Mystic and Rider

by Sharon Shinn

  Tayse was getting impatient. Dark was almost upon them, and he wanted to get inside the city while it was still light enough to look around. “Are we ready? Good. See you both in a couple of days.”

  They separated, the two mystic men heading off the road, the other four riding forward toward the city. In a few minutes, they had reached the gate and were passed through with only a cursory inspection.

  Tayse looked about him with interest as they entered the city. He had been here before, more than once, when escorting King Baryn to some function or another. He remembered it as a prosperous, well-kept place, and it still was—perhaps even more so. There appeared to be many new buildings crowding next to old ones at several intersections, and the streets were thronged with people. The traffic was heavy, even at this time of day, and the profusion of carts and carriages made it difficult for the horses to travel down the streets. All sorts of people could be seen, all at once: rich matrons in their textured silk, Nocklyn soldiers in their formal uniforms, farmers with their wagons, beggars with their bound eyes and truncated limbs, schoolgirls, errand boys, dreamy lovers, angry friends. The city embraced a profusion of humanity and swirled them all together.

  “Do you know where this hotel is?” Senneth called to Kirra over the constant rattling and shouting in the streets.

  Kirra nodded.

  “Then you take the lead.”

  It was nearly an hour later, and close to full dark, by the time they had navigated the streets to Kirra’s destination. It had been clear for several blocks now that they were in the most elegant part of town, with broad avenues lined with spacious houses and discreet shops. The hotel Kirra had selected was charming, offering a wide stone sweep of a driveway for carriages to pull through and an ornate fountain before the triple doors. The weather was too cold to allow for running water, of course, so instead the bowl of the fountain was filled with ice sculptures, all of them starting to look a little mushy at the end of a sunny day. Tayse wondered if the hotel proprietors commissioned and installed new ones every morning. He could hardly imagine anything more ridiculous.

  He had been paying too much attention to their progress through the streets to give much notice to his companions, but he was not surprised to find both Kirra and Senneth transformed by the time they pulled up in front of the Nockworth. Kirra wore a fine red riding cloak and had her hair held back with ruby clasps. Senneth looked dull but respectable in her ordinary riding clothes and her assumed submissive demeanor. Tayse found himself wondering by what unnoticeable increments they had managed to change their clothes and their features as they made their slow parade through the city.

  “Two rooms. One for myself and my companion, one for my guards,” Kirra greeted the man who had come rushing through the doors to welcome her. It was always something of a shock to hear the unpretentious Kirra assume the tone and manner of a titled lady. “And dinner sent to us. Immediately. We have had a very long, very trying day.”

  “Yes, of course, my lady,” the footman said, first bowing and then reaching up to help Kirra from her saddle. An ostler had appeared from somewhere behind the hotel to take the reins of her horse. “Do you have—is there a packhorse behind you with more of your luggage?”

  Senneth slid from her saddle under her own power, keeping her face so set it was almost mournful. Kirra was already stalking toward the door. “No,” Kirra said over her shoulder. “The absence of luggage is part of what has made this a very unfortunate day.”

  Tayse swung down from his own horse and handed the reins to the groom. He couldn’t keep himself from glancing over at Justin for a second and sharing a grin. The servants were already pitying them for having to ride with such a shrew. If they came down later and wanted to buy a pint of ale, they’d probably get an extra portion just out of sympathy. At times like these, Tayse thought that even Justin could appreciate Kirra.

  They were led across expensive rugs and through high corridors to a set of rooms on the second floor. Kirra inspected hers for a moment as if she was not sure it would be good enough, and then she sighed and said, “Fine. Send wine with our meal.” And she shut the door in the footman’s face.

  Grinning, Tayse let himself and Justin into their own quarters, adjacent but not nearly so spacious. “Fine as well,” he said. “I find I am not nearly as picky as our mistress.”

  Justin laughed and threw his saddlebags to one of the narrow beds. “Day like this, a man can be glad he’s not a mystic,” he observed. “We get to sleep inside on clean linen while Cam and Donnal huddle under the stars. No magical fire to keep them warm all night, no aristocrat ordering them meals.”

