Days of Blood and Fire - Katharine Kerr [53]
“Oh. And that matters?”
“It matters a great deal, here in Deverry. Never forget that. Your life might depend on it, remembering that the noble-born see themselves as a good bit more valuable, like, then the aminheddic. But anyway, I’ve got a bondwoman’s name, sure enough, and so I’m guessing that somewhere back in my family, there were freedmen.”
“And that doesn’t ache your heart?” Meer said with some surprise.
“Not at all, good bard, not at all. All souls are the same to me, noble or common, human or otherwise. I was given the dweomer to serve them all.”
Meer sucked his fangs as he thought this over.
“I have never heard of a sorcerer who used her tricks to serve anyone or anything but herself.”
“Then I’ll wager you never heard of a sorcerer who had anything more than tricks at her disposal.”
Meer seemed to be about to speak, then sat back. Out of sheer nerves Jahdo giggled, which earned him a cuff on the shoulder.
“My apologies, Meer. I wasn’t mocking you or anything.”
“Good. Don’t.”
“Meer, bard, loremaster,” Jill said. “I truly believe that we must be allies, not enemies, in this time of danger. Pooling what I know with what you know will be of great profit to both our peoples.”
“You believe so, do you?” Meer paused for a sip of milk. “Strange stuff, this cow’s milk you people drink. It’s so thick and oily.”
Jill smiled at the evasion, then merely waited, letting Meer drink his cup of milk as the silence grew thicker in the room. All of a sudden Jahdo wasn’t hungry anymore, though he couldn’t say why. He laid his half-eaten piece of bread down on the wooden trencher. From outside and down below came noises, horses’ hooves clopping on stone, people laughing and talking, the rumbling bump of a barrel being rolled, but they all seemed to be sounding from a great distance away. In the chamber the silence seemed so thick that he felt he’d touch it if he reached out a hand. Meer handed Jahdo the cup, then wiped all round his mouth with the back of his hand in case he’d spilled a drop or two. Jill merely waited, her hands folded in her lap.
“Ah well,” Meer said at last. “I do happen to know why Thavrae led his men east to your country.”
Jill smiled again.
“Thavrae?” she said. “That’s your brother, isn’t it?”
Meer growled.
“My apologies,” Jill said and quickly. “The man who used to be your brother.”
Meer grunted, satisfied.
“I’d very much like to know that,” Jill went on. “If you could bring yourself to tell me.”
“I might, mazrak, but in return, I’ll want a promise out of you, that you’ll do everything you can to make sure young Jahdo here returns to his homeland before he’s much older. What happens to me now is of little moment, but I made his mother a promise.”
Jahdo felt his eyes fill with tears, which he wiped away as unobtrusively as he could.
“Done, then.” Jill reached out a hand and touched Meer’s arm. “You have my sworn word.”
They clasped hands for a brief moment.
“And you have mine that this is the truth, as much as I know of it,” Meer said. “When the man who once was my brother fled our city with his band of soldiers, because by our laws he’d be strangled for heresy should he stay within the city bounds, the high priestess came to my mother, and my mother in turn sent for me. The priestess swore that the god Evandar the Far Archer, he who serves the goddess Rinbala, had appeared to her while she did vigil in the temple and had delivered unto her tidings of great import. The man my mother had birthed before me was fleeing east on his false goddess’s bidding, to fetch some valuable thing for the demoness. The Alshandra creature had charged him with the returning of this precious object to her. As to what it is or was, none of us knew, except that she claimed it was hers and that it had been stolen from her.”
“Evandar?” Jahdo broke in. “He’s the one who did tell us which road to take!”
“So he did,” Meer said. “Now