Mistress of the Catacombs (43 page)

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Cashel set one end of his staff down, not banging it but letting the ferrule rap loudly enough to call attention to him and Tilphosa. The floor was of puncheons, logs halved and set edge to edge instead of being fully squared. The design saved labor and drained better than proper carpentry; in this wet land, the latter virtue might be important. There were rushes on the floor, but they should've been replaced weeks ago.

"We'd like food and a room," Cashel said as the eyes of the handful of men in the common room turned toward them. There was a small fire on the hearth and a billet of lightwood stuck up on a firedog for the only illumination.

"Food and a bed, you can have," said the woman behind the bar to the left. Cashel hadn't noticed her in the dimness as he entered. "If you can pay for it. Three Reeds for a bed for the two of you. A Reed apiece for porridge, and another Reed if you want it soaked in fish broth."

"How much for a separate room, mistress?" Tilphosa said, her tone that of one demanding rather than begging. Her chin lifted slightly.

The landlady was a largish woman who took care of her looks even though she must be forty years old. She reminded Cashel of Sharina's mother, Lora; though Lora was small and pretended to be 'a lady', while this woman was of a much earthier disposition. Instead of an ordinary tunic she wore a sleeved doublet with vertical stripes and the neckline scooped deeply onto her ample bosom.

"I don't have a separate room for anybody but myself, missie," she said, eyeing Tilphosa with disdain. "If you've got a problem with that, you can go back out in the street."

"He looks like a good prospect, Leemay," said one of the men sitting in the fireplace nook with a masar of beer. "Maybe you could find him private room, hey?"

Leemay lifted the gate in the bar and came out into the common room. She wore baggy linen trousers, gathered above the ankles; her feet and those of the men in the room were bare.

"You've got money?" she asked Cashel, no longer hostile. She walked to the hearth where an iron pot hung on a spider.

"Yes," Tilphosa said. She touched Cashel's wrist to silence him. "We've got silver, I mean, and I suppose copper pieces too. It's not stamped with reeds or whatever, though."

Leemay paused, then bent to swing the kettle out to where she could dip from it. She straightened and took one of the wooden bowls hanging from the mantel by riveted leather straps.

"You've got silver?" she said, speaking again to Cashel. "You don't look it, if you don't mind my saying."

"We've been shipwrecked," Cashel said. He moved his staff so that it stood vertically before him; the butt rapped the puncheons again, this time a little harder.

Leemay dipped porridge into the bowl, set it on the mantel, and took down a second. "You needn't worry about being robbed here," she said as she filled it also. "And if you didn't have money, well, I've been known to help a likely young man who's down on his luck."

"With the broth," Tilphosa said sharply. "And as I told you, we have money."

The two men at the end of the bar were laughing and nudging one another. Cashel looked at them, just curious. They calmed down immediately, but they still giggled into the cups they quickly lifted to their mouths.

Leemay set the second bowl on the mantel, thrust horn spoons into both, and reached past the seated local to take a pewter cruet from the warming niche in the hearth. She poured a thin fluid into the first bowl and a more generous portion onto the second. After replacing the cruet, she held the first out to Tilphosa and said, "Come get it, girl—or are you crippled?"

Cashel reached for the bowl. Leemay shifted so that her soft hip bumped him back. Her eyes held Tilphosa's. Tilphosa sniffed and took the bowl.

When the landlady took the second bowl from the mantel, Cashel reached out again. Leemay touched his extended hand with her free one and said, "Come over to the bar and eat. You'll want ale, won't you?"

She walked across the room, leading Cashel. He shook his hand loose.

"Yes, we'll want ale," Tilphosa said, raising her voice more than the quiet of the inn required. The men at the bar were chuckling among themselves again.

Leemay walked to the other side of the bar but didn't bother to lower the gate again. She set the porridge down and started to draw beer from a tun under the counter.

"Hey Leemay?" called one of the men warming at the hearth. "You going to do your tricks tonight?"

