Wolf's Head, Wolf's Heart (62 page)

Edlin hinted to Firekeeper that he'd enjoy "Little Sister's" company down in the stable, but Firekeeper wasn't about to encourage his puppyish affection. With Blind Seer ghosting behind her, she joined Doc and Wendee.

The innkeeper had loaned them one of his sons, a youth with enough of both languages to act as a translator in case Wendee's New Kelvinese wasn't sufficient. In turn, Wendee's New Kelvinese was sufficient to assure that the boy didn't distort their needs for his own gain.

The innkeeper's boy led them immediately from the quieter fringes of town to a secondary market area outside the ancient walls. Inside the main walls—as in Eagle's Nest—stabling for the horses and mules would be prohibitively expensive. Moreover, the boy explained, that part of the city had become the purview of the sodalities. Very rarely did any building come up for rent, and the market there welcomed only the products of the sodalities themselves.

Firekeeper followed a few steps behind the rest, trying not to show her terror at being surrounded by this sprawling city. She took some comfort from knowing that Blind Seer was trailing them, seeing how well he could conceal his presence from the daylight world.

"
Given the pong of trash and night soil
," the wolf said, "
even though cold has deadened some of the reek, I should not alert the duller noses. We will be helped in that the New Kelvinese limit the numbers of herbivores on the streets during the day
—
fewer to catch my scent and be properly terrified
."

"
And the dogs
?" Firekeeper had asked. "
These people do keep dogs
."

"
I'll growl 'em to silence
," the wolf replied confidently.

Firekeeper knew that in reality Blind Seer was no happier than she about their surroundings, but like her he had changed since their first venture into what humans persisted in calling "civilization." Moreover, he had promised to help her in the undertaking the Royal Beasts had laid upon her, and he could not do that from outside Dragon's Breath.

Elation, as usual, was gone on some business of her own. She might be following Derian; then again, she might be hunting out some of the wingéd folk—perhaps the very crow who had followed Lady Melina north.

Actually, as they twisted through the streets, Firekeeper began to have a sneaking suspicion that Blind Seer could have walked openly at her side with Elation perched on his back and no one would have noticed. Even to her, limited as her exposure to human customs had been, the people of Dragon's Breath seemed
weird
.

The stories Wendee had told along the road had prepared her somewhat for the wide use of face paint, but she decided that no mere tales could have prepared her for the reality of the wildly colored faces—or for the smell of the preparations used to achieve the effect.

There didn't seem to be one single preparation in use, but many involved oils and dyes that had quite strong odors. Spices, nutmeats, flower petals, pulverized minerals all mixed together into an olfactory storm that made Firekeeper struggle not to pinch her nostrils shut.

And then there was the clothing. Much of it resembled the long straight robes Wendee had purchased in Gateway—although more brightly colored. Sometimes two or three such robes had been layered over each other to provide protection from the cold. Other passersby wore long coats trimmed in fur or brilliant tapestry brocades.

These, however, were the comparatively normal New Kelvinese.

Firekeeper nearly lost sight of her companions the first time a truly exotic figure paraded past. It was a man—at least it seemed to be male—clad all in bronze-colored tights. These tights were not merely formfitting. They were padded so that the man's limbs had
more
form, so they were exaggeratedly defined. Stylized muscle groups along the man's arms, legs, and chest had been worked out with careful anatomical detail; his penis protruded before him like a spear, balls swaying below with every stride.

The man's face had been stained reddish-bronze, his eyes rimmed in black, his nose tip painted so that it appeared to spread across his face in an oddly bovine fashion. The enormous headgear he wore continued the illusion. Flaring ears and long bronze horns created the impression—even for Firekeeper, who usually saw reality and had difficulty seeing mere art—of a bipedal bull.

She swiveled around as the man went by and saw that his outfit included a tail that, rather than dragging limply on the ground behind him as she might have expected, bounced and waved like a natural tail of flesh and bone.

