The Gambler's Fortune (Einarinn 3) (14 page)

He was no new traveler, fresh from the Forest and eager to taste adventure. This man had been pacing the roads that knit together the Old Empire for nigh on a generation, if I were any judge. Of a little less than common height, his angular face was weathered, hair no longer the red of autumn leaves but faded amber streaked with white, receding at temples and crown and cropped close. His long-fingered hand on the frets of his lute was bony, the other plucking the strings in the Forest manner was deft with the thickened nails and calloused tips of a lifetime’s playing. His voice had the rich timbre of a double-reeded flute and the depth of a thousand leagues’ experience. His clothes, unremarkable in color or cut and showing signs of wear at knees and elbows, had once cost good coin paid to a master tailor. He was unmistakably of the Folk but old enough to be wise and spend winters traveling where inns offered warm beds and hot food, returning only when the woods were green, the living easy in the fruitful days of summer. A heavy gold chain around his neck was threaded through a handful of rings and each ear was pierced several times, gems catching the candlelight. Forest Folk, like pied crows, have a taste for such things.

“Can I be of service?” A youth in a spotless apron hovered politely at my elbow.

“I wish to speak to the singer.” I rolled the Forest cadence off my tongue, my father’s accents vivid in my memory.

“He takes his break in the back yard.” The boy looked uncertain. “Would you care to wait there?”

“Thank you.” I hardly expected the usual dumping ground for broken crocks and empty casks, given the good order of the house, but the yard still came as a welcome surprise. The gray paving was swept clean and pots of herbs were ranged around the walls, warm in the late sun and sweetening the air as I brushed against them. A bower seat’s roses were scarcely more than bare stems at this season but still made a pleasant place to sit and wait and admire a carved statue of Halcarion. The goddess gazed at her own reflection, combing her hair over a broad marble basin. I recalled I’d wanted to find a shrine for an offering.

“She’s a pretty thing, isn’t she?” The minstrel’s voice sent a thrill of recognition through me as he stood silhouetted against the early lamps behind him. I recalled a garret bedroom, my father halting on the threshold after singing me to sleep with songs of a heritage so long lost to me. But this man was not my father, so I got myself in hand at once.

“If you see the Maiden tending her hair and biding her time until Drianon calls her to motherhood. For myself, I prefer the tales where she makes men and moons alike dance to her tune.” I realized I was gabbling and shut my mouth.

“That’ll be your blood talking, given the color of your hair.” The minstrel said something else in the fluid tongue of the Forest, the stresses suggesting some proverb or truism but the words meant nothing to me.

“I’m sorry, I don’t understand.” I shook my head in apology.

The minstrel leaned against the flecked and crumbling orange brick of the wall and raised an eyebrow. “You have all the pieces, and if you want to talk to me, I assume you want to play, but you don’t know the rules?”

“That depends on the game,” I countered. I can do this kind of banter readily enough but wondered what his point was.

“Life is the game, my dear, the whole round of it.” He smiled at me and this time a light that I recognized well enough lit his copper-colored eyes. “So if you’re not of the Folk, how do you come to have all the pieces that make a Forest maid, and such a very fine set at that?” He looked me up and down with that slow intensity many women find flattering.

“My father left me the outer shell.” I tried to convey polite disinterest. Luckily another concern diverted my companion.

“Where and when were you born?” he asked, a faint worry wrinkling his brow.

“In Vanam, in the Aft of Autumn twenty-seven years past, to a servant girl called Aniss,” I replied, my smile broadening.

He evidently ran rapidly through his memories of travel and conquest and his expression soon cleared to share my amusement. “In that year, at the relevant season, I was in Col, my dear,” he said with a formal bow. “If you are seeking a lost father, I am afraid I do not have that honor.”

“That’s not what I wanted to talk to you about, don’t worry.” The door opened with a timely interruption as the lad came out with a tray of fancy pastries and an etched glass jug of golden wine, moisture beading the sides as it carried the chill of an ice cellar.

“Here’s to our common blood in any case.” The minstrel poured me a glass and raised his own in salute. “What is your name?”

“I’m Livak.” I toasted him in turn.

“And I am Frue,” he responded. “Your father left you with a fine Forest name, at very least,” he observed before hungrily biting into a flaky shell crammed with spiced apple.

