The Western Wizard (56 page)

His condescending tone coupled with the obscene gesture aroused anger. Anticipating trouble ever since leaving her companions, Mitrian instinctively placed a hand on her own hilt. Then, recognizing the danger of such an action, she forced her grip lax and smiled dryly. “It’s not.” She hurried off, not wishing to antagonize guards.
Their response told her what sort of women frequented this tavern, and she did not relish the need to deal with strange men’s solicitations. Still, she dared not waste time seeking another tavern when she had found one so close.
No need to upset Garn, Rache, or Colbey. If they come looking for me, we won’t escape without a heated battle.

As she trotted past the cooper’s shop, Mitrian found the next building dilapidated, its paint peeling and its door splashed with mud. She paused, wondering whether the guards had steered her in the wrong direction for the fun of harassing a foreigner. She might have believed the shop abandoned if not for a sign swinging from a single nail above the doorway. Dirty and weathered to jagged planks, the sign held lettering that had faded beyond Mitrian’s ability to read it; yet its vaulted shape had become symbolic of bar signs throughout the Westlands.

As Mitrian stood staring and considering, the door swung open. Two men stumbled out and onto the street, laughing, their clothing stained and reeking of ale. Seizing the opportunity, Mitrian peered inside. She caught a quick glimpse of crowds, all men, huddled around tables. Candles reflected from polished glass and pewter. No fire lay in the grate; summer heat and hordes of patrons warmed the room well enough. Painted walls of pale blue and white made a cheerful contrast to the unkempt exterior. Mitrian wondered if the look had been created intentionally. The earthy, corroded exterior made the interior seem so much more inviting. The door banged shut, leaving her once again in the darkening street.

Emboldened by her glance, Mitrian pushed the door ajar and slipped inside. She noticed details that her flash of a view had not revealed. Shelves filled one wall, lined with bottles, bowls, and flasks. A doorway had been cut into the center of the shelving. By the chime of pots, she guessed that it led into the kitchen. Before it, two men poured mead from flasks to bowls and mugs, and half a dozen long-legged barmaids carried the drinks to tables.

Those men nearest the door fell silent. From the corners of her vision, Mitrian saw them exchange nudges and whispered comments she could not hear. Ignoring them, she crossed the floor quickly. She tried to look nonchalant, but managed only a self-conscious shuffle
across the barroom, where she took a seat at the nearest empty table.

Once settled, Mitrian scanned the patrons. Most were Westerners, dark-haired, muddy-eyed natives in ragged farm dress. Many carried weapons, to her surprise. A few even wore armor of leather, without the studs that her father’s officers had worn on duty. Most of the others sported the simple homespun of men who preferred work to war. She saw only one other female patron. A scantily-clad, aging woman wandered from table to table. Her clothes sagged around her thin frame. Surely, she had once made her living seducing men in the tavern, but time had stolen her beauty.

The men seemed far more interested in the drink-touting beauties. Repeatedly, Mitrian watched the girls smile tolerantly at leers, pinches, and propositions. As she studied the crowd, one of the barmaids approached. “Would the lady have something to eat and drink?”

Mitrian tore her gaze from the others reluctantly, not yet satisfied with her inspection. She looked up into a face nearly a decade younger than her own twenty-nine years. The barmaid wore a haughty smirk that suggested she guessed Mitrian’s profession was the same as the other female patron. Though she carried no money, Mitrian’s hunger bested her common sense. Recalling the sheep and pigs that she had passed, she ordered accordingly. “Mutton and wine, please.”

“At once, lady.” The barmaid scurried toward the bar.

Not yet ready to contemplate payment, Mitrian examined the crowd more thoroughly. At the next table, four men spoke the Western tongue in loud tones interspersed with laughter. Beyond them, a press of working men carried on a heated discussion. Mitrian could not understand their words, but they waved their arms wildly as they made their points. Then her gaze riveted on a table of wanderers she had not previously noticed, and the workers were forgotten. In the far corner of the room, three Northmen sat drinking beer.

Mitrian clasped the edge of the table, keeping her face in shadow and cursing the male domination that would make her a center of attention. The Northmen looked conspicuous with their braided yellow hair and savage
faces. She wondered why she had not noticed them before, attributing it to their stillness and choice of position. A sword girded each waist, and a pair of long bows leaned against the table. Two of the Northmen sported travel-darkened leather. The third wore a corselet of iron rings. A beaked nose jutted from an otherwise ruggedly handsome face. He was clean-shaven where the others were bearded, and golden clips in the shape of lightning bolts adorned the bands that wound through his braids. Mitrian had seen Valr Kirin only once before, from a distance, but his description had lodged in her memory.

