Son of Avonar (6 page)

“Jaco, we need to talk. Privately.”

“Not a soul in town to hear, I'd wager. Everyone's gone out to Augusto's. With the eviction tomorrow, everyone thinks either to help him move out or to steal whatever they can get their hands on. After the flogging, Augusto can't move fast enough to keep up with his children, much less his belongings.”

I drew a pair of rickety stools close together where we could see the shop door. Jacopo pulled a wadded leather pouch from the pocket of his worn blue sailor's coat, extracted a pipe, and filled it from a battered tin.

“Yesterday a stranger showed up on the ridge. . . .”

When I was done, the pipe remained unlit. “And he can't speak at all?”

“Not a syllable. But he's not accustomed to it nor to rough living or having to do for himself. I can't seem to convince him to leave. So what am I to do with him?”

“Give him over to Graeme Rowan. That's the only way to stay clear of trouble.”

I shook my head. “Darzid's surely spoken with Rowan. Our upright sheriff would turn Aeren over straightaway. I won't do it.”

“But if he's a thief—”

“We've no evidence this man has broken any law, and whatever his crime, I've doubts he can remember it. He's not even sure of his name.”

“Perhaps he's not the one the captain's hunting. Likely he's just a fellow wrecked himself on the Snags and wandered up the ridge. I've seen many a body with the clothes washed right off them after getting caught up at the Snags, though mostly they were dead.”

“I won't believe that. It's too much of a coincidence.”

“What if I was to trot down to the docks and have a smoke with Graeme, see what he knows?”

“You won't mention Aeren or me?”

“I'll be as clever as a boy when there's work to be done.”

“I'll watch the shop.” I had to offer, though I thoroughly disliked the task.

“Right then. Have a look through my bins and see if there's aught to dress the fellow in. I'll be back in a bit.”

I delved into the three great wooden clothes bins. That the contents of the bins were entirely dead people's clothes didn't bother me. Dead was dead. The former owners weren't going to come back and haunt those who found some use for their breeches. I came up with gray underdrawers, a long tunic of russet, some worn and greasy loose breeches of brown kersey with a drawstring to hold them up, and canvas leggings. Aeren was clearly unused to going barefoot. His feet were soft, battered by the stones and sticks of the forest path, and the lack of calluses told me he was accustomed to boots that fit, not these hobnailed monstrosities the rest of us wore that weighed like oak and were no more yielding. The only thing Jacopo's bins provided were sandals that looked as if they'd been chewed by a goat.

I had watched the shop for Jacopo on other occasions. I wasn't much good at it. Jacopo could talk to a customer for an hour about nothing, and before you knew it, a woman who had come in search of a spoon would leave with two crocks, a bowl, three shirts, and a ladle. I rarely managed to get past “Good day.” Fortunately, only two people came into the shop while Jacopo was out.

Mary Fetterling, a bony woman of indeterminate age, brought in a tidy bundle of clothes: a thin summer cloak, a boy's stiff jacket, some stirrup-footed leggings, and a pair of patched and baggy farmer's trousers. Her graying hair flew about her head in distracted tangles, and her eyes darted from here to there, never fixing on anything. “I've Tim's things. He won't be needin' them no more. And I could use a penny.” Tim was the last of Mary's four sons, one of thousands of Leiran conscripts dead from Evard's determination to conquer the desert kingdom of Iskeran, the only one of the Four Realms not under Leiran rule. Mary's husband had been lost in King Gevron's campaign against Valleor, and her other three boys in Evard's conquest of Kerotea.

I had grown up with soldiers, but they were men hired by my father to defend his house and support his obligations to his king, not conscripts. Conscripts were necessary in a war—I understood that—but at the least they deserved good officers and reasoned strategies. And for a family to lose all of its sons . . .

“Jaco isn't here, but I'm sure he'd give at least two coppers.” The clothes weren't worth so much, but Jacopo had taught me his ways.

