A Time of Omens - Katharine Kerr [108]
“Don’t I know you, silver dagger?”
“Not that I recall.” Yet even as he spoke Rhodry felt his heart twist.
He did know this lad, didn’t he? It seemed that the name hovered on the edge of his mind, just out of reach yet as familiar as his own, and on that same edge an image was trying to rise, a memory trying to bloom like a flower.
“Where are you from?” the lad said.
“Down Eldidd way. You’re from Deverry proper, by the sound of your speech.”
“I am, and never been west till this summer. But it’s odd, I could have sworn…” He let his voice trail away.
Rhodry hadn’t been in Deverry for close to twenty years, when this fellow would have been a babe in arms.
“And who was your father, then?”
“Now that I can’t tell you.” The lad hesitated, drawing into himself, turning his face expressionless. “And as for my name, you can call me Yraen.”
“Well and good, Yraen it is. My name is Rhodry, and that’s all the name I have.”
“It’s enough for a silver dagger, huh?” Yraen hesitated, cocking his head to one side, looking Rhodry over. “You are a silver dagger, aren’t you? I mean, I just assumed …”
“I am.” Rhodry drew the dagger and flipped it point down and quivering into the table between them. “What’s it to you?”
“Naught, naught. Just asking.”
Yraen stared at the device graved on the blade, a striking falcon, for a long time.
“Mean anything to you?” Rhodry said.
“Not truly, but it’s splendid, the way it’s drawn. You’d swear that bird could fly, wouldn’t you?”
Rhodry remembered the innkeep, looked up to find Merro shepherding his daughters through the door into the family’s rooms.
“I’ll just leave you two lads,” Merro announced. “Bank the fire before you go to sleep, won’t you, silver dagger? Dip yourself more ale if you want it.”
“I will, and my thanks, innkeep.”
He got himself more ale and came back to the table to find Yraen holding the dagger, angling the blade to catch the firelight. Yraen caught his expression and hurriedly put the dagger down.
“Apologies. I shouldn’t have touched it without asking you first.”
“You’re forgiven. Don’t do it again.”
Yraen blushed as red as a Bardek roof tile, making Rhodry wonder if he were closer to eighteen than twenty.
“You look like you’ve been on the long road for years,” the lad said finally.
“I have. What’s it to you?”
“Naught. I mean. Well, you see, I’ve been hoping to find a silver dagger. Think your band would take me on?”
“Oho. You’ve got a reason to be traveling the kingdom, have you?”
Yraen stared down at the table, began rubbing the palm of one hand back and forth along the edge of the grease-polished wood.
“You don’t have to tell me what got you dishonored,” Rhodry said. “None of my wretched business, truly, as long as you can fight and keep your word.”
“Oh, I can fight well enough. I got my training… well, uh, in a great lord’s household, you see. But…”
Rhodry waited, sipping his ale. He could tell that Yraen was hovering on the edge of some much-needed confession. All at once the lad looked up.
“They say that every silver dagger’s got some great shame in his past.”
“True enough. Not our place to judge another man.”
“But, you see, I haven’t done anything. I just want to be a silver dagger. I always have, from the day I heard about them. I don’t know why. I don’t want to sit moldering in my, uh, er, my lord’s dun down in Deverry. I’ve talked to every silver dagger who rode our way, and I know in my very soul that I was meant to ride the long road.”
“You must be daft!”
“That’s what everyone says.” All at once he grinned. “And so, think I, well, maybe being daft is dishonor enough.”
“Not likely. Listen, once you take this blasted dagger, you’re marked for life. You’re a shamed