Mitrian’s hands fell into her lap as she considered the futility of her predicament. At the time, standing in a secluded forest with the people she loved and the protection of the best swordsman in existence, the decision had made sense to her. She had wanted to be alone for a time, to escape the lead weight of grief that seemed interminable. As much as she had cared for Episte, she found her thoughts straying protectively to Rache. Occasionally, joy had spiked through her pain, inspired by the relief that she had not lost her own son, and this emotion made her feel ugly and evil. She knew it was wrong to place her own bloodline before the orphaned child the gods had so graciously handed to her. And she also knew that, before the Renshai became fully settled, she would almost certainly lose Colbey and possibly others that she loved as well.

The concept shivered through Mitrian. She considered herself wholly Renshai, yet she still clung to some of the moralities and concepts with which Santagithi and her mother had raised her. As many times as she told herself that she could accept the deaths of Colbey, Garn, and Rache, so long as they went down in glorious combat, the reality of the agony she felt for Episte made her question her emotional strength. Though Colbey had given no details, the means of the teen’s death did allow her to mourn. But Mitrian had come to realize that far more than the method of Episte’s slaying upset her. She missed Episte. She could scarcely imagine life without the natural skill that she had coveted, without the careless grace that had reminded her so much of the boy’s father, and without the soft-spoken gentleness, the sensitivity that
flared to sullen, bitter rages. She could not help wondering whether her lapse made her a poor excuse for a Renshai. She wished she could be as strong as Colbey.
It might be worth his stony coldness not to hurt so much.

Recognizing that her thoughts had shifted to the matters she had come to escape, Mitrian forced her mind to a more urgent dilemma.
I’m in a tavern with Northmen, including Valr Kirin. We desperately need supplies, but I can’t even pay for the meal I ordered for myself.

Enmeshed in these concerns, her attention riveted on the Northmen, Mitrian did not notice the man who came up beside her until he spoke in the Western trading tongue. “Hellooo,” he slurred.

Startled, Mitrian looked at the speaker, a stout, middle-aged Westerner with a crooked smile. The stench of ale on his breath made her cringe. She made a wordless sound of repugnance, then added, “Go away.”

The man stumbled backward. His smile faded. “Hozzz-tile wench.” He tottered several steps further, stepping on his own feet as he moved and catching his balance with a hand on the back of a chair.

“Yes. Now go away.” Mitrian sighed, glad that the incident seemed so swiftly finished.

A neatly dressed man at the table beside Mitrian jumped to his feet, his short sword hissing from its sheath.

Mitrian recoiled, her own hand falling to her hilt. She did not draw.

The armed man flicked the tip of his blade to the drunkard’s throat, though the other held no weapon and was obviously too intoxicated to defend himself. The drunkard made a garbled noise of defense.

“How dare you insult a lady.” The well-dressed man maintained an air of dignity, but Mitrian guessed that his intentions were no more honorable and far less amusing. He tossed his next line to her. “I’ll take care of this wretch, ma’am.”

The man’s antics infuriated Mitrian. She had tried so hard to remain inconspicuous despite her sex, and this stranger professing to defend her honor had destroyed any remaining shred of privacy. Uncertainty exploded to outrage. She sprang to her feet. At this point, she wanted
to be left alone. With every eye in the tavern already on her, it no longer mattered how large a scene she created to achieve that goal. “I can defend my own damned honor!” Her sword whipped from its sheath. Using a basic Renshai disarming maneuver, she wrested the sword from his hand, catching the hilt before it struck the floor.

The drunkard made a hasty retreat that sent him sprawling over a chair. The well-dressed man recoiled in stunned surprise, studying his hand for the damage most disarming maneuvers would have inflicted.

