The Three Lands Omnibus (2011 Edition) (88 page)

I could not give him my real title on this trip, nor could I lie to such a question, so I invented a new way to describe myself: "I am Andrew son of Gideon, free-man of the Chara's palace." I touched my heart and forehead in a slow and ceremonious manner.
A long silence spun out. The butcher was blocking the door, and he seemed in no hurry to reply. John said, "Harold." He spoke no further word, but the butcher looked suddenly uneasy.
I turned quickly to John and said, "I think I would rather wait outside, John. It is too beautiful a day to be inside."
The butcher hastily greeted me with his hand. "I am Harold son of Ulric. You are welcome in my home."
I shook my head and walked past John toward the shop window. A boy was standing there, guarding the vintner's cart. He spat on the ground as I came near, and then ignored me as I settled myself on an upended wine barrel, one of several that had already been unloaded next to the shop window. I sat facing the alley but could still watch, out of the corner of my eye, as the men walked into the shop and went to sit at a table in the back. Their voices drifted back at me: the butcher and the vintner exchanging grievances, John occasionally inserting a quiet question. I paid no mind to what they were saying, but instead concentrated my thoughts on the midday sun, feeling its moist warmth as though I were being showered with sultry snowflakes.
After a while, John said, "This is how I judge the matter: that Harold is right in what he asks, except that Nathan should be allowed to have a say over the quality of the lamb."
The butcher gave an appreciative grunt. The vintner sighed and said, "I agreed to abide by your ruling, so I suppose that I must."
"Good," said John in a tone that suggested there had been no question in his mind of anyone going against the bargain he had made. He stood up, went over to the satchel he had laid next to the wall, and pulled out a pen, ink bottle, and piece of paper. "Which language?" he asked.
"Koretian," said the vintner firmly.
"Emorian," countered the butcher with just as much determination. "I am no lover of the language, but if this bargain falls through again, I want a document I can take to the court."
"I hope that it will not come to that," said John, sitting down beside the men. "You know that I cannot appear in the court. But I take it, then, that you will let the court decide the penalties for oath-breaking?"
The butcher nodded. The vintner shrugged and said, "What alternative do we have?"
"Well," said John, dipping the pen in the ink and beginning to write, "you could follow Koretian tradition and burn each other's houses down."
The butcher gave a guffaw. The vintner looked annoyed as he said, "I am prepared to admit that Emorian rule has its benefits, but even the courts are not worth the price we have had to pay for the Chara's tyranny." He glared my way. I kept my eyes carefully fixed on the alley.
John was silent for a minute, his quill scratching on the parchment. Then he laid the pen aside and read, "'Nathan son of Boris and Harold son of Ulric do swear on this day the following oath to the gods: that Nathan shall deliver ten casks of wine and, in exchange thereof, Harold shall give him twenty pounds of Daxion lamb of the quality Nathan shall request. The witnesses for this oath are John the trader and the gods under whose care we are placed. The penalties for the breaking of this oath shall be determined by the city court, and in token of this oath we place our pledge here.' I have signed and dated the document. Do either of you have a blade, or should I use the quill?"
The butcher silently unsheathed his dagger and handed it to John, who pricked his finger with the tip. He then handed the dagger to the vintner, who followed suit and said, "You will poison yourself one of these days from that ink-stained pen. Why don't you carry your own dagger like any other trader?"
The butcher took the dagger from the vintner, pricked his fingertip, and grumbled, "If you carried a free-man's weapon, you could at least appear in the court if this bargain falls through."
"You can take that for your answer, then," said John. "I would not care to appear as a witness in an Emorian court. Nathan?" He pushed the document over to the vintner.
The vintner touched his bloodstained finger to the paper and said, "In the Jackal's name."
The butcher did the same and said, "In the Moon's name."
John took the document back, pressed his finger down, and said, "I swear this vow of witness in the name of the Unknowable God. —Now I must be on my way. You know my fee already, Nathan; you can send the wine to my house."
A minute later he joined me outside, and we made our way through the alley once more. "I apologize for being so long," said John.
"I found it interesting. It's been years since I've seen a trade take place."
