an otherwise empty stretch of alley. He’d stopped worrying about Wil running away days ago, but damn it, if those men had spooked Wil and he’d taken off—

  “Down this way,” came from behind him, accompanied by a light tug at his elbow. Dallin only twitched a little, turned to find Wil at his side, eyes darting beneath the brim of his hat

  “Where did you come from?” Dallin wanted to know.

  That space had been decidedly unoccupied two seconds 90

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  ago. And where the hell were Dallin’s reflexes? He couldn’t remember the last time someone had successfully got behind him without him knowing it.

  “I can turn myself invisible,” Wil said with a wry wink, smirked a little when Dallin’s mouth twisted. “I was right there.” Wil pointed to a tiny shadowed alcove to the side of the gunsmith’s stall and gave Dallin’s sleeve another tug. “This whole place is crosshatched with alleys and little side streets—we could probably get lost if we’re not careful, but it’ll likely throw those men off for a while.”

  Dallin just shook his head, waved a hand. “You’ve been doing pretty well so far,” he told Wil seriously.

  “Lead on.” Because it was all too clear that Dallin was decidedly not at his best today.

  A surprised little half-smile flitted over Wil’s face, but he just nodded, turned, and led Dallin into a labyrinthine crisscross of overgrown bricked paths and dirt alleyways, intersected now and again by neater cobbles and stone walks. The sun slanted lower over the tops of the buildings they passed, roofed variously with thatch, tin and slate. They were losing time—another two hours ’til the auctions—but losing the guard and his little posse was a bit more important right now.

  They fetched up some time later when the random path they were following dead-ended at the rear of a great stone building, stately and dignified, with portcullises grown over with ivy and the crumpled autumn remnants of wild roses. The characteristics were universal and unmistakable. Dallin grinned.

  “A library,” he told Wil. “Perfect. I’ve been wishing for Manning and his know-it-all lectures, but this will do very well indeed.”

  Wil’s mouth twisted a little. “You want to go in there?”

  He eyed the building, its crouched stone bulk with its thick stained glass windows. “What am I supposed to do in a library?”

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  “Hm, well, yes, but it might turn out to be important.

  Or at least somewhat informative. I hope.” Dallin shrugged. “It shouldn’t take too awfully long, and those men wouldn’t venture in there unless they were serving free beer.”

  “Any way,” Wil sighed, shoving his hands in his pockets.

  Dallin hadn’t noticed until just this second when he’d watched Wil hunch in again that, though the alert wariness had remained all through their diversion through the alleys, the expectant sullenness had disappeared. It was subtle and not a huge difference, but it was a difference, a marked distinction between how Wil behaved around Dallin as opposed to everyone else. And now that Dallin was thinking about it—about all of the different faces Wil had donned just since they’d arrived at Chester’s gates—he realized the resentful look of a man constantly on tenterhooks, just waiting for the next offensive, had only really re-emerged after he’d been disarmed. He’d been cagey but determined when the guard had moved toward him, but drawn in and angrily sharp the moment the rifle left his hands. He’d gone from a man with the confidence of carbine and cartridge at his back to a back-alley grifter like a fish that had grown legs and lungs but still knew how to swim with the sharks. Dallin had more-or-less handed over the reins to him at the gunsmith’s stall, and Wil had taken them up like he’d been born to this particular saddle. For all Dallin had seen in his years as a constable, he’d never know the underside of a city as well as one who’d spent time in it. Wil was much better at being a sneak than Dallin was.

  “What?” Wil wanted to know.

  Dallin realized he’d been staring and not moving. He shook his head and breathed a small laugh. “Sorry,” he said. “It’s just that you’ve impressed me again.”

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  One dark eyebrow rose. “Because I said I’d go to the library with you?”

  “Because you got us out of a touchy situation without a shot being fired or a punch being thrown.”

  Wil scowled. “You’re very easily impressed,” he muttered. “Are we going in or not?”

  Dallin only waved a hand toward the path that led to the front of the building. Wil rolled his eyes and slouched around to the front steps. Smiling slightly, Dallin followed, waiting politely for a clutch of women to pass him before stepping out into the still-busy street as Wil shuffled up the steps ahead of him. They were well away from the main thoroughfare of the market, deeper into the city itself, but plenty of traffic still bustled along the several stray carts that hadn’t been fortunate enough to win a prime location on the square. He was just stepping across the cobbled walk, following after Wil, when an abrupt, inexplicable shudder fizzed up Dallin’s spine, and his eyes shifted a cursory sweep over the sparser crowd—

  Dallin stopped dead with his foot on the bottom step of the library, body gone tense and rigid, his full attention captured by the man across the narrow street.

