Bristling Wood (52 page)

“Vote? I don’t know this word.”

“Vote—choose a leader. On the election day, they put urns around the fountain, one for each candidate. Every free man and woman puts a pebble in the urn that belongs to their choice. The man who gets the most pebbles is archon for three years.”

Gwin might have said more, but Briddyn turned and snarled at him to hold his tongue and hurry.

“Over there, little one,” Gwin said to Taliaesyn in a soft whisper. “You’ll soon be rid of him.”

The “there” in question turned out to be a narrow, treeless alley that twisted between back garden walls. As they walked along, the walls grew lower until they disappeared altogether, and the houses, smaller and poorer until they degenerated into a maze of huts and kitchen gardens. Here and there Taliaesyn saw and smelled pigsties, each holding one or two small, gray-haired pigs. Once, as they passed a ramshackle hut, a vastly pregnant woman came out to slop her hogs. When her gaze fell on the prisoner, her face softened with pity for him. Every other person they met simply ignored him, the same way that they ignored the half-starved dogs in the gutters or the gaudy birds in the trees.

Finally the alley gave a last twist and debouched into an open square where weeds pushed aside sparse cobbles and chickens scratched, squawking every now and then at the small children who shared the space with them. On the other side was a high wall, striped in blue and red and obviously part of a compound. In the middle was an iron-bound door. Everything made Taliaesyn uneasy: the thick wall, gaudy but practically a fortification; the stout door, as heavily reinforced as a Deverry dun. Briddyn glanced his way and smiled in a peculiarly unpleasant way, then included Gwin in the gesture.

“Here’s where you two say farewell,” he said in Deverrian.

He made a fist and pounded on the door, over and over until they heard a voice scream in Bardekian that its owner was on the way. The door opened a crack, then wider, and a slender, dark boy of about fifteen, wearing a pale blue tunic, made a low bow to Briddyn.

“Baruma, master! How can I serve you?”

“Is your father in? I have someone to sell.”

“The barbarian? Oh, he’ll be very interested.”

They followed the lad down a narrow corridor to a long room with a blue-and-white-tiled floor and dark green walls. At one end was a low dais, strewn with many-colored cushions, where a fat man with pale brown skin and black curly hair sat cross-legged before a low table. When they came in, he looked up from what Taliaesyn took to be a game played on a circular board.

“Baruma!” He heaved, himself to his feet only to make a deep bow. “I am honored, honored.” Yet, as he went on, speaking too fast for Taliaesyn to understand, he seemed far more frightened than overwhelmed at the honor of entertaining Briddyn.

The two men bargained quickly in shrill voices, waving their hands around, making dramatic grimaces, seeming to threaten each other, but always, Taliaesyn noticed, Briddyn won his points. Finally the slave dealer, whose name turned out to be Brindemo, unceremoniously ordered the prisoner to strip, then ran his hands down Taliaesyn’s arms and back, poked his legs like a horse dealer, and even looked into his mouth. By the end of it, Taliaesyn was thinking murder.

“Deverrian, are you?” Brindemo said in a reasonably sound accent. “A dangerous man, then. I speak your ugly tongue. See? One wrong move or word, and I have you whipped.”

Then he turned back to Briddyn, who took the bill of sale out of the pouch at his belt and handed it over. Taliaesyn noticed the dealer’s eyes narrow suspiciously as he looked at it. When they started speaking again, somewhat slower, Taliaesyn could pick out phrases here and there. It seemed that Briddyn was suggesting that the trader sell him to the copper mines in the high mountains of the southwest or perhaps to the archon’s fleet of galleys. His stomach cramped in fear at the thought; he remembered enough to know that slaves sold to those lives died soon—and were glad to. Brindemo gave him one last look, then returned to Briddyn.

“How much opium have you been giving him, honored master?”

“Not much and not for long.” He went on to say something incomprehensible that pleased Brindemo, because the fat trader nodded and smiled.

Coins changed hands, then, close to twenty gold pieces as far as Taliaesyn could see. Brindemo took the bill of sale, tucked it into his own pouch, then escorted Briddyn, Gwin, and the mute to the door while his son held Taliaesyn on a short, tight chain. When the trader came back, he considered his new slave for a long, shrewd moment.

“You cannot run away, Taliaesyn of Pyrdon. If you do, the archon’s men hunt you down—”

“And kill me. I, know that.”