"I might," said the woman. She eyed Cashel speculatively and smiled. "I just might."

She set full masars in front of Cashel and Tilphosa, then paused and deliberately spilled a little of Cashel's ale on the bar between them. "Eh?" he said.

"I'll show you," Leemay said, still smiling. "Later."

To have an excuse for looking away, Cashel lifted his mug and drank quickly. The beer was all right, though it had an oily aftertaste that'd take some getting used to. He was thirsty, though—thirstier than he was hungry, he found—and he drained it quickly.

Tilphosa opened her sash and took a crescent-shaped silver piece from the purse she carried in its folds. "For our food and lodging," she said crisply. "You'll need to weigh it, I suppose?"

Leemay reached down between her breasts. Grinning, she brought out a wash-leather purse which she opened one-handed.

"'Atta girl, Leemay!" cried one of the local men.

She set a thin silver coin stamped with a ship's prow on the bar beside Tilphosa's Crescent. She balanced one in either hand, then slipped both into her purse.

"I guess it'll run about the same as a Boat," she said to Cashel. "That's fourteen Reeds to a Boat."

From a cash box under the bar she produced darkened copper coins and put them on the bar where Cashel's left hand had been resting, one for each finger. "There's your change," she said.

She took his masar and refilled it without being asked. "This is on the house," she said. She nodded toward the pool of beer on the smooth, dark wood. "For what I shorted you."

"Just make sure you don't short her tonight, boy!" called the man in the chimney corner.

"Shut up, Halve!" Leemay said, forcefully though without real anger. She nodded toward Cashel's porridge and went on, "Eat up, boy. You look peaked."

"Aye, and Leemay wouldn't want that," someone said. Cashel grimaced and took a spoonful of the porridge.

It was a thick mixture of peas and a grain which Cashel hadn't eaten before. The broth was pungent, but it merely added to the bowl's flavors instead of over-riding them.

He scooped and chewed steadily, keeping his eyes on his food. Leemay drew beer for others and dished up porridge for the man in the chimney corner, but she kept coming back to the bar across from Cashel.

"Show him, Leemay," said one of the men at the bar. "She's a wizard, boy, and I do mean that."

Tilphosa had been dipping with the corner of her broad spoon instead of taking full gulps as Cashel did, so she'd made only a start on her porridge while he was finishing. Now she leaned back to look at the speaker.

"Oh, don't worry, girlie," he said. "What's a slice off a cut loaf, hey?"

"Here, I'll work with this," Leemay said. Before Cashel could respond, she'd reached up and plucked out a single long hair from where he parted it in the center. She set it on the bar and pinched out one of her own, then twisted the two together. The landlady's hair was black, thick and straight as a spearshaft; Cashel's brunet strand looked thin and light beside it.

"What's your name, lad?" she asked. She set the porridge bowl to the side and began tracing a design about the twined hairs, painting the wood with lines of spilled beer.

"We don't have to tell you our names!" Tilphosa said, clutching her crystal amulet in her left hand.

"My name's Cashel or-Kenset," he said. The landlady'd been free with her own name and besides, he didn't care what she knew or didn't about him. "Ah, Mistress Leemay, I know it's early for you, but we've had a hard few days and we'd like to get some sleep. Is there a place my friend and I could bed down now?"

"I may decide to close up early tonight," Leemay said, concentrating on the symbols she'd just drawn. "Wait a bit and we'll see."

She reached under the bar and brought up what Cashel first thought was a stalk of grass, then a splinter of cowhorn... and then decided he didn't know. It was no longer than his outstretched hand, slender and grayish green.

Leemay began chanting under her breath. Using the splinter as a wand, she worked her way around the symbols surrounding the entwined hairs. Cashel couldn't hear her words any more than he could see what she'd drawn.

He didn't think anybody could see them, Leemay included. The only light was from the hearth across the room, and the ale had slid back into pools following the wood's natural valleys. The important thing was that she had drawn them.

