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Authors: Sharon Shinn

Mystic and Rider (Twelve Houses) (41 page)

BOOK: Mystic and Rider (Twelve Houses)

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“Two rooms. One for myself and my companion, one for my guards,” Kirra greeted the man who had come rushing through the doors to welcome her. It was always something of a shock to hear the unpretentious Kirra assume the tone and manner of a titled lady. “And dinner sent to us. Immediately. We have had a very long, very trying day.”

“Yes, of course, my lady,” the footman said, first bowing and then reaching up to help Kirra from her saddle. An ostler had appeared from somewhere behind the hotel to take the reins of her horse. “Do you have—is there a packhorse behind you with more of your luggage?”

Senneth slid from her saddle under her own power, keeping her face so set it was almost mournful. Kirra was already stalking toward the door. “No,” Kirra said over her shoulder. “The absence of luggage is part of what has made this a very unfortunate day.”

Tayse swung down from his own horse and handed the reins to the groom. He couldn’t keep himself from glancing over at Justin for a second and sharing a grin. The servants were already pitying them for having to ride with such a shrew. If they came down later and wanted to buy a pint of ale, they’d probably get an extra portion just out of sympathy. At times like these, Tayse thought that even Justin could appreciate Kirra.

They were led across expensive rugs and through high corridors to a set of rooms on the second floor. Kirra inspected hers for a moment as if she was not sure it would be good enough, and then she sighed and said, “Fine. Send wine with our meal.” And she shut the door in the footman’s face.

Grinning, Tayse let himself and Justin into their own quarters, adjacent but not nearly so spacious. “Fine as well,” he said. “I find I am not nearly as picky as our mistress.”

Justin laughed and threw his saddlebags to one of the narrow beds. “Day like this, a man can be glad he’s not a mystic,” he observed. “We get to sleep inside on clean linen while Cam and Donnal huddle under the stars. No magical fire to keep them warm all night, no aristocrat ordering them meals.”

“And we don’t have to worry about being eaten in our sleep,” Tayse said. “But even without those incentives, most days I’m glad I’m not a mystic.”

And to Tayse’s surprise, Justin merely looked thoughtful, and nodded, and did not add another word.

SHE had sent a note to the manor house of Nocklyn Towers, Kirra informed them over the dinner they shared, and now there was nothing to do but wait. “I wouldn’t think we’d hear back before morning,” she added.

“What do you want to do tonight?” Tayse asked.

Senneth looked at him. “Sleep.”

He grinned and gestured. “Whole town out there. Some entertainment you haven’t been offered while on the road. You might enjoy an evening in civilization.”

“You go,” Senneth said. “You and Justin. Carouse. I’m sure the king won’t mind. Kirra and I will be just fine here at the hotel, helpless females prey to all sorts of unsavory types who might have designs on our purses—or our virtue.”

Kirra was choking on her giggles, and even Justin was grinning. Tayse managed to keep a serious expression on his face as he examined her. “When was the last time you were ever actually helpless?” he inquired. “Or afraid?”

She seemed to debate. “I can’t remember.”

“Then, if you don’t mind, we’ll go out. To test the mood of the town, if nothing else.”

She nodded. “Actually, I was hoping you would. You’ll get inside some places that might not let us in.”

“Tayse and I don’t go to places like that,” Justin said in a virtuous tone of voice.

Kirra turned her bright blue eyes on him. “Well, this just might be your chance.”

So they left the hotel as soon as they’d eaten and had an opportunity to change clothes. Even though he knew that the women were safe—in such a place, and with their own powers of protection—it bothered Tayse just a little to leave them behind. His directive was to protect them, and he had scarcely been more than fifty yards from either of them since they started out on this journey. It was not through his neglect that they would come to harm.

Still, it was hard to worry for long with all the distractions around them. Justin’s mood was good, and the city was pulsing with excitement. Certain sections of Nocklyn Towers came alive at night, even on a night as cold as this one. They strolled through expensive districts where rich young men spilled out of fancy clubs and held dainty duels in the street. They went farther afield, to the rougher parts of town, where the liquor was higher proof and the fights in the alley were for blood. They were neutrally dressed; they could not enter the exclusive clubs, of course, but they could walk into any of the fancy pubs as well as the workingmen’s establishments, and not raise eyebrows.

Accordingly, they stopped first at a tavern that seemed to cater to merchants and businessmen, some there with their wives or other companions—a respectable place with a long list of beers to choose from. They didn’t make any attempt to mingle, and didn’t speak much to each other either as they sat there, nursing their glasses and listening to the conversation around them.

Talk of money. Talk of trade. Grumbling about new taxes and a son or two who’d signed up with the expanded civil guard.

“Well, so, my boy goes off to join the soldiers, and my girl goes off to join the Daughters,” one man said with a careless laugh. “If I can get my wife to run off with the theater troupe, I’ll have the whole house to myself! But she says she doesn’t like to travel and that I’m stuck with her.”

Other voices chimed in with their own stories. What Tayse noticed was that none of them sounded too disgruntled. These men might be irate at a new tax, but they were able to afford it, and they didn’t disagree with how it was being spent. And they seemed proud rather than alarmed that their sons and daughters were finding places in the barracks yard and the convent. He finished his beer and nodded at Justin, and they went back out into the night.

