The First Binding, page 58
I thanked him, going so far as to offer payment, but a look from his wife had the man waving me off. I gave her the widest smile I could and a greater thanks than her husband. It seemed to be more than enough.
The kindness and charity of old women is not something to be taken lightly. It can save lives. I know that much to be true.
I finished the cheese well before making it halfway to Del Soliel, resigning myself to sating my stomach’s pangs with cautious sips from my waterskin.
Daylight soon turned to dusk, then to darker night by the time I stepped onto the dirt of Del Soliel proper. The city looked to be everything Karchetta wasn’t. More of the paths were paved and layered in thin slates of stone. Larger portions of the streets were illuminated by lanterns. The buildings stood higher, and more of them had been fashioned of hard rock and brick rather than wood and simpler materials.
A pair of guards, not clergos, marched by and gave me a long look before passing me over.
I ignored them and fixed my stare on my surroundings, searching for the nearest inn that looked in need of a performer. And I found it within a handful of minutes.
The Leyon Dis Ario stood three stories high with a russet tile roof that sloped both ways. Its shape meant some of the higher rooms and walls would be canted—narrow. An annoyance, but a longer look at the place assured me of its quality.
The paint showed no sign of wear, still holding to all the soft warmth and invitation of sunflower petals. The wooden beams framing the landing to the door were the color of rich red clay and well cared for.
I made way into the Golden Lion Inn and took in the nightly chatter of its crowd.
The nearest conversation dulled, dimmed, then died completely. Others followed suit, falling full into silence as eyes slowly turned on the stranger in the red cloak and cowl.
A few voices carried on, but they’d become nothing more than a wisp of wind rolling through a dead and quiet field.
To say the Golden Lion was similar in any regard to the Three Tales would be like saying a butterfly and moth were the same. Not that the Three Tales was ugly by any means. It had its own charm, and one, in truth, I preferred. But the Golden Lion had an open-faced and easy-to-see beauty.
The walls had been painted to match the tawny color of the beast the tavern was named after. A soft and muted shade that brought warmth to your eyes without being jarring. The wood throughout the place had been painted a red like old brick, just as light and easy to take in. All the while the candlelight brought another subtle brightness to the place. It had all the comfort of a fire under familiar stars and the surety of good food with it.
I walked over to the counter, ignoring the silence that had followed me. I saw no reason to break the quiet and direct more attention to myself. My time was better served focusing on a room for the night and what it would take to get one. Then finding a way to the palace from here.
The barkeeper noticed my approach and gave me a look as if weighing the trouble I’d bring.
I decided it best not to give him cause to think I’d be a bother. A flick of a hand sent my cowl falling from my head, at least giving the man a better view of my face.
People generally feel more at ease when they can see the face of who they’re talking to, but it did me no favors, the night being so late and me clearly marked as a foreigner.
“Do you have any rooms available? I can pay. I can also make it worth your while by performing.”
The man had the build of someone who labored hard day in and out most of his life before deciding his body couldn’t keep up with it. He must have been a barkeeper only for the last few years of his life, putting on some fat over still-noticeable slabs of muscle. The green shirt stretched tight around his shoulders and chest, though did little to hide what he had by way of a belly now. He looked like everyone else in Etaynia—dark of brow and eye. His beard could have nested birds with its thickness and only betrayed a speck of steel in its color.
“Might do. You play?” His voice came hard and dry as smoke over broken stone. He then settled his gaze on the mandolin case in my hand. “You sing. Don’t look like a singer. Dance? No. What? Juggle? Tumble.” He shook his head, each of the words having come out sharp and clipped. “What? What do you do?”
The speed of everything would have tripped me once, but now I’d come to expect people like him every now and again. “I perform. I tell tales that entertain. Stories and little magics if you have the—”
The barkeeper grunted and shuffled away from me, grabbing a pitcher to serve another patron.
I stood there, blinking several times. I could count on one hand the number of times someone ignored my offer to perform since I’d cobbled my new reputation as The Storyteller.
Whispering, not low enough to keep to itself, graced my ears.
“Heard someone like him come to Karchetta?”
Ah, word had spread. I leaned closer to the conversation happening seats down from me.
“Think he’s that one? Heard he and some songstress put on a show worth sitting through in some small tavern south of here. Word came up from my cousin who heard it himself from his brother’s sister.”
A grunt. “Could do with a story. Things are tighter and stiffer here than my legs, especially with the efantes coming here. You know how things are now, everyone on edge after the … incident.”
Another grunt, one of affirmation. “Maybe he knows somethin’ of them foreign far-off tales. I heard a piece o’ one long ago. How’s it go?” The man speaking screwed his face tight as if thinking twice as hard as he usually did.
“On the mountain of ice and snow,
he called to it to come down low
and brought it crashing on the serpent
and then something…”
The man’s companion snorted, then broke into snickering. “Good thing we’re not paying you to tell things, huh? ‘And then something,’ you remember that bit and want to hear something foreign? Keep it to good tales of here, I say.” He punctuated the statement by banging his mug on the counter.