  “And we don’t have to worry about being eaten in our sleep,” Tayse said. “But even without those incentives, most days I’m glad I’m not a mystic.”

  And to Tayse’s surprise, Justin merely looked thoughtful, and nodded, and did not add another word.

  SHE had sent a note to the manor house of Nocklyn Towers, Kirra informed them over the dinner they shared, and now there was nothing to do but wait. “I wouldn’t think we’d hear back before morning,” she added.

  “What do you want to do tonight?” Tayse asked.

  Senneth looked at him. “Sleep.”

  He grinned and gestured. “Whole town out there. Some entertainment you haven’t been offered while on the road. You might enjoy an evening in civilization.”

  “You go,” Senneth said. “You and Justin. Carouse. I’m sure the king won’t mind. Kirra and I will be just fine here at the hotel, helpless females prey to all sorts of unsavory types who might have designs on our purses—or our virtue.”

  Kirra was choking on her giggles, and even Justin was grinning. Tayse managed to keep a serious expression on his face as he examined her. “When was the last time you were ever actually helpless?” he inquired. “Or afraid?”

  She seemed to debate. “I can’t remember.”

  “Then, if you don’t mind, we’ll go out. To test the mood of the town, if nothing else.”

  She nodded. “Actually, I was hoping you would. You’ll get inside some places that might not let us in.”

  “Tayse and I don’t go to places like that,” Justin said in a virtuous tone of voice.

  Kirra turned her bright blue eyes on him. “Well, this just might be your chance.”

  So they left the hotel as soon as they’d eaten and had an opportunity to change clothes. Even though he knew that the women were safe—in such a place, and with their own powers of protection—it bothered Tayse just a little to leave them behind. His directive was to protect them, and he had scarcely been more than fifty yards from either of them since they started out on this journey. It was not through his neglect that they would come to harm.

  Still, it was hard to worry for long with all the distractions around them. Justin’s mood was good, and the city was pulsing with excitement. Certain sections of Nocklyn Towers came alive at night, even on a night as cold as this one. They strolled through expensive districts where rich young men spilled out of fancy clubs and held dainty duels in the street. They went farther afield, to the rougher parts of town, where the liquor was higher proof and the fights in the alley were for blood. They were neutrally dressed; they could not enter the exclusive clubs, of course, but they could walk into any of the fancy pubs as well as the workingmen’s establishments, and not raise eyebrows.

  Accordingly, they stopped first at a tavern that seemed to cater to merchants and businessmen, some there with their wives or other companions—a respectable place with a long list of beers to choose from. They didn’t make any attempt to mingle, and didn’t speak much to each other either as they sat there, nursing their glasses and listening to the conversation around them.

  Talk of money. Talk of trade. Grumbling about new taxes and a son or two who’d signed up with the expanded civil guard.

  “Well, so, my boy goes off to join the soldiers, and my girl goes off to join the Daughters,” one man said with a careless laugh. “If I can get
my wife to run off with the theater troupe, I’ll have the whole house to myself! But she says she doesn’t like to travel and that I’m stuck with her.”

  Other voices chimed in with their own stories. What Tayse noticed was that none of them sounded too disgruntled. These men might be irate at a new tax, but they were able to afford it, and they didn’t disagree with how it was being spent. And they seemed proud rather than alarmed that their sons and daughters were finding places in the barracks yard and the convent. He finished his beer and nodded at Justin, and they went back out into the night.

  The story was much the same at the other taverns they tried, though the tale was told in a rowdier fashion the farther down they went on the scale of civility. More sons had gone to be soldiers than daughters had gone to be novices, from what Tayse could tell, but everywhere were the accouterments of both professions: swords and moonstones. In one rather disreputable pub situated next to a brothel, there was a large contingent of fighting men gathered at most of the tables. Tayse and Justin, who normally would have felt at home in such a crowd, found seats for themselves near the bar, away from the action, and surreptitiously watched the gaming and quarreling going on among the other patrons. Soon it was clear that there were two main factions, and they were competing over a variety of skills: the ability to drink, the ability to throw a dagger with accuracy over a short distance, the ability to turn up an advantageous card. More than one crash of glass and shouted oath attested to the fact that the drinking did not do much to aid in the accuracy of throwing a knife.