The woman dipped her head. “Thank you, ma'am. A fella that was with him come to tell me of him. It's been nigh on two years that it happened, and I didn't hear of it till this week. But I wasn't surprised. A mother knows. Tim was my youngest. He would always come—”

“I'm sorry about your boy.” Useless words. Not worth the effort to voice them. But I didn't want to hear of her sorrows. I swatted at a fly buzzing about my face.

“They say he died brave,” she said. “Blessed Annadis will remember his name.” She clutched her pennies and went on her way. Neither my words nor Jaco's coppers would keep her fed for long. And I'd seen no evidence that having either of the disinterested Holy Twins remember a dead soldier's name benefited his family in the least. Mary would end up harnessing herself to a plow on some noble's leasehold east of Dunfarrie and pull until she dropped dead from it. I hated working the shop.

An hour later, a ragged boy barged through the door carrying a wad of dingy rags, shouts of “Run, Donkey” following him. Underneath a scraggly mop of honey-brown hair and thirteen years' accumulation of dirt were a thin freckled face and ears that seemed too large for his scrawny frame. One of his legs was shorter than the other, and he loped through the village with an off-kilter gait that left one expecting him to crash into the nearest obstacle at any moment. Paulo was his name. Almost everyone in Dunfarrie called him Donkey.

The boy pulled up short when he saw me, and he quickly stuffed his bundle behind his back. “Where's Jaco?”

“Out. Do you have something for him?”

“Nope. Nothin'.” He ducked his head, touched his forehead, and backed toward the door.

“Come, what's in your hand? You know I work the shop when Jacopo's away.”

“Nope. I'll wait.”

“Wait for what?” Jacopo stepped through the doorway, pipe smoke curling about his head.

The boy looked from Jaco to me, hesitating.

“I think Paulo has a treasure for you, Jaco.”

“What've you got, boy? Out with it. I've no time to dally.”

With a sideways glance at me, the boy unfolded the filthy cloth. Between the stained folds lay a silver dagger half again the length of Paulo's hand. The guard was a simple, elegant curve, and both guard and hilt were densely filled with intricate engraving that glittered as it caught the light.

Jacopo voiced our mutual astonishment. “Where in perdition did you come up with such a thing?”

“Found it, Jaco. Honest. Left on the ground. Nobody about.” The boy held it well out of my reach. “Didn't steal it. I promise.”

“Not saying you did.” Jaco stroked the gleaming blade. “Just trying to figure out where such a fine thing might have come from.”

I thought I might understand the boy's anxiety. The villagers were well aware of my origins. “You needn't fret, Paulo. I've not owned anything so fine for a number of years.” Ten, to be precise. “Here, let me see if I can recognize the markings.”

The boy allowed me to move in a little closer, but kept his thin hand firmly on the knife. A beautiful weapon. Wickedly sharp. I examined the engraving, and the day lurched off in a new direction. “Where did you find it, Paulo? Where exactly?”

Jacopo peeked over the boy's head and waggled his eyebrows at me in question.

“On the ridge up to the head of Poacher's Creek.” Paulo glanced suspiciously from Jaco to me. “It's a fine thing. If you can't pay, I might try Sheriff. He needs a good one.” The boy was studiously diffident. “Or someone as comes downriver might want it. No hurry.”

I still had Jacopo's eye and shook my head ever so slightly.

Jacopo turned the dagger over in his hands. “Well, I suppose you could take it to Graeme and he might buy it, but then he might well take it without paying, as maybe it was evidence or something lost as someone will want. All I could give for it would be a silver penny.”

“Three!” Glorious avarice burst through the boy's hang-dog manner.

“Two, and not a copper more.”

Paulo's eyes gleamed. “Done!” In moments the boy was trotting down the road, carrying more money than he could ever have thought to see in his life.

“Now what is it you find so almighty fascinating about this little bit of wickedness, young lady? It's cost me dear.”

I pointed to the engraved device on its hilt. “This is the mark Aeren was trying to draw in the dirt.” His version had been crude, but it was unmistakable: a rectangular shield with two rampant lions supporting a curved arch. Not arrows or crosses, but two starbursts sat atop the arch and a third underneath it. I didn't mention the nagging familiarity that still refused to resolve itself. “The knife might help us trace him, or perhaps there's another clue at the spring.”

