Kushiel's Justice - Jacqueline Carey [249]
"Where are you from?" he asked.
"Terre d'Ange," I said. The innkeeper shook his head. "Far, very far." I pointed to the ceiling. "Buy room? Bed? One night?”
"Da, da." He continued to watch me. "Why are you here?”
"Buy…" Elua help me, I didn't know the word for "horse" in Rus. "Do you speak Habiru?" I asked, switching. He shook his head. I slapped my thighs, mimicking the sound of trotting hooves, blew air through my lips. "A horse," I finished in D'Angeline.
The innkeeper grinned into his beard. "Lózhat? " he suggested, setting his legs astraddle and miming a man riding.
"Da," I said gratefully, filing the word in memory. "You know where?”
He gave me a lengthy reply, speaking slowly and carefully as if to a child. I tried to recall if Phèdre had ever had this much difficulty communicating in her travels. Somehow I didn't think so. She soaked up language like a sponge. When I was younger, I had, too. It seemed harder now.
At any rate, if I understood the innkeeper aright, Tarkov was in the midst of an autumn fair, with the last buying and selling of livestock before the snow fell. It was held in paddocks near the eastern verge of town.
When he was done, he showed me to my room, a long, narrow, windowless chamber lined with straw pallets. Several appeared to be claimed already. I set my pack down on an empty one. "Bath?" I asked hopefully.
The innkeeper shook his head. Another lengthy reply led me to understand that there was a public bath-house in Tarkov.
"I'll find it," I said.
The men's bath-house wasn't an elaborate affair like those in Tiberium. It was a squat, windowless affair with thick stone walls to keep in the heat, a true luxury in a cold clime. Inside, there was a chilly outer chamber in which to disrobe, and then an inner chamber that was much like the one in the palace at Vralgrad, except the tubs were made of wood.
I didn't care. The room was thick with steam. There were other men there, some soaking in tubs, others sitting naked on stone benches, relishing the steamy heat. Vralians, staring curiously at me. At my face. At my scars. I didn't care about that, either. I'd been stared at a lot in my life. I eased my aching body into the hot water, feeling stiff muscles unknot, blisters and raw patches on my feet and ankles stinging.
I lingered there until the water grew tepid, then dragged myself reluctantly from the tub. No fine linens here; only a length of coarse burlap. I scoured myself dry, then dressed hastily in the antechamber. More stares and low murmurs. I ignored them.
By the time I left the bath-house, I felt immeasurably better. The cold air seemed bracing. Dorelei would have laughed, I thought, remembering how she had known somewhat was amiss when I went straight to the ollamh's without bathing after my bindings had broken during the cattle-raid. Afterward, when my bindings were restored, she'd washed the cow-dung from my hair and told me about her dream of me feeding her honeycomb. The memory made me smile.
And Sidonie at the hunting manor…
Elua.
I'd kept those memories locked away in my heart. I hadn't let myself think about her. My girl. I did now. Only for a moment. The look of grave concentration as she unwound my bandages. Her skin, slick with scented oil; then, and later. It made me shiver with desire and longing. I missed her. It hurt.
Just come home.
I sighed, put the memory away, and went to buy a horse.
There were a number of them available for purchase, as well as cattle and a strange breed of long-haired oxen in separate paddocks. I leaned on the railing and eyed the horses. Most of them looked to be farm stock, broad-backed and platter-hooved, suitable for the plow. There was a shaggy pony I considered, remembering how Phèdre had told me of the pony they'd had