Daggerspell - Katharine Kerr [5]
After the lord and his men left the tavern, Jill put her silver piece into a little wooden box in her chamber. At first, looking at it gleaming in the box made her feel like a rich lady herself; then all at once she realized that his lordship had just given her charity. Without that coin, she wouldn’t be able to get a new dress, just as without Macyn’s kindness, she would have nothing to eat and nowhere to sleep. The thought seemed to burn in her mind. Blindly she ran outside to the stand of trees behind the tavern and threw herself onto the shady grass. When she called out to them, the Wildfolk came—her favorite gray gnome, a pair of warty blue fellows with long, pointed teeth, and a sprite, who would have seemed a beautiful woman in miniature if it weren’t for her eyes, wide, slit like a cat’s and utterly mindless. Jill sat up to let the gray gnome climb into her lap.
“I wish you could talk. If some evil thing should happen to Macyn, could I come live in the woods with your folk?”
The gnome idly scratched his armpit while he considered.
“I mean, you could show me how to find things to eat, and how to keep warm when it snows.”
The gnome nodded in a way that seemed to mean yes, but it was always hard to tell what the Wildfolk meant. Jill didn’t even know who or what they were. Although they suddenly appeared and vanished at will, they felt real enough when you touched them, and they could pick up things and drink the milk that Jill set out for them at night. Thinking of living with them in the woods was as much frightening as it was comforting.
“Well, I hope nothing happens to Macco, but I worry.”
The gnome nodded and patted her arm with a skinny, twisted hand. Since the other children in the village made fun of Jill for being a bastard, the Wildfolk were the only real friends she had.
“Jill?” Macyn was calling her from the tavern yard. “Time to come in and help cook dinner.”
“I’ve got to go. I’ll give you milk tonight.”
They all laughed, dancing in a little circle around her feet, then vanishing without a trace. As Jill walked back, Macyn came to meet her.
“Who were you talking to out here?” he said.
“No one. Just talking.”
“To the Wildfolk, I suppose?”
Jill merely shrugged. She’d learned very early that nobody believed her when she told them that she could see the Wildfolk.
“I’ve got a nice bit of pork for our dinner,” Macyn went on. “We’d best eat quickly, because on a hot night like this, everyone’s going to come for a bit of ale.”
Macyn proved right. As soon as the sun went down, the room filled with local people, men and women both, come to have a good gossip. No one in Bobyr had much real money; Macyn kept track of what everyone owed him on a wooden plank. When there were enough charcoal dots under someone’s mark, Macyn would get food or cloth or shoes from that person and start keeping track all over again. They did earn a few coppers that night from a wandering peddler, who carried round a big pack, holding fancy thread for embroidery, needles, and even some ribands from a town to the west. When Jill served him, she asked, as usual, if he’d ever heard of Cullyn of Cerrmor.
“Heard of him? I just saw him, lass, about a fortnight ago.”
Jill’s heart started pounding.
“Where?”
“Up in Gwingedd. There’s somewhat of a war on, two lords and one of their rotten blood feuds, which is why, I don’t mind telling you, I traveled down this southern way. But I was drinking in a tavern my last night there, and I see this lad with a silver dagger in his belt. That’s Cullyn of Cerrmor, a fellow says to me, and don’t you never cross him, neither.” He shook his head dolefully. “Them silver daggers is all a bad lot.”
“Now here! He’s my da!”
“Oh, is he now? Well, what harsh Wyrd you’ve got for such a little lass—a silver dagger for a da.”
Although Jill felt her face flush hot, she knew that no use lay in arguing. Everyone despised silver daggers. While most warriors lived in the dun of a noble lord and served him as part of his honor-sworn warband, silver daggers traveled