“Hmm. Or it might belong to the other odd fellow what's been hanging about. . . .”

“Another one? Tell me!”

Jacopo rolled the dagger in a cleaner rag. “Found Graeme havin' a pint at the Heron. He was low about Barti Gesso's thievin' Mistress Jennai's flour. Barti did it no question, but he's got seven little ones to feed and his hold's got the blight. Mistress Jennai wants half the flesh off Barti's back, and Graeme's got to do it, so—”

“Spare me the sheriff's moral dilemmas, Jaco. With two floggings and an eviction within three days, I don't think I can muster any sympathy for him.”

Sheriffs were constable, judge, and hangman in most Leiran towns and villages. They were charged to enforce the king's law, to support the king's whims, and to prevent interference with the conscript gangs, tax collectors, and quartermasters who ensured the unending supplies of lives, money, food, and horses for the king's wars. But such duties had been acquired only in the past century. The badge sewn on a sheriff's coat was scarlet, fashioned in the shape of a flaming sword, for the office had been created to enforce the extermination laws—to root out sorcerers in every corner of the realm and burn them.

“You're still hard on Graeme, Seri. He's a fair man and does his job well. I've known him since he was a boy.”

“I won't argue it again. So what else did he say?”

“He talked of the king's men come riding through yesterday looking for the missing servant. They told him no more'n they told you. But then he said another fellow come through here a few days ago, an odd one, dressed as a nob from Kerotea, but his look was not such as would fit his clothes. Said the man was telling how his groom run off with a prize horse, and he was offering a reward for either the groom or the beast.”

“Aeren is no—”

“Now just haul in your jib. Graeme believes the man wasn't looking for no horse, neither. The fellow couldn't even describe the horse other than it was big and white. Right odd, Graeme said. For certain, he was no king's man. This Kerotean is staying down to Grenatte, and he wants Graeme to let him know right off if there's any word of the horse or the groom, but not tell anyone else that might be asking. Says the groom is tall, light-haired, about twenty and some years, fair in the face, but with a testy temper. The boy's not quite right in the head, he says. Might be talkin' wild.”

“He's lying. If I'd not seen Aeren's hands or feet, perhaps, or noted his manner. Or if I'd not learned how intelligent he is, I might have believed it. But he's no groom, and he's not incompetent.” No groom practiced the kind of martial exercises Aeren had been doing that morning. The more I thought of the whole matter, the odder it was.

“It's a mystery, for sure. Graeme says he plans to look into it. And after hearing all this and knowing this little trinket is involved”—Jaco tapped the bundle on his hand—“I don't know but what we'd best get you out of it as quick as we may.”

“I'm not getting involved in
anyone's
problems. I'm going to give Aeren the clothes and send him off to Montevial. Could I take the dagger back with me?” Seeing Aeren's reaction to it might be interesting.

“Surely. But I think I'll come along with it and get a look at your new friend myself.”

I hefted the bundle of clothes, Tim Fetterling's gray cloak, and my bag of eggs and butter, while Jacopo found an unused knife sheath, bundled it with the knife, and grabbed his walking stick. We strolled in quiet companionship past the clay statues of the Twins, glaring from their unkempt shrine, across the fields, and up the trail into the woods. The shadows were already lengthening.

 

My breath stopped when I glimpsed the still form sprawled on the grass under the eaves of the forest. Stars of night, was he dead? I sped across the meadow and dropped to my knees beside the body, but I had scarcely noted that Aeren was only sleeping when I found myself face down with my arms pinned painfully behind my back, my nose in the dirt, and not a breath left in my lungs.

“A blight on your thick head,” I said, gasping. “It's only me and a friend.”

At my first word, Aeren released me. By the time I had dragged myself to my knees and reassured myself that neither arms nor neck were broken, he stood ten paces away from me, taut, wary, and watching Jacopo limp across the meadow.

“Demons! The rascal didn't hurt you?” said Jacopo, no longer leaning on the sturdy length of hickory, but gripping one end of it fiercely.