I shook my head. “I’ve no idea.”
“It’s got to be worth a look,” said Dalmit with a predatory grin. “I’ll let you know what I find out.”
“Shall we get you cleaned up?” Mistal tried for a smile. As he took his hands out of his breeches pockets and found some chewing leaf, I saw his hands were shaking. Temar by contrast looked like a hound who’d caught an interesting scent and then been chained up in the kennel yard.
“We agreed not to give them a fight, Temar,” I reminded him.
“Must that mean we never hit back?” he growled.
“We need to know who we’re fighting,” I pointed out.
“Den Thasnet for one, that is clear enough,” he said scornfully.
I pulled off my bloodstained, sweaty shirt. “We’ll go back to the residence and start planning our campaign, shall we?” My injured hand throbbed and the strains of intense sword-play pulled at my muscles. I was going to miss Livak’s skilful fingers working rubbing oils into my shoulders tonight.
“You need something to drink and something to eat!” Stolley reappeared, offering me an uncorked bottle. I drank deep, no way to treat a good wine, but I was too thirsty to care.
“Not until you’ve had that stitched.” Fyle elbowed him aside, bandages and salve at the ready.
I looked at the oozing slice on my arm and took another long drink of wine. “Have you some tahn paste to numb it?”
“Rysh! Get yourself bandaged and we can start the serious drinking!” Jord raised a tankard to me as he shouted over the avid debates being joined all around us.
Mistal looked at me. “This is probably our best chance of finding out if anyone put him up to answering the challenge, him and Lovis.” D’Istrac men all looked keen to join any celebration going.
Temar was bright-eyed with interest. “It would hardly be courteous, to leave at once.”
I hesitated. “We can stay for a little while.”
A Hireling Coach,
Summer Solstice Festival, Third Day, Evening
And do you remember Inshowe, the tailor up by the portage way?”
Temar did his best to look interested at what would doubtless be yet another story about people he didn’t know and places he was never likely to see.
“Had a wife with a limp?” Ryshad sat up straighter as the carriage carrying the three of them bounced over uneven cobbles. “Three daughters, all with faces like a wet washday?”
“That’s him.” Mistal could hardly speak for laughing. “The wife, she was all for putting a wonderful new frontage on their house, squared-off stone, nice Rational lines, none of these old-fashioned bays and turrets.”
Ryshad frowned with the effort of recall. “But all those houses are timber-framed. You’d be better to tear the whole thing down and start again.”
Mistal nodded with heavy emphasis. “That’s was Hansey said when they came asking. He totted up the men and materials for a job like that and her ladyship near fainted in the yard.”
Hansey and Ridner were the oldest Tathel brothers, Temar remembered belatedly, stonemasons down in Zyoutessela.
“Inshowe’s never as rich as he likes to pretend.” Ryshad yawned. “If he was, someone would have taken those whey-faced girls off his hands.”
Temar felt slightly let down by that unguarded remark.
“Hansey reckoned that’d be the last they’d hear of it,” continued Mistal. “But next market day Ridner comes home saying the word round the well is Jeshet’s going to do the work.”
“The brickmaker?” Ryshad asked, puzzled.
Mistal was nodding. “He’d convinced Inshowe he could reface the building in brick. It would look just like stone, he told him, built up to a nice flat roofline. Only someone reckoned to save time and coin by not taking the old roof off.”
Ryshad shook his head. “I don’t follow.”
He wasn’t the only one, thought Temar sourly.
“They built up the frontage with brick and carried it up to the same height as the roof ridge.” Mistal illustrated his words with gestures. “Then they filled in the gap, from the slope of the old roof to the frontage, with brick.”
Ryshad gaped. “How did they secure it?”
“They didn’t.” Mistal was still chuckling. “Half a season later the whole top section slid clean off the old roof, bringing most of the facing down with it! The street was blocked for two days and Inshowe had to pay a fortune to get it cleared. Now he’s arguing Jeshet’s liable for all that coin as well as making everything good. Jeshet says he only did what Inshowe told him.”
“Was anyone hurt?” Temar was appalled.
Mistal looked perplexed. “No, it all came down in the middle of the night.”
“A rude awakening,” Ryshad observed. “Who are you arguing for?”
“Jeshet,” said Mistal promptly. “He may only be a brick-maker but that’s a more honest trade than tailoring.”
“That’s good, coming from an advocate!” laughed Ryshad. Temar felt entitled to join in after what he had seen in the courts.
The carriage lurched to a halt and the driver hammered the butt of his whip on the roof. “You wanted Narrow Shear?”
“Yes,” yelled Mistal. The door hung crookedly on stretched leather hinges as he got out. “I’ll need credentials from Burquest to get access to the Tor Alder archive, so I’ll do that first thing. Oh, Temar, your clothes—”
“Return them tomorrow,” Temar said politely.
“First thing,” Mistal promised solemnly. “When I’ve had a look at the records, I’ll call round and tell you what kind of case we might make.”
Temar wondered how early Mistal might consider first thing, given the bottles of wine he’d helped empty down at the sword school.
Ryshad waved his brother off and settled back against the greasy upholstery. “Mist’s always full of the latest news from home,” he apologised.
Temar managed a thin smile. “I imagine Zyoutessela is much changed from the town I remember.”
“The colony expedition set sail from there, didn’t it?” Ryshad looked pensive.
He was doubtless recalling those echoes of Temar’s own memories left him by the enchantment; it was a shame he hadn’t won some of Ryshad’s knowledge in exchange, Temar thought crossly. Then he might not feel so utterly at sea this side of the ocean.
Ryshad yawned and fell silent, cradling his thickly bandaged hand across his chest. Temar watched the city go past the open window of the hireling coach. A puppet show was drawing a good crowd, rapt in the light of flickering lanterns in an alley mouth. Inns and taverns were doing a roaring trade on every side. Cheerful family groups bowled past in complacent coaches or walked along, arm in arm. Every so often some gathering blocked the flagway as people met with delighted greetings, exchanging news and embraces. The narrow houses of the tradesmen living below the old city were lit from cellar to garret, a season’s worth of candles squandered over the five days of Festival as visitors were welcomed, parties given and the births, betrothals and weddings of the previous season all celebrated in the finest style that each family could afford. As the coach wound its way up to higher ground, wealthier merchants competed with their neighbours in more decorous but ever more lavish revels.
Temar looked at the proud dwellings, struggling between sadness and defiance. He had no family, no home, not on this side of the ocean anyway, and unless Burquest, Mistal and all their clerks could come up with some winning argument, he wasn’t going to have a House or a Name to call his own either. He smiled thinly to himself at the weak joke.
What of it? He’d set his face eastwards when he’d first sailed to Kel Ar’Ayen, hadn’t he? He’d promised his grand-sire he’d raise the House of D’Alsennin to its former glories beyond the ocean, and by Saedrin he would do so still. He’d been mistaken to think all the cares of the colony were tedious and trivial, Temar realised. These so-called nobles, with their self-absorbed, trifling concerns, they were the petty ones.