The Dragon Revenant - Katharine Kerr [138]
That same night, just after sunset, Salamander came back from his day’s business at the law courts with another headache. Since Gwin and Rhodry were gone, chopping firewood for the temple for want of anything better to occupy their time, Jill was alone in the guesthouse when he came slouching in and flopped down on his cot. Without waiting to be asked, she poured him wine.
“We’ve had a real setback, haven’t we?”
“How perceptive you are, oh partridge of perspicacity.” Salamander had a long swallow and wiped his mouth on his sleeve. “They’re talking about summoning Brindemo to testify.”
“That could take months!”
“Indeed. If our fat friend even lived to reach the court. The idea is to force us to drop the case.” He finished the other half and held out the goblet to be refilled. “The sagacious archon of this fair and fountain-studded city seems most unwilling to prosecute Baruma.”
“He’s afraid of the Hawks, no doubt.”
“Of course. I have been repeatedly assured that, if it were a simple matter of freeing Rhodry and getting on our way, our affairs could be attended to in the proverbial twinkling of an eye. There have even been hints of a substantial reduction in the usual fees, as recompense for the inordinate amount of time which we’ve been forced to spend on what should be—and here I get a veritable dumb show of knowing winks and significant glances from each official present—what should be a routine matter.”
“Bastards.” Jill poured herself a cup, too. “I imagine Rhodry would be pleased to drop the case, though. He wants to kill Baruma himself. Letting a lot of common-born folk tell him what to do won’t sit well, either.”
“How simple life must seem to the likes of my beloved younger brother!” Salamander was smiling, but his fingers were twining round his wine cup so tightly that Jill was afraid he’d snap the stem. “But I think me we don’t have much choice.”
“Why? I thought the whole point of this lawsuit was to waste time.”
“Just so, but wasting time does not include wasting yet another life. If the archons send for Brindemo, the Hawks will kill him, one way or another, if not in Myleton, then somewhere along the way. And please do not even begin to tell me that Brindemo would deserve no better, because flawed though he may be, he’s a human soul and a child of your gods and so on and so forth.”
“He also refused to send Rhodry to the mines. That’s enough for me.”
“A practical soul to the core, aren’t you? Well and good, then. We shall ask His Holiness to solemnize Rhodry’s freedom on the morrow, and the day after that—you have to wait a full day and night, you see, which is all to the good in our pending precarious and perilous predicament—we’ll register it with the archon, and then … well, indeed, what then? Do you think we dare take the risk of scrying Nevyn out?”
“Will the Hawks know it if we do?”
“Most like.”
Jill sipped her wine and considered the grim alternatives. With a vast sigh Salamander got up and, still clutching his wine cup, wandered over to the lectern, where a candle as long and thick as a child’s arm stood impaled on an iron spike in readiness. He flicked his fingers and lit the candle, frowned, flicked them again and put it out, then waved his hand in the air and summoned a candle-shape of pure golden light to hang above the scroll laid out on the lectern.
“Why are you reading that stupid thing now?” Jill snapped. “We should be thinking about the trouble we’re in.”
“What a nasty temper you have! I’ve already thought about the trouble and have reached the conclusion that there isn’t one—a conclusion, that is. Like the shepherd in the ancient fable, caught twixt lion and wolf, no matter which way we run, we are somebody’s dinner.”
“There are times when I feel like strangling you.