What astonished her almost as much as the bull-man was that no one else seemed to notice him, no one but herself, Wendee, and Doc. Even the innkeeper's son, who was young enough that he should have been delighted by such a colorful figure, passed the bull-man without slowing, pausing only when he realized that he had nearly lost those he was intended to guide.

After they had threaded through the streets for a bit longer, Firekeeper realized why these exotic figures raised no comment. Many they passed on the crowded streets in this part of town could have rivaled the bull-man in complexity of costume and pure gaudiness of finery.

Within the next hour Firekeeper saw so many wildly attired figures that she finally didn't bother to turn and stare after each one. There were people dressed as birds or beasts, people dressed as the night sky in robes set with mirrors, people parading beneath amazing hats—some so large that they required support yokes resting on the wearer's shoulders.

Nor were the domestic animals immune to the general passion for costuming things as what they were not. The horses wore—at the very least—horns jutting from their foreheads or antlers on their headstalls. Their coats had often been colored some unusual shade. Firekeeper had a sudden insight to where the dyes once used to color Princess Sapphire's Blue must have been bought. She wondered if Lady Melina had been inspired by her youthful visit to New Kelvin.

Oxen with intricately curling horn sheaths hauled carts covered in bells and streamers. Even the dogs—though they encountered few of these—were adorned with things that glittered and flashed. Only the birds were, by and large, untouched by the human passion for decoration and seemed drab and plain by contrast.

Within a few hours after noon, Derian and Wendee had located a landholder who seemed interested in renting a portion of her premises to them.

She was a fat woman with rolling chins that effectively disguised the location of her neck. Because of the New Kelvinese custom—fairly universally observed as far as Firekeeper could tell—of shaving the front of her head to a point just above the tips of her ears, the woman appeared to have an extremely large head—or at least a vast expanse of face.

This face was stained bright pink, the color of certain late flowers—the flowers that must compete for the attention of bees who have been jaded by the entire spectrum of spring and early summer. Her eyebrows were stained a darker pink, as were her lips. The blue eyes that confronted the world from this wash of rose were startling in contrast.

Somehow
, Firekeeper whispered to Blind Seer,
I expected them to be red, like those of a rat seen at night
.

The wolf snuffled his agreement. "
At least her gown is green. More pink and I would think we had opened a door into the sunrise
."

"I am," the pink-faced woman announced haughtily, "Hasamemorri."

She spoke Pellish with a formality that suggested that she had learned it much as Elise had learned New Kelvinese, from books and tutors rather than from daily use.

Wendee said something in New Kelvinese, doubtless a request about the property they had been told Hasamemorri had to rent.

Hasamemorri raised a carnation-pink eyebrow, possibly, Firekeeper thought, considering their previous encounters, at Wendee's archaic phrasing. Wendee, however, had learned it was better to show at least some knowledge of the local language. The locals were either amused or flattered. They took not being told that one among them spoke New Kelvinese—as the trio had learned at their first stop—as an insult.

Hasamemorri said something else. Though she didn't invite them inside, Firekeeper saw her relax slightly.

"
Curious about us
," Blind Speaker commented. "
And she has stabling for the horses. This time I checked
."

Firekeeper nodded thanks. They'd wasted a long hour negotiating with a promising landholder only to learn too late that although he owned stable space it was currently leased out. She didn't pass the news on to Wendee. Wendee had learned enough to ask early on.

Wendee continued to speak in New Kelvinese for another phrase or so; then she switched to Pellish.

"I'm sorry, ma'am," she said. "I can't say what I need to in your fine language."

"I doubt," Hasamemorri replied fairly amiably, "that the texts of the great playwrights contained the words you need for discussing a rental. Would you and your companions come within?"

Doc nodded acceptance. Firekeeper spoke quickly before anyone could accept for her.

"Please, Wendee, Doc—I want to stay out here and watch the people."

Wendee gave a quick glance toward Hasamemorri, but the pink lady seemed pleased rather than offended.

"Let the child remain without," she said grandly. "Come into my parlor."

