Songs of the Earth (12 page)

‘I’ll tell him you asked after him.’ Gair paused, wondering how the fellow had known where to find the old man in all of Mesarild. ‘Are you staying at the inn?’

‘Alas, no. I have appointments elsewhere today. A pity, since the landlord here keeps quite a good cellar. Do tell Alderan Savin was here, though. Are you new?’

New? New to what?
‘He and I are only recently acquainted, yes.’

‘You seem very different to the strays he usually picks up. Gutter-sweepings, most of the time, I have to say, but you strike me as a cat of a different colour altogether.’ Savin gestured to the bench beside him. ‘Come and have some wine and tell me about yourself.’

Who was this fellow? For all he said he was acquainted with Alderan, his manner was off-putting. It set Gair in mind of someone who would squash a bee he found in his room, rather than open the window and let it out. ‘Thank you, sir, but no.’

Savin picked up a bottle from the floor and refilled his goblet. ‘Sure I can’t offer you some? I won’t bite.’

Gair remained where he was.

A flicker of irritation crossed Savin’s immaculate features. ‘As you wish.’ He set the empty bottle on the tiles and snapped his fingers. It disappeared as completely as if the world had opened up and closed itself around it.

Gair was startled, but not really surprised; Alderan had mentioned knowing others with abilities like his own.

‘I despise untidiness, don’t you?’ The man lounged against the arm of the bench, ankles crossed. His boots were black and glossy, quietly expensive. ‘So, tell me how Alderan came to find you.’

‘I doubt you’d find it interesting.’

‘I am beset by a curious nature; I find all manner of things quite fascinating.’ Savin savoured a mouthful of wine, then treated Gair to a disarming smile. ‘Besides, I’d have thought you’d enjoy some conversation. You must be bored out of your mind, stuck with him every day of the week.’

‘He’s not so bad.’

‘But it’s hardly been exciting, though, has it? Alderan’s such a stuffy old coot, although his heart is in the right place.’

‘I’ve had enough excitement lately to last for a good while.’ Savin rubbed across the grain. Just being next to him was enough to raise the hairs on Gair’s arms.

‘Really? Do tell me what happened.’

‘I had a close call with some Church Knights.’

‘How thrilling. What sort of trouble were you in?’

‘It was fairly serious.’

‘Well, I’d love to hear you tell the whole story, but alas, I have to go.’ Draining his goblet, Savin stood up. ‘I’ve enjoyed our chat, even if it was a little one-sided. Perhaps we can talk again sometime.’

He extended a hand on which winked a heavy silver and amethyst ring.

Gair gave another stiff bow. For no reason he could explain, he did not want to be any closer to the man in the violet shirt than he already was.

Disappointment tightened Savin’s mouth, but he responded with a bow of his own, crisp and courtly. ‘Perhaps you’ll come to trust me eventually. Until then, let me just say that you’ll do yourself a favour if you think hard about whatever Alderan tells you and take
it with a pinch of salt. He is not what he seems to be. Now I must take my leave. I think I have outstayed my welcome.’

‘I’ll be sure to tell Alderan that you called by.’

Footsteps sounded on the tiles behind Gair. He looked round to see Alderan striding through the potted shrubs towards him. When he looked back to Savin, the man was gone. ‘You just missed a friend of yours,’ he said.

Alderan stared at him as if he had declared the sky was green. ‘What?’

‘A man called Savin. He said he was a friend of yours – an acquaintance, anyway.’

The old man frowned. ‘And his name was Savin?’

‘He said he wanted to catch up on old times, hoped to find you here. I said I’d pass on the message.’

Alderan’s face grew grim.

‘Have I done something wrong?’

In a blink, the old man’s expression shifted to geniality. ‘No, not at all. I just wasn’t expecting to run into him here, that’s all. Well, well. I haven’t seen Savin in a very long time.’

‘He asked to be remembered to you.’

‘I’m sure he did, lad. Now, did you leave me some supper?’

Back in their rooms, Alderan ate in silence. Gair sensed that something was wrong, but he could not tell whether it was connected to Savin’s visit. He wandered the room, nibbling grapes and trying to puzzle out what it was about the elegantly dressed fellow that had sounded such an odd note in the otherwise tranquil garden.

‘Did Savin say anything else?’ Alderan asked abruptly, pushing away the tray.

‘He said I was different to the others you picked up. What did he mean?’

The old man dabbed his mouth with a napkin. ‘You’re not the first who’s come to the Western Isles with me. Some stay, some
don’t. They’ve all been people who needed to be somewhere else for a time, much like you. What did you tell him?’

‘Nothing. I didn’t care for his manner. Besides, if he’d come to see you, what did he need to know about me?’

With a harsh laugh, Alderan threw the napkin down onto the table. ‘You have excellent instincts, my boy. Savin and I go back a long way, but I don’t much care for him and I don’t particularly want to spend the evening drinking and trading war stories with him. You’ve done me a favour, no mistake. By the way, you might like to know that I’ve booked passage for us, leaving first thing tomorrow. It’s nothing luxurious, but it’ll get us there, and the sooner we get there the better. These are troubled times and from what I heard down in the city, they’re only getting worse.’

He tugged a crumpled paper from his pocket and tossed it on the table. Gair smoothed it out. It was a four-day-old broadsheet, the low-grade paper already yellowed, but the print was sharp. He read a few lines of a report of renewed banditry in the Arennorian Marches and the dispatch of five hundred men from the garrison at Fleet to deal with them.

