The First Binding, page 30
I waggled a hand in a so-so gesture. “Had better. Have had worse.”
Dannil grunted and grabbed a mug, turning it over to polish its insides with a rag. “I meant me.” He placed the cup back where he’d gotten it from and then turned to prop his elbows up on the counter, leaning toward me. “So?”
I arched a brow. “So?”
“You met our songstress. And then you got into a fair hand of trouble. The kind that kept me from sleeping well, mind you.”
I fought the urge to wince, keeping my face as wooden and neutral as the countertop. “I did.”
Dannil drummed a few fingers against the bar before scratching a fingernail against the spot I’d restored. His lips pulled into a frown as he scraped harder. The wood would not give up its renewed state no matter how fervently the barkeeper clawed. “You do good work.”
“Thank you.”
He grunted. “Did just as well with your storytelling. Made me the kind of money that lets a man turn his head and ears away from trouble … of a sort. But the clergos…” He shook his head and sighed. “Solus’ shadow, man, you know how to bring a proper sort of trouble around. And a justice on top of it all. She could shutter this place till next year’s harvest if she had a mind to, but that’s if she knows I’m keeping you here. Which she don’t.” His words fell into the distant low muttering of a man rationalizing with himself, forgetting all about me sitting just within arm’s reach of him.
I gave him the moments he needed to set his mind at ease before speaking. “And I thank you for that—keeping me here that is. And our songstress friend, at that. But I know it’s not an easy thing, and you just have to say the word and I’ll leave.”
Dannil waved me off and fetched another mug, plunking it down between us. “Don’t think on it. Rita taught me better than to put out people with no home to call their own. Solus doesn’t look kindly down on those that do, and he don’t share his blessing with them either. Terrible thing to be without God’s blessing.”
A man’s life seems to be better off the further he walks away from gods and their problems. Because the blessing of gods can come more as a curse in my experience.
Rather than dismiss the man and his god, I simply nodded. “There is that.”
He placed a steaming clay pot before me and nodded toward it. “Tea? Or something stronger for the morning?”
“Tea please. I don’t think I can handle anything more right now.” My mind swam with last night’s conversation, the wounds—long buried, thought to be healed—that I’d reopened in telling Eloine my tale so far.
Dannil poured a steady stream, unwavering, not a drop faltering. The liquid fell in colors like dying autumn leaves, too far past their time to hold any brightness beyond a muddled pale brown. “Sugar? Honey? Milk?”
I bit my tongue, keeping silent at my abhorrence of adding milk to tea. A practice many east of Etaynia viewed with disgust. “Just honey, thank you.”
The muttering behind my back intensified, sounding like rasping wind dragging dead twigs over stone streets. The men’s voices scratched and hissed at the blanket of silence within the Three Tales that continued trying to fall over our morning.
“Unnatural things ’bout that man. I’m telling you, Tiago.” The speaker, Doniyo, let out a drier cough than before. “You felt those words last night? Summin’ powerful strange in them. Was like strings on my ears and heart—couldn’t turn away from his story if I wanted to. That’s unnatural.”
“You said that already. Twice already.” The man I wagered to be Tiago rapped his knuckles against the table once, then again. “Keep that talk to yourself and we’ll be better off for it. These are bad times. Efante are gutting each other, and that’s ill omens there. When princes shed their own blood, the people’s will follow. Tell me I’m a liar.”
No one raised a voice to object.
“So, no more talk of strangeness, unnatural things, or demons … sieta, Doniyo?”
A half murmur I couldn’t make out, but the table fell silent afterward.
I guessed the men agreed under their breaths.
Dannil finished spooning in more honey than anyone back home would have asked for, but the west loved its sweetness in abundance. He pushed the mug my way. “Would be I’d charge you a pewter bit for that.”
I smiled as I pulled the drink toward myself. “Would be, but most houses don’t charge their entertainment for the price of a cheap tea, especially when that person happens to be me. I’m sure you’ll make it back and more aplenty after tonight’s tale.”