With a little nod, Brindemo unlocked the collar and took it off his neck.

“This will chafe and leave ugly sores. We must have you look pretty.”

“And will that matter in the mines?”

“Oho! You understand some Bardekian, do you? Better and better. The mines? Hah! Baruma leaves on the morrow. He comes through here, oh, once each year, if that. How will he know where I sell you? The mines pay a price fixed by law. Barbarians are much more expensive than that. You behave, show the good manners, and we sell you to honored home. Sit down. I have an armed man just outside, in earshot, by the way.”

“I won’t try to escape. I’m too weary, and I don’t even know where I am.”

Laughing, Brindemo lowered his bulk onto the cushions and motioned for the prisoner to perch on the edge of the dais. He took out the bill of sale and studied it, his lips pursed.

“Your name,” he said at last. “Is it truly Taliaesyn?”

“I suppose so.”

“What? Surely you know your own name.”

“I don’t, at that. I don’t remember one blasted thing about my life until a few weeks ago.”

“What? Were you hit on the head or suchlike?”

“That could be it, couldn’t it? A strong blow to the head makes men lose their memories at times. But I don’t know. No one told me.”

Brindemo tapped a gold-trimmed tooth with one corner of the bill while he looked over his purchase.

“Tell me somewhat. Baruma, did he . . . well, hurt you?”

Taliaesyn winced and looked at the floor.

“I see that he did, then. It will make you easy to manage.” Yet there was a thread of pity under the trader’s cold words. “I do not like to cross Baruma. Do you blame me?”

“Never.”

“But then, I do not like to cross the archon and the holy laws of my city.” He studied the bill of sale again. “If I break the law, it is as painful and perhaps even more expensive than crossing Baruma.”

“That thing is forged, isn’t it?”

“Ah, the opium must be wearing off.” He held the bill up to the light coming in the window. “It is very cleverly done, very, very professional, but then, one expects that from Baruma. May he mistake a candlestick for a cushion and sit upon it! Try to remember who you are. I perhaps can help you. You have kin and clan in Deverry?”

“My father was an important merchant there. That much I remember.”

“Aha! Doubtless, then, he will buy his son back at an honest price if only he can find him. If. Do your best to remember. I cannot keep you too long—what if Baruma comes back and asks for you?”

Taliaesyn shuddered, but this time, he despised himself for doing so.

“I see you understand.” Brindemo gave a shudder of his own. “But I sell you to decent place if all else fails, and then, when the beloved father comes searching, I tell him where. Perhaps he thanks me with hard coin?”

“Of course.” Taliaesyn found it surprisingly easy to lie, considering what was at stake. “He’s always been generous.”

“Good.” He reached up and clapped his hands together. “We give you food, a place to sleep.”

At the signal a black-skinned man came through a door near the dais. Close to seven feet tall, he was also heavily muscled and wearing a short sword in an ostentatiously jeweled scabbard. Even without the sword Taliaesyn wouldn’t have been inclined to argue with someone whose hand was as broad as an ordinary man’s bead.

“Darupo, bring him something to eat. I’ll wager Baruma’s been keeping him half starved.”

The fellow nodded, gave Taliaesyn a sympathetic glance, then disappeared again. While he was gone, Brindemo returned to his game, moving ivory pegs along tracks in the board in response to throws of dice much like the ones in Deverry. In a few minutes Darupo returned with an earthenware bowl of vegetables in a spicy sauce and a basket of very thin bread, almost like rounds of parchment. He showed Taliaesyn how to tear off strips of bread and use it to scoop up the sloppy mixture in the bowl. For all that the stew was difficult to eat, it was delicious, and Taliaesyn dug in in sincere gratitude. It occurred to him that feeding him well was a sound commercial proposition, because buyers would pay more for a healthy slave than a sick one, but he was too hungry to care about the ethics of the thing. At his dicing, Brindemo sighed suddenly and looked up.

“The omens are wrong no matter what I do.” He waved his hands miserably at the board. “I have this dark feeling in my heart, or however you Deverry men say it. I might turn a good profit off you, Taliaesyn of Pyrdon, but I rue the day that the gods brought you to me.”

