Between Worlds: the Collected Ile-Rien and Cineth Stories (2 page)

Kade took a seat on the edge of the big square well to
watch Giles approach the locals. The men seated at the long plank table eyed
him with suspicion as the balladeer started to open the leather case he
carried. The suspicion faded into keen interest as Giles took out the viola d’amore.

Traveling musicians were usually welcomed gladly and
balladeers who could bring news of other towns and villages even more so. Within
moments they would be fighting to tell him their only news -- the grim story of
the potter’s death, or at least what little they knew of it. Kade stirred the
mud near the well with her big toe. She was disgusted, mostly with herself. She
knew why the potter had been killed well enough -- to attract her attention.

In the old faith, the villages honored the fay in the
hopes that the erratic and easily angered creatures would leave them alone. Riversee
was dedicated to Moire, Kade’s mother, and Kade could only see the death of the
village’s sacred potter as a direct challenge. A few years ago it might have
pleased her, this invitation to battle, but now it only threatened to make her
bored. She wasn’t sure what had changed; perhaps she was growing tired of games
altogether.

* * *

That night, seated atop one of the rough tables in the
inn’s common room, Giles picked out an instrumental treatment of a popular
ballad, and watched Kade. She sat near the large cooking hearth in the center
of the room, regarding the crowd with an amused eye as she tapped one bare foot
to the music.

The inn was crowded with a mix of locals and travelers
from the nearby post road. Both the magistrate and the elderly parish priest
were in attendance; the first to count the number of wine jugs emptied for the
Vine-growers’ Excise and the second to discourage the patrons from emptying the
jugs at all. Smoke from clay pipes and tallow candles and the heat of the fire
made the room close and muggy. The din of talk and shouted comments almost
drowned the clear tone of the viola, but whenever Giles stopped playing enraged
listeners hurled crockery at him.

If Giles hadn’t known better he would’ve thought the
dim flickering light kind to the rather plain woman who called herself the old
potter’s daughter. But when firelight glittered off a wisp of pale hair as she
leaned forward to catch some farmer’s joke, he saw something else instead.
The
daughter of the spirit dame of air and darkness, and a brute of a king
,
Giles thought, and added a restless undercurrent to the plaintive ballad. Smiling
at his folly, he bent his head over the viola.

Over the noisy babble and the music there were voices
in the entryway. Two men with a party of servants entered the common room. One
was blond and slight, with sharp handsome features and a downy beard. His
manner was offhand and easy as he said something with a laugh to one of the
servants behind him. His companion could not have been a greater contrast if
nature had deliberately intended it. He was tall, muscled like a bull, with
dark greasy hair and rough features. Both men were well turned out, though not
in the latest city style, and Giles labeled them as hedge gentry.

He also had a good eye for his audience, and saw
tension infect the room like a plague in the newcomers’ wake. There was
muttering and an uneasy shifting among the local people, though the travelers
seemed oblivious to it. In Giles’ experience the nobility of this province were
little better than gentlemen farmers and usually got on quite well with their
villages and tenants, except for the usual squabbles over dovecotes and rights
to the mill. Obviously the relationship in Riversee was somewhat strained.

Seated at the table Giles was using as a stage were
the grizzled knife-grinder who worked in the innyard, a toothless grandmother
that might have been a hundred years old, and a farmer in the village to sell
pigs. Giles nodded toward the new arrivals and asked softly, “And who is that?”

The knife-grinder snorted into his tankard. “The big
one is Hugh Warrender, the land owner. Some distant kin of the Duke of Marais.”

“Fifth cousin, twice removed,” the piping voice of the
old woman added.

The farmer said, “Fifth cousin...? Quiet, you daft
old--”

“The boy is Fortune Devereux,” the knife-grinder
continued, oblivious to his companions’ comments. “He’s Warrender’s brother
from the wrong side of the bed, come up from Marleyton.”