"Most of my trades aren't done in that manner, of course; I generally negotiate on behalf of one of the parties. But every now and then I must act as judge over a word-bound oath that's disputed."
"Are the oaths usually phrased in that manner?"
"These days they are. They need to conform with Emorian law so that the documents can be admitted as court evidence. But I believe that the old Koretian oaths weren't much different. It's surprising how much our lands have in common. —Here we are." He pointed, and I saw that we were at the tavern. As we passed through its door I caught a glimpse of its sign, whose image seemed oddly familiar: a rose growing out of a fire.
We could scarcely make our way through the crowd inside. The room was drowned with smoke from the hearth fires heating the food. Amidst the smoke, dozens of bodies were jammed together: traders dressed in dark tunics and holding their cups with ink-stained fingers, housewives taking a break from their work and holding squalling babies, market-sellers rushing in to buy a drink and keeping a nervous gaze through the window at their lightly-guarded stalls, and many more. The tavern guests stood close to each other with fellowship and also with the usual Koretian stubbornness against accommodating others. Yet as I entered the room, the crowd, seemingly without taking any notice of me, parted so that they would not have to touch me.
I looked over to the other side of the room and discovered I was not alone in my isolation. Fully half the tavern was taken up with soldiers sitting in neatly ordered groups and ignoring the Koretians with as much concentration as the Koretians were ignoring them. I saw a few of the Emorians eye me curiously, but none of them showed any signs of wishing to speak to me. Perhaps my face was too Koretian for that.
John led us through to the back of the tavern, heading for a door there. He reached the door at the same moment as a serving woman who was holding a tray full of mugs and a pitcher.
"John!" she cried with delight. "Where have you been hiding yourself for the last few days?"
"I've been at the priests' house, Mai." John spoke in a low voice I could barely hear above the chatter around us.
Mai cocked her head at him. "And did your god speak to you?" she asked with such mockery that I wondered whether she was insulting John.
John answered her seriously, however. "Only with commands, not with the answers I was seeking. Are you taking that tray to the others?"
"This is their
second
tray – the ale is flowing there as fast as the gossip. And as for gossip, a few rumors have been spreading here at the tavern."
John smiled. "I'll be glad to relieve you later of the burden of keeping all of those rumors locked in your mouth. In the meantime, let me relieve you of this." He reached out and took the tray.
"Are you trying to steal my job again, John? You should let one of the other men play the role of servant for once."
"I am free-servant to the others – I do this of my own free will. In any case, you appear to be busy this afternoon."
Mai cast her eye back at the crowd. "As busy as we have ever been. We've run out of room for all the soldiers here."
"Ah." John shifted the tray in his hands and caught hold of a mug that had been about to slide off. "The governor has sent more divisions to the city?"
"He has sent back the division from Valouse, at any rate. Nothing is left there to guard." Her gaze slid over to me.
"This is my blood brother Andrew," said John. He did not look at me as he spoke. His eyes were on the soldiers, as though he were memorizing their faces.
Mai smiled at me and gave me the free-man's greeting. "You are very welcome here, Andrew. I heard Brendon telling the others about you; he said that you had known John when you two were boys. Has John changed much since then?"
"Not much," I said. "Except that, when we were young, he let me order him around more."
Mai laughed. "That hasn't changed, has it, John the free-servant? Let me know if you have need of anything more. It looks to me as though that soldier over there is about to pick a fight with one of our customers. I had better go prevent the city riots from beginning at this tavern."
Mai left, and I lifted the latch to the door in front of us so that John could walk through. We entered a dark passage that immediately veered off to the left. John turned the corner and then stopped suddenly. "I forgot to ask – do you prefer ale or wine?"
"I've found myself drawn to wild-berry wine since my return, but I'll drink whatever is in that pitcher."
"It's ale, but I know where Mai keeps the wine. Guard this; I'll return in a minute." He placed the tray on a small table in the passage, and then disappeared back into the main room of the tavern.
The passage was musty with the scent of dust and wood. It was as dim as the corridor at the Chara's palace, lit only by a small window facing south. I went over and rested my arms on the windowsill, listening with half an ear to the muffled sound of voices that were raised and then subsided. Mai had evidently been able to prevent the fight.
