Roland supposed an old fellow like Thorin might like to have a pretty young relation near at hand to help draw attention to him, or to cheer up his own eye, but it still seemed odd. Almost an insult to one’s wife. If he was tired of her conversation, why not put her at the head of another table?
They have their own customs, that’s all, and the customs of the country aren’t your concern. This man’s crazy horse-count is your concern.
“How many other running horses, would you say?” he asked Renfrew. “In all?”
Renfrew gazed at him shrewdly. “An honest answer’ll not come back to haunt me, will it, sonny? I’m an Affiliation man-so I am, Affiliation to the core, they’ll carve Excalibur on my gravehead, like as not-but I’d not see Hambry and Mejis stripped of all its treasure.”
“That won’t happen, sai. How could we force you to give up what you don’t want to in any case? Such forces as we have are all committed in the north and west, against the Good Man.”
Renfrew considered this, then nodded.
“And may I not be Will to you?”
Renfrew brightened, nodded, and offered his hand a second time. He grinned broadly when Roland this time shook it in both of his, the over-and-under grip preferred by drovers and cowboys.
“These’re bad times we live in, Will, and they’ve bred bad manners. I’d guess there are probably another hundred and fifty head of horse in and about Mejis. Good ones is what I mean.”
“Big-hat stock.”
Renfrew nodded, clapped Roland on the back, ingested a goodly quaff of ale. “Big-hats, aye.”
From the top of their table there came a burst of laughter. Jonas had apparently said something funny. Susan laughed without reservation, her head tilted back and her hands clasped before the sapphire pendant. Cordelia, who sat with the girl on her left and Jonas on her right, was also laughing. Thorin was absolutely convulsed, rocking back and forth in his chair, wiping his eyes with a napkin.
“Yon’s a lovely girl,” Renfrew said. He spoke almost reverently. Roland could not quite swear that a small sound-a womanly hmmpf, perhaps-had come from his other side. He glanced in that direction and saw sai Thorin still sporting with her soup. He looked back toward the head of the table.
“Is the Mayor her uncle, or perhaps her cousin?” Roland asked.
What happened next had a heightened clarity in his memory, as if someone had turned up all the colors and sounds of the world. The velvet swags behind Susan suddenly seemed a brighter red; the caw of laughter which came from Coral Thorin was the sound of a breaking branch. It was surely loud enough to make everyone in the vicinity stop their conversations and look at her, Roland thought… except only Renfrew and the two ranchers across the table did.
“Her uncle!” It was her first conversation of the evening. “Her uncle, that’s good. Eh, Rennie?”
Renfrew said nothing, only pushed his ale-cup away and finally began to eat his soup.
“I’m surprised at ye, young man, so I am. Ye may be from the In-World, but oh goodness, whoever tended to your education of the real world-the one outside of books ’ maps-stopped a mite short, I’d say. She’s his-” And then a word so thick with dialect that Roland had no idea what it was. Seefin, it sounded, or perhaps sheevin.
“I beg pardon?” He was smiling, but the smile felt cold and false on his mouth. There was a heaviness in his belly, as if the punch and the soup and the single beef-strip he had eaten for politeness’ sake had all lumped together in his stomach. Do you serve? he’d asked her, meaning did she serve at table. Mayhap she did serve, but likely she did it in a room rather more private than this. Suddenly he wanted to hear no more; had not the slightest interest in the meaning of the word the Mayor’s sister had used.
Another burst of laughter rocked the top of the table. Susan laughed with her head back, her cheeks glowing, her eyes sparkling. One strap of her dress had slipped down her arm, disclosing the tender hollow of her shoulder. As he watched, his heart full of fear and longing, she brushed it absently back into place with the palm of her hand.
“It means ‘quiet little woman,’” Renfrew said, clearly uncomfortable. “It’s an old term, not used much these days-”
“Stop it, Rennie,” said Coral Thorin. Then, to Roland: “He’s just an old cowboy, and can’t quit shovelling horseshit even when he’s away from his beloved nags. Sheevin means side-wife. In the time of my great-grandmother, it meant whore… but one of a certain kind.” She looked with a pale eye at Susan, who was now sipping ale, then turned back to Roland. There was a species of baleful amusement in her gaze, an expression that Roland liked little. “The kind of whore you had to pay for in coin, the kind too fine for the trade of simple folk.”
“She’s his gilly?” Roland asked through lips which felt as if they had been iced.
“Aye,” Coral said. “Not consummated, not until the Reap-and none too happy about that is my brother, I’ll warrant-but bought and paid for just as in the old days. So she is.” Coral paused, then said, “Her father would die of shame if he could see her.” She spoke with a kind of melancholy satisfaction.
“I hardly think we should judge the Mayor too harshly,” Renfrew said in an embarrassed, pontificating voice.
Coral ignored him. She studied the line of Susan’s jaw, the soft swell of her bosom above the silken edge of her bodice, the fall of her hair. The thin humor was gone from Coral Thorin’s face. In it now was a somehow chilling species of contempt.
In spite of himself, Roland found himself imagining the Mayor’s knuckle-bunchy hands pushing down the straps of Susan’s dress, crawling over her naked shoulders, plunging like gray crabs into the cave beneath her hair. He looked away, toward the table’s lower end, and what he saw there was no better. It was Olive Thorin that his eye found-Olive, who had been relegated to the foot of the table, Olive, looking up at the laughing folk who sat at its head. Looking up at her husband, who had replaced her with a beautiful young girl, and gifted that girl with a pendant which made her own firedim earrings look dowdy by comparison. There was none of Coral’s hatred and angry contempt on her face. Looking at her might have been easier if that were so. She only gazed at her husband with eyes that were humble, hopeful, and unhappy. Now Roland understood why he had thought her sad. She had every reason to be sad.
More laughter from the Mayor’s party; Rimer had leaned over from the next table, where he was presiding, to contribute some witticism. It must have been a good one. This time even Jonas was laughing. Susan put a hand to her bosom, then took her napkin and raised it to wipe a tear of laughter from the comer of her eye. Thorin covered her other hand. She looked toward Roland and met his eyes, still laughing. He thought of Olive Thorin, sitting down there at the foot of the table, with the salt and spices, an untouched bowl of soup before her and that unhappy smile on her face. Seated where the girl could see her, as well. And he thought that, had he been wearing his guns, he might well have drawn one and put a bullet in Susan Delgado’s cold and whoring little heart.
And thought: Who do you hope to fool?
Then one of the serving boys was there, putting a plate offish in front of him. Roland thought he had never felt less like eating in his life… but he would eat, just the same, just as he would turn his mind to the questions raised by his conversation with Hash Renfrew of the Lazy Susan Ranch. He would remember the face of his father.
Yes, I’ll remember it very well, he thought. If only I could forget the one above yon sapphire.
10
The dinner was interminable, and there was no escape afterward. The table at the center of the reception room had been removed, and when l lie guests came back that way-like a tide which has surged as high as it can and now ebbs-they formed two adjacent circles at the direction of a sprightly little redhaired man whom Cuthbert later dubbed Mayor Thorin’s Minister of Fun.