Sword of Hemlock (Lords of Syon Saga Book 1) (21 page)

She saw, to her pride, that the servants had not waited for
her orders.  The maids ran to fetch as much clean linen as they could find
while grooms from the stables swept away the hay and rubbish left over from the
last Marketday and brushed out the stale manure and rotting vegetables.  Sedrik
brought out several more servants, each carrying a mop and a bucket of water,
to swab the floors behind the grooms.  While it might not be quite as clean as
the hospice, it would serve the priests well, if for no other reason but that
it was large and open.  Renda swallowed hard.  If Arnard was right, it still
might not prove large enough.

Before long, they had cleared the better part of the
garrison, enough that the priests and their patients could settle themselves
while the servants finished clearing the rest.  At a word from Arnard, the
priests brought the wagons and gratefully began to unload.

They had brought what they could from the temple—burlap
sacks to use as mattresses, healing unguents, shrouds, bandages, a few personal
effects. The Damping Mantle and the bishop’s miter were locked away in a crate
in one wagon, rescued from the main sanctuary of the temple by Arnard even
while the walls of the building had been crashing down about his head.  He had
not expected to survive, but survive he had, and now he presented the box to
Nara for safekeeping.

Having seen the priests installed in the garrison by midday,
Renda and her father had planned to make their way back to the fields, to
continue the harvest.  But when they reached the gates, they saw outside a
farmer and his family from Sir Ralton’s lands near the temple who had
apparently followed the priests.

A woman no older than Renda sat against the wall outside the
gate holding a bundled baby in her arms and propping up her ill husband. 
Nearby, two somber-eyed children sat stifling their sharp, barking coughs.  The
mother looked up hopefully as they approached, took in their worn tunics and
breeches, and turned away in disappointment, rocking the baby in her arms. 

The gate opened, and the two knights ushered her inside with
her family.  Renda tried not to meet the gaze of the young mother, but she
could not avoid it.  When she watched the woman open the bundle in her arms to
coo and coddle, to Renda’s horror, she saw that the woman carried no more than
the bones of her newborn child in her arms.  The rest of the blanket was full
of ash and dust.

The sheriff led them back toward the new hospice, and he and
Renda carried the woman’s dying husband, trying to ignore his screams of agony
as they moved him as gently as they could.  Beneath the man’s clothes, they
could feel his flesh sloughing away to leave a trail of ash behind them—dust
and ash that his wife and children walked over numbly.  She would be haunted by
their eyes in the night, but for now, she was grateful that this simple act of
necessity left her no room to think or feel. They set the dying man down inside
the garrison on one of the straw-filled burlap sacks that the priests had
brought with them, wondering that he should still be alive at all, and Arnard
knelt beside him at once.

Another priest ruffled the two boys’ hair and settled them
together on a pair of sacks far from their father and the rest of the more
advanced victims in the hope that by keeping them away from the disease in its
worst stages they might survive it.  But the hope was vain; no one had yet
survived the plague, not once they caught the telltale cough.

“Please,” spoke the man’s wife, turning her head away from
them to clear her throat.  “I cannot bear it, the smell.”  She broke down in
tears.  “Please, make it go away!”

Arnard quickly put the man to sleep and put his arm around
the wife’s shoulders, leading her away to her own mat.  He took the bundle from
her as they walked and opened it carefully.  Only Renda saw the slight widening
of his eyes, but he only smiled at the mother and carried her baby away.  Renda
watched the woman settle herself on one of the burlap sacks, and the knight found
herself overwhelmed by the fear and grief that must have driven the woman mad.

“Renda,” called her father quietly.  She turned and followed
him most gratefully into the light and fresh air of the courtyard, basking a
moment in the warm afternoon sun before they went once more toward the gate. 
As they walked, the sheriff brushed the strange ash of the dying man’s flesh
from his arms with the sort of insouciance she might have expected him to show
toward the blood of an enemy.  Then, with a chill of horror, she felt herself
doing the same.

“It’s but the beginning,” sighed the sheriff.

Outside Farras

S
he
applied countless eyelash-like hairs across her chin, some in patches and some
one by one over the tacky maquille, conscious that Chul was sitting on his
haunches in the brush watching her with utter fascination.  Now and then, she’d
see him look out over the road and toward the tavern which was to be the site
of his lesson today, making sure no one saw them, but mostly, he was watching
her.

