The Black Raven - Katharine Kerr [26]
When Verrarc went inside, he closed the door carefully behind him. The stone room, with its high ceiling and rank of windows covered only by wooden shutters, was as cold as the open plaza. Earlier, Harl had, on his orders, laid a fire in the hearth and arranged the council’s round table and chairs in front of it. Verrarc knelt and used his candle to get the tinder started. A few quick breaths and the kindling caught as well, but Verrarc kept his cloak wrapped around him. The fire would do little but take off the chill.
Chief Speaker Admi joined him in but a few moments, still wheezing from his climb up the steep path to the plaza. He waddled across the room and stood in front of the crackling fire.
“Good morrow,” Verrarc said.
Admi nodded and fumbled inside his cloak for a rag to mop his face. When Verrarc pulled out a chair, Admi sank into it with a little nod of thanks in his direction. Verrarc took a chair next to his.
“Ah, there, my breath returns,” Admi said finally. “Which does remind me. How fares your poor woman?”
“Better, my thanks.” Verrarc shuddered as the memory rose of Raena’s dead gaze. “Gwira did fear that fever would set in, but Raena, she’s been naught but sleepy. This sort of possession, Gwira did tell me, exhausts the poor soul who suffers it.”
“No doubt.” Admi’s fingers twitched in the warding sign. “It gladdens my heart that she came to no harm.”
“My thanks. I do appreciate your nicety of feeling.”
“Welcome, I’m sure.”
“If only—” Verrarc hesitated, but Admi’s eyes were all sympathy. “If only my cursed father had let me marry Raena, back before her father did betroth her elsewhere, none of this trouble would have fallen upon us.”
Admi nodded, considering.
“True spoken,” Admi said at last. “He did think her beneath you—ah. Here be Frie.”
The stocky blacksmith opened the door, then stood half in and half out while he looked over the warding.
“No use in discussing your woman in front of him,” Admi whispered.
“I know,” Verrarc said, and as softly. “It be his wife; she did always hate my Raena.”
Admi raised one eyebrow, then forced out a bland smile. Frie had shut the door; he strolled over, wrapped in a thick grey cloak with his ceremonial scarlet draped on top. His thick dark moustache glittered with frozen breath.
“Good morrow, Frie,” Admi said.
“And to you both.” Frie sat down across the table. “I did stop at old Hennis’s house, and he be too ill to come out in this cold, or so his servants did tell me.”
“Huh!” Admi snorted. “I’ll wager I know what does sicken him. He does hate to hold his tongue and smile when Werda talks of the gods and spirits.”
“Can’t understand the man,” Frie said. “Cursed obvious, it is, that the world be full of gods and spirits. Makes you wonder, it does, if his long years be muddling his mind.”
“Well, now,” Verrarc put in, “he does know the city laws off by heart still. His mind be sound enough on those matters.”
“True enough,” Admi said. “Now, where be Burra? Late, no doubt, as always.”
Frie grunted his agreement and wiped the melting frost from his moustache with the back of a soot-stained hand.
“I’d hoped for a little chat among us before the Spirit Talker arrived,” Admi went on. “Which we’ll not have if he doesn’t get himself here soon. I’d best have a private word with him. If he takes not his duty to the town seriously, well, then, there are others who long for a council seat.”
Not long after Burra did arrive, a skinny man with yellow hair, not much older than Verrarc and,