“From Banesford,” the old woman put in, almost
shouting over the farmer’s attempts to keep her quiet.

“He first came here two years ago.” The grinder
shrugged. “Warrender’s not well thought of, but Devereux’s not so bad.”

“Wrong!” The old woman glanced suspiciously around the
room and lowered her voice to a shriek. “He’s worse, far worse!”

* * *

Kade watched as a table was cleared for Warrender and
his men near her seat beside the hearth, a process which involved a good deal
of shouting, jostling, and imprecations. As the group argued with the landlord,
her eyes fell on the blond Devereux. He was an attractive man, but she wasn’t
sure that was what had drawn her eye. There was something else about him,
something in his eyes, the way he moved his hands as he made a placating gesture
to the ruffled landlord. Whatever the something was, it made the back of her
neck prickle in warning. She was so occupied by it that she was caught
completely unawares when Warrender turned with a growl and backhanded a grubby
potboy into the fire.

No time for thought or spell, her stool clattered as
Kade launched herself forward. She landed hard on her knees, catching the boy
around the waist before he stumbled into the flames.

Thwarted, Warrender snarled and lifted a hand to
strike both of them. Kade knelt in the ashes, the fearful boy clutching a
double handful of her hair. “Yes, it would hurt me,” she said quietly to the
madness in Warrender’s face. “But it would also make me very, very angry.”

Something in her face froze Warrender. He stared at her,
breathing hard, but didn’t drop his arm. The moment dragged on.

Then Fortune Devereux stepped forward, catching his
brother by the shoulder. Past Warrender’s bulky form, Kade met the younger man’s
gaze. Though his expression was sober, his eyes danced with laughter.
Yes,
she thought, her grip on the boy unconsciously tightening,
Oh yes. And now I
know
.

The tension held as Warrender hesitated, like a
confused and angry bull, then he laughed abruptly and let Devereux lead him
away.

Kade felt the potboy shiver in relief and released
him. He scrambled up and darted away through the crowd. She was aware that
across the room Giles was on his feet, that an older man had him by the wrist,
trying to pry a heavy wooden stool out of his hand. As Warrender and the others
moved away, Giles forced himself to relax and let the man take the makeshift
club. He retrieved the viola from the table where he had dropped it and sat
down heavily on the bench. She saw his hands were shaking as he rubbed at an
imperfection on the instrument’s smooth surface.

As the rest of his party took their seats, Devereux
strolled over to the balladeer’s table. He spoke, smiling, and tipped his hat. Giles
looked up at him warily, gave him a grudging nod.

Kade looked away, to keep from betraying any
uneasiness. Devereux had marked Giles’ reaction, had seen him ready to leap to
her defense.
That,
she thought,
cannot mean anything good.

* * *

“What did he say to you?” Kade’s voice floated down
from the cavernous darkness of the stable’s loft.

“Nothing.” Giles had finished wrapping the viola d’amore
in its oiled leather case. He was not sure when Kade had gotten into the loft
or how. The stable, the traditional sleeping place of itinerant musicians and
entertainers, was warm and dark except for the faint glow of moonlight through
the cracks in the boards. The horses and mules penned or stalled along the
walls made a continuous soft undercurrent of quiet snorts and stamping as they
jostled one another. Straw dust floated down from above and into Giles’ hair. He
stretched slowly, trying to ease the knots out of his aching back. This had not
been one of his better nights.

He knew he was a fool, but he would rather no one else
know it; when Warrender had been a breath away from knocking Kade into the fire,
he had come dangerously close to exposing his feelings.
She’s the most
dangerous woman in Ile-Rien,
he told himself ruefully,
she doesn’t need
your defense.
Except in his songs maybe, that spoke the truth about her
when others lied.

“I know he said something to you, I saw his lips move,”
she persisted impatiently.

“Nothing that meant anything. Only gloating, I think. He
said he was sorry for the disturbance.” Giles hesitated. “What would you have
done?”