“Just a bit more, lad.”  She lifted her brow and placed a
few hairs under it to thicken it.

“I don’t understand,” Chul said at last.  “You disguise
yourself, but you already look like all of them.”  He touched one of his braids
and looked down at his leathers.  “I am Dhanani.  Unless I disguise myself as
well, I will surely be seen.”

Gikka paused.  “No, lad.  The point of disguise is not to go
unseen.  The point is not to be recognized, first, or remembered, second. 
Expect not to be seen at all, count on it, and you’re fleeked sure.”

“Fleeked?”

She smiled, sticking a few hairs to her upper lip.  “Caught
by the guardsmen. Fleeks, we called them in Brannford.”

“Fleeks,” he repeated the strange word, rolling it off his
tongue. “I don’t want to be fleeked.”

She laughed.  “Aye. that you don’t.”

Chul cast a nervous glance toward the tavern.  “But I stand
out.  I will be remembered.  I look Dhanani, I sound Dhanani…”

“You do.”  She applied a few tiny hairs between her brows. 
“There’ll be no hiding it, lad, not for all the maquille in Syon, and it’s
foolery to try.  Besides, even the best maquille only stays good an hour or two
ere it comes running down your face, especially in any heat at all.  Is why I’m
at it here in the brush and mire and not at my mirrors at Graymonde.  You,
you’re best hiding in plain sight.  But,” she added, dusting her face with fine
sand, “this means you can’t ever give cause for your mark to look for a
Dhanani.  Not ever.”

She stopped and looked at him, this boy who trusted her to
keep him safe, and her smile faded.  Once again, the precariousness of his
situation struck her, this Dhanani boy with the Touch.  She worried for him and
hoped she could teach him well enough to survive.  Part of her wondered if this
was what mothers felt sending their children off to war.  “Understand this,
lad.  You’re caught once, you’re done.”

“Fleeked,” he grinned. 

“Aye,” she chuckled, letting her sudden fears be cheered
away, “fleeked.”  She wrapped herself in a plain woolen cloak, looked to see
that no one was about, and stepped onto the road as if she’d been there all
along.  Her step, her manner, everything about her was now of a man rather than
a woman.

He fell in beside her.  “What is my lesson today?”

She grinned as she reached for the tavern door and deepened
her voice.  “Watch.  Listen.  Learn everything you can.”

Chul chose a table near the door, and he and Gikka sat.  She
saw, to her satisfaction, that before he even settled into his chair, he’d
already taken in the whole tavern and everything important within.

“Ah, go on.”  A large man standing at the bar glanced up at
them for a moment and went back to picking the soot out from under his
fingernails with his teeth. “The Brannagh child, gone to undead, you say?” He
squinted at his comrade and grinned a toothless grin.  “What, next you’ll
accuse the sheriff himself of black magics?”

“Aye,” snorted the other over his pint, “or the very duke,
what.”

Chul looked up at Gikka in alarm, but she only tapped one
long nail against the table’s edge.  Patience.  This was why they had come to
this place, and she saw the understanding dawn in his eyes.  Yes, they were
here to spy.

The two men laughed, and the barmaid slammed two empty mugs
down on the counter.  “An’ I suppose you’ll be saying I make up the plague, as
well?” she snapped.

At once, their laughter stopped.  The smith’s hand moved
reflexively to the small soot-blackened sachet of herbs he wore at his throat,
and his fingers played over it anxiously for a moment.  “No, the plague’s real
enough.  Chatka says it is.”  He reached for his mug as if his throat had
suddenly gone dry.

The smith’s friend nodded piously.  “Them as turn from the
gods, they’s the ones what come down of it, and no others, says Chatka.”  He
frowned sideways at the smith’s sachet.  “Ain’t no protection from it with
blasphemous trinkets and wards, save you pray, what.”

“Got this from Chatka’s own hand, I did,” the other man
growled at him, clutching the tiny bag of herbs.  “Do as you like and I’ll do
the same.”

His friend shook his head sadly and murmured what sounded to
Gikka like a prayer.

