Irons in the Fire (11 page)

She nodded. "I'll have the coin waiting for your man. Make sure you send me word as soon as any of those other titles come into your hands," she warned.

Tathrin wondered how she could spend such a sum with only the merest pretence at hard bargaining.

"Master Gruit, fair festival." Lady Derenna turned to grant him her full attention.

He smiled. "My lady, I have just received a consignment of fortified wines from Dusgate."

"Good." She accepted Gruit's courteous offer of his arm.

As she did so, the wind coming up from the lake ruffled the fall of lace at her elbow. Tathrin saw that her forearm was pitted and blotched with ugly white scars.

"Who is your young companion?" She turned intense dark eyes on him.

"Tathrin, Carluse-born but no friend to Duke Garnot." Gruit cleared a path through the crowd with his free hand. "A scholar of the university who hopes to see an equitable peace in Lescar for all ranks, from highest to lowest."

Tathrin made the best bow he could amid the crush of people and offered his ringed hand as proof.

"A scholar?" Lady Derenna ignored such ceremony. "Of what discipline? Under whom?"

"I studied mathematics, my lady," Tathrin said politely, "under Mentor Peirrose."

"A sound man," she allowed, "if too much inclined to relish theory over practical application."

"You know him?" Tathrin was surprised.

"Are you one of those who cannot conceive of female scholars?" she challenged. "Asserting that the highest intellectual calling a woman can hope for is merely playing the whetstone to sharpen superior male minds?"

"No, not at all," Tathrin assured her.

"You're a rational man?" Unmistakable meaning weighted her words.

"A rational thinker, my lady," he said carefully, "but no Rationalist."

"A wise answer." Gruit laughed. "Let's get some refreshment."

They had reached a space in front of the shrine where an alewife was dispensing her brew from barrels carried by a patient donkey.

"You may come to a fuller understanding of Rationalist philosophy in time." Lady Derenna regarded Tathrin. "My own interests are alchemical, as are my husband's. We work together as equals, agreeing that a finer understanding of natural philosophy must surely lead to a better life for all, from highest to lowest."

"Will I have the honour of meeting your lord?" Tathrin asked politely.

"No." Derenna accepted a coarse pottery tankard from Gruit and drank without concern for such unladylike behaviour. "Duke Moncan of Sharlac has decreed he cannot leave our residence. A detachment of His Grace's personal guard sees to it."

"Why?" Realising that was an impertinent question, Tathrin hastily drank his own ale.

"My husband spoke out against a decree that Duke Moncan announced to his noble vassals last Winter Solstice," Lady Derenna said crisply. "If anyone, of whatever rank, cannot pay their land dues over the course of this year, Duke Moncan will transfer title to the property in question to anyone who comes forward to pay those arrears."

"That's monstrous." Tathrin had often heard his father call the Duke of Sharlac "Jackal Moncan". It appeared the epithet was well deserved.

"Saedrin save those who don't have friends or family abroad to send them coin," Gruit said with a pointed glance at Tathrin.

"My husband wasn't the only one to speak out. Many born to higher rank are as eager as anyone else to see an equitable rule of law established across Lescar." Lady Derenna held Tathrin's gaze. "But Duke Moncan has been looking for an excuse to punish my husband ever since he failed to show sufficient grief at Lord Jaras's death."

Tathrin wondered if the duke ever spared a thought for all the other fathers' sons who'd died in that awful battle at Losand where the heir to Sharlac had been slain. "Can you not return home, my lady?"

"I could return, but I doubt I could leave again." Lady Derenna smiled thinly. "So I travel in hopes of persuading influential men and women to write to Jackal Moncan and protest his actions until he's shamed into freeing my husband and repealing the property decree."

"While Reniack stirs up the common folk for you." Gruit grinned at Tathrin. "Do you reckon Lescari lordlings will risk telling their duke all these things he doesn't want to hear if enough disgruntled peasants are hammering on their gates?"

"Hush!" Derenna looked around crossly. "If Duke Moncan learns I have any connection with that man, my husband will pay dearly for it."

"I won't say anything," Tathrin assured her. Anyway, the name Reniack meant nothing to him.

