City of Jade (27 page)
Authors: Dennis McKiernan
“Bink’s right,” said Pipper, and he made a sweeping, theatrical gesture that took in all the others dining on the porch. “We are daring adventurers, and we have the blood of heroes in our veins.”
“Heroes? Ha!” sneered the Tark. “Weakling runts like you, heroes?”
The skinny one, Queeker, hooted, as if somehow a victory had been won.
Binkton muttered, “Rûck-loving, rat-eating idiots,” and he reached for a rock, but even as he bent down, Pipper grabbed his cousin’s arm and hissed, “Remember what Uncle Arley said: Turn hecklers into part of the act.” Then Pipper pulled himself up to his full three-foot-four height. “We are descended from the great hero and healer Beau Darby, and Captain Trissa Buckthorn of the Company of the King is our cousin.”
At these words, two men, each wearing a scarlet tabard emblazoned with a rampant golden griffin, looked up from their own meals.
“So?” sneered the skinny man.
“So,” answered Pipper, “adventurers we are, and quite bold, with the blood of warriors in our veins, as you’ll see tonight if you come to the Black Dog and watch.”
“Ar,” scoffed the skinny one, “as Tark says, y’r nothing but pip-squeaks. Pah! As if you could fight anyone.”
Even as this exchange went on, one of the tabarded King’s men stood and strolled to the table where Queeker and Tark sat. With a flinty gaze he looked down at them. “I fought beside Captain Buckthorn and her company in the Dragonstone War, and finer or better warriors I ne’er saw. So, if I were you, I’d keep my gob shut.”
As Queeker flinched down, Tark looked up, his eyes filled with suppressed rage. Then he glanced at the other King’s man, who had also risen to his feet, but who merely stood waiting.
In that moment the lad burst back through the doors, a sheaf of paper in his hands. And on the boy’s heels bustled a small, rotund, bald-headed man who burbled, “Binkton Windrow and Pipper Willowbank, I presume? Welcome to my establishment. Graden Finster at your service. Which of you is which, might I ask?”
“Um, I’m Pipper, and this is Binkton,” said Pipper.
“Well met. Well met,” said Graden, nodding enthusiastically. “Have you brought your gear? Oh, I see you have. Yes, yes. Yes, yes, yes. Indeed, I see you have. If you’re anything like your Uncle Arley, well . . .” He turned to all the diners at hand, and even though there were no women present he announced, “Ladies and gentlemen, I invite you, each and every one, to come tonight to see these two perform. All the way from the mysterious and exotic hidden land of the Boskydells they came to delight all. Tonight, sometime after”—he looked at the buccen—“sundown?” Pipper nodded. “Tonight after sundown they’ll be here exclusively in the Black Dog. You don’t want to miss them.” Finster then said to the lad, “Pud, start passing out those handbills. Make certain that everyone in town gets one. And post several down at the Red Coach station”—he glanced at the King’s men—“and make sure the garrison gets some as well.”
As the boy darted off, Graden turned to the Warrows again and said, “Now let’s get your gear inside.”
“Um, Mr. Finster,” said Pipper, “we’ll need some help with the chest. It’s quite heavy.”
“Right-o,” Finster started to answer, but the King’s man looked at the buccen and smiled and then turned to Tark and Queeker and said, “These two here will be more than happy to carry your trunk inside, right?”
Queeker leapt to his feet, but Tark said, “Hey! We’ve got a Red Coach to catch.”
“Don’t worry,” said the guardsman, placing a hand on the hilt of his sword. “You’ve time.”
Tark snarled, and his own hand twitched toward the dagger at his belt, but the burly man did not complete the move and, growling, got to his feet. He and Queeker stepped to the handcart, and, grabbing the leather handles at each end, they hefted up the iron-gray case with its painted-on flames, Queeker grunting under the unexpected load. Following Finster, they toiled up the steps and into the inn, the King’s man coming after, Binkton and Pipper, their duffle bags over their shoulders, trailing the parade.
The Black Dog’s interior was huge. “Used to be a hay barn, back before Junction Town became a way station,” explained Finster. He took a deep breath and said, “Still smells like clover at times.—Anyway, they were going to tear it down, and that was when my great-granddad said to himself that it’d make a fine inn. So he bought it and changed it over, and it’s been in the family ever since.”
As they wended among the tables, Pipper looked up at the rafters and beams high overhead. “Perfect,” he murmured to Binkton.
“Just like Uncle Arley said,” replied Binkton, gesturing at a stage sitting well below what must have been a small loft of sorts.
To one side sat a bar, and swinging doors led somewhere—to a kitchen, the buccen guessed.
They crossed the large common room and passed through a door to one side of the stage, where they entered a hallway. Graden led Tark and Queeker along the corridor to a modest room.
As Queeker and Tark set the trunk down, Finster said, “I turned a storage room into this dressing room a while ago when I realized we’d have bards and dancers and such passing through. It’s had lots of use, and for the next sevenday it’s all yours.”
Binkton looked about. “I don’t see any cots. Where do we sleep?”
Finster laughed. “The main inn is out back in another building. One of the guest rooms is waiting for you. Come, I’ll take you to it.”
Pipper said, “First we need to push the cart back to the Red Coach station.”
“Oh,” said the King’s man, “I’m sure Mr. Queeker and his sidekick, Tark, will be glad to do that for you. After all, they have a Red Coach to catch.”
“Yessir,” said Queeker, heading out, even as Tark, relegated to the status of sidekick to his own hanger-on, glared and followed. As he passed the Warrows, he muttered, “Someday, pip-squeaks. Someday.”
“Oh, yeah?” spat Binkton, as the man went onward.