  Wide and tall, hair the same color as Dallin’s but graying and longer, with beaded braids holding it back at the temples. His dress was similar to those of the general public fanning about him, affording him a wide berth, but plainer, colors bland and tending toward browns and beiges. His face was clean-shaven and deeply tanned.

  Dallin couldn’t really see from here, but his mind’s eye etched a string of scars over the right cheekbone at the same instant he realized the man’s gaze was pinned over Dallin’s shoulder—Wil. Dallin jerked his head, took a step up the stone stairs—meaning to block the man’s line of sight, perhaps, or just get between him and Wil. Wil seemed to feel something, too, his shoulders twitching 93

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  a little and his head jerking to the side before he spun about, frowning. His eye caught Dallin’s, questioning.

  Dallin blinked, shook his head, turned his glance back out into the street…

  No bulky figure stood staring, no blond head towered above the crowd.

  The ghost of the Watcher from his dream, perhaps?—

  dedication and devotion to his Calling reaching even beyond his foreign, anonymous grave? Or merely Dallin’s lack of sleep and recent immersion in the bizarre finally catching up with him?

  “Something wrong?” Wil asked from behind.

  “Maybe,” Dallin murmured, turned. Wil’s expression was clouded, anxious, his good hand gripping the library door’s handle in a white-knuckled fist. His eyes kept snapping from Dallin and then out into the street, searching, and then back again to Dallin, dark and on the verge of fear beneath the wide brim of his hat. Dallin wondered if Wil had seen, too, or if Dallin’s own disquiet was leaking out onto Wil. In fact, Dallin wondered if he’d even seen anything himself, now that the initial rush of apprehension was beginning to subside. It wasn’t like he was exactly the epitome of stealth and expertise today.

  He gave his head a quick shake and pulled a sedate expression to his face. “Thought I saw something,” he told Wil, “but if it was there, it’s gone now.” He jerked his chin. “C’mon, we’re already running later than we wanted.”

  Wil stared up at him for a moment, flicked his eyes back out into the street, then twitched a small nod. He pulled the door open and went inside. Dallin gave the street one last sweep before he followed.

  The scents of a library, like its overall appearance—

  regardless of architecture—were universal
and so therefore soothingly familiar. Dust and parchment were more 94

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  palliative to Dallin’s senses than a stiff drink would’ve been. He stood by the door for a moment, just breathing in the scent of beeswax and ink, letting his eyes adjust to the dim light filtering in through the high windows paned in painted, leaded glass. It wasn’t as big as Putnam’s, nor was it as comfortably shabby: the shelves didn’t overflow with a mishmash of titles of which only Manning knew the order, but were lined neatly, each volume tucked in its own slot; no squat little stove piled with teapots and saucepans heating the Librarian’s lunch ticked in the corner, but a central hearth burned with a sensibly sized fire that put off just enough heat for comfort and chased away the dampness that bred mildew.

  Dallin knew just by the neatness of the setting not to expect someone like Manning to greet them, but Chester’s librarian still startled him somewhat: a spare little woman, gray and just going slightly wizened, who looked like she was perpetually chewing on the sour-bitter rinds of a lemon. She regarded them suspiciously, eyes going narrow as they roved over Dallin’s weapons and their obvious travel-wear, narrowing further when they rested on their heads. Dallin started a little, took off his hat and nudged at Wil to do the same.

  “Good afternoon,” he began politely. “I was wonder—”

  “Ye can’t take books ’less you live in Chester.”

  Amazing, how the woman managed to bark it so quietly.

  Dallin blinked, heard a muffled snort from Wil, and shot him a quick sideways glare. Dallin shook his head.

  “I wasn’t—”

  “If ye want a book, ye’ll have to show papers and leave five billets deposit.”

  Dallin frowned this time, pinched at the bridge of his nose. His first impulse was to puff up and cut the woman down to an even smaller size with verbal chastisement 95

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  and high-handed posturing. His second impulse was to do exactly the opposite of his first impulse. His first impulse, after all, had worked decidedly against them at the gates.