"Thank you." Derenna handed him her empty tankard as if he were still the pot-boy in his father's taproom. She looked up as the loud bell in the shrine's tower rang out the third hour of the day. "I must return to my lodgings. Gruit, I'll call on you later today to sample those wines. I'm sure my husband will welcome a cask."

Tathrin watched her walk away. "Why did you want me to meet her?"

"To show you that not every Lescari noble is your enemy," said Gruit. "Come on, you should meet Reniack. Listen to what he has to say about the sufferings of the common folk of Lescar before you beggar them further." He went to give the alewife back her crocks.

That noblewoman might not be his enemy, Tathrin thought, but she still treated him like a servant. That was no more welcome than Gruit ordering him around. All the same, he was curious about this man Reniack. He knew Aremil would want to know of someone who could stir up the common folk of Lescar. "Where are we going?"

"The temple of Saedrin." The wine merchant turned with a slight frown. "Come on, lad."

Tathrin slowed. "I've no wish to see men hanged."

After the battle at Losand where Lord Jaras had been slain, the mercenaries who'd fought for Sharlac had turned brigand. Duke Garnot had sent the warband he'd paid to defend Carluse after them. Every last bandit had been hanged in chains along the high road.

"They won't start decorating the gallows till noon." Gruit began walking.

Tathrin followed reluctantly, promising himself he'd be long gone by then. He tried not to think about the two thieves who'd choked and writhed and soiled themselves as they swung from the gibbet by his father's inn. They'd been no older than he was, and he'd overheard his father telling his sister's husband that the duke's mercenaries had raped the girl before they strung her up.

It wasn't far to the temple to Saedrin up on the summit of the Grastan Hill, but the streets were choked with hawkers.

"Discover the secrets of Aldabreshin soothsaying." A girl with the dark skin of the distant southern islands tried to hand him a crudely carved circle of wood. "Read your future in the passage of the stars."

"A contest of dancing bears! In the Mercers' Market at noon tomorrow!" The burly man jangling a length of sturdy chain looked half-cousin to a bear himself with his bushy beard and long black hair.

"Come and see the two-faced pig! Two snouts, three eyes." A smaller man was approaching from the other direction. "A marvel of nature!"

The bear-ward rattled his chain violently. "Dancing bears, noon tomorrow in the Mercers' Market!" he roared.

"The two-faced pig and more freaks besides," the smaller man bellowed. "At the horse-market outside the Selerima Gate!"

"Dancing bears!" The bear man scowled ferociously and pulled the chain taut between his fists. "From the mountains of Gidesta!"

"A two-faced pig and a six-legged calf!" The pig's herald squared up to him, bold as a cockerel. "From the wildlands of Solura!"

The two men stood motionless in the middle of the street, gazes locked. Then the bear-ward threw back his head and laughed. The pig's herald grinned and offered the bigger man his hand. Relief rippled briefly through the crowd as people who'd slowed to see if there was going to be a fight began moving again. Tathrin wondered if the whole encounter had been deliberately planned.

"The wizards of Hadrumal keep you in ignorance while the dead can speak through those who can weave necromancy's spells!" A skinny man in a garish purple cloak shouted into the momentary lull. "The keys to Saedrin's door no longer lock away the secrets of the Otherworld!"

Tathrin saw a priest in yellow robes belted with an orange rope come out onto the steps of Saedrin's temple. He pointed the blasphemer out to three solidly built men also liveried in the god's colours.

"Want to know all the shields and blazons of Lescar's dukes and their vassals?"

Tathrin was about to brush the man aside when he saw Gruit accept the grubby sheet of paper.

The pamphleteer bowed to the merchant. "My congratulations on castigating the worthies of Vanam so eloquently, my friend."

He was a man of medium height and solid build, blunt-featured with brown hair and beard, both close-cropped and fading to grey. He wore a ragged blue doublet and grimy buff breeches, his lower legs bare and his shoes tied up with twine. Tathrin would have taken him for a beggar.

"If you can remember exactly what you said, I'll print it up." The man clapped Gruit on the shoulder. "It's time someone challenged Lescar's exiles to decide if they are sheep or goats."

What had happened to the man's ears? Tathrin wondered. Both lobes were raggedly torn, and not so long healed, judging by the red of the scars.

