The Raven Ring (6 page)

“I thank you for your courtesy,” Eleret responded automatically. “May your welcome bring strength to us both.”

“And defeat to our enemies, yours and mine,” the Shee finished. “Though mostly yours, I expect; Cilhar seem to collect them the way Traders collect money. Come in and sit down.”

Eleret hesitated, wishing she had thought to question the young doorkeeper before she had gotten into this. However logical she tried to be, however much she told herself that Gralith wouldn’t have sent her here if it weren’t acceptable, it just didn’t seem right to ask a Shee, one of the race of wizards who had raised up the Mountains of Morravik in order to hold back the Melyranne Sea, to give her directions to a cheap inn.

Climeral saw her glance back the way she had come, and misunderstood. “Don’t mind Prill. We’re very informal among ourselves, and she hasn’t been here long enough to realize that some people find it disconcerting.”

“It’s not that,” Eleret said quickly, and then wondered what she would say if he asked her what the problem was. She didn’t think she could bring herself to explain that she did not know how to treat a being who had stepped straight out of the oldest and most beloved tales she knew.

Fortunately, Climeral didn’t ask. He waited until she had settled herself into the chair, then said, “Gralith told us you were on your way, but the method he used does not allow long messages. You’ve come to collect your mother’s effects?”

“I’m to pick up Ma’s things, yes,” Eleret answered, relieved by the Shee’s businesslike tone. “Where do I go to get them?”

Climeral shuffled through several sheets of paper, then pulled one out and looked at it. “The office of the Imperial Guard. Ask for Commander Weziral. If anyone tries to make difficulties, tell them I sent you.” He looked up with a smile. “And don’t let anyone talk you into signing up.”

“I won’t.” Tentatively, Eleret returned the smile. “How do I get to the office of the Imperial Guard?”

“I’ll give you directions, but it’s too late for you to go today. By the time you got there, everyone would be gone.”

Eleret stared, her awe of the Shee swept away by astonishment. “Gone? What do you mean? How can you run an army if no one can get hold of the commanders?”

“There aren’t many emergencies of that sort in Ciaron,” Climeral said gently. “If something
should
happen, there are ways of sending messages to the people who need them. Important as it is to you, though, I don’t think giving you your mother’s things would be considered a good reason to summon the Commander during his off-duty time.”

“Then I’ll go tomorrow,” Eleret said. The Shee magician might be right, but the arrangement still seemed peculiar. An army couldn’t do much if it only fought for a few hours every day, and the people who ran it had to work as long and hard as the soldiers or everything was likely to come to pieces. Of course, Climeral was a wizard, not a warrior, so perhaps he didn’t understand. “Can you suggest a place where I can stay tonight?”

“Try the Broken Harp. It’s a little farther from the palace and the sights of Ciaron than most people like, so it’s not expensive, but it’s clean and reasonably comfortable. I’ll have someone escort you there, if you’d like.”

“No, thank you.”

“Ciaron can be a bit overwhelming if you’re not used to cities,” Climeral warned. “And I wouldn’t like to think that anything…unpleasant might happen to you. You may not be wearing Cilhar styles, but someone may still guess where you’ve come from. And you’re an attractive young woman; that can be a danger in itself.”

For a moment, Eleret was tempted; then she shook her head. She didn’t think Climeral could assign someone to be her guide and bodyguard for the whole time she was in Ciaron, so sooner or later she would have to survive the city on her own. It might as well be sooner.

Climeral shrugged. “All right. I’ll write you out directions to the inn, then.” He reached for the inkpot in the corner of the table.

“No need to waste the paper,” Eleret told him quickly, a little shocked by the very idea. “Just say them over; it’ll be faster.”

“You’re sure you’ll remember them?”

“Quite sure.” Eleret smiled, thinking of the straight, evenly spaced streets outside. The problem wouldn’t be remembering the turns; it would be keeping count of them as she walked. She’d have to, though, if she wanted to find the inn. Everything in Ciaron looked like everything else; from what she’d seen, there were hardly any useful landmarks.

Climeral still looked dubious, but he told her. He seemed surprised when she did not ask him to repeat the directions, and even more surprised when, to reassure him, she faultlessly recited what he had said.

“What a remarkable memory,” Climeral said when she finished.