After a moment’s contemplation, the smith turned a glance
toward his friend, and his expression was sober.  “Them as angers the gods,
aye, all save Brannagh and Damerien…freemen, knights, farmers, just like the
temple priests, all will fall, but not these, Chatka says.  Not these.”

Gikka muttered under her breath.  So now the Verdura witch
had gone on to talk to them of plague, had she, and to blame it on her
betters?  And the idlers, given leave to let their crops waste, had no better
use for their minds than to be led a merry chase by her fancies.

“And don’t be telling me it’s on account of their virtues,
neither.  That sheriff’s as human as any man,” the smith grumbled unhappily and
hunched himself over the bar, “as prone to sin as any.”

“That’s truth, aye,” his companion laughed darkly, “lusts
and wants and greeds, him.  Him and his damnable knights.”

Gikka bit back her anger.  How could these ungrateful
wretches speak of Lord Daerwin and the knights this way?  Had they forgotten
the war so quickly?

The smith raised a hand in agreement and swallowed a
mouthful of ale.  “Now, that’s just my point, y’see.  I’ll show you greeds, I
will.  With us, now, seems we’s no better off than we was in the war, none the
richer, none the safer, aye?”

His companion nodded wisely.  “Sure no better took care of.”

“And our lords of Brannagh, still pulling their shares like
they’d feed armies, what, saying it goes to pay their lord and on up to
Damerien.  But come the plague on us, and they’ll be shutting their doors,
barring their gates.  Just as Chatka said.”

“Chatka,” the second man intoned piously.  “Praise the gods
for her sight.”

“Aye, may the gods bring down them as brung this plague
among us,” uttered the smith before he raised his mug to his lips.

“Gikka,” Chul whispered, “are they talking about
overthrowing the duke and the sheriff?”

She nodded.  “An they talk and splutter over pints, they but
shadow fight, and then home they go to feel they’ve spoke their piece and done
enough, is why there’s no point to silence them.  Best let them talk, so you
know their minds.  No, what worries me more is Chatka and how they bow and
scrape to her more and more.”

The old man sitting at a table not far from the smith
shrugged.  “Seems the goddess is already vexed at them of Brannagh, you ask
me.”

The maid drew two fingers across her chin in a gesture of
warding.  “It is evil afoot at Brannagh, I tell you, evil, that them of the
house speaks to undead!”  Her voice rose until it charged the place with an air
of fear.  “But more evil still, that even in the midst of such sin, the plague
lets them lie!”

Chul frowned.  “Can she say things like that?”

Gikka’s eyes narrowed, and conflict battled in her. 
Confronting the barmaid would be a risk, but her loyalty to Brannagh would not
let her leave such accusations unanswered.

“Be ready,” she said.

“Shut your mouth, woman,” the tavernman muttered, nodding
toward the table where Gikka and Chul sat and toward the door where another man
had just entered the inn.  “You’re hired to tend tables, not chat up the
custom!”  At his words, the young woman cast him a look of scorn, and he shook
his finger at her.  “See you to your work, or I can find another quick as I
found you.”

She sneered at the tavernman and started toward their table.

“Mind yourself,” Gikka whispered to Chul.  “We are not among
friends.”

“Dhanani,” the barmaid smiled, her eyes flashing.  She cast
a quick look at the cloaked one with him and turned her attention back to
Chul.  “Ooh, I do like a Dhanani,” she smiled.  “Ale, is it, then?”

Chul nodded.  “Two.”  He tossed some coins on the table.

She glanced at the bar.  The barkeep’s back was turned.  She
leaned over and mentally counted up the coins he had thrown on the table.  “For
a few pence, I’ve a story to chill your very spine and of Castle Brannagh, at
that, though I should reap a round price of it for my trouble, say,” she picked
up a coin and tossed it in the air, “this little coin?”

Chul cast the maid a dark look.  She’d picked up a shilling,

“A shilling?”  The old man sitting at the next table laughed
openly.  “Boy, a shilling’d buy more than talk, and with one more fair, my word
on that.”

But before the maid could bark out her caustic answer, Gikka
reached up and gripped her arm.  “What price,” she said in a low, masculine
voice, “to silence your gabbling?”