The story was much the same at the other taverns they tried, though the tale was told in a rowdier fashion the farther down they went on the scale of civility. More sons had gone to be soldiers than daughters had gone to be novices, from what Tayse could tell, but everywhere were the accouterments of both professions: swords and moonstones. In one rather disreputable pub situated next to a brothel, there was a large contingent of fighting men gathered at most of the tables. Tayse and Justin, who normally would have felt at home in such a crowd, found seats for themselves near the bar, away from the action, and surreptitiously watched the gaming and quarreling going on among the other patrons. Soon it was clear that there were two main factions, and they were competing over a variety of skills: the ability to drink, the ability to throw a dagger with accuracy over a short distance, the ability to turn up an advantageous card. More than one crash of glass and shouted oath attested to the fact that the drinking did not do much to aid in the accuracy of throwing a knife.

“Sweet and silver hell,” the barkeeper swore once when he happened to be standing in front of the Riders as yet another glass went smashing to the floor. “It’ll take me all day tomorrow to clean this place up.”

Tayse nodded for another beer and reflected that it had better be his last one. “Who are they?” he asked. “Can’t you throw them out?”

The barkeeper gave a short laugh. “Well, half of them are Nocklyn men, so, no, I can’t. And the other half are convent guards, and around here it’s considered bad luck to treat them with discourtesy.”

Tayse lifted his eyebrows and sipped from the glass. He could taste the smoothness of the southern grains; nothing like Nocklyn beer. “Bad luck because you offend the Pale Mother or bad luck because you offend the guards?” he asked softly.

A twist of the mouth and the barkeeper looked down at the counter, swiping it with a dirty towel. He wore a small moonstone ring on his thumb. “Both,” he said, “though I think the Pale Mother is not as easily offended as her servants.”

“There seem to be a lot of them,” Justin said.

“Oh yes. And on best of terms with the Nocklyn guard. Some folks here don’t like it—too many soldiers make people uneasy—but I like them well enough before they start drinking.” He shrugged. “A city needs a strong guard, and friends who have their own strong guards. No harm in that. Makes people respect you if you can put some force behind your words.”

Tayse nodded. “I believe that myself, friend.”

“Soldiers yourselves. I can tell that by how your carry yourselves,” the barkeeper said. “That last drink’s on me.”

“Appreciate it,” Justin said and toasted their host with his glass before draining it.

Tayse did the same and slipped to his feet. “Thanks for the ale. I’ve never tasted better than Nocklyn’s.”

The man behind the counter grinned. “No, and you never will, not if you travel from here to Ghosenhall or even farther.”

Tayse laughed. “And some days, you know, I think I might.”

They were back on the street in a few moments, hunching their shoulders against the chill of a bitter wind. They were far enough from the hotel that they would be good and cold by the time they made it back.

“Nocklyn guards on the best of terms with convent soldiers,” Justin said once they were a few yards away. “Senneth won’t like that.”

“No,” Tayse agreed. He was thinking that Justin should have said,
The king won’t like that
—but he was thinking that he, too, would have phrased it exactly as Justin had if he’d been the one to speak first.

CHAPTER 22

T
HE next day opened with a headache from all the beer consumed the night before. “Acquired in the interests of obtaining information for
you,
” Tayse mumbled when Senneth laughed at them in the morning. “I don’t normally drink much at all, so I wasn’t prepared for the backlash.”

Kirra was more sympathetic. “Here,” she said, and came to stand beside him where he sat slumped on her very expensive sofa. He was not sure what would happen when she laid her delicate hands on either side of his face. For a moment he was conscious of nothing except the thought that aristocrats had the smoothest skin imaginable; no working woman had palms like that. And then he was aware of a strange, delicious sensation. His headache eased and evaporated; his knotted stomach relaxed. The low sense of malaise that had greeted him when he awoke transformed into a warm sense of well-being.

He looked up at her in astonishment. “How did you do that?”

She laughed and lifted her hands. “It’s magic. I’m a healer.”

“I think I want to be sick again.”

“Do that for me,” Justin demanded. “Whatever you did.”

Looking a little less delighted, because she didn’t like Justin any more than he liked her, Kirra rested her hands on the young Rider’s head. Tayse watched his face as the miracle occurred, and wondered if he had looked quite so foolishly pleased.

“
Now
I’m hungry,” Justin said with relish. “Pass me that tray.”

So they ate, and the Riders told stories of their night before, but the women had no news. Then there was nothing to do for the rest of the day but wait. Justin and Tayse cleaned their weapons and practiced a little swordplay, dancing through the furniture of their bedroom like they might sidestep bodies on a battlefield. The women didn’t want to leave, in case word arrived from Els Nocklyn, so the men went out a couple of times to pick up supplies and see if they could absorb any more information. Then they returned to the room again for more waiting.

It was almost dinnertime when a messenger knocked on Kirra’s door with news that a visitor was below. Kirra looked bored.

“Did this—visitor—bother to announce who he was?”

The footman was bowing. “No, my lady. But it’s—it’s—I recognized the crest on her cloak.”

“Yes? And?”

The footman glanced over his shoulder, well aware he should not be gossiping about any member of nobility, particularly not this one. “She’s a serramarra of Nocklyn, my lady,” he whispered. “Come to pay you a visit.”

“Ah,” said Kirra. “Well, please show her up.”

The footman disappeared; the four of them disposed themselves around Kirra’s room. “We stay?” Tayse asked.

BOOK: Mystic and Rider (Twelve Houses)

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