A thin drizzle sheeted across Aberwyn’s harbor and turned the cobbles as slick as glass. Wrapped in his splendid scarlet cloak, the royal herald scurried across the gangplank to the pier and made the galley rock behind him. The high prow, a rearing wyvern, seemed to be bowing to the assembled crowd. Down at the land end of the pier, Nevyn started forward to greet him, then hesitated, turning to Cullyn, who was there as head of the honor guard.

“Make sure the marines get something hot to drink as soon as they reach the dun, will you?”

“Gladly. Poor bastards, rowing half the way from Cerrmor in this wet.”

Nevyn hurried down to exchange the ritual salutations with the herald, whose self-control was amazing. For all that he was wet, exhausted, and rheumy, his voice boomed out on every syllable, and he bowed with the grace of a dancer.

“I, Orys, come on the king’s business. Who is this who receives me?”

Nevyn hesitated briefly, then decided that he didn’t truly want to explain the jest in his name at a time like this.

“I am called Galrion, councillor to the regent, her grace, Tieryn Lovyan. The king’s justice is ever welcome in Aberwyn.”

“My thanks, good councillor. I see horses have been provided.” He suddenly smiled, the ritual done with. “Shall we get ourselves out of this wretched rain?”

“By all means, Lord Orys.”

In the great hall of the gwerbrets of Aberwyn huge fires roared in both hearths. Standing warrior-straight by the table of honor, Lovyan was waiting for them, with the red, white, and brown plaid of the Clw Coc draped over her chair and the blue, green, and silver plaid of Aberwyn thrown back from her shoulder. When the herald bowed to her, she acknowledged him with a small wave of her hand, but this was no time for a curtsy. She was as much lord here now as ever her son had been.

“Greetings, honored voice of the king. What brings you to me?”

“Grave news, Your Grace.” He reached into his shirt and brought out a silver message tube. “I have with me a proclamation of the most serious import.”

Except for the crackling of the fires the hall went utterly, breathlessly silent. Since the king had kept the contents of that proclamation a secret from everyone at court, not even Nevyn knew what it contained. He glanced around, noting the men of both warbands sitting stock-still at their tables across the hall; the servants practically frozen in their places; Rhys’s wife at the staircase, her face pale; Tevylla and Rhodda, slipping in the back door and hovering there.

“I would be honored, O voice of the king,” Lovyan said, her voice firm and steady, “if you would read it out to this assembly.”

With a flourish Lord Orys slipped the parchment free of the tube, laid the tube on the table, and unrolled the proclamation with a snap.

“Here be it known, in the province of Eldidd as in every province of our kingdom of Deverry, that I, Lallyn the Second, king by right of blood and right of sword, do, with full compliance of the laws and of the priesthood of Holy Bel, take it as my duty to concern myself with the line of succession of the gwerbrets of Aberwyn, being as the gwerbretrhyn is both a well-loved and an important part of our realms. While Rhys Maelwaedd, Gwerbret Aberwyn, still lives, let no man dare convene the Council of Electors to meddle with the lawful passage of the rhan to his possible heirs.”

Nevyn’s heart thudded once.

“Furthermore.” The herald paused to clear his throat. “Let it be known in Eldidd as in all parts of our beloved kingdom that I, Lallyn the Second, acting under the authority granted to me by Great Bel, king of all the gods, do hereby disavow and overrule utterly in all its particulars the pronouncement of the aforesaid Rhys, Gwerbret Aberwyn, of the ban of clan exile upon his brother, Rhodry Maelwaedd of Dun Gwerbyn.”

There was a great deal more, but no one could hear it over the cheering and shouting of the warbands, wave after wave of approval and laughter. When Nevyn looked through the crowd he found Cullyn standing at the rear door with Tevylla. In the uncertain light it was hard to tell, but he thought he saw tears glinting in the captain’s eyes. Through all the cheers Lovyan stood perfectly still, her face expressing nothing but a mild relief, a certain pleasure at the thought that justice had finally been done. Nevyn had never admired her more.

Much later, when the herald was taking his well-earned rest in the best guest chamber, Nevyo had a chance to talk with the tieryn alone, in the reception chamber of her suite. There she could allow herself a crow of triumph, and she even jigged a few steps of a country dance upon the Bardek carpet.

“So Blaen won, may the gods bless himl Truly, Nevyn, I didn’t know what to expect when Orys unrolled that bit of lamb leather.”

“No more did I. So. We have a year and a day to get Rhodry back here to claim his restoration to the clan.”

Her triumph disappeared, and she sank into a chair like an old woman.