He rolled his eyes.
I reached to where my purse had sat, well within the folds of my heavy cloak inside one of its many pockets. My hand fell against a piece of robe that held an uncanny flatness in its shape. My eyes widened as I grasped at the spot again. But no amount of grabbing would make my purse reappear. It had vanished as well and true as the storm from last night.
Dannil caught my expression. “What’s wrong?”
I gave him a hapless and tired smile. “I guess I’ll be giving you a pair of stories tonight—better than what I did for you yesterday.”
He cocked a brow. “Why’s that?”
“Because, good stories pay, and two pay better than one. And it seems if I’m going to be paying for drinks, I’ll be in need of money.” I opened my cloak, showing him the pocket I’d reached into.
It took him a few heartbeats to catch my meaning. Realization struck Dannil and he burst into a fit of laughter.
Of all the things I expected from him, his amusement hadn’t been on the list.
He ground the back of a hand against one eye as he leaned against the counter for support. His shirt crinkled along the bulk of his stomach as he shook. “Oh, that’s something, isn’t it, Rita?” He exhaled a deep breath before steadying himself. “I guess our songstress got the better of you, hm? Seems you should have kept a hand more to yourself than to her, huh? Don’t know the kind of life you lived as a storyteller, but around parts of Etaynia, a man needs to have a hand on his purse at all times. Heard it said by a wise man once that, ‘A gentleman is never far from his purse.’”
I grunted, thinking back to what I’d told Eloine. I am no gentleman. But there had been a time my hands had found their ways into purses aplenty that belonged to the gentlemen within the Mutri Empire.
It seemed that part of me had fallen asleep, and all the cleverness and awareness of that time had slipped into slumber as well. The long-practiced motions born of survival had given way to the ones I needed to survive my new life and identity as The Storyteller—nameless, without a story of my own beyond the reputation of my craft and deeds done under that mantle.
“I suppose she did, but so long as man has his wits about him, money is easy enough to come by.” That had been true enough for most of my life.
This was no different. Just another role to play—a performance.
And I’d play it masterfully.
A heavy thud echoed behind me, drawing the attention of all. A pair of strangers had come to the Three Tales Tavern.
The first of the two men reminded me of a grizzled fox that had gone too long without eating. He stood a head taller than me, looking like he’d been stretched to that length. His limbs were lanky, the sort a child might draw.
A thin layer of sand and road grime clung to his tight-fitting pants and sleeveless shirt. His hair fell in dark waves to frame his chin, but they’d lost any sign of healthiness over whatever journey he’d recently taken, looking thin and wiry.
He surveyed the taproom before locking eyes with me. They were the color of warm honey under foggy glass. Something had dulled his irises.
An illness?
The man moved with an odd stiffness, like he’d spent too many days on rough floors and harbored old injuries he never tended to.
I shifted without fully turning toward Dannil. “Do you know him?”
Dannil shook his head and moved to grab a mug that needed no polishing, yet he set to the task like he had eyes for nothing else but the chore.
It was the kind of measured focus actors adopted when going through well-rehearsed lines. I recognized it for that, and the sort of posture a barkeep would take who’s seen one too many troubles in his establishment. It was the busyness and unconcern that would hopefully keep him out of the eyes of those who wished to cause trouble.
I couldn’t blame him for that.
The second man bustled into view, though how he had hidden behind the first was a mystery no lifetime of theatricality and tricks could answer.
He had the build of longtime dockworkers, rippling muscle under generous layers of fat and the sun-darkened skin to match. He could have been molded from heaping amounts of clay that no sculptor took the time to refine. His face had the same weighty mass to it. The man’s eyes were a cold gray with scant hints of a green that could have been found in old sage.
He had no hair to speak of, even on his eyebrows, save for a short beard he’d braided into a single tie no longer than his index finger. Its coloring carried a red like rust, likely from the dye men and women used along the routes from the Mutri Empire to Zibrath.