‘Bands of thieves roaming the highways, civil unrest – there was an apprentices’ riot in Yelda last month, and rumours coming out of the desert too. All the broadsheets are full of it. According to the people I spoke to, we were lucky not to have had trouble with brigands on our way south. The Imperial patrols scour them away every few months, but they creep back. All the merchants are forming up into caravans and hiring mercenaries for protection.’

‘So why aren’t we travelling with one of the caravans?’

‘I don’t fancy waiting two days for the next south-bound one,’ Alderan told him. ‘The convoys are slower than molasses at midwinter, anyway. I’d rather be on my way quickly and round the Horn of Bregorin before the autumn gales. The bargees at the docks said there are fewer brigands along the waterways, although there are still some.’

‘That’s not very comforting.’

‘Oh, I think you and I can handle a few ruffians with rusty knives, don’t you? After seeing off a troop of the Church’s finest?’

Grudgingly, Gair surrendered to the old man’s humour and smiled. ‘I suppose we can,’ he said. ‘When do we sail?’

‘Dawn, so you’ll need to be early to bed. Did you leave me any bathwater?’

The
Trader Rose
was a two-masted lugger carrying grain downriver to the White Havens. There was room on board for two passengers, provided they did not mind sleeping on deck and helping with the rigging if called upon. The horses, however, had to be sold. Gair had grown fond of the chestnut and stood stroking his long nose and tugging his ears whilst Alderan negotiated a price with the liveryman at the inn. Then they shouldered their saddlebags and made their way down to the docks in the rosy early light.

The
Rose
’s bargee was a villainous-looking creature with only one eye and a stubby clay pipe clamped in the corner of his mouth. For company he had a black and white dog of indeterminate parentage, and a cat to keep down the rats.

‘Rats?’ Gair echoed, glancing around the neatly painted deck.

‘She’s a grain ship; the buggers is attracted to it.’ The swarthy bargee cackled. ‘Don’t you be worryin’ yourself, though. I ain’t seen one in three days and old Reuben is just as fat as butter!’

Scratching his rump, he ambled back to the wheelhouse and produced a black leather bottle from which he took a long pull.

Gair eyed the man’s stained clothing and stubbled chin. ‘Is he reliable?’ he asked Alderan as they stowed their belongings against the bulwark.

‘Skeff? More or less. I’ve travelled with him before. Besides, he was the best I could do at short notice.’

‘What if we’re robbed?’

‘Unlikely. The brigands generally leave Skeff alone – they know
there’s slim pickings to be had from him. Whatever he earns he drinks away.’

‘This is not doing much to increase my confidence.’

A dockhand cast off the ropes and tossed them onto the
Rose
’s deck. Toby the dog barked excitedly at the mongrels on the other barges as wind and current took hold, and once she started downstream, he took up station in the bows like a figurehead, grinning and panting. Reuben eyed him disparagingly from the top of the rope locker, and tucked his tail round his nose.

The cat certainly seemed to be a competent ratter, as the first night on board was undisturbed by so much as a squeak. His night’s work over, he sat up in the bows performing his morning ablutions. He was a large orange tabby, with white paws which he washed carefully, back and front, before swiping them around his ears. Occasionally he paused to stare at Gair with slitted yellow eyes before returning to his toilet.

‘Breakfast is served.’ Alderan emerged from the tiny galley below deck and set two plates on the hatch-cover next to Gair. They were piled with steaming bacon and fresh bread from the stores.

‘Looks like it’s going to be another fine day,’ he added, squinting at the pale sky. The sun was a bright golden disc in the haze and skeins of mist lay across the water in front of the barge. Where the sunlight penetrated, dew sparkled on the grasses on either bank. The air smelled of damp earth and freshly mown fields. ‘Did you sleep well?’

‘Very.’ Gair helped himself from a plate. ‘Better than I’ve slept in a while.’

‘No bad dreams?’

He shook his head. There had been some, if he was honest, but none to wake him in a rank sweat the way he had the first few nights out of the Motherhouse.

‘The music?

‘I can’t hear it.’

Alderan produced a clay pot of relish from his saddlebags and began spreading it liberally on his bacon. He had an apparently inexhaustible supply of condiments. ‘What about our friend over yonder?’ He gestured roughly north of east.

‘Nothing. Do you think he’s lost the trail?’

Alderan looked thoughtful. ‘Maybe, maybe not. Time will tell. Let me know if you sense him.’

Whilst he ate, Gair attempted to bribe Reuben with a sliver of bacon, but the cat was too engrossed in grooming his belly fur. Toby, however, skidded to a halt at Gair’s feet, tail wagging.

‘All right, then,’ he laughed, and tossed him the scrap. The dog wolfed it down, then begged for more.

‘I’m sorry, that’s it.’

Toby whined, so Gair bent down and ruffled his fur, and was rewarded with an enthusiastic face-wash. From the top of the locker, Reuben favoured them with a yellow-eyed look, then curled up with his back to them.

Time passed slowly on the barge. The late summer heat was pleasantly languorous and the gurgle of the water soothing. Alderan stretched out with his saddlebags for a pillow and quickly fell into a doze, but Gair grew restive. Over the after-deck a breeze freshened the air, so he sat there for a while and watched the beasts and waterfowl that patrolled the Great River until even that palled. Rhythmic snores from the vicinity of the bulkhead told him he’d be short of conversation from Alderan, so he quietly fetched his sword from the baggage and took himself back to the after-deck for a little practice.

Ten years of discipline could not be unlearned in a hundred days, although Gair’s body was not quite so sure. The iron room had robbed his skin of colour and his muscles of much of their tone, but the exercises came back quickly. Stripped down to bare feet and breeches, he swung his way through the forms until his shoulders burned and sweat ran down the hollow of his spine.