Cashel held his staff upright in his right hand, glad of its feel. He tried not to squeeze the hickory till his knuckles stood out white.

The stool in the chimney corner creaked; the local men were moving to where they could watch also. None of them spoke.

Flecks of wizardlight, both red and the blue that made eyes tingle, appeared above the bar. The snapped alive so suddenly that Cashel's mind supplied a crackle to the sparks' silence. Paling, they swelled into interlinked figures the size of a child's straw poppet.

"Hey, good job, Leemay!" a local said.

Cashel felt hot. The images were so sharply detailed that he didn't have any difficulty in recognizing his face on the blue figure and Leemay as the red one. There wasn't any doubt about what the images were doing, either.

Tilphosa threw the rest of her beer in Leemay's face. The landlady jerked backward and the illusion vanished.

Tilphosa picked up the twined hairs, wet with ale, and stuffed them into her purse. "Your exhibition insulted me!" she said in a ringing voice.

Leemay stared at her silently. It'd been a long time since Cashel saw the face of anybody so mad.

"We'll be going now," he said. "We won't trouble you further."

Putting his arm around Tilphosa so he knew where she was, he started backing toward the door. The locals who'd watched the funeral were gone, so worst case Cashel was going to throw the girl out into the street while he and his quarterstaff took care of business in the common room.

None of the men looked like they wanted a problem, though. Three of them crouched, their hands ready to turn the tables over as shields if anything started happening. The two fellows at the bar had backed to the wall, from which they watched Cashel with the expression of rabbits trapped by a fox.

The landlady put down her wand. "My mistake!" she said. "The lady was right to show me that I'd made a mistake. Go if you want—"

She pointed to the door. One panel was closed again; that was going to be a problem for haste.

"—but the nights are dark here in Soong. I'll give you my room."

Nobody spoke. Leemay shrugged, then smiled. "To make up for what happened a moment ago. Shall we be friends?"

We've already paid, Cashel thought. He knew it didn't matter any more, but three coppers was more than he'd earned most weeks when he was a boy.

"Cashel?" Tilphosa said in a small voice. He glanced at her. She looked white and her cheeks were hollow. "Can we stay? I'm really...."

She was almost dead on her feet, was what she was trying to say. It'd been a long day even for Cashel, and he was used to them as Tilphosa was not. Her burns and the hike and now this, the sort of fuss that swallows up all the energy you've got even if it doesn't come to blows at the end after all...

"Sure," Cashel murmured. To the landlady he went on, "We'll take your offer, mistress. I, I'm sorry about the mess."

Not that a little splashed beer was going to change this place a lot, but it was polite to say something. Cashel always tried to be polite, especially when it looked like he might be knocking heads in the next instant. That way spectators didn't feel they maybe ought to pile in on the other fellows' side.

Leemay took the stick of lightwood from the firedog, then went back behind the bar. "It's this way," she said to Cashel.

"Hey, don't leave us in the dark," one of the men complained.

"Light another billet, then!" snapped Leemay. She unlatched the door in the end wall. Cashel motioned Tilphosa ahead of him—his body would shadow her if he was in front—and they followed along after the landlady.

Beyond the door was a storage room. Tuns of beer stood along one wall, and lesser items in crates and storage jars were stacked on the other. The aisle between was a tight squeeze for Cashel. He frowned, then realized that Soong was so lowlying that the buildings couldn't have cellars the way Reise's inn did back in Barca's Hamlet.

Leemay opened the door at the far end, then lit the candle in a wall bracket just inside. She gestured Tilphosa through, saying, "There you go, missie. If it suits your ladyship's tastes, I mean."

Tilphosa glanced up at the landlady's renewed hostility, but she didn't rise to the bait. Tilphosa'd seen men killed now, and she was smart enough to understand that she might've seen more die because she'd flown hot at Leemay.