  “Sweet and silver hell,” the barkeeper swore once when he happened to be standing in front of the Riders as yet another glass went smashing to the floor. “It’ll take me all day tomorrow to clean this place up.”

  Tayse nodded for another beer and reflected that it had better be his last one. “Who are they?” he asked. “Can’t you throw them out?”

  The barkeeper gave a short laugh. “Well, half of them are Nocklyn men, so, no, I can’t. And the other half are convent guards, and around here it’s considered bad luck to treat them with discourtesy.”

  Tayse lifted his eyebrows and sipped from the glass. He could taste the smoothness of the southern grains; nothing like Nocklyn beer. “Bad luck because you offend the Pale Mother or bad luck because you offend the guards?” he asked softly.

  A twist of the mouth and the barkeeper looked down at the counter, swiping it with a dirty towel. He wore a small moonstone ring on his thumb. “Both,” he said, “though I think the Pale Mother is not as easily offended as her servants.”

  “There seem to be a lot of them,” Justin said.

  “Oh yes. And on best of terms with the Nocklyn guard. Some folks here don’t like it—too many soldiers make people uneasy—but I like them well enough before they start drinking.” He shrugged. “A city needs a strong guard, and friends who have their own strong guards. No harm in that. Makes people respect you if you can put some force behind your words.”

  Tayse nodded. “I believe that myself, friend.”

  “Soldiers yourselves. I can tell that by how your carry yourselves,” the barkeeper said. “That last drink’s on me.”

  “Appreciate it,” Justin said and toasted their host with his glass before draining it.

  Tayse did the same and slipped to his feet. “Thanks for the ale. I’ve never tasted better than Nocklyn’s.”

  The man behind the counter grinned. “No, and you never will, not if you travel from here to Ghosenhall or even farther.”

  Tayse laughed. “And some days, you know, I think I might.”

  They were back on the street in a few moments, hunching their shoulders against the chill of a bitter wind. They were far enough from the hotel that they would be good and cold by the time they made it back.

  “Nocklyn guards on the best of terms with convent soldiers,” Justin said once they were a few yards away. “Senneth won’t like that.”

  “No,” Tayse agreed. He was thinking that Justin should have said, The king won’t like that—but he was thinking that he, too, would have phrased it exactly as Justin had if he’d been the one to speak first.

  CHAPTER 22

  THE next day opened with a headache from all the beer consumed the night before. “Acquired in the interests of obtaining information for you,” Tayse mumbled when Senneth laughed at them in the morning. “I don’t normally drink much at all, so I wasn’t prepared for the backlash.”

  Kirra was more sympathetic. “Here,” she said, and came to stand beside him where he sat slumped on her very expensive sofa. He was not sure what would happen when she laid her delicate hands on either side of his face. For a moment he was conscious of nothing except the thought that aristocrats had the smoothest skin imaginable; no working woman had palms like that. And then he was aware of a strange, delicious sensation. His headache eased and evaporated; his knotted stomach relaxed. The low sense of malaise that had greeted him when he awoke transformed into a warm sense of well-being.

  He looked up at her in astonishment. “How did you do that?”

  She laughed and lifted her hands. “It’s magic. I’m a healer.”

  “I think I want to be sick again.”

  “Do that for me,” Justin demanded. “Whatever you did.”

  Looking a little less delighted, because she didn’t like Justin any more than he liked her, Kirra rested her hands on the young Rider’s head. Tayse watched his face as the miracle occurred, and wondered if he had looked quite so foolishly pleased.

  “Now I’m hungry,” Justin said with relish. “Pass me that tray.”

