Days of Blood and Fire - Katharine Kerr [99]
The dwarf groaned with a roll of his eyes.
“Gods!” Rhodry snapped. “I nearly forgot another thing. All last night, Jill, I dreamt that someone was watching me. It was like a huge eye, floating above me. Does that mean aught?”
Jill felt her blood run cold.
“It does, indeed. Be careful, will you? On guard, every moment. Especially since there might be someone here to work you harm.”
“There’s not,” Jorn broke in. “If you mean the fellow who tried to kill young Carra, he’s dead. We found him out, you see.”
“Oh. You might have told me.”
“Well, truly.” Otho looked embarrassed. “In all the excitement, it slipped my mind, like.”
Jill waited, expecting more of the tale. The dwarves merely looked at her.
“Do you mind telling me why he tried to kill the lass?”
Jorn and Otho exchanged a glance first with each other, then with the innkeep, who looked down at the floor. No one spoke for some minutes.
“Er, well,” Jorn said at last. “It’s a dwarven matter.”
Jill considered both threats and invective, but she knew them useless. When Rhodry started to speak, she waved him into silence.
“Well, keep Rhodry safe for me, will you? And send Mic with a message if you need me for aught.”
When Jill got back to the dun, she hurried up to her chamber in the hopes of finding some message or token from Dallandra, if not the elven dweomermaster herself, but her room was exactly as she’d left it. In a fit of irritation she went down to the ward to pace back and forth where she had some room. Whenever she came to a place with a good view of her chamber window, she would stop and peer up, but she never saw anyone in it.
During one of her rounds, just as she passed the stables, she heard voices behind a nearby shed, nothing unusual in itself, but there was something oddly furtive about these, an old man’s voice, a woman’s. Such was her mood that she sidled close to hear.
“They don’t look worth the fart of a two-copper pig,” the woman was saying. “No wonder they got left behind!”
“Well, I don’t know about that. There’s a pretty pair of blue beads, and then this here bit could be silver, couldn’t it now? Looks silver. And a nice bit of bronze with a design, like, on it. I deserve somewhat for all the trouble I went through with them prisoners. That worm-gut silver dagger ordering me around!”
Jill walked round the hut in her usual quiet way, raising a shriek from the pair—one of the kitchen maids and the elderly jailor, who was holding a cluster of thongs and amulets much like the ones Jahdo wore.
“And what have you there?” Jill said.
“Naught, naught.” The jailor started to shove them into his pocket, then paused, caught by her stare. “Er, well, now, don’t you be putting the evil eye on me!”
“I’m doing naught of the sort. All I did was ask you a question.”
He licked dry lips and looked this way and that. The kitchen maid began to move backward, one cautious step at a time.
“Well?” Jill said.
“Er, I found them, like, in the straw in the cell where that hairy creature and his lad were kept, and I’ve been wondering what they were, like, for days now. You can’t say I stole’m, can you now? They left ‘em there, threw them away, and you can’t say I stole’m!”
“I never said you did. I merely asked you what they are.”
“Take’m, then, take’m! They creep my flesh, anyway.”
He tossed the thongs her way, then turned and bolted with-the kitchen maid right behind. Jill caught them in one hand. As soon as she got a good look at them, she realized that they were Gel da’Thae work. When she glanced at the sky, she realized that it was about the time of the afternoon when Meer took his nap and that, therefore, Jahdo was likely to be outside somewhere.
She eventually found the boy out behind the stables, rubbing down his mule with a brush braided from straw. She made sure that they were alone before she took the thongs and charms out of her pocket.
“Oh, Thavrae’s amulets,” he announced. “Where did you find them?”
“The jailor just gave them to me, I suppose you could say. Had he stolen them from you?