Mitrian sheathed her sword and took her seat in a single motion. She had caught the man’s sword out of habit, not from any specific respect. To remedy the lapse that had grown from years of training Renshai, she dropped the other’s sword to the floor deliberately. It struck with a clanging thump. With the ball of her sandal, she kicked the weapon back to its owner, turning her back to him to augment her disdain. She suspected that all of the conventional warrior insults were lost on this man, who had probably seen little, if any, combat. Still, they made Mitrian feel better, and her movement did give her a nonchalant position from which to view the Northmen while showing them only a partial profile. She watched the three resume their meal and conversation, like the remainder of the men in the tavern. They had paid her no more heed than the others, yet that was too much for Mitrian. Silently, she cursed her misfortune, knowing that she could only partially blame the drunk solicitor and her false protector. She had not handled the situation as well as she should have.

Gradually, the conversations in the tavern of Porvada returned to normal. The drunkard found his way into the street. The well-dressed man retook his seat amid the laughter of his companions. The bouncers finished glaring and returned to their posts. Apparently, they drew their line of interference at or near bloodshed. Of that Mitrian was glad, and the Northmen’s huddled composure lulled her further.
I was lucky.
She considered the other possible outcomes.
The drunkard could have gotten injured. The other man might have felt a need to fight back. Worse, the Northmen could have recognized me.
Now, Mitrian felt better about her strategy. Clearly, her
quick and competent action had rescued the drinker, cooled the other’s ardor, and handled the matter with minimal time and attention.

The barmaid arrived with Mitrian’s dinner, a hearty portion of mutton graced with bread and a glass of wine. The sight of food reawakened hunger. She shoveled meat to her mouth without a pretense of delicacy, hoping her method would discourage amorous patrons as well as satisfying hunger. Occasionally, she tossed a glance at the Northmen. As the crowd changed and grew, Valr Kirin and his men remained for a third round of drinks. Soon, the shifting of Westerners around Mitrian grew familiar, and she paid them no heed. She turned her mind to the gathering of supplies and payment. For now, the best plan she could muster involved remaining until closing, then volunteering to clean in exchange for rations. She did not know how much more than her own meal this would buy, but she hoped the proprietor would have leftovers that would not keep until the following day.

Though deep in consideration, this time Mitrian did not miss the subtle change in the pattern of moving patrons. One man had paused overlong at her right hand.

Mitrian stiffened, trying to gather words to urge him away before annoyance goaded her to violence again. She opened her mouth to speak, prepared to modulate her voice to make her position dangerously clear.

But he spoke first, his voice nearly a whisper. “Good evening, dear friend.” The accent was Western, the voice unfamiliar, and the phrase fluent Renshai.

Mitrian’s blood seemed to ice over in her veins. Her hand tightened on her fork, but she gave no other outward sign of the riot erupting within her. Struggling for a look of confusion, she raised her head to the speaker. “Excuse me?” She used the Western trading tongue and her best rendition of the local dialect.

The man met her gaze with eyes so pale they looked like the foam through which Mitrian had once glimpsed the faint blue glimmer of the sea. His face was the color of a sun-bleached skull, and his flaxen hair hung in neat braids. She estimated him as a few years older than Episte’s chronological age. A sparse beard grew in tufts from his chin. “My name is Tannin,” he said, still in
Renshai. “We can’t talk here. There’re Northmen looking for you and the Golden Prince of Demons.”

Mitrian wrestled uncertainty. She knew, with no means nor reason to doubt, that only Colbey and Episte’s father had survived the Northmen’s attack against Devil’s Island. Yet she could not guess how a Northman could have learned so many words of the Renshai tongue. Mitrian drew breath carefully, aware her hesitation would condemn her as much as a direct response to his words. Logic told her this man could not be Renshai, nor a friend. “I don’t understand . . .” she started and stopped. Pulling a rag from her pocket, she casually wrapped the food remaining on her plate. Despite her hunger, she had left a large piece of mutton and all of the bread. It would not feed every one of her companions, but it would prove better than nothing at all.

Only after Mitrian pocketed the food did she bother to meet the stranger’s gaze again. Memory stabbed at her. She recalled catching snatches of Colbey’s prayers to Sif on the night that he returned from his search for Episte. She remembered the anguish in his voice, the familiar, pained entreaties of a pious man forced to question as well as revere. Though Mitrian had heard the elder’s words through the beckoning fog of approaching sleep, his final line returned to her now: “Mistress Sif, if my people earned your wrath, if it is your will to see the end of the true Renshai line . . .” Mitrian cringed at the memory of the agony that had filled his voice, so unlike Colbey’s usual impassive fierceness that she wondered if she had dreamed it. “. . . then your will be done.”