“You should have run when you could,” said the brown man.
“You could acknowledge my help,” said Gird. Then the guards were in the room, their torches sending wild flickers of bright orange across the calmer candlelight. They skidded to a halt, their pikes at Gird’s back.
“M’lord Sier,” said the one with a knot of bright yellow at his shoulder. “Someone reported noise—” His voice trailed away as he looked around him.
“Treachery, sergeant,” said the brown man.
“This lout?” asked the sergeant.
“No.” The brown man smiled at Gird. “That fellow came to my aid; the traitors lie dead, all but one.” He looked down at his son, and the sergeant’s breath hissed in.
“Lord—Jernoth, m’lord?”
“Lord Jernoth. And two of these others.” He pointed, and the sergeant’s breath hissed again. Clearly he recognized them all. The brown man’s orders brought him to quick attention. “Sergeant, send word—I will need a cart; I’ve been wounded. This—fellow—” He waved a hand at Gird. “If he had not saved me, you would have a new sier this night; he is a stranger, but welcome in the city for three days, for his service. See he gets a tally from the guardhouse, meals and beer; I brought nothing with me, not so much as a copper crab.”
“Yes, m’lord Sier.” The sergeant eyed Gird with dubious respect.
“And then Lord Jernoth must be straightly confined until I pass judgment; it is ill done to hurry such a decision.” This he said facing Gird directly; but somewhere in the tone of his voice, Gird sensed that he would come to follow Gird’s advice.
From there, things went smoothly; the guards bound the young man more securely, then hauled him to his feet and away. Another tended the brown man’s wounds, and yet another had already sped away with messages. The sergeant opened his belt-pouch with deliberate slowness, and pulled out a flat wooden tally, one end stamped with the Sier’s mark.
“This here’s a meal tally, good at any inn but the Goldmark or the White Wing—them’s only for nobles.” He took his dagger and made three scores across the tally. “That’s for a day’s food and beer; they’ll break off the end each time, to the next line. Understand?”
“Yes, sir.” Gird wondered if he was really going to get free this easily.
The sergeant lowered his voice and went on. “What I heard was there was a meeting of conspirators, to hear a stranger, an outsider who came in to start trouble. Have any idea who that was?”
“Me, sir?” Stupidity was always a safe mask for a peasant.
“And then here you are, without a mark on you, but the Sier says you saved his life. Me, I wonder if you meant to do that—but his orders is my life, as they say, and he says let you bide here three days on free meals and beer. All I say is, you’d best be gone by sundown that third day, or the sier might have remembered something he wants to ask you. I would.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And I don’t suppose you’ll be having any quiet little meetings with rebels while you’re here, either.”
“No, sir.”
“All right. Go fill your belly, and stay out of my sight.”
Gird went out into the dark street, only to be stopped by an arriving troop of guards, who let him go when he showed his tally. He tried to walk like someone with honest business, but the events of the past hour or so were beginning to touch his feelings, as well as his mind. When he got to the main square, he edged his way around it, touching the walls of one building after another, until he found the beggars’ steps.
Chapter Seventeen
“You had an interesting evening?” The old man’s voice was soft, but clearly audible. Gird jumped, then crouched quickly beside him. “Here’s your staff,” the old man said, brushing his knuckles with it, as if he could see in the dark. Gird clutched at it, consoling himself with its smooth oiled strength. If only he’d had it with him . . .
“You’d have gotten yourself killed,” the old man said, even more softly.
“You—what do you know about it?”
“Shh.” Gird felt a strong, bony hand on his forearm, and the faint warmth of the old man’s body leaning against his. In the brief silence, he was aware of other movement on the beggars’ steps, movement that might have been the restlessness of disturbed sleepers.
The old man’s body was warmer than he’d thought at first; along his right side he began to feel as if he sat before a fire. He had not thought he could sleep, but now he felt himself sinking into that warmth, as the exhaustion of the day and the night’s exertions landed on him. It was so comfortable—and he could not, at the moment, feel threatened.
He woke at dawn, when the great bells of Esea’s Hall rang out to declare the sun’s daily triumph. The sound crashed through him, shaking him out of peaceful dreams, and for an instant he thought he was being attacked. The old man’s hand on his arm quieted him. Gird looked around wildly. The others who had spent the night on the beggars’ steps were stirring, sitting up, stretching. The man beside him—was someone else. He jerked his arm back.
“Easy,” the old man’s voice said, out of a different face. “It’s just a face.” It wasn’t a very different face, after alclass="underline" still old, still with the same basic shape. He looked less feeble, this morning, and was certainly not blind—“A miracle, remember? We came for that.”
“But—”
“We should find something to eat.” The old man stood, and Gird unfolded himself, less stiff than he’d expected to be. “What is that?” the old man asked.
It was the tally the guard sergeant had given him. “It’s—I can get food, at an inn. A tally from the sier.”
The old man’s wispy white brows raised. “So—the sier himself. I knew it was important, but—”
Gird had had enough of the old man, who was certainly not the helpless, tortured creature who had aroused his pity the evening before. “I will share my breakfast with you, but then—”
“You wish I would go away. I worry you, don’t I?” That face was not guileless at all; Gird was more than worried. Whatever this was—and he was no longer sure it was a man and not some kind of demon—it kept forcing him into impossible situations.
“I have business,” Gird said, through clenched teeth. “I only wanted to help you, and—”
The thin hand, so very strong, slid under his elbow and gripped his arm as if to steady a fragile, tottering oldster. “And you think I’ve brought more danger on you, more trouble. And you think I was blind, as I know you are. Come along, Gird Strongarm—I know you, and you will know me better before this day is done.”
As before, he could not shake that grip, and found himself walking where the old man willed. To the public fountain, to wash his face and hands. To a cheap inn, where he bought hot, meat-stuffed rolls from the serving window, getting double the amount because he refused the ale that the servant offered. To a crooked alley, where they leaned against the bulging wall of a baker’s oven, and ate the rolls, while cats wound around their ankles, begging. The food steadied him, and restored the town walls and streets to their normal colors, no longer bright and scintillating as if he had a fever, but ordinary, subdued, under a gray wintry sky.
“You are better now,” the old man said, still clutching his elbow. Gird looked down at him.
“In body, yes. But you—what are you?”
“What I told you. A priest of Esea, presently in difficulty with his fellow priests. You have my gratitude for your service—”
“You didn’t need me!” Fed, awake, alert, Gird had been remembering that whole sequence of events. “You only seemed hurt—you tricked me.”
“No.” The man’s voice was low. “No—I could have died. I almost did. You do not understand—you could not—all that happened to me, or what my powers are. But I was near death, when you found me: that is true. You saved my life.”