A Time of Omens - Katharine Kerr [25]
“Out with it, Stevyc.”
“Well, by the hells, Maddo, I was just wondering.” He glanced at Branoic. “Did you ever find out what they meant? About coring apples I mean?”
“I didn’t. Everything happened too fast.”
When Stevyc swore in honest regret, everyone howled and hooted. There was the true end to the matter, Maddyn assumed, and he pitched into his breakfast. Yet, as he was leaving the tavern room afterward, his little blue sprite appeared, and with her were two gray gnomes, dancing up and down with their normally slack mouths twisted into frowns. Her mindless blue eyes peered up at him in something like worry.
“What’s all this?” Maddyn whispered. “You’re not even supposed to be here. You’d best run away before Nevyn sees you. Whist!”
Yet they stayed with him, the sprite riding on his shoulder, the gnomes clinging to his brigga leg like frightened children. He considered for a moment, then went upstairs to Nevyn’s chamber with the Wildfolk hurrying after. He found the old man sitting on the windowsill of his chamber and staring idly out across the spring countryside. Although Maddyn hesitated, wondering if he were interrupting some meditation, Nevyn turned to him and started to smile—until he saw the Wildfolk.
“What? You shouldn’t be here!”
All three of them began to jump up and down and point up at the ceiling, their little faces twisted in an agony of concentration.
“Ye gods!” Nevyn sounded truly alarmed. “Someone’s watching us?”
They shook their heads in a no, then frowned again and began pinching and shoving each other.
“Someone saw last night, when the men were fighting.”
They all nodded, then disappeared. Even though Maddyn had no idea of what was happening, he went cold with fear just from the look on Nevyn’s face—an icy kind of horror mingled with rage.
“This is serious, Maddo lad, truly serious. When did they come to you?”
“Just now. I came straight up here.”
“Good, good. You did exactly the right thing.” Nevyn began to pace back and forth across the chamber. “Ye gods, I don’t know what to do!”
Maddyn’s chill of unease deepened. For so long he had so blindly trusted Nevyn to solve every problem that hearing the old man admit helplessness was as bad as a death sentence.
“We’ve got to get out of Dun Ttebyc,” the dweomerman said finally. “But we’ve got to do so in the right way. We need to keep up our ruse of being a perfectly ordinary troop of mercenaries.”
“Well, if we were, we wouldn’t be leaving without a proper hire. No single jewel merchant’s rich enough to engage a whole band of mercenaries. If he was, he’d have bodyguards.”
“Just so. We’d best find a better excuse than me. I—who’s that? Come in!”
The footsteps they’d heard turned out to belong to Cara-doc, who came in with a bob of a bow for the old man.
“We’ve got to get out of here today, Nevyn. Been lucky so far, but I’ll wager the town warden and his men are going to be coming around soon, asking questions about that brawl last night.”
“I had the same thought myself. Hum. I think I know where I can find us a hire. Since I’m a merchant now, I’d best go pay my respects to my new god, hadn’t I? I’ll be down at the temple of Nwdd if you need me.”
When the old man returned, not more than an hour later, he brought two merchants with him and prosperous ones from the look of the fine wool in their checked brigga and cloaks. Stout men in their thirties, the pair stood uncertainly near the door of the inn chamber as Nevyn introduced them round as Budyc and Wffyn.
“We might have a hire for you, Captain.” Budyc stroked his dark mustaches with a nervous hand. “The jewel merchant here swears you’re reliable.”
“More than most, anyway,” Caradoc said. “And every one of my lads can fight like a fiend from hell. I’ll swear it on Gamyl’s altar if you want.”
The merchants exchanged speculative glances.
“They’ll have to do,” Wffyn said. “This time of year, it’s a stroke of luck to find a free troop that isn’t pledged to a lord