“The blood of heroes beats in our hearts,” Pipper called down the hallway after Tark.
The guardsman laughed and looked at bristling Binkton and said, “I believe it does at that.”
That evening, the large common room of the Black Dog was full to the walls with King’s men and townsfolk, along with most of the passengers on layovers while waiting for Red Coaches to roll through heading toward their various destinations: some would fare north through the land of Harth and toward Rian and the Jillian Tors, as well as the Dalara Plains; other passengers waited for a southbound coach en route to Gûnar, Valon, Jugo, and Pellar; a few travellers would bear west through the Boskydells, aiming for places in Wellen, or Thol, or Jute, or Gothon, or perhaps across the waters to Gelen. But on this eve, the townsfolk and soldiers and wayfarers were not thinking of these things. Instead they were in the Black Dog to see a show. Quite often bards and minstrels came through, and occasionally dancers, and many onlookers came to hear them sing or see them perform, especially if they were Elves. But this show would be different, for these were not singers, not musicians, not dancers, but entertainment of a different sort. Not only that, but this diversion boasted legendary Warrows, a folk seldom seen outside the Boskydells, except in times of strife.
And so the room was crowded, and Graden and his staff bustled hither and thither, bearing platters of food and trays of foaming mugs of ale from the Holt of Vorn and goblets of dark wine from Vancha.
Some in the audience were impatient, and many asked when the performance would get under way.
“In a candlemark or so,” someone said.
“Ar, is that one of the ‘old’ candlemarks, or one of High King Ryon’s ‘new’?”
That simple question started an argument among those gathered concerning the merits of the old versus the new, an argument hearkening back some seven years past to the time King Ryon had made it so:
It was after the end of the Dragonstone War that the boy King declared that beginning on Year’s Start Day, with the onset of the Sixth Era, there would be a new candlemark instituted, where four of the “old” candlemarks equaled just one of the new. He said that with this change, instead of there being ninety-six candlemarks in a full day, there would be only twenty-four. No one knew for certain why ninety-six marks from noon to noon had been chosen as the old candle measure in the first place, and there were several explanations—none of them satisfactory. Regardless, King Ryon set about to partition the day into more readily remembered divisions, and he decided on a four-to-one standard, for that would make it straightforward to institute, since the chandlers could simply alter their existing wares with a red mark every fourth one of the old. Slowly the new standard—twenty-four candlemarks in all—was accepted, but for the most hidebound. In reality, given the quality of the wax and wick, most candles burned at something between twenty-one and twenty-seven new marks in a full day.
But in the Black Dog, even as arguments over candlemarks continued, Graden Finster stepped upon the empty stage and called for quiet. When—but for some murmurs—relative silence fell, Finster announced: “My lords and ladies, sirs and madams, and soldiers and maidens alike, I present to you, all the way from the secret land of the Boskydells, the Incredible Pip and Marvelous Bink, and their travelling show: Fire and Iron!” Graden then made a wide-sweeping one-handed gesture to point up to the rafters, where lines had been strung, along with stationary bars crossing from beam to beam as well as trapezes lightly held up and back by fragile string tethers. And upon a joist high above in the shadows stood Pipper. And even as the crowd turned about and looked toward him, Pipper leapt out into the light and into empty space. Women screamed and men shouted, as the buccan hurtled through the air like a red flame, with yellow and orange streaming after, and it seemed the wee one would plummet to his death. But in the last instant he caught hold of a tethered bar and swung down and through a deep arc, then up to the rafters again, where he released the one only to catch another lightly tethered bar to swing down and just over the heads of the gasping onlookers. Up he sailed once more, to release and somersault through the air, and grab onto one of the fixed bars to whirl ’round and ’round. Then he dropped straight down and onto a tightrope and he ran across to leap to another. And all the while he looked to be a Warrow trailing fire, dressed in scarlet as he was, with a multitude of bright orange and yellow ribands streaming from the backs of his arms and legs, and his fair hair flying out behind. And he spun and whirled and leapt and swung, all scarlet and gold and saffron.
The crowd
ooh
ed and
ahh
ed and called out in fear for the wee one’s very life. And women fanned themselves and gasped, while men leapt to their feet and shouted.
ooh
ed and
ahh
ed and called out in fear for the wee one’s very life. And women fanned themselves and gasped, while men leapt to their feet and shouted.
But then Pipper swung on a line down and through and up, and he released to land on a rope tied from a high rafter on one end to slant down to the stage on the other. And he glided down to the platform, where he sprang outward in a high-flying leap and flipped through the air like a swirling blaze to land upon a large iron-colored chest painted with flames, a chest that had not been there when Graden made his announcement.
He came to rest and bowed to the crowd, to wild cheers and applause. And he bowed again and then once more, the cheers only growing as he did so. But then, of a sudden, there came a flash and a bang and a great puff of smoke. Some in the crowd shrieked in fear, while others reached toward their waists for a weapon. And when the smoke cleared, Pipper was gone, but high above and dangling upside down from the ceiling and wrapped in dark chains secured with locks slowly spun a Warrow dressed in iron gray. Two men rushed out from the wings, and they took up the chest and rushed off, while two more men, one of them Graden, at the end of a rope dragged a bed of long, gleaming spikes to place them directly below the trussed Warrow.
And even as the men exited, there came a
Ping!
and a large silvery link flew to clatter upon the stage, and the Warrow dropped toward the spikes, only to be jerked up short, having fallen some third of the way.
Ping!
and a large silvery link flew to clatter upon the stage, and the Warrow dropped toward the spikes, only to be jerked up short, having fallen some third of the way.
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