A cup of something hot and smelling lightly of mint was sent out to her. It wasn't tea, quite, but it wasn't alcoholic, so Firekeeper sipped it as she watched the New Kelvinese go by. She tried to think how she would paint herself if she were to pass as a New Kelvinese. None of the designs she saw appealed to her, but the imagining amply amused her.

Doc and Wendee emerged in good humor.

"We have a place and at a decent rent, too," Wendee said as they walked briskly back to the inn. "It turns out that Hasamemorri has trouble with arthritis or something in her knees."

"Nothing that losing a few hundred pounds wouldn't help," Doc muttered.

"And Doc made much of the pain recede," Wendee continued blandly. "In return for his continued services, we're to have the entire ground floor—Hasamemorri prefers the upper apartments. There's a kitchen we can share and she'll even loan us a maid once a week and allow us to combine our laundry with hers for a small additional charge."

Much of this information rushed through Firekeeper's mind as water would over a rock. Still she grasped the essentials.

"And the horses and mules?" she asked, just to be safe.

"There's a good stable out back," Wendee assured her. "We have to supply our own feed and labor, but that's no trouble."

"Good," Firekeeper said. "Now we can find Lady Melina. People will hear of Doc and come to us with stories."

"I doubt it will take long for us to get a line on her," Wendee agreed optimistically. "Right, Doc?"

Doc, perhaps contemplating an undefined period of time during which he must daily contemplate Hasamemorri and her abused knees, replied with unaccustomed fervor:

"I sincerely hope so!"

A
rrival in dragons breath dispelled the last of the cloud that had clung to Elise since the bandit attack. They moved from the inn to Hasamemorri's house the very afternoon that Wendee and Derian rented the space. The landlady descended like a pink cloud to supervise their arrival, although she seemed disappointed that they didn't have more baggage.

"Perhaps," Wendee said with a soft giggle as she hurried past Elise with a double armful of groceries, "she thought we would be burdened down with exotic foreign trade goods—salted fish, maybe."

Elise grinned, her happiness continuing unabated when the next day dawned and the work of settling in began in earnest. Hasamemorri might be disappointed, but Elise was not.

Everything about the house—including their pink-painted landlady—filled her with delight. Elise had always enjoyed reading about foreign lands. Bright Bay, cousin as it was to Hawk Haven, had proved to be something of a disappointment. New Kelvin most definitely was not, and now she had escaped the shelter of the inn and was actually living among the native people. It was all she could do to keep from hugging herself with excitement.

The large central hallway that split the ground floor of the house into two parts was transformed into their waiting area. The room to the left of the front door was to be Doc's consulting room. The chamber to the right would double as a short-term infirmary and dispensing area.

At night Edlin would sleep in the consulting room; Derian and Doc would, share a chamber that backed onto the infirmary. Elise and Wendee would share the nice, well-lit side room that, owing to its glass skylight, would become a surgery when one was needed.

Firekeeper had made clear that she didn't want any special space in the house reserved for her. If the night grew cold, she would sleep in the kitchen. Otherwise, she preferred the stables. As this provided protection for their horses and mules, no one—not even Edlin—protested that these were quarters far beneath the rank of a lady.

Edlin, Elise thought with a wry smile, was learning something about the reality of the girl he thought he adored—learning that she was often taciturn, that when she did speak she was often disturbingly literal, and that she was as loyal as the sun was bright—most especially to Blind Seer, but also to those humans for whom she felt responsible.

At this very moment, Edlin, however, was presumably too busy to moon over his wolfy lady. Wendee had somehow tricked her young master into supervising the maids Hasamemorri had graciously loaned them. As this meant assisting with the lifting and water carrying—Doc was being a stickler for cleanliness, especially in the surgery and consulting rooms—Edlin was kept quite busy.

Firekeeper and Derian had been excused from anything to do with setting up the household and medical practice. Their job was to learn everything they could about Dragon's Breath. Since the innkeeper's boy had been quite happy to continue as guide and translator, Elise was free to translate for Doc—a necessary task, since without assistance he could not understand anything his patients said to him.