"I don't recall saying anything about sheep or goats." Gruit was amused.

"You may as well have done." The pamphleteer reached inside his doublet. "Do they want to be sheep, penned and fleeced? Or goats, roaming free, answerable to no man?" He showed them both a sketch of remarkably stupid-looking sheep looking through a wooden fence as fearsomely horned goats put a mangy pack of hounds to flight. "When goats could chase off those dogs of mercenaries."

A gap-toothed woman came up to nudge the fellow's elbow, her hands full of scraps of dirty linen. "I can't find no more. Not without getting a beating from the local rag-pickers."

The pamphleteer pulled a canvas sack from a pocket and shoved the linen into it. "Wait by the gallows and see what you can get when they cut the bodies down." Seeing Tathrin looking askance, he grinned. "You know the price of paper, apprentice? There's ways around that. Keep papermakers in rag and they pay in offcuts."

"I admire your resourcefulness," Tathrin said politely.

"This is Reniack--" Gruit began.

"A whore's bastard from the free enclave of Carif on the southern coast of Parnilesse." The pamphleteer bowed again, elegant as any lord. "I call no man father and I call no man master. My only allegiance is to the truth, which I spread as far and wide as I possibly can. What can words do, you ask me? What can one rock slipping down a hillside do? Scant damage. But send another after it and then another? A landslide can change the course of a river. What do you say to that, apprentice?"

"I think your imagery still needs a little polishing," Gruit said dryly.

"What if every Lescari exile lent a hand to bringing change?" Reniack wasn't deterred. "I know your history, Master Gruit."

A brazen clangour interrupted him. Gleeful, Reniack spun around. "Your pardon, good sirs. I must make a note of every name and accusation. Every honest man in Vanam will buy my broadsheet to learn exactly who has been defrauding them."

As Reniack shoved through the crowd, Tathrin saw shivering men wearing no more than their shirts led out in front of Saedrin's temple. Each one's head had been roughly shaved, tufts of hair that the razor had missed clotted with blood from deeper scrapes. The yellow-robed priest had been joined by another in the blue and white colours of Raeponin, while a third in the dour black of Poldrion carried the pole that symbolised the ferryman of the dead.

The priest of Raeponin rang his handbell and an acolyte read out the charges in the silence that followed. "Histen Soway pays this penalty for unpaid debts in the amount of six hundred and thirty-two gold crowns. Those with a claim on his goods should present their case to the Saddlers' Guild at the close of festival."

A heavy-set man in blue and white livery forced the offender to his knees. Another placed a clapperless bell on his head and beat it with an oak club. The noise was deafening. Tathrin hated to think what it must be like to suffer such punishment. As the man with the club lifted the bell, which was still ringing faintly, the unfortunate fell forward to lie half-stunned on the cobbles, bleeding from his nose. Two shamefaced men scurried forward to drag him away.

Tathrin didn't want to see any more. "If you'll excuse me, Master Gruit, I want to buy a book of maps."

"I'll walk with you." The merchant thrust his hands in his tunic pockets again. "So, I've been thinking. This notion of cutting off the flow of silver to Lescar's dukes is still folly. But if you and Aremil could come up with a better idea, Lady Derenna and her husband could spread the word among the nobles in all the dukedoms who share their fascination with alchemy and mechanics and such. Scholars don't let trifles like the quarrels and alliances of their overlords interfere with the free exchange of ideas and discoveries."

Tathrin frowned. "If her husband's under house arrest, surely his letters are read by Duke Moncan's spies?"

"Not the ones I smuggle in with the shipments of wine that I send for her, or the ones that come out the same way." Gruit smiled. "Now Reniack, he can send a scandal east and west quicker than the Imperial Tormalin couriers. He'd be the man to spread some scheme among as many exiles as possible in Ensaimin, as well as explaining it to the ordinary folk of Lescar." He pursed his lips. "You should read his broadsheets. For every tale you can tell of greedy dukes and unjust levies and mercenary crimes, he can tell ten without pausing for breath and some will turn your stomach. He sees it as his duty to make sure those who've escaped Lescar's torments don't forget those they've left behind. But he won't be party to beggaring those who are already paupers," he warned, "so don't suggest this business of withholding coin to him."