Roberson, Jennifer - Cheysuli 08 (8 page)

           
Kellin grinned at the young thief
through pale dawn. "Rogan. I told you, Urchin."

           
The door was opened and a man came
in. It wasn't Rogan at all, but the Mujhar himself, followed by the giant.

           
Kellin scrambled hastily to his
feet. "Grandsire! You?"

           
The giant was very pale. "My
lord, how could we know? Had we known—"

           
Stung by the outrage, Kellin turned
on the man. "You knew," he declared. "I told you. You just
didn't believe me." He looked at his grandfather. "None of them
believed me."

           
"Nor would I," Brennan
said calmly. He arched a single eloquent brow. "Have you taken to swimming
in the midden?" Yellow eyes brightened faintly, dispelling the barb-
"Or was it an entirely different kind of Midden?"

           
Kellin recalled then the whore's
words, her mention of the Midden. It basted his face with heat. Such shame
before his grandsire! "My lord Mujhar . . ." He let it trail off.
Part of him was overwhelmed to be safe at last, while the other part was
mortified that his grandsire should see him so. "No," he said softly,
squirming inside filthy leathers. "I fell ... I did not mean to get so
dirty."

           
"Nor so smelly." Brennan's
gaze was steady. "Explain yourself, if you please."

           
Kellin looked at the giant.
"Didn't he tell you?"

           
"He told me. So did the other
man. Now it is for you."

           
Kellin was hideously aware of
everyone else in the room, but especially of his grandfather, his tall, strong,
Cheysuli grandfather, whose dignity, purpose, and sense of self was so powerful
as to flatten everyone else, certainly a ten-year-old grandson. The Mujhar
himself, not Rogan, standing in the doorway with the sunrise on his back,
^r-gold gleaming brightly, silver in his hair, stern face even sterner. The
wealth on his arms alone would keep Urchin and others like him alive for years.

           
In a small voice, Kellin suggested,
"It would be better done in private."

           
"No doubt. I want it done
here."

           
Kellin swallowed heavily. He told
his grandsire the whole of it, even to the woman.

           
Brennan did not smile, but his mouth
relaxed.

           
Tension Kellin had been unaware of
until that moment left the Mujhar's body. "And what have you learned from
this?"

           
Kellin looked straight back.
"Not to run in Mujhara."

           
After a moment of startled silence,
the Mujhar laughed aloud, folding bare bronzed arms across his chest with no
pretensions at maintaining a stem facade, even before the others. Kellin gaped
in surprise; what was so amusing, that his grandsire would sacrifice his
dignity before the others without hesitation?

           
"I had expected something else
entirely." Brennan said at last, "but I cannot fault your statement-
There is truth in it." Amusement faded. "But there is also
Rogan."

           
Kellin's belly clenched. He nodded
and stored at his boot toes. "Rogan," he echoed. "I meant not to
make him worry."

           
"Tell him that."

           
"I will."

           
"Now."

           
Kellin looked up from the ground and
saw Rogan in the doorway just behind his grandsire.

           
The man's face was haggard and gray,
his eyes reddened from sleeplessness. Kellin thought then of the aforementioned
repercussions, Rogan's own question regarding what would become of him and the
Mujharan Guard if harm came to Kellin.

           
"I am unharmed," Kellin
said quickly, grasping the repercussions as he never had before. "I am
whole, save for my lip, and that I got myself when I fell down."

           
"And your cut hand; Rogan told
me." Brennan extended his own. "Let me see."

           
Kellin held out his hand and allowed
his grandsire to examine the cuts. "Filthy," the Mujhar commented.
"It will want a good cleaning when we return, but will heal of its
own." His yellow eyes burned fiercely. "You must know not to test
others, Kellin. No matter the provocation. If you had not been so quick—"

           
"But I knew I was," Kellin
insisted; couldn't any of them see? "I watched him. I watched the knife. I
knew what it would do,"

           
Brennan's mouth crimped. "We
will speak of this another time. For now, I charge you to recall that for such
a serious transgression as this one, you endanger others as well as
yourself."

           
Kellin looked again at Rogan. He
tugged ineffectually at his ruined jerkin. "I am sorry."

           
The tutor nodded mutely, seemingly
diminished by the tension of the night. Or was it the Lion, biting now at
Rogan?

           
"Well." The Mujhar cast a
glance around the room. "It is to be expected that you smell like the
Midden, or a midden—though I suppose it is less your own contribution than that
of everyone else."

           
Kellin nodded, scratching at the
fleas that had vacated his pallet to take up residence in his clothing.

           
Brennan considered him. "I
begin to think you are more like my rujholli than I had believed
possible."

           
It astonished Kellin, who had never
thought of such a thing. "I am?"

           
"Aye. Hart and Corin would have
gotten themselves thrown into a room just like this, or worse, for about the
same reason—or perhaps for a crime even worse than thievery—and then waited for
me to fetch them out." He looked his grandson up and down. "Are you
not young to begin?"

           
Ashamed again, Kellin stared hard at
the ground.

           
Softly, he said, "I did not
expect you to come."

           
"Hart and Corin did. And they
were right; I always came." Brennan sighed. "You did expect someone."