“Me?” Eleret said. “You mean because I can say over that little bit? That’s nothing. You should hear Siff or Bilet do a telling; they can go on for hours and never miss a word.”

“This ability is common among Cilhar?”

“Most people can do it a little, if that’s what you mean.”

Climeral gave her a long, thoughtful look. “I can see that there is a great deal more to your people than their skill with weapons. Since you have so little difficulty, I may as well tell you now how to get to the offices of the Imperial Guard.”

Eleret listened closely to the instructions, and repeated them at Climeral’s request. It all seemed simple enough. In another day, or at most two, she should be ready to leave Ciaron. Climeral raised an eyebrow when she mentioned this, but did not comment, and a few minutes later a small boy solemnly escorted her to the door of the school.

TWO

T
HE SOUNDS AND SMELLS
outside were a shock after the cool quiet of the Islander’s school, and Eleret paused for a moment to get her bearings. A wrinkled, sour-looking man passed by, pushing a two-wheeled cart with long handles. On the far side of the street, a dark-haired woman in a brown wool cloak stood tapping her foot impatiently and peering east at the shapes of people walking toward her. She seemed vaguely familiar, but that was impossible. Eleret didn’t know anyone in Ciaron except the people at the school, whom she had just met. She frowned and shifted uncomfortably. Something felt wrong.

She looked around once more. The man with the cart turned onto a side street. Three young women, hardly more than girls, came toward the school from one direction, talking and giggling, while a short fat man going the other way glared at them. The dark-haired woman showed increasing signs of irritation. None of them seemed particularly interested in Eleret.

Eleret shook herself and started down the street. It was only the strangeness of the city that was making her uncomfortable, she told herself. It was all the smooth, unweathered stone, all the tall buildings and straight lines, all the people. Still, she kept her hand near the hilt of the dagger she had strapped to her leg under her skirt. Cilhar did not make old bones by ignoring a warning hunch, no matter how unlikely it might seem.

Despite her worries, Eleret reached the inn without incident. She saw the splintered harp hanging from the bar above the door when she was still two blocks away. The inn itself was wood, not stone, and comfortably shabby, as if it had stood in its place through years of sun and storms. As she set her hand against the faded blue paint on the door, Eleret felt almost at home.

The middle-aged couple who kept the Broken Harp took half a copper coin as an earnest, then showed Eleret to a sunny chamber on the south side of the building. Eleret thanked them and promised to take dinner in the public room. As soon as they had left, she set down her kit bag and examined her new quarters.

The windows were the same long, narrow slits that Prill had been complaining about at the school, but these were set in groups of three, less than a hand’s span apart. Built that way, they let in more light and gave the impression of a larger opening, but only a very small child would be able to get into the room through one of them. The door was made of wide pine boards and had two iron hooks on the inside, though Eleret did not see a bar anywhere around. Perhaps the innkeeper could supply one. In the corner next to the door, a wooden frame with rope woven across it supported a straw-stuffed pallet and a couple of blankets. The rest of the furnishings consisted of a glazed clay chamber pot, a small oak table with a pitcher and washbasin on it, and a short, three-legged stool.

The sight of the washbasin made Eleret suddenly conscious that she had been traveling all day and was covered with dust. Upon investigation, however, the pitcher proved to be empty. Eleret picked it up and went out in search of a pump.

As she reached the door to the public room, she heard voices on the other side. The room had been empty when she arrived, and the innkeeper’s wife was at the far end of the hall, just going into the kitchen. A customer must have come in while Eleret was looking around. Not wanting to interrupt, Eleret went past the door, toward the kitchen.

The door swung open. “—on the second floor,” the innkeeper said. “Will that do?”

“It will be suitable,” a woman’s voice answered.

Eleret glanced back over her shoulder and froze: The speaker was the dark-haired woman in the brown wool cloak who had been waiting for someone outside the Islanders’ school.

Leaning into the shadows, Eleret waited until the innkeeper and his new guest had gone on up the stairs. Then she walked softly back to her room and sat down on the bed to think.

