“Who’s that?” Madoc asked, sobering.
Usha shook her head. “No one. A knight. They’re the lords of the city now. Some of them get a bit bold. But enough of that.” She took his shoulder, turned him and gave him a little push. “We have some things to talk about. Take me to the Goat.”
8
The sun lay on the edge of the horizon, signaling the approach of Sir Radulf’s curfew, yet to Usha’s surprise the Grinning Goat rang with the laughter of dark knights bristling with weapons and arrogance, and the shrill voices of girls of doubtful virtue—or at least doubtful sense, Usha thought—who flirted with them.
“Does no one worry about curfew here?”
“Not that I’ve noticed,” Madoc drawled. “And I’ve been living up the stairs for nearly a year, somewhat less than a half owner of the place—but not much less, and—” he stopped, then mugged a wide-eyed expression of shock and surprise—“why, will you look at that! I’m a respectable businessman.”
Usha laughed, the young ne’er-do-well had always been able to charm her.
“We’re quite popular with the knights,” Madoc said as he held a chair for her. “The old Goat’s doing a fine business thanks to the occupation.” He shrugged. “And knights have to go somewhere to drink, eh?”
Usha glanced at the bar. Her eyes met those of a tall, burly knight who looked at her over the head of the dark-haired woman he held in his arms. The woman clung to him, drunk or laughing, perhaps both. He winked at Usha, flashing white teeth in a vulpine grin. Usha dismissed him with a look of chill disdain.
“Oh, don’t mind him,” Madoc said. “That’s Sir Arvel of Kinsalla. We’re becoming quite used to each other here. I’ve known for a while that he’s one of Sir Radulf’s close men.”
Usha frowned, not understanding the term.
“A knight particularly close to the power in the occupation. He’s here often, drinking, listening, and playing with the girls. That last he gets to do often, as you see.” He nodded genial salute to the knight who fondled the woman in his arms and yet looked at Usha. “He’s a man with an eye for beauty, that one. Could get him into trouble one day.”
Usha thought just about anything in the Goat could get anyone in trouble. In the corners and shadows lurked men with the hoods of their cloaks pulled low to hide their faces, and damn the heat; women whose glances darted all around the tavern in looks that reminded Usha of flinching.
“Who are these?” she asked Madoc, nodding to the secretive men and the skittish women.
“My clients, some. Others soon to be. The ones who come all the way down here to the docks looking for information they’ve been unable to find. Where is the dissolute son, the runaway daughter? Where can I find the ruthless bastard who cheated my old father of all he owned? Or where can I find a man to do a shady job of work?”
A man to hand out a beating, rob a house, slip a knife between the ribs of the one who debauched an innocent daughter, a spy in the shadows ...
Madoc didn’t say these things, but Usha heard them in his silence. She thought of the dark elf who’d died in the alley between Aline’s house and her neighbor’s stable.
“You know all these things, Madoc?”
The mage shook his head. “But I can find out anything. I know the people who know—or who might know.” His voice twisted on a bitter tone. “Days were when I could know such things by looking into a man’s heart and mind.”
Usha heard the same dry, self-mockery she’d heard from Palin in those later years when gods-given magic was dying, the cynical chuckle of a man who was once strong and willful in his magic and now daily wakes to an aching impotence.
Usha pushed her chair a little away from the small wooden table as a girl in a red skirt and black bodice used a much-rinsed rag to wipe the stains left behind be the last patron. The rag did well enough for rings from over-filled mugs of ale and beer, but failed miserably at cleaning away thick stains of something brown and sticky. That didn’t seem to trouble the girl, who balled up the rag and tossed it to the bar then turned to ask their pleasure.
Madoc turned a smile on the girl that, despite the new leanness of his face and the scruffiness of his chin, held the same charming combination of wistfulness and danger Usha remembered.
“ ’Twould please me, darling Bess, if you’d sit here on my knee for a bit.” The girl giggled as he caught her around the waist. Usha did not give much weight to her squeals of protest when Madoc lifted her up and settled her on his knee. Over the serving girl’s shoulder, he asked, “Are you hungry, Usha?”
“No.”
From Madoc’s knee, Bess took his order for a pitcher of ale. “And a couple of the clean mugs, eh?”
She giggled again and slipped out of his arms to return in moments with ale and two reasonably clean mugs.
At the bar, Sir Arvel tossed a few coins onto the oak and disengaged from the dark-haired woman. The barman said, “See you again,” and the knight assured him that he would. On the way out he slowed his step, nodded to Usha with another wolfish grin, and left the tavern.
Usha’s look was chillier than the one before, but it didn’t seem to trouble him in the least.
“Ah, you’re not going to freeze that one with your iciest glare, Usha,” Madoc said, pouring a frothing mug for Usha and one for himself. “He’s too busy warming himself at the hearth of his own self-regard. But he’s gone and it’s a good time for talking. So, tell me. I don’t have but a lick and a spit of magic, and that only on rare days, but it’s at your service if you need it. How can I help you?”
Usha looked at him for a long quiet moment, remembering him as he’d been the last time she’d seen him—a reckless young man shunned by his family for abandoning knightly training and refusing to take up a knight’s vocation as his brothers and sister had.
“The woe of my father,” he’d said, in grim mockery, “and the misery of my mother.”
In those days Madoc ap Westhos had been a wayward and very promising student of Palin’s, a young man who’d had nothing to look forward to but an increasing pile of bar bills. He’d taken Aline to Haven simply on the promise that Usha would pay off those accounts. Nor had he asked for more when he’d come back, his heart irretrievably lost. Now, head high and a strange, lean smile on his lips, he bore Usha’s scrutiny well.
On the brink of asking what he knew about Qui’thonas, Usha changed her question.
“Madoc, what do you know about Sir Radulf’s second in command?”
He gave her a long look. Usha felt him weighing the implications of the question. He took a drink of ale, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, and shrugged.
“What everyone else knows. She’s highborn Palanthian. And when Solamnics fall from grace, we tend to fall hard and far.” He twisted a wry smile. “But not all black sheep gather in the same fold, Usha. I didn’t know her family. My kin are from Sancrist. I don’t know Lady Mearah, either, just her reputation. Whatever you hear about her isn’t much of an exaggeration. She’s ruthless. Not as ruthless as Sir Radulf, though. As long as she serves his purpose, she’ll do well, but they’re a dangerous combination. Whoever is running things in Neraka these days is taking a bit of a gamble pairing those two.” Again, he shrugged, as though to say, Who can figure out what they’re thinking in Neraka, anyway? “Together, they’ll run this city so it brings in nice profits for the green dragon. If Beryl is happy, everyone in Neraka will be happy. But if things get dicey, milady had better watch her back. And Sir Radulf had better watch his.”
Satisfied, Usha said, “Do you know about Qui’thonas?”
Madoc nodded, but very carefully, as though feeling to see if an old wound still hurt. “I know it got paid for with a wedding. And that no one had gone out from Qui’thonas for some time before the old man died.”