That earned him a long and steady stare from the barkeeper. “You nick the wood? You pay. You spill a drink and stain the wood? You pay. You get too drunk and tip something over? You pay. You get drunk and start a fight … you wish you could pay.”
The man sobered immediately, clearing his throat and deciding that maybe he should keep his mug just a bit out of arm’s reach for the moment. “Was just talking is all, Santiyo. That’s all.”
“You want to talk. You talk. But you do it without banging the counters, sieta?”
The man nodded. “Sieta.” He drew a circle through the air before kissing the tip of his finger. “Swear it.”
“Besides,” said the first man who’d tried to recite the little rhyme, “there’s more story to that than what I just tried to say. Heard rumors come up long ago that the fella swallowed the whole village under that mountain. Or he buried them all. Or dropped the mountain on them. Vile thing, that. Imagine the man it takes to do something like that. Dark things. But still a story maybe worth hearing. Maybe.”
The second man grunted. “Heard something of a name to go with it. Something foreign soundin’ too. Aryan? Arun? One of those, just like all those eastern stories that find their way here. Half of them have someone or other with the same name. Or close enough. Maybe they all just make monsters out there. Must be.” He looked deep into his mug. “Dropping a mountain on nothing but harmless village folk.”
The quiet that came between the group of men was the perfect sort for me to break and win a piece of attention I could use.
“Actually, it goes like this:
“Atop the mountain // ever high
along the crest // kissing sky,
he called upon a binding old
to unleash a vengeance
most bitter cold
“and called down a fury
of all ice and snow
upon the serpent
to bring down // the mountain low
“and did so succeed
to bury this beast
in this deed,
“but too great a price was unfairly paid
for the village buried,
lost to time,
and // unmade.”
The two men gossiping, as well as the barkeeper, all turned to look at me with renewed interest. But it was the barkeeper who spoke. “You did good with that little riddle rhyme. Maybe you can perform good enough to be worth something. But I have no rooms. You need a place to sleep? You can sleep with the horses, but for free.”
The pressure in my gums promised to burst them as I ground my teeth. “I don’t perform for a share of horse trough and hay.”
It’s said pride is a terrible thing, and that it may be. But it is just as tricky a thing as well, and important. It may lead us into trouble, keep us from charity that spares us hardships, but without pride, we’d hardly ever come to know our worth. And people are generally worth a great deal more than they ever give themselves credit for, in my experience.
“I’ve performed for kings and sultans. The duke of Tarvinter.” One of my hands came up before I realized I’d moved. My mind moved through the folds and I blew a breath into my open palm. “Whent. Ern.”
“What’s that?” The barkeeper looked at me quizzically.
The thin current of air flew fast into the space above my hand, coiling with the sinuous grace of a snake and all the fluidity of water. I shaped it within the folds of my mind until a ball of air formed, dancing and strobing, all unseen but to my eye. Every flickering candle flame called to me, and I envisioned them all, keeping track of their every movement in my mind. I knew them to be within my reach and pulled, focusing them onto the air in my hand. “Tak. Roh.”
Every minute bulb of fire winked out of existence. Streams of flame all stretched gossamer thin, burning brilliant bright, arcing through the tavern and to my palm. They coalesced and joined the currents of air to form a ball of fire. It danced and throbbed like any tiny flame, though now nearly as large as a man’s head.
The whole of the tavern stilled and fell better silent than a graveyard. “Does this prove my worth? I can take the breath of every person here and hold it in hand until I feel they’re best to breathe again. I can set their hearts thundering in anticipation with stories they’ve never heard, and tell those they have in such ways they’ll sit on edge waiting to hear what happens even though they know it by heart. I can conjure magic out of myth and legend to set them all clapping and ready to tip iron and silver onto your counter.”
“And for all that, he doesn’t know well enough to keep his tongue from going sharp and too far past what needs to be said. Many men don’t, sadly.” I knew that voice.
The folds of my mind nearly vanished, the binding slipping as I realized Eloine was nearby, but shrouded in the darkness. I eased out of the binding, letting the flames return to where they had been. The breath of air dissipated with a sound like someone gently exhaling.
Light returned to the Golden Lion and I watched Eloine approach.
She’d traded her dress for a new one of emerald green, all the better to bring out the color of her eyes. Her hair held more curl in it than before and most of the gold had vanished from her arms and ankles, the only glint now coming from the hoops at her ears. “And to think, you couldn’t be without me for so long that you decided to follow me here.”
It wasn’t the truth. I’d come for reasons of my own, and there had been no way to know she would be at this inn, of all places. I opened my mouth to voice that, but one of her fingers pressed against my lips, hushing me effectively.
“I think you’ve talked enough. And, you’ve done a good enough job making your point. I”—she placed one hand to her chest—“just so happen to have a room here. Join me.” She didn’t phrase it as a question.
I nodded.
She moved past me, giving no signal for me to follow, but I knew well enough by now to do so. I slipped in behind her and ignored the renewed threads of gossip that broke up as I passed folks by. Eloine led me up two flights of stairs to a narrow floor with just enough space for four small rooms.