           
"What else?" It startled
Kellin. "You would not leave me here!"

           
Brennan eyed him consideringly.
"I did leave you here. I knew where you were last night."

           
"Last night It was
preposterous. "You left me here all night?"

           
Brennan exchanged a glance with
Rogan. "In hopes you might profit from it, albeit there were guardsmen—and
a Cheysuli—just across the street."

           
His eyes narrowed. "You said
you have learned not to run in Mujhara . .. well, I suppose that is
something." His tone was ironic. "Surely more than Hart or Corin
learned."

           
"Grandsire—"

           
"But whether you learned
anything is beside the point. Your granddame made it clear to me that if I did
not fetch you out at once come dawn, she would have my head." He smiled
slightly. "As you see, it is still attached."

           
Kellin nodded, not doubting that it
was; nor his granddame's fiery Erinnish temper.

           
"So Rogan and I are here to
fetch you, very much as you expected, and will now take you back to
Homana-Mujhar, where I shall myself personally supervise the bath just to make
certain the body in it is that of my grandson, and not some filthy street
urchin masquerading as the Prince of Homana."

           
"Urchin!" Kellin cried,
turning. "We have to take him with us!"

           
"Who?"

           
"Urchin. Him." Kellin
pointed to the astonished boy. "I told him you would pay his copper and
bring him with us—well, I said Rogan would—"

           
Kellin cast a glance at his tutor,
"—so you could heal him."

           
"Volunteering my services, are
you, you little wretch?" But Brennan crossed the room and knelt down by
the boy thief. "How are you hurt? Ah, so I see. Here—"

           
"No!" Urchin jerked away
the infected foot.

           
"There is no need to fear
me," Brennan said quietly. "I will look, no more; if you are in need
of healing, it shall be done in Homana-Mujhar."

           
"I can't go there

           
"Why not?" Brennan
examined the infected bite. "Walls and a roof, no more .. . you are as
welcome as Kellin."

           
"I am?"

           
"For now. Come. Trust me."

           
Kellin looked at his grandfather
through Urchin's eyes: tall, dark warrior with silvered hair; yellow eyes clear
and unwavering as a wolf's, with the same promised fierceness; lir-gold banding
bared arms; the soft, black-dyed leathers clothing a powerful body. He was old
in years to Kellin, but age sat lightly on Cheysuli; Brennan was still fit and
graceful, with a cat's eloquent ease of movement.

           
"He won't hurt you,"
Kellin explained matter-of-factly. "He is my grandsire."

           
Brennan smiled. "The highest of
compliments, and surety of my goodwill."

           
Urchin's eyes were wide. "But—I'm
a thief."

           
"Former thief, I should hope.
Come with me to Homana-Mujhar, and you need never steal again."

           
The Mujhar grinned. "Where you
may also shed forty layers of dirt, ten years' worth of fleas, and fill that
hollow belly."

           
"No!" Urchin cried as
Brennan made to pick him up. "You'll catch my fleas!"

           
"Then I shall bathe also."

           
"I am too heavy!"

           
"You are not heavy at
all." Brennan turned toward the door, toward the red-haired giant. "I
will have the fines paid for everyone in this room, and the other; you will see
to it they are released at once. But I sympathize with those who fear for their
purses; if any of these are caught again, keep them here till Summerfair is
ended: in the name of the Mujhar." He smiled briefly at Kellin, slipping
into the Old Tongue. "Tu'halla dei." He cast a glance at gape-mouthed
faces, then settled Urchin more firmly against his chest. "The Guard has
horses waiting. You'll ride behind me."

           
"My lord," Rogan said
quietly, following his lord from the room as Kellin slipped out. "There is
the matter of the fortune-teller."

           
"Ah." Brennan's face
assumed a grim mask. He glanced down at Kellin as he carried Urchin into the
street. "What did he say to you, Kellin?"

           
Kellin shrugged. "I couldn't
understand it all. They were just—words."

           
"Tell me the words
anyway."

           
Kellin squirmed self-consciously; he
did not want to admit to his fear of the Lion. "Cynric."

           
Brennan's mask slipped, baring naked
shock beneath. "Cynric? He said that?"

           
"A name." Kellin frowned.
"And a sword, and a bow, and a—knife?"

           
"Gods," Brennan whispered.
"Not my grandson, too."

           
It terrified Kellin to see his
grandfather so stricken. "Not me?" he asked. "Why do you say
that? Grandsire—what does it mean'?"

           
"It means—" Brennan's
mouth tightened into a thin, flat line. "It means we will go visit your
fortune-teller—who speaks to you of Cynric—before we go home."

           
"Why? What did he mean?"
Desperation crept in; did it have to do with the Lion? "What does 'Cynric'
mean?"

           
" 'Cynric'?" The Mujhar
sighed as he handed Urchin to a guardsman and ordered him put up on his own
mount. "It is a name, Kellin ... an old, familiar name I have not heard in
ten years. Since your jehan first brought you to us—"

           
"Before he left." Kellin
blurted it out all at once; bitterness encased it. "Before he left.”

           
"Aye." Brennan rubbed
absently at the flesh of a face suddenly grown old. "Before he left."
He looked at Rogan. "Can you direct us?"