"Aye, but my little ticklers are in my wallet, which is in the magistrate's custody."
"He also has my magical accessories in his charge."
"This is ridiculous!" growled Jorian. "Here we are, two harmless travelers with local friends of influence and repute, locked up through a series of mischances, and we cannot even communicate with anyone who could help us!"
"If we shouted our message through yonder window, belike we could persuade someone to carry a message."
Jorian clapped a hand to his forehead. "Why didn't I think of this sooner? I'm a stupid clod. We've wasted a quarter-moon in this stinking cell. If I stand on one of the stools…"
The stool brought Jorian's face up to the window. He found himself looking down from the second story of the jailhouse on to the street below.
"Methinks we're on Amaethius Street," he told Karadur. "There are a few passersby. Ho there, young man! You with the red cap! Wouldst earn a golden royal of Penembei by bearing a message?"
The boy hurried on. Jorian tried again and again with other pedestrians. At last he gave up. "They must be so used to hearing cries from prisoners that they heed them not."
A raucous laugh came from beyond the bars. Malgo stood there, saying: "Waste your breath if ye will, noble Jorian! Know that there's a law against carrying messages for prisoners, and we keep an officer posted to see that none flouts the rule."
Jorian got down. When Malgo went away, Jorian said: "Still, there must be something." He sat frowning in thought and said at last: "Some have said that I have not a bad singing voice, albeit untrained. If I gave the folk below a little concert, at a regular hour each day, perchance I could draw a crowd who would gather to hear. Sooner or later the word would get out, and one of our friends would hear of it."
"I cannot see how it would hurt to try," said Karadur.
Jorian hoisted himself back on the stool and, in his powerful bass, began singing one of his jingles, to a tune from an operetta by Galliben and Silfero. The first stanza ran:
By the end of the third stanza, a cluster of pedestrians had coagulated in the street below, staring up. Malgo appeared outside the bars, roaring: "Stop that hellish noise!"
Jorian grinned over his shoulder at the bailiff and continued on through the six stanzas he had previously composed. He added a new one:
Malgo continued to bawl objections, but he did not enter the cell. Jorian added several other songs, then stepped down. "It's a start," he said.
He spent the rest of the day and much of the night remembering the verses he had casually tossed off over the years and trying to match them to tunes he remembered. The following afternoon, at about the same time, he delivered another recital. Malgo shouted: "For this, I'll see to it ye never go free! Ye shall rot here for ay!"
Jorian ignored the threat and continued his singing. On the sixth day after the first recital, the half-wit appeared at the bars with keys. To Jorian's astonishment, the youth unlocked the cell door, saying: "Ye come, now."
They found Magistrate Flollo talking with Doctor Gwiderius. The professor beamed through his bushy gray beard. "Jorian! My onetime pupil! When I heard those songs with the quadruple-alpha rhyme scheme, I suspected 'twas you, since that was your favorite form despite its difficulties. You are free, and there are your effects. Who is your companion?"
Jorian introduced Karadur, adding: "What—how—"
"I shall tell you later. Have you a place to stay? I cannot lodge you in my own house, because we have visiting kinfolk."
Jorian shrugged. "I suppose I'll stay at Rhuys's inn, the Silver Dragon, as I did before." He turned to the magistrate. "Sir, where is Master Malgo?"
"Oh, when Doctor Gwiderius brought the order for your release, the bailiff was seized by sudden pains internal. Avouching that he suffered an affliction of the bowels, he begged the rest of the day off. So I let him go. Why, Master Jorian?"
Jorian looked at the knuckles of his fist. "Oh, I just thought I should like to bid him a fond farewell." He turned to Gwiderius. "Where's the public bathhouse?"
Chapter Three THE INN OF THE SILVER DRAGON
JORIAN SAID: "GOOD MASTER RHUYS, I, TOO, AM GLAD TO see you again. I trust the dinner will make a pleasant contrast to those I've enjoyed as a guest of the Grand Duchy."
"I heard of your trouble with the park rangers," said Rhuys. The proprietor of the Silver Dragon was a small, seedy-looking man with thinning, gray hair and pouched eyes.
Jorian, Karadur, and Doctor Gwiderius occupied a table in Rhuys's common room, drinking wine and telling tales while awaiting their repast. Jorian had sent one of Rhuys's pot boys with a message to the wizardess Goania, whom he had met on his previous visit to Othomae. He said to Gwiderius:
"But Doctor, you haven't explained how you got me out so featly."
The learned man chuckled. "I have a cousin named Rodaus, a usurer by trade. This cousin owed me a favor for giving his mediocrity of a son a passing grade in one of my courses at the Academy. The Grand Bastard seeks a loan from Rodaus, and they have disputed the rate of interest." .
'To finance his armored horse, belike?" said Jorian. In Othomae, the Grand Duke ran civil affairs, while the Grand Bastard, the eldest illegitimate son of the previous Grand Duke, commanded the army.
"No doubt. Anyway, I passed the word to Rodaus, assuring him that, knowing you from yore, I was sure your release were no injustice. So Rodaus, in return for a promise to drop all charges, let the noble Daunus have his loan for half a percentum point less than he had demanded."
Nodding toward Karadur, Jorian smiled. "My dear old perceptor insists that all decisions be made on a basis of abstract, impersonal right and wrong. But I note that in sore straits, he lets expediency rule his course, even as we common clods." He counted the money in his purse. "By Imbal's brazen arse, they forgot to deduct the cost of my food in jail!"
"They forgot not," said Gwiderius. " Twas part of the bargain."
Jorian was volubly thanking the savant when the door opened, and in came the wizardess Goania, a tall, middle-aged woman with graying hair. After her came her bodyguard, a big, gross, porcine man. Following him, a tall, black-haired young woman in a grass-green gown came in. She was not beautiful, but striking-looking, with the lines of a hard life graven on her irregular features. She bore a black eye.
Jorian rose. "Hail, Mistress Goania!" he called. "Ah there, Boso and Vanora! How wag your worlds?"
The stout man growled something in a surly tone. The young woman cried: "Jorian! How good to see you again!" She hurried over to embrace Jorian, who showed no great eagerness to respond. Two years before, just after his escape from Xylar, he had engaged in a brief and stormy love affair with Vanora, who then became the companion of the piggy-eyed Boso son of Trüs. She and Boso sat down by themselves at a small table across the common room.