Idly, I gazed out on the open square behind the tavern. I had never seen it before, of course; the houses surrounding it had all been built since the fire. Looming over it was Capital Mountain. I thought I could see, well hidden by summer foliage, a bit of red stone that might have been the gods' house. Then my gaze drifted down the mountainside: to the priests' house, to the trees that hid the cave, to the city wall at the other end of the square, and, finally, to the charred remains of a tree trunk standing in front of the wall.
I do not know at what moment I realized where I was. But after a time I found that I was frozen, reliving in my mind an earlier square, with flames surrounding it on all but one side. The flames touched my mind and burnt at it with the fire of remembered death and lost hopes. Within a short while, I could not bear the images brought forth, so I stared instead at the blackened tree marking the tunnel. John and I might have escaped through that tunnel – we might have helped my mother escape through it – if only the god had placed us under his care that day.
The dark hole of escape grew in my mind as though it were something greater than a simple tunnel. Soon the flames were gone, the tavern was gone, and all that I could see was blackness.
"I've sometimes wondered whether what happened that day was my fault."
The voice drifted to me through the blackness. I was already vaguely aware that I had been standing in the dark for some time, unwilling to return from it to the pain of my memories. But the sound of John's self-judgment jolted me back to the tavern, and I found myself still standing by the window, my head cradled in my arms.
I raised my head and looked at John. He was gazing unwaveringly at the scene before us, but his fists were clenched tightly against some enemy. As he saw me look his way, he let his hands grow loose and said, "I don't think the soldier had any immediate plans to harm you. If I'd talked to him rather than trying to kill him, I might have been able to persuade him to let you go."
"John," I said firmly, "there is a time for talking and a time for fighting, and that was the time to fight. You're in no way to blame for what happened."
"Blood must sometimes be shed, I know," said John, "but talking is more likely to bring peace." He turned abruptly and picked up the tray. I followed him to a door at the end of the passage and walked beyond it into the next room.
The sounds from the main room of the tavern subsided to a whisper as the door closed behind us. The only sound which greeted us here was that of Brendon, who was speaking, with long pauses between his sentences, to five men seated at a table. They made no move as we entered the room, but one of them looked at John, a couple gave the free-man's greeting, and the rest nodded their welcome. Then their attention was focussed back on Brendon, who was rubbing his bloodstained bandage as he spoke.
John ushered me into the one of the two remaining chairs at the table, poured me a mug of wine, and began refilling the other men's mugs with ale. Brendon paused again in his narrative, this time with a small gasp of pain. John glanced toward him before continuing to make his way around the table.
"You aren't badly hurt, I hope?" said a man sitting next to Brendon; he was wearing the dark clothes of a trader.
Brendon gestured toward John. "John says I'm not, so you may be sure that I'll heal. I'd have been glad to have my arm cut off if I could have accomplished my goal, which was to save a man who had just been stabbed by a soldier and who was too badly hurt to move. But by the time I'd killed the soldier, it was too late: the flames had reached the man."
John finished pouring the ale for the others and went over to the window opposite me, where he placed the tray. He took up the remaining mug and poured himself some wine, and then stood with his back to the window, watching the others. The man who had spoken before said, "So then you escaped?"
"Then, as you say, I escaped, and was joined by a lucky few on the road. Soldiers were posted at the town gates, killing the townsmen who tried to leave, but I managed to slip past them."
"They showed no mercy." A man sitting near the window slammed his mug down onto the table. "It's no more than we might have expected. These Emorians have hearts of stone."
John did not look my way, but he said quietly from his place of isolation, "What Brendon has told me of Valouse reminds me of a village I visited several years ago. I spoke to a woman who lived there – she was in fact the only person who lived there, for the village had been burnt to the ground by soldiers, just as Valouse was. I think she continued to live there out of sheer hatred of the men who had destroyed the place. She said she had been visiting the city at the time the soldiers came, or else she would have been killed with the other villagers. Just as in Valouse, the soldiers took no prisoners."