That’s when it struck me. The men’s appearances marked them from the regions along Zibrath’s roads to the smaller countries surrounding it. A mix of features found in the Mutri Empire and nearby. Pieces plucked from all over to form their people as trade flowed through and ships set sail from there to every corner of the world.
I’d once traveled and lived among men like them. And I remembered enough of the customs to hopefully start things off on a good note.
I inclined my head, bringing my left hand over my heart. “Sholkuh.” The greeting may have been rather formal for the likes of the two men, but it carried enough ingrained religious significance to warrant an equal and genuine return of it.
The men made no such offering.
I took a short sharp breath in through my nose, moving my hand back to my staff and clenching it tightly.
The leaner of the two men tilted his head, giving me a look like he wasn’t quite sure what he was staring at. “Tuam? Tuam ohe wahl?”
Whatever calmness I held to shattered, leaving me feeling like bits of cold glass. I reached for the lucidity of the candle and the flame, tipping my mind into it. All of my shock and confusion fed into the single point of fire and I found a piece of myself to hold to and act around.
An old clever smile, well-rehearsed, made its way across my face. “I’m sorry?” I kept my words to the Trader’s Tongue, hoping it would force the newcomers to adopt the same language. “I didn’t quite catch that.”
He continued in the old and dead language. “Teham mainye Ari?”
My eyes widened as his were overtaken by the muddled gray I’d seen earlier. The color quickly morphed into the sort of black found in an ocean at night, flooding his sclera entirely. His arms blurred and I reeled away from him only to have my back press against the countertop. He grabbed hold of my robes with a grip strong enough to tear the fabric if I resisted.
Tiago and his elderly friends got up from their table, breaking into a clamor I wouldn’t have expected given their hushed and tired voices. One of them bulled past the larger of the two newcomers only to have a hand clamp down on his shoulder.
The dockworker squeezed and hauled the old man with all the ease of handling a basket of bread. He tossed the grandfather of a man against the wall near the entrance, holding him in place with no visible effort.
The other man moved into action but I turned my mind from the scuffle as the man holding me released one hand to draw something from his waist.
A bead of light glinted along a wicked edge of silver. The knife was no longer than the tip of my smallest finger down to the end of my palm, but it would have found its way easily enough through my guts.
The candle and the flame still filled my mind, and in it, I grabbed hold of another piece of my story I’d long since left behind. My hand gripped even harder to my staff as I twisted. The head of the wooden tool clapped against the man’s brow, staggering him. I turned the weapon at an angle, snapping it in a sharp and short blow. The tip smacked against the man’s lips.
Blood welled all along the soft tissue from where it had broken against his teeth. He reeled, but more in shock than pain.
I seized the opening and held my staff between both hands now, stepping forward and driving the whole of my weight into a blow using the weapon’s length. It struck the man across the chest and shoved him back.
He kept his footing but his balance faltered.
I shifted my grip to hold the staff along its base like a club and swung. Its mass came down on the man’s neck in a blow that would have taken the light from most men’s eyes. A quick repositioning of my feet put me in the stance I needed to thrust the staff’s tip into the hollow of the man’s throat with all the force I could muster. The strike caught him perfectly in place.
His legs buckled and I expected his eyes to lose what intensity they had. They would have had he been normal in any way. I watched his chest for a moment to see if it moved, the subtle signs of breath and life.
Nothing.
His gaze remained unflinching, however, still holding to that unnatural coal-like black.
Fade away. Just leave. The temptation to shut my own eyes, hoping that his vacant dark stare would vanish, grew in me.
A staccato of curses and tangled words pulled me from my wishful reverie, and I turned toward the commotion.
The trio of old men wrestled with the brutish dockworker, and each man ended up tumbling away to crash into bits of furniture.
None of the woodwork looked worse off from the collisions, much to Dannil’s relief, I wagered.