The maid tried to pull away, but Gikka’s grip got tighter. 
“I beg your...”  She blinked at those eyes a moment, thinking she saw something
familiar beyond that olive skin, beyond the patchy beard and the thick brow,
something very familiar.  Her eyes widened suddenly in fear and recognition.

“Aye, Trina, well you know me,” whispered Gikka in her own
voice.  “What treason is this, to spread tales against your lord’s house
thus?”  She tightened her hand on the woman’s arm.  “Stop your mouth now, or
I’ll cut your tongue from your head.”  She nodded toward the tavernman.  “Yon
barkeep’d pay me for the service, I wager.”

“An I but speak your name,” the maid sneered under her
breath, “they will tear you apart like wolves.  Loyal to Chatka, them.”

“Truly?”  She nudged the point of her stiletto against the
girl’s side.  “Maybe I’m best served to kill you out of hand, then.”

The girl gasped with pain and fear, and the assassin jerked
her arm again.  “Learn this deep in your bones: give no more lies and slanders
against your lord’s house, or you will answer.”

“Aye, I swear it!”  She tried to pull away.

“Hold ye still and listen once more!  Give no word of me,
not now, not ever, or your very life is forfeit.  One inch at a time, aye?”

“Aye,” she breathed when Gikka released her elbow.  “Aye.”

Then she backed away rubbing the marks from her arm and
nearly knocked over a chair.  She brought two pints of ale to their table
without a word.  Then, catching Gikka’s eye once more, she returned to the bar
and refused to offer one more word of her tale to anyone.

Gikka looked over the rest of the bar patrons, the two at
the bar, the old man, two younger men who had come from the kitchens, another
who was just coming in the door behind them.  She was certain they’d seen no
more than the girl bending down to talk to two customers, but in the meantime,
they’d fallen to silence in their cups.  She’d get no more from any of them
today.  Still, it was a good first outing for the boy.

“Are you the one they call Beridien?”

Beridien.  Now that was a name she’d not heard in ages. 
Gikka glanced toward Chul, who had the good sense to watch and not speak.

“Mayhap,” she growled deeply, letting the sound roll from
her throat.  She took another slow sip of the ale before she set down the mug. 
Then she turned her gaze up toward the man who addressed her.

The messenger’s manner was neither furtive nor anxious, yet
even so, she had a sense of duty and business from him.  He did not seek a
drinking companion.  He was small and slender and very pale, at least part
Hadrian, and surely too thin for the rich voice he bore.

A Hadrian.  And he was standing right next to Chul.

Whether by design or because of sheer luck, the messenger
had kept his hood up close about his face, thank the gods, or he would already
be dead at Chul’s hands.  Bloody Hadrians, always turning up in the wrong
places.  Whether it was bravery or ignorance or profound trust in Limigar’s
distraction that had him standing a pace away from being torn to pieces by a
Dhanani, she did not care.

She looked at Chul, who was peering at the man, trying to
see his face, and calmly gestured for him to give them privacy.  The boy got up
without a word and moved to the bar.

“Mayhap I know where he might be found,” she replied to the
messenger.  “What seek you with Beridien?  You’re no bounty hunter, sure.”

“Bounty hunter, not I,” he laughed quietly, as if the idea
were absurd.  “I bear a message,” spoke the man quietly.  “From one in the
Hodrachaig
.”

The Hodrache Range.  Dith.  Her heart jumped, but she drew
two long breaths before responding to him.  Beridien was nothing if not
patient, calculating.  “I am the one you seek,” she said finally. She motioned
for him to take Chul’s seat.  “What news?”

“Two sealed scrolls,” he said, taking the two bone cases
from his cloak and sliding them into her hand under the table.  “He would have
you open this one first.”

Gikka took them both and brought them into her sight below
the edge of the table, but she did not open them.  “I may give reply.  Return
you that way?”

The man seemed amused at the notion.  “Tell me, Beridien,
would you return to, say, Durlindale?”

The corner of her mouth twitched upward.  Not as Beridien, I
wouldn’t, not and keep my head.  She pressed a golpind into his hand.  “My
thanks for your trouble.”

The man rose and gave a quick bow before he left the
tavern.  Gikka watched Chul’s gaze follow him, trying to peek up under the hood
as he passed, but no, the boy saw nothing.  She gestured to him, and he
rejoined her at the table, shivering.