Whatever the Golden Lion boasted in décor below it lost on this floor. Don’t mistake me, the wood showed all the signs of being well cared for. The handles on the doors were brass, all without any wear. The glass of the windows were without a speck of dust. The area simply lacked the brightness and eye-drawing tricks that had been employed below.
I found the place better for it, in truth.
Eloine led me to her room, opening the door and gesturing me inside. They’d given her a better one than I’d expected. Certainly something nicer than what I had back at the Three Tales Tavern.
The bed was twice as wide as mine and thicker in padding as well. The blanket had been dyed the color of bright plum. She had her own copper washtub, full mirror, without any scuffs, and a changing screen that didn’t look like it had been cobbled together out of flimsy wood.
Eloine eased herself onto the bed, lounging on her side. “Why did you follow me all the way here, Ari? Or are you going to tell me you just so happened to be in the same inn on the same night as me all by happenstance? And, I must admit, if it’s the latter, my feelings will be slightly hurt.”
I noted that. “Since you said only ‘slightly’ I suppose it won’t be so bad a wound for you to hear that, yes, it was quite by accident.”
She narrowed her eyes to give me a stare that could have turned stone hot in seconds, but I knew she didn’t really mean it.
“Besides, with the carriage coming to get you, how could I have known you’d be here, lady? If anything, you ought to be in your suitor’s manor—castle?”
She straightened and rose, looking me over. “Are you jealous?” Eloine leaned closer. Her eyes and mouth widened a second later. “You are!”
“Nothing of the sort.” I waved her off and fell into restless pacing around the room. “I came here to get to the efantes’ summer palace. All I needed was a room for the night. I mean to head there first thing tomorrow.”
“Fine, don’t tell me the truth.” She let the strength out of her posture and collapsed against the bed, shifting into a position she felt comfortable in.
I stopped moving, turning slowly to face Eloine and fix her with a long look. “You should know me better by now to know that I wouldn’t do that to you. I did come to this country in hopes of visiting the library held by the efantes, though I hoped to work my way into their palace proper, not their summer one. I’m sure their collection here is just as nice, though. There’s something I’m looking for.” And someone.
“And here I had hoped you were only looking for me.” Her voice came light and breathy. “Foolish girl that I was to hold such a hope.”
I rolled my eyes and took a place by her—well, what little corner she left free by her feet. “It’s a hope well held, because I held a secret one myself.”
She lifted a brow. “Oh?”
I smiled. “Yes. I was so dearly hoping to find a room tonight, and wouldn’t you know it, someone was kind enough to—ow!” I nearly fell from the bed and my hip throbbed.
Eloine pouted and pulled her foot back, keeping it raised in the silent promise of another kick.
I laughed. “I’m glad to see you. I am. And, yes, I did hope to see you, but I couldn’t know for certain whether I would.”
She pursed her lips and coiled up, giving me space to sit comfortably. “So you came all this way for books, not princes and to entertain the gentry? You’ve already hurt my feelings, and with an attitude like that, I daresay you’ll hurt the nobility’s as well. They are tender people at their cores.”
“You sound like you know them. But then, I suppose you would.” I gave her a knowing look. “But”—I drew the word out—“if I’ve hurt your feelings, I suppose it would only be proper to make it up to you.”
She gave me a solemn nod.
“Tell me how?” I fought to keep the smile off my face, knowing what she would ask.
“Lie with me. Tell me the rest of your story. As much as you can tonight.”
I obliged her.
“I just left behind my family and took the first steps into my new life. I had a new cloak, candles, and a cane. Three things I didn’t appreciate, but I’d been convinced to buy. And I’d just been told who to seek to find my way to the Ashram. That’s probably the best place to pick up. The journey north.”
FIFTY-THREE
THE JOURNEY NORTH
“Oi!” Jaseem waved at me as I neared his cart. “You need a ride? You’re set and dressed for traveling.”
“Yes. To the Ashram in the north, or as close as you feel comfortable taking me.”
“More than comfortable. How many are we taking? Where’s the rest of your family, boy?”
My core tightened at the question. “Just me. No family.” Those last two words sent a chill through me, but I pushed it from my mind, knowing the quicker I got on board and underway, the better and further I’d be from my pain. “How much?”
“All that way is about four. Three and twelve in truth. But if you’re going to be wanting a better place to sleep at night than under the carriage, and more than broth, the remaining chips will get you some of that.”
I nodded and pulled my last copper rounds from my purse. One gold piece left. It would have to do for whatever came up. “Thank you.”
Jaseem hooked a thumb to the open carriage back. “Get on. We leave soon as my wife returns with vittles for the horses.” At that, he walked over to the trio at the head of the carriage. He gave the one on the far right an affectionate pat. “Ay, ay, Meeta. Sshh. Calm.” The horse neighed but otherwise showed no signs of agitation.
I did as Jaseem said and climbed aboard, taking a seat against one of the carriage sides.