I raced back into action, reaching for the set of movements and old techniques long hidden within my mind.
The large man seemed unperturbed by my approach. He shifted with all the lazy care of a cat stretching in the morning. His hands spread wide in anticipation, but his face held all the expression of a stone at the bottom of the sea. Smooth, empty, worn to nothingness.
I stopped short, sending the staff into a diagonal cast. The length of it slammed into the soft tissue at the side and behind the big man’s left knee. His joint buckled, but not enough to have him sink as far as I’d hoped. I brought the staff down on top of his skull. A crack like a hammer on thin wood filled the taproom, but the man’s eyes remained as steady as before.
I pulled my staff back to inspect it and spotted a fissure along the head as wide as my pointer finger. My grimace was short-lived as the man surged to his feet, wrapping both arms around me in a hold that could have shattered an empty oak barrel. The air fled my lungs and hot strings of aching filled them in its place. I wheezed, fighting to voice the only question on my mind.
The man’s body shuddered. I heard a sound like wet fruit being torn apart. Then again—several times. He opened his mouth and I caught a faint glimpse of the insides. Where there should have been pink for his tongue was the color of soot and jet. His grip slackened and I shook myself free. I had to use my staff for balance as I teetered on the ground for a moment.
The dockworker crashed to the floor, splotches of blood tingeing his clothing. In any other place in the world, it would have been a shade of crimson. But here, in the Three Tales Tavern, it pooled dark as pitch like the other man’s eyes.
One of the older men, the one I figured to be Doniyo, staggered back. A simple fisherman’s knife shook in his hand. The blade looked like it had been dipped in ink, still holding a film of darkness along the edge.
A thought occurred to me and sent lightning through my body. I raced toward the man, batting his knife from him with contemptuous ease. His companions blurted protests that I had no ears for in the moment. I pressed the old man against the wall with my staff and arm, using my other hand to grab his mouth and force it open.
His feet beat against the floor.
“Look at me.”
He shied away from my stare.
“Look. At. Me!”
He did. His eyes remained the same.
I took one of my fingers and ground it into his ear, drawing a sharp yelp from him. The finger came back clean. “Open your mouth. I won’t ask again.”
He did as I instructed and I plunged two fingers in, brushing against his tongue. No residue. His mouth was healthy and pink.
The old man mustered a show of strength I would have expected from someone half his age and shoved me back. “Hell and fire, take me from Solus’ grace. What was that about? Don’t go sticking your bits in my mouth like that! Dannil, you going to let this—”
“You should consider yourself lucky if any of my bits go near your mouth.” The words carried no humor, though. I couldn’t bring myself to muster anything other than dry hard anger.
The man’s eyes went wide before screwing tight into a glare. “Why you—”
“Shut up, Doniyo.” Dannil’s voice fell harder and heavier than any of the strikes I’d landed in the fight. “Shut. Up. This isn’t the time for anyone’s jackassery. None of it now. The way I see it, two strangers just came into my tavern—my home—and tried to kill my regulars and my entertainment. I saw him”—he jabbed a finger at me—“come under the same threat as you. If he wants to look you over after whatever just happened, damn well let him!” Dannil slammed a fist onto the countertop, rattling the mug he’d been polishing.
Stillness returned to the Three Tales Tavern.
This was a moment for me to lay these men’s concerns to rest … albeit by filling them with another one altogether. But it would be worth it for some peace at last.
I exhaled and extended a hand in a gesture I hoped was calming. “I’m sorry for what I did. I got swept up in things, and I just had to be sure you weren’t one of them.”
The trio of men exchanged a look and huddled closer, taking to muttering under their breaths. One of them shot a look my way. “That one over there said something to you, didn’t he?” He pointed to the slender man with the knife.
I nodded. “Couldn’t make out what, but he did.” I hoped the lie wouldn’t need more than that to convince them after the drama we’d endured.
