The Bristling Wood - Katharine Kerr [156]
Jill noticed the men at the table listening, and their hands were near their sword hilts. She gave them an insolent stare, then turned back to the tavernman.
“Done. Give me a tankard of dark.”
Jill found a table where she could sit with her back to the wall and made a mental note of the position of every window and door. When the tavernman gave her the ale, she held up a silver piece.
“I’m looking for someone, someone who seems to have disappeared.”
The tavernman’s eyes flicked this way and that. The men at the other table leaned forward, listening.
“Someone else is looking for him, too,” she went on. “I’ll wager you can guess who I mean.”
“Rhodry of Aberwyn?”
“Just that. I’ve got a score to settle with that lying little bastard. I don’t give a pig’s fart why the gwerbret wants him. His Grace can hang what’s left after I’m done with him, for all I care.”
The tavernman considered her shrewdly, then nodded, accepting her tale.
“I am glad I am not this Rhodry with the likes of you after me. What makes you think I know somewhat about him?”
“I’ll wager you know naught but the name of a man who knows more.”
“Here, they look for this Rhodry everywhere and never find him. I say he is dead. Forget him. You can’t bring a man back from the dead to kill him a second time.”
“Dead?” Here was the moment she’d been counting on, and she paused, giving him a twisted, ugly smile. “Come now, my friend. We both know better than that. Word gets around.”
He hesitated, his dark face going a bit ashy in honest fear. A burly brown-haired fellow at the other table got up, swinging himself free of the bench, and strolled over, his narrowed eyes revealing nothing of what he might have been thinking. He had the biggest hands that Jill had ever seen on a man, enormous bear paws like clubs.
“Just how much is your hatred worth, silver dagger?”
“Hard coin.”
Smiling a little, he sat down and took the silver piece she offered him.
“I had naught to do with getting him away, but I had a chance at the job, and I saw who was doing the hiring.”
“I like a man who doesn’t mince words.” She got out two more coins and flipped him one. “You’ll get the other at the end of the tale.”
“Well and good, then. Now here, you’re right enough. There never was any question of killing him, far as I could tell. I’ve got a friend who’s made somewhat of himself, risen in the world, like. He’s a footman for one of the rich merchants up on the cliffs, see, a man who doesn’t fancy being jumped in the street one dark night, so my friend, he goes around with him. And his master’s rich friends know that my friend is always useful for a bit of rough work, like convincing a man who owes them coin to pay up. So my friend comes in here, oh, three nights ago, it was, and saying that he’s maybe got a job for us. A business acquaintance of his master’s wants a word with a certain silver dagger, and he’ll pay if we take this lad on the road and bring him somewhere.”
“Where?”
“I don’t know, because we never did it.” He leaned closer in garlic-breathed sincerity. “If you’d have seen this Briddyn, you wouldn’t have taken a copper from him, either. He was this big man, not paunchy, but all porky-like, and he had this smooth little face like a lad’s, and this slick black hair and beard, like it was greased with lard, it was that slick.”
“Indeed? Did you notice whether his hands were smooth, too?”
“I did, and they were. I can still see him, like, in my mind.” He shuddered slightly. “In his beard he had this clip like lasses put in their hair, but it was a silver lizard with a butterfly in its mouth. There was somewhat about him that creeped my flesh, and it wasn’t just his taste in jewelry, neither.”
“Was he a Bardek man?”
“He might have been, but then again, he might have been a Deverry man with some Bardek blood in his clan. He was brownish, sort of, but it might have been just a lot of sun. So anyway, this Briddyn offers us a lot of coin, but it wasn’t near half enough, not for meddling