The woman had followed her from Climeral’s school. Why? Not to steal; Eleret had nothing worth taking except her knife, and that was hidden among the folds of her skirt. Could it be because Eleret was a Cilhar? It was not so long ago that any Cilhar who left the mountains risked his life against the assassins of Syaskor. The Emperor of Ciaron was supposed to have put an end to that, but could he have succeeded completely in only eight years? But how could the woman have known where Eleret came from? Her knife and her pouch of finely balanced iron raven’s-feet were the only things Eleret could think of that might betray her origin, and neither was obvious to a casual observer.

Perhaps the woman was one of Climeral’s people. Eleret considered this idea for a moment, then shook her head. She did not think Climeral would send someone to follow her after she turned down his offer of a guide, and if the woman had come from the school without Climeral’s knowledge it was not likely that she meant well.

Frowning, Eleret stood up and checked her weapons. She readjusted her skirt slightly, until she was completely satisfied that she could reach through the slit and draw her knife as quickly as possible. Then she picked up the pitcher in her right hand and left the room once more, moving as warily as if she were hunting squirrels in the mountains around her home.

She saw no one but the innkeeper’s wife, who filled the pitcher with water and Eleret’s ears with a stream of apologies for having left it empty. Eleret seized the opportunity to ask about a bar for the door.

The woman gave her a sharp look, then nodded approvingly. “That’s right, you’re a pretty one and there’s no sense taking chances. We’re a respectable inn, we are, but even so, it’s better. Here, take your pick.” She gestured at a stack of smooth wooden bars, each as thick as Eleret’s forearm, which stood against the wall behind the kitchen door.

Eleret examined the bars with care and chose one without knots or cracks that might weaken it. She thanked the innkeeper’s wife, picked up the pitcher in one hand and the bar in the other, and returned to her room, keeping a cautious eye on the stairs where the dark-haired woman had gone.

The public room of the Broken Harp was as agreeably shabby as the rest of the inn. The wooden floor was smooth with years of wear, and the passage of countless feet had ground gray-black paths from the door to the trestle tables. At one end of the room, an open hearth took up most of the wall. Someone had tried to scrub the ancient accumulation of smoke stains from the stone shelf above it, and had given up less than halfway through the job. A row of mismatched small jugs with harps and pipes painted on the side stood on the shelf. Even from the doorway at the opposite end of the room, Eleret could see cracks in two of them.

“Soup and ale, one and a half bits, since you have the room,” the innkeeper told her. “There’s meat as well, for two bits extra, if you want it. Beer’s a half-bit for the first draw, a bit for every one after that. Wine depends on what you’re drinking; we don’t have many fancy ones, but there are one or two that aren’t bad.”

The prices seemed high, but she’d been warned that everything would be more expensive in Ciaron. It was a good thing she wasn’t planning to stay long. “Soup and ale are fine,” she said.

“Sit down and I’ll bring it for you,” the innkeeper said, smiling. He turned and vanished in the direction of the kitchen.

Eleret seated herself at a table near the inner door, where she could watch the room with her back to a wall. The other two patrons had plainly come for refreshment rather than a meal. From all appearances, they had been refreshing themselves for some time. Eleret smiled slightly to herself.

The kitchen door swung open. “—quite sure you can carry it, Dame Nirandol?” said the innkeeper over his shoulder.

“It is no trouble,” a woman’s voice answered, and Eleret stiffened. An instant later, the dark-haired woman entered the room, holding a wooden bowl in one hand and a cup in the other. The innkeeper followed, still looking distressed at the thought of one of his guests carrying her own meal. In one hand, he bore three mugs; in the other, a half-loaf of bread, hollowed out and filled with Eleret’s soup.

The innkeeper brushed by the dark-haired woman, muttering apologies, and set two of the mugs in front of the drinkers. Then he crossed to Eleret’s table and left the soup and the third mug in front of her. “If there’s anything else you want—”

“I’ll let you know,” Eleret said, only half attending. Most of her mind was concentrated on the dark-haired woman making her way slowly across the public room toward them.

“As you wish,” the innkeeper said, and left. Eleret picked up her mug and sipped at the black, bitter brew. The dark-haired woman drew nearer, moving with studied grace. She was at least twenty-eight, Eleret guessed, but no more than thirty-two, and she had the look of someone used to getting her own way. Under the table, Eleret’s left hand crept into her pocket and closed around the hilt of her dagger.