  So they ate, and the Riders told stories of their night before, but the women had no news. Then there was nothing to do for the rest of the day but wait. Justin and Tayse cleaned their weapons and practiced a little swordplay, dancing through the furniture of their bedroom like they might sidestep bodies on a battlefield. The women didn’t want to leave, in case word arrived from Els Nocklyn, so the men went out a couple of times to pick up supplies and see if they could absorb any more information. Then they returned to the room again for more waiting.

  It was almost dinnertime when a messenger knocked on Kirra’s door with news that a visitor was below. Kirra looked bored.

  “Did this—visitor—bother to announce who he was?”

  The footman was bowing. “No, my lady. But it’s—it’s—I recognized the crest on her cloak.”

  “Yes? And?”

  The footman glanced over his shoulder, well aware he should not be gossiping about any member of nobility, particularly not this one. “She’s a serramarra of Nocklyn, my lady,” he whispered. “Come to pay you a visit.”

  “Ah,” said Kirra. “Well, please show her up.”

  The footman disappeared; the four of them disposed themselves around Kirra’s room. “We stay?” Tayse asked.

  “You stay,” Kirra confirmed. “She’ll have her own guards with her. The room will begin to seem quite crowded—except that all of you, of course, will be invisible.”

  He couldn’t help grinning. “Senneth could see to that.”

  “I didn’t mean literally,” Kirra said. “Merely, that Mayva will not realize you exist.”

  Indeed, a few minutes later when the small entourage entered, it was clear that, for the serramarra of Nocklyn, there were only two people in the room: herself and Kirra. This despite the fact that she was accompanied by a maid, a groom, and two guards. The men ranged themselves against the wall; the maid took up a seat close to Senneth, who had done as much as she could to make herself disappear without actually invoking the spell.

  “Mayva,” Kirra cooed, coming forward to kiss the young woman on both cheeks. “I am so glad to see you! I know I arrived completely without notice and I was so sure you wouldn’t have time to see me—how kind of you to come by like this!”

  Mayva Nocklyn was small and sophisticated, with very dark hair pulled back in a severe style. But even that didn’t serve to give much maturity to the round, childi
sh features or counteract the sulky expression that seemed habitual to her face. “Oh, well, I am famished for news of the world, and I was simply delighted when your note came yesterday. But I just couldn’t get away till now, what with one thing or another. You would not believe how much there is to do now that Papa is sick and Lowell and I are responsible for everything.”

  Kirra pulled the young woman down to a seat next to her on the silken sofa. “Yes, I was so sorry to hear about your father! Will he be better soon, do you think?”

  Mayva Nocklyn shrugged. “Well, I wish he would be! But he just lies there, and doesn’t get better and doesn’t get worse, and isn’t interested in anything, and so all the work falls to us. Lowell likes it, I think,” she added, “but I find it very tiresome. Taxes and trade bills and who’s loyal and who isn’t. I mean, it’s so dull.”

  With every word the woman spoke, Tayse was mentally subtracting a few years from the age he had originally put her at. He was guessing she had to be in her late twenties, but she sounded as petulant as someone nearly ten years younger. Kirra showed no surprise, however, and indeed was nodding vigorously.

  “Oh, I know what you mean. Now and then my father will call me and Casserah into a room and tell us something that he swears is very important, so of course we nod and listen, but I almost never understand what he’s talking about,” she said. “I suppose someday we’ll have to pay more attention, so we can take over when—when we must, but for now—” She waved a hand. “I don’t want to bother.”

  “Oh, you won’t have to bother even when you become marlady,” Mayva said carelessly. “Your husband will handle everything.”

  Not Kirra’s husband, Tayse thought, and he saw Senneth’s eyes lift oh so quickly to his. She wasn’t smiling, but she may as well have been.

  “Well, I’m not sure Casserah or I will ever be married,” Kirra said merrily. “Casserah is too stubborn, and I’m too flighty. Or so my father says. So we might have to learn about taxes and crop rotation after all.”