Allin immediately spread her hands in a decisive gesture. Sapphire light came and went at the edge of Temar’s vision like a jewelled memory of the day and he could see his hands again. “My thanks,” he said with heartfelt sincerity.
“If you’re done, move on, will you?” A man about Temar’s age shifted impatiently from one foot to the other at the entrance to the alley, a slightly older woman on his arm, eyes cynical in her painted face.
“Did they see anything?” whispered Allin.
“There’s nothing I’ve not seen, blossom,” said the woman with a coarse chuckle.
Temar drew a mortified breath, uncertain how to respond. Allin giggled and slid her arm inside his. “We’re nearly there.”
As the road forked either side of an ancient shrine, Allin led Temar up an avenue of lime trees spreading a moist green scent. Mismatched buildings jostled a run of tall, narrow houses with proudly precise gables looking down on the six-sided chimneys of lower dwellings with narrow leaded windows and uneven rooflines.
“It should be down there,” said Allin uncertainly. Bright lights beckoned at the bottom of a small entry, too short to be a street, too wide to be an alley. Lively chatter lilting with unmistakably Lescari accents echoed from an open window.
“Yes, look.” Allin pointed with relief at the great half-circle lock hanging from a sturdy chain above the door. It was all that distinguished the building from its neighbours, each with irregular windows beneath a dishevelled roof of stone slates, oaken beams set for no readily apparent reason in walls crumbling with age and inattention.
Temar drew his arm close to his side to shield Allin with his greater height. “I have not spent any great time in taverns,” he said cautiously. Not this side of the ocean, not since waking from enchantment, he amended silently to himself. Riotous evenings carousing with Vahil so long ago, not a care between them, counted for nothing now.
But they’d never have come to such a sober house, little changed from the dwelling it had once been. Two casks of ale were set on trestles in a parlour furnished with cast-offs from people who could have had precious little to start with. There were no potmen or maids that Temar could see, just an unhurried matron filling a steady flow of jugs brought by men and women in sombre, well-worn clothes who either sat near by or disappeared into the back of the building.
Four newcomers pressed past Temar and Allin as they hesitated on the threshold. Greeting the mistress of the house in Toremal-accented Lescari, two lads took tankards from a rack beside one door for their ale while the others helped themselves to glasses and a flat-bottomed greenish bottle, dropping silver and copper coin into an open box. A crone sewing a slow seam by the table nodded, her smile shrunken around toothless gums.
“Can I help you?” The woman drawing the ale looked over at Allin, polite but cool. Her clipped words carried echoes of the mercenaries Temar knew in Kel Ar’Ayen.
Allin fumbled beneath her cloak for the handbill. “I was looking for Mistress Maedura?” Her own accent was stronger than Temar had ever heard it.
The woman nodded, indifferent. “Out the back.”
Allin smiled uncertainly. “May we see her?”
The woman glanced, incurious, at Temar. “Please yourself, lass.”
“Come on,” he encouraged Allin, doing his best to sound like the Lescari mercenaries he knew back home. Digging a few coins from the purse tied to his belt, he pointed at a bottle of wine inky dark inside emerald glass. “How much?”
The old woman chuckled, revealing a baby pink tongue, and said something Temar didn’t understand. Allin held out some silver of her own, talking hastily in Lescari.
“She says we should wait our turn through here,” she said tightly to Temar.
He picked up a bottle and two thick glasses with uneven rims. “What did I do?” He was used to struggling with the indecipherable mysteries of female disapproval from Guinalle and Avila, but had thought he’d made a fresh start with Allin.
“Tried to pay her about ten times what that wine’s worth.” A faint smile was tugging at the corners of Allin’s mouth. “I said you thought she was taking money for the seer.”
People were waiting on chairs beneath an unshuttered window and by a door opening on to a small yard. A second door, cut through the wall to give access to some afterthought of an outbuilding, was firmly closed, though faint sounds of conversation filtered through to the expectant room. Everyone looked at Allin and Temar, some curious, a few defensive, but all with unspoken determination to protect their place in the line.
“We have some time in hand.” Temar rattled the coins in his hand absently.
“Don’t do that,” Allin reproved him. “Hasn’t anyone told you what an Empire Crown buys?” She moved two rickety chairs to a small table with a dull, much wiped surface.
“No.” Temar looked at the thick white-gold coin. “Camarl only gave me a purse today. I remembered what that handbill says, so I asked.”
“Did he ask why you wanted it?” Allin looked like a child caught in mischief.
Temar grinned. “I said it was because Tor Kanselin’s surgeon said I probably only took that knife yesterday by way of payback for having nothing to steal.”
Allin frowned. “Don’t you use coin in Kellarin?”
“Odd copper and silver, but the mercenaries brought most of the coin, so it comes from all manner of places.” Temar set down the glasses and wondered how he was supposed to get the cork out of the bottle. “They only seem to use coin for gambling anyway. We mostly deal between ourselves by swapping work on a man’s barn for a share in his corn, half a sheep for a side of beef and suchlike.”
Allin took a small knife from her purse and chipped at the wax sealing the wine. “Camarl doubtless thinks an Old Empire Crown is a trivial enough sum, but round here three of those would feed a family for a week and leave table scraps to fatten the pig.” She worked the cork out of the bottle with the point of her knife. “Get Ryshad or someone to change those Crowns for some common coin if you don’t want everyone eyeing your purse.”
“How does common coin differ?” Temar took the bottle from Allin and poured them each a measure of wine.
“I’m not surprised they don’t want you going out on your own.” Allin narrowed her eyes. “Old Empire coin is noble coin, purer metal than anything minted these days, less of it to be had. Common coin is what we commoners use, what the various cities and powers mint for themselves.”
Temar fell silent for a moment. There was still so much he didn’t know, wasn’t there? “Why would Camarl give me Old Empire money?”
“I don’t suppose he thought you’d be spending it in places like this.” Allin was unconcerned. “And you’re a noble, aren’t you? If you can get it, it’s the best coin to carry.”
“Four copper pennies still make a bronze?” Temar looked for some reassurance. “Ten bronze pennies to a silver and four of those make a silver Mark?”
Allin shook her head. “No one’s used bronze pennies since the Chaos. Ten copper to a silver penny and when six silver Marks make a gold Crown that’s an end to it. Only the Old Empire used gold Marks.” She smiled but this time without humour. “Don’t take Lescari Marks off anyone. If any of the Dukes mint a coffer of coin, they add enough lead to roof a moot hall.”
She paused as a young woman carrying a baby on her hip came out of the far door, her expression half hopeful, half puzzled. The low murmur of conversation stopped and all eyes turned to the girl. The only one not looking was an old man in much mended homespun who hurried in, heavy boots clattering on the floorboards. The girl lifted her chin, hoisted the child more securely inside her shawl and strode out of the room.
“She looks as if she got something for her coin,” commented Temar in low tones.
“I don’t think she’s quite sure what she’s gained though.” Allin drank her wine. Silence hung heavy between them for quite some moments.