“When?”

Irritated, he replied more sharply than he meant to. “When
that hulking bastard was about to push you into the fire, when do you think?”

“I wouldn’t turn to dust at the first lick of flame,
you know.” There was a pause. “I did have in mind a certain charm for the
spontaneous ignition of gunpowder. And considering where he carried his
pistol--” She added, “Devereux made his brother do it, you know.”

Giles turned to look up at the dark loft, startled. “What?”

“Warrender’s under a binding spell. You could see it
in his eyes.”

“Devereux is a sorcerer?” Giles frowned.

Her voice was lightly ironic. “Since he can do a
binding spell, it’s the logical conclusion.”

“But why would he do that? Did he kill the potter?”

“Assuredly.”

Giles gestured helplessly. “But why?”

She sounded exasperated. “I’m only an evil fay,
ballad-maker, I don’t have all the answers to all the questions in the world.”

Giles drew a deep breath, summoning patience. Then he
smiled faintly to himself. “My lady Kade, the playwright Thario always said
that it was how we behave in a moment of impulse that told the true tale of our
souls. And you, in your moment of impulse, kept a boy from being pushed into a
fire. What do you say to that?”

An apple sailed upward out of the loft, reached the
peak of its ascent, then dropped to graze his left ear. There was a faint
scrabble and a brief glint of moonlight from above as a trap door opened
somewhere in the roof. “My mother was the queen of air and darkness, Giles,”
her voice floated down as if from a great height. “And darkness...”

* * *

Giles rolled over, scratching sleepily at the fleas
that had migrated from his straw-filled pallet. The stable had become
uncomfortably warm and the summer night was humid. The sound of a woman sobbing
softly woke him immediately. Wiping sweat from his forehead, he sat up and
listened. It was coming from the stableyard, the side away from the inn.

He pushed to his feet and pulled his shirt on. Moonlight
flickered down through the cracks in the high roof. As he crossed the
hay-strewn floor, a horse stretched a long neck over a stall door and tried to
bite him.

The sobbing was slightly louder. It seemed to blend
with the whisper of the breeze outside, forming an ethereal lament. Giles
stopped, one hand on the latch of the narrow portal next to the large wagon
door, some instinct making him wary.

Even through tears, the voice was silvery, bell-like. Odd.
If the woman was under attack by whatever had killed the potter, she wouldn’t
be merely crying quietly.

On the chance that this was some private lover’s
quarrel and that interruptions, no matter how well meant, would be unwelcome,
he groped for the rickety ladder in the darkness and climbed to the loft. The
window shutters were open to the breeze and the big space was awash in
moonlight. The hay-strewn boards creaked softly as Giles crossed it and
crouched in front of the window.

A woman was pacing on the hard-packed earth in front
of the stable, apparently alone. Her hair was colorless in the moonlight, and
she wore a long shapeless robe of green embroidered with metallic threads. She
swayed as the wind touched her, like a willow, like tall grass. Behind her the
empty field stretched out and down toward the trees shadowing the dark expanse
of the river.

The woman tilted her head back and the tears streamed
down her face, into her hair. Giles had one leg out the window when Kade caught
the collar of his shirt and jerked him back. He sat down hard and looked up to
see her standing over him.

He shook his head, dizzy and a little ill, suddenly
aware his mind had not been his own for a moment. His gut turning cold, he
looked out at the weeping woman again, but this time saw her gliding progress
as strange and unnatural. “What is it?” he whispered, prickles creeping up his
spine.

Kade knelt in the window, matter-of-factly knotting
her hair behind her head and tucking it into her kerchief. “A glaistig. Under
that dress, it’s more goat than human and it’s overly fond of the taste of male
blood. They usually frequent deep running water. Someone must have called her
up from the river.”

Giles looked down at the creature again, warily
fascinated.

Kade said grimly, “Mark it well for your next ballad,
that’s your killer.”