I accepted his mute offer of an apricot tart, curiously remembering how my mother had resisted every blandishment and threat my grandmother could summon in her various attempts to rename me after my father’s periodic visits ceased. “His name was Jihol,” I volunteered, surprised by my own unbidden words.

“Of what kin?” Frue cocked his head to one side. “Do you know?”

“Of the Deer, I think.” I drank some wine and cast around for some means of ending this fruitless conversation.

Frae’s stillness was broken with an abrupt shake of his head. “No, don’t know him, not to my knowledge.”

“It’s not important,” I said with relief. In fact, I’d probably take some pains to avoid my long absent parent, if the breezes brought any scent of him. I had enough uncertainties to juggle in my life at present.

“So what are you looking for?” Frue devoured a second pastry and I waved away his offer of another, realizing this was likely part of the payment for his music.

“I have a book of old songs, collected by a Tormalin noblewoman in the latter days of the Empire. They are from all the ancient races, Mountain, Plains and Forest. I’m trying to find people who can translate them for me.”

Frue looked up, clearly interested. “I’ll take a look for you, willingly.”

That had been a certain bet, hadn’t it? Old songs could offer a minstrel something new for his repertoire without all the effort of composing it himself. “I’d welcome your thoughts, certainly. The thing is, I’m traveling with a scholar and he’s bound to want more than one opinion, so I’d really like to show them to more Folk of the true blood as well. Are you returning to the Forest? May we travel with you?” I refilled Frue’s glass.

“I am heading back to my kin, as it happens,” said Frue with caution, wiping his fingers on a well-darned napkin. “You and your scholar would be welcome to take the road with me.”

“We have two other companions, old friends, men of the mountains.” I hoped Frue hadn’t heard the faint hesitation in my voice.

“What do uplanders want in the wildwood?” Frue seemed more curious than concerned, which was a relief.

“They travel, like me, playing the runes and White Raven where it’s offered. Raven was a game of the Folk long before it traveled east and north, so I think they are hoping to find some trick or strategy to give them an added edge.” I made a mental note to warn Sorgrad of his new interest.

“You play White Raven?” Frue was looking at me with interest again.

“My father taught me as a girl,” I replied.

“Then you know that the game relies on the balance between the protection of the woods and the strength of the birds, as they try to drive the Raven away.” Frue’s eyes were bright. He came to sit beside me under the bare thorns of the bower and leaned close. “Every exchange must be even-handed between the Folk. What have you to offer me, in exchange for escort and introductions?” His voice was soft and caressing, fingers brushing lightly on my breeched knee.

“Songs that no one has heard since the days when the greenwood reached to the very gates of Selerima?” I delicately lifted his hand from my leg. “A romp for a night is all very well, but a good song lasts forever. When they’re heard anew, it’ll be your name associated with them.”

“If they are truly unknown. You’d be surprised how far back down the Tree of Years some of our songs reach.” He laughed and I realized with relief that part of the game was done, with no ill feeling on either side.

“What’s amusing you out here, Frue?” The door to the yard flung open to reveal a well-rounded lass in grass green draperies glaring at me with ill-disguised suspicion. She had a childlike face, round and soft with a turned-up nose and pretty eyes but with a sulky downturn to the corners of her full-lipped mouth. “Tris said you were out here.” Her silent question was unmissable.

“Zenela, this is Livak,” Frue smiled with a hint of lasciviousness. “She’s been tempting me with the prospect of an intriguing lay.”

That set Zenela’s nostril’s flaring. “That’s lay as in music, not as in bed. For the moment,” I added, giving Frue a flirtatious smile to shake her a little.

“Bring your song book over tomorrow morning and I’ll see how I can help you.” He pulled Zenela close as her outraged breath threatened the low neckline of her dress. “Let’s sing for our supper, sweetest.” Frue sauntered through the door and, after shooting me a look sharp with warning, Zenela hurried after him.

Chuckling, I took the tray back to the kitchen. “Can I listen from here?” I asked the broad-hipped woman everyone was deferring to, her snowy apron smudged with honey syrup and face flushed beneath a no-nonsense cap.

