"Then you believe the Wild Hunt serves the unseen courts?"
"The Wild Hunt and the courts are facts that do not need my belief to exist. I know what killed my grandfather."
"I'm sorry to hear of his death in such unpleasant circumstances."
"My thanks. You have a kind heart."
Out of the bramble of conversation beyond the door, a new rhythm was struck, followed by a descending line on the kora underlaid by drawn-out notes on the fiddle. The audience whistled in anticipation.
"Come on," said Brennan, touching my arm. "This should be something."
He pushed open the door. I crept in his wake. Women had crowded into the common room, seated on benches over by the innkeeper's serving bar, while younger men stood along the other wall. The oldsters remained at the center, closest to the hearth. Only Andevai sat out of place, stuck at the left hand of the eldest who, gesturing, called the djeli out of his corner by the fire.
Brennan leaned his broad shoulders against the wall beside the supper room door. I closed the door and stood beside him, wondering if Andevai would look my way, see me, and disapprove, but he sat with elbows on the table and head bent, listening to the old man speak into his ear just as the djeli was listening to the play of the instruments. A smile flashed on Andevai's lips at some comment made by the farmer. I hadn't even imagined he could smile! I had a momentary hallucination that, in these surroundings, my proud husband was comfortable.
The djeli extended his arms, the full sleeves of his robes belling out like a vulture opening its wings. He called out words in a language I did not know but that I could guess was one of the Mande languages, which like the Celtic languages survived in their purest form among bards and djeliw. The conversations in the room stilled. The old farmer sat back, and Andevai looked Up. He saw me just as Brennan bent to speak into my ear.
" The djeli is reminding us that his kind, the masters of speech, hold the traditions of the ancestors. Now he's asking if there is anyone from the Soso lineage here. That's so he won't inadvertently insult anyone when he tells his story, by making the Soso king look bad. He's a Keita djeli and therefore likely to be telling an episode from the Sundiata cycle, in which the Soso king is the enemy and evil besides. So if there is a Soso present, he'll tell a different version, maybe skip over any episode in which the Soso king plays a vindictive role."
Every gaze in the room turned toward Andevai, as if they all knew he would nod and reply with a few words. Which he did, exactly as if their eyes had called gesture and speech from him. A few glanced toward me and as quickly away as the djeli spoke again. The music shifted rhythm so effortlessly that it was like flying along a perfectly smooth road, hooves syncopating and wheels scraping beneath as an anchor pattern, and besides all that, there lit a tip-top-tip-top into the gaps. Looking toward me,
Andevai began to stand as if to come over and scold me. The old farmer put a hand on his elbow and stayed him..
Andevai sat down like a meek child. The djeli launched into his song, his words punctuated at intervals by responses called from the crowd to questions or cues I did ndt recognize or hear. Brennan's attention had shifted entirely to the djeli's song, a tale familiar enough to wrap him in its weave. I was forgotten. Even Andevai's gaze drifted to the djeli, whose gold earrings glinted in the firelight as words poured out of him. The singer commanded the attention of every soul in the common room except mine, for I was floundering in the current of an unknown river.
Also, a faint rhythm not in keeping with the song nagged at my hearing. I stepped away from Brennan and pulled the supper room door open just enough to slip through, closing it after me. Kehinde and Godwik were deep in a technical conversation about katabatic winds.
Chartji looked up as I paused beside the table. "Come to save me from these two and their interminable natural history? I can't abide rat music, I must confess, and I'm not tired enough to fall into a stupor."
I raised a hand to ask for a moment's peace. The troll cocked up her muzzle and bent an eye on me as I crossed to the main window, unlatched one of the shutters at the base, and levered it away from the window. Cold exhaled from the bubbled glass, but I did not need the clarity of expensive glass to perceive that the distant scene of blurred blobs of light was in fact a phalanx of torches being borne along the road out of the south.
I leaned into the glass, night's chill a bite on my skin. I bent my concentration and listened past the tick-tick of sleety drops sliding off the roof to the ground and the creak of a stable door being shoved open and the burr of a pair of voices that, inside a shuttered house, were oblivious to what was going on outside. There! A party of rumbling feet and stamping hooves slowed
with hesitation as a young male voice called to them. At this distance, no person in this inn could have heard his words except for me.
"We're come from Adurnam. Did anyone arrive here before us?"
"A rider came before dusk from Adurnam. Foundered his horse to get here so quick. Is it true what he said? A ship came to Adurnam that sails in the air? And it's been destroyed by those cursed magisters?"
"It's true," replied a different man in a grim voice.
"Are you with the Prince of Tarrant's wardens?"
"No. The prince went to the law court to try to get a legal ruling in his favor. Without a ruling, he's too cowardly to act against a mage House. But some of us aren't cowards. It's time the mages feel the sting of our anger. We've eyewitnesses among US who saw and can identify the cursed cold mage who did it. We almost got him in Adurnam, but he called down a storm and escaped."
"A young magister has taken shelter at the Griffin Inn. It's got no veil of protection to keep you out. But you'll have to act fast to catch him unawares."
My cheek burned against the glass.
A breath of summer's warmth eased in beside me.
"Trouble?" asked Chartji in a low voice.
I jolted back, banging my head against the shutter, then pushed its lower edge farther away so the troll could dip her narrow head in, glimpse the distant torchlight, and duck out again. There flowed from her muzzle a series of clicks and whistles, and Godwik's patter ceased on the instant. Kehinde, too, fell quiet; she shoved her sliding spectacles up her nose. I latched the shutters, feeling chilled to my core.
Chartji cocked her head at me, examining me with one eye, then the other. The movement was itself a question.
"Trouble," I said intelligently.
"Legal trouble?" she asked, tilting her head in that trollish way. "We're experts."
"No. Not precisely."
But I thought, What if I do nothing? What if I let them reach the inn, and what if they are indeed an illegal crew of radicals sent after Andevai Diarisso Haranwy? He has, after all, done a great deal of damage in Adurnam simply because the mage Houses detest the new technology, and he may be responsible for the deaths of people caught in the airship's destruction.
What if I do nothing and let them kill him?
Let them try. They had ridden all this way in pursuit knowing he was a magister. They'd sent a messenger ahead; they already had allies in town, maybe some already in the common room waiting to strike.
But Andevai would not stand idly by. He would defend himself, and it was not in the capacity of cold mages to distinguish the innocent from the guilty within the circle of their power any more than an ice storm can blister some trees in its path and leave others untouched.
If I did nothing, then it was the innocent people gathered in the common room listening to the djeli's tale who would suffer. Probably me, too. But them most of all.
"Peace upon you and all your undertakings," I said to Chartji in the old Kena'ani way.
In perfect mimicry, she said, "Peace upon you."
I put out my hand and took her claw in farewell. "I thank you for your hospitality. I will not forget it. Now I have to go."