Darkspell - Katharine Kerr [127]
“He’s coming,” a thought sounded in her mind. “He’ll come save us both.”
Jill choked so hard on her ale that she coughed and sputtered into her tankard. The innkeep hurried over.
“There wasn’t no fly in that, was there?” He pounded her on the back.
“There wasn’t. My thanks.”
With a sympathetic nod he hurried away. That’s the last feather off this hen! Jill thought. I’ve got to find out more about this gem. Although there were bound to be several jewelers in a town this size, she had no intention of talking openly about a gem that could shapechange and send thoughts to people’s minds. There were, however, always other sources of information for a person who knew how to look for them.
The tavern room was crowded. At one table sat a gaggle of blowsy young women who were eating breakfast porridge rather late in the day; at another, a handful of aspiring caravan guards; at a third, some young men who might have been apprentices to shopkeepers. When the innkeep came to refill Jill’s tankard, she did a bit of deliberate bragging, praising Blaen’s generosity and saying she’d never been so well paid for riding a message. Of course she paid the man from the pouch she wore openly at her belt, not the well-stuffed one round her neck. Then she went out to walk round the streets.
The afternoon sunlight lay thick on the well-swept cobbled streets. Prosperous tradesmen hurried by on business or strolled along, gossiping idly. Women with market baskets or water buckets glanced at Jill’s silver dagger and pointedly crossed the street. Jill turned down all the narrow alleys she could find and strolled slowly, as if lost in thought. Finally, in an alley between a bakery and a cobbler’s shop, her hunt brought her game. As a young man passed, he bumped into her. He made a gracious apology and began to hurry on, but Jill swirled and grabbed his wrist. Before he could squirm away, she slammed him into the stone wall of the cobbler’s shop and knocked the breath out of him. Jill’s catch, a skinny little fellow with pale hair and a warty nose, stared up at her and gasped for breath.
“My pardon, silver dagger, I never meant any insult.”
“Insult? The Lord of Hell can take the insult. Give me back my pouch.”
The thief kicked and made a dart sideways, but Jill grabbed and twisted him face forward against the wall. While he whimpered and kicked, she got her hand inside his shirt and retrieved her pouch, then took for good measure a wicked little dagger out of a hidden sheath. When she hauled him round to face her, he moaned and went limp in her hands.
“Now,” Jill said, “if I take you to the gwerbret’s men, they’ll cut your hands off in the marketplace.”
The thief’s face went dead white.
“But if you tell me who your master is, I’ll let you go.”
“I can’t! That would cost my life, not just my hands.”
“Oh, you dolt, what do you think I’m going to do? Run and tell the gwerbret?” She held out the dagger hilt first. “Here, have it back.”
As he considered, the color came back to his face. Finally he took the proffered dagger.
“Ogwern,” he said. “Down at the Red Dragon Inn, on the east side of the river near the commons. You can’t miss it. It’s right next to the candlemaker’s.”
Then he turned and ran, as fast as a startled deer in the forest. Jill strolled slowly after, letting him get back to Ogwern with news of her before she announced herself. She found that he was right about the candlemaker’s shop; it was indeed hard to miss. Out in a sunny yard in front of a long shed sat heaps of tallow, quietly stinking in the heat. Just across the narrow alley was a little wooden