She lifted a tray of pastries from a vast range that wouldn’t have disgraced Messire’s kitchens. “Just keep out of the way.” She busied herself with powdered sugar and crystalized fruits.

I found a quiet corner by the door and made myself useful passing empty plates to the lank-haired youth up to his elbows in the vast wooden sink. The bustle of the kitchen stilled momentarily as Frue struck up a lively roundelay. He finished with a flourish and then Zenela began to sing, the soft chords of the lute underscoring her melody. I moved closer to the door for a better view.

Her voice was pure in the higher notes, rich and resonant in the lower. Thrilling with emotion over a song everyone must have heard a double handful of times, she made it sound as fresh as the first time of hearing. Standing beneath a double branch of candles, her bright auburn hair owed more to herbal rinses than Forest blood and her eyes reflected the green of her dress and the subtle cosmetics on her lashes. I wondered idly what her story was. She was maybe a handful of years younger than me and looked still to have a number of lessons to learn. I watched as she sang of love and loss and let myself be caught up in the glorious harmony of voice and lute.

An idea was slowly forming in the back of my mind. What if I offered Frue a new story as well as the old songs, something never yet set to music, a tale of recent events that stirred the highest powers of Tormalin and set girding their arms for a challenge not seen since the fall of the Old Empire? Minstrels spend their lives looking to be the first to weave tale and melody into new enchantment and this was festival time, when every tuppenny ha’penny warbler churns out the same old tunes just when people are looking for new diversions. The threat from mysterious islands in the ocean, the discovery of the lost colony and its sleeping survivors, all that would make a ballad to seize the attention and grip it till it cried for mercy.

The ten chimes marking sunset and the end of the day floated in through the back door and I chided myself for self-indulgence. “Tell Frue I’ll call back tomorrow,” I caught the serving lad’s arm and slipped him a couple of copper for his trouble. Back at the Swan in the Moon, I found Sorgrad sharing a companionable meal with Usara in the tap room.

“Where’s ’Gren?” I pulled up a stool.

“Giving Kelty some color in her cheeks before the masquerade starts.” Sorgrad poured me a drink. “How did you get on at the races?” I asked Sorgrad.

“Well enough,” he grinned. “None of the tally-touts knew your man here so he was able to play the innocent abroad. We were laying bets at good long odds and taking their coin.” Usara smiled modestly.

“Where did you get the tips? Did you meet someone we know?” There was no way the brothers could know the current word on the local breeders, not when they’d been in Col all winter.

Sorgrad smiled sunnily. “Our good friend here was able to tell us all about the state of the earth beneath the grass when the horses were showing their paces and when they were running. Once we had the measure of that and ’Gren could tell which beasts liked the wet side or the dry, we had an edge to shave the odds off the risk.”

’Gren’s always had this theory he can tell what a horse is thinking, just from its expression. As far as I’m concerned, a face that long, hairy and inflexible can’t have an expression beyond putting its ears back because it’s about to kick you.

I narrowed my eyes at Usara. “The Archmage would approve of that, would he?”

“Planir appreciates I may have to use my talents in somewhat unorthodox ways, to further our researches.” He smiled blandly as he reached for more bread.

That was a different song to the one he’d sung yesterday.

“How did you get on?”

“I’ve found a minstrel who could be able to make some useful introductions,” I let myself sound a little dubious. “How about you?”

Sorgrad shook his head. “Not a trace of a scent. There were a couple of Mountain Men at the cock-pits but they were with Harquas.”

I grimaced as I helped myself to some of Sorgrad’s bread and scooped a piece of the seared fish he was carefully easing away from its bones. “What were you doing at the cockpits?”

“Sandy there said he wanted to take a turn around the guild halls again and told us to go and amuse ourselves.” Sorgrad smiled at Usara but the wizard didn’t rise to the new nickname. There was definitely something awry there.

“Is this Harquas someone significant?” Usara looked at us each in turn.

“He’s one of the biggest villains in this city,” I explained. “Anyone working with him will be as false as a pawnbroker’s welcome, not someone we want to travel with.”

“Order your food at the kitchen door, my girl,” said Sorgrad as he moved his plate out of my reach. “No, this pair looked fresh off their donkeys, all dressed up and sticking out like a cut finger.”