When it died down, he took up the bread and tore it in half with his hands and set one half in front of her. Inside there was still steam and it rose gently. He nodded at it.
“Eat it.”
“I said I'm not hungry.”
“I know what you said.”
She took the bread up and took a bite and longed to eat every bite there was and his also. Her stomach clenching at this lost and forgotten gift. In her world this something no longer in existence, as stripped from the earth as any one thing could be, and yet here in plenty and just sitting on a plate within a room full of people, none of whom would take it. The jester too feeble and the rest unneeding. But she fought that too and took a small bite and put it down again.
“They're here to meet you,” he said.
“I gathered that.”
“You see the fat one? He's from Plarenth and he wants to trade me some of his skins for some damn thing. He's not got enough for what he wants but he's got some. And the tall one is from Grayston and he's here about a debt my father owed and wants to know can we find the record. And the other three, they're from Mraok and they want to talk about archers and dragons.”
She had been reaching for the bread again and she stopped halfway and looked at him. “What have they said?”
“Damn fools think they saw a dragon.” He shrugged. “They've got a lot of gold for archers.”
“What did you tell them?”
“Told them they needed the archers.” The grin again. “Did I mention the gold?”
“But you don't believe them.”
“About the dragon? Of course I don't. But that's not what matters. What matters is that they believe it and they'll pay for some men to go sit on the walls or some such thing. Staring at the sky for a few months until no one sees anything. Then they'll send them back but I'll still have the gold and we'll all be good friends.”
“I told you they're liars.”
“Not this time they're not. They do think they saw it.”
She took the bread up again and turned it and looked at it and took a bite. “Let me talk to them.”
“You don't trust me?”
“I just want to hear it.”
“Don't we all want to hear it.” He turned and beckoned to them. The fat one was watching endlessly and stumbled as he started coming over, the others trailing behind him.
And she looked then at the windows of this room and her mind in another time and place and she could hear everything as if it were happening again. The ring of metal on metal and someone shouting and another man crying as he tried to hold his entrails in with his hand and crawled across a scorched forest floor covered in ash and bone. The very air seeming to move as if alive itself. Snowblind in the memory as she'd been in life and the whole world just pain and that blurred wash of darkness and light but screaming still and her hands clawing endlessly for her sword. The sound of bowstrings and then a great rushing sound like a whirlwind coming down on them and everyone calling out and then the memory faded back and became nothing.
She felt her skin pucker and clasped her hands and at last was truly finished with the bread. On the far side of the room the jester was clapping his hands to a beat no one could hear and it was no beat at all. Just the random and sporadic sound of his palms slapping one against the other and he too stupid and ruined to know it and grinning the whole while as if this song where the song of some angelic beings with wings like the sun and voices too beautiful to ever be heard twice.
The men came over and stood opposite the table and none of them spoke and the fat one was breathing very hard and the others swallowing and all of their eyes very wide, their faces bright with the wine. Clutching in their hands accounts of what they should say on rolled papers.
He stood to join them and waved easily one arm in her direction, sweeping it toward her in a way so formal and lost to her that at first she did not know what he was doing. He bowed his head slightly to her and addressed the men as one, liars or tellers of the truth that they may be:
“My mother,” he said. “The queen.”
Chapter Three
In silence he sat with before him the glassware mug of ale and all about the sounds of men talking and in the corner a blind man playing some instrument for which he did not know the name. The sounds of it jaunty and bright and in contrast to this place with its dark clientele. The town for mining and mining alone and these men heavily muscled from years of such and with a blackness in their hair and beards and upon their skin. Two women in the corner and one sitting in some thin lace upon a man's lap and laughing and the other scouring the room.
Across from him, the man with the half-shaved head sat with his chair leaned back against the wall and the front legs up. His ale untouched before him and a warm brown in the lantern light. All the windows like black oil with the night. A great wagon wheel as a chandelier in this vaulted room with above it a balcony and doors opening off that into parts unknown. Rooms perhaps for those such as him.
“Why didn't you take a horse?” the man asked at last.
Brack looked to him and took a drink. The ale very heavy and cold and good. “You going to tell me your name or are we waiting on something?”
“What would we wait on?”
“I don't know.”
“Then I guess we can't.”
“I guess not.”
The man did not extend a hand, but he did grin. His face slender and his eyes bright, the irises an amber color Brack had never before seen. His dark skin smooth and flawless. When he smiled he appeared childish and when he did not he appeared aged so that Brack could not figure out his true age and it seemed in this duality to move based on mood or perhaps desire. The impression in the world he chose to carve out for himself. Shifting that carving as fit his needs.
“You can't pronounce my name,” he said. “But they call me Juoth.”
“That's it?”
“That's it.”
“And where are you from?”
Juoth finally let his chair tip forward and come down hard. One of the women looked over and then looked away. He grinned again. “Seems to me I asked a question first.”
“They needed them.”
“What?”
“The horses. They needed them. Those I sent to the gap.”
“So you're gallant.”
“If that's what it means I'd ask about your judgement.”
“Travii. I'm from the island of Travii.”
Brack looked at him carefully and swirled his ale in the glass and looked at it and drank. Letting it run cold down his throat and then warm him. He drank it half down and stood. “I'll see you around.”
Juoth canted his head to the side and looked at him. “Something wrong with Travii?”
“Who do you take me for?”
“I'm not sure I follow.”
“Travii was destroyed fifty years ago. There's nothing left but stones. Shattered buildings. No one's from Travii.”
Juoth shrugged. “Be that as it is. I am.”
“You're a liar.”
“Some of the best men are liars.”
“And some of the worst.”
“And there we have it,” he said. “All men are liars. So why don't you drink with this one and so will I.”
Brack looked around the room. In the corner the blind man was playing a new song and the sound of it swelling and the man with the woman on his lap had gone out with her and the other woman was sitting up at the long bar and down from her the spearman and the other were talking closely and looking around with before them many mugs. They had all four come in together and those two had taken their leave and Brack had watched them at first and now knew what would come of it but could not stop it. He turned back.