The Magic of Recluce - L. E. Modesitt [79]
This time the serving-girl turned toward us.
“What’s for a traveler?” I made my voice hard.
Her eyes turned to me from the mug she had lifted from Arlyn’s hand, running over my dark cloak, sandy hair, and fair skin. “Perhaps you should join the dark one, young sir.”
Arlyn looked at me again.
“I doubt I could afford such luxury.”
The girl, for she could not have been much older than I, actually flashed a quick smile before her face turned cold and professionally false again. “Two pence for the fire, and five pence for the cider. Mead is ten pence a mug.”
“Food?”
“Cheese and black bread is ten pence; cheese and bear and black bread is twenty.”
“Cheese and black bread with cider.”
“Twenty-two pence.” She paused. “Now.”
I shrugged. “Half now, and half when I get the food. Someone will take the cider.”
Her face looked bored and tired already. “Fine. Twelve now. For fire and cider. Ten when you get the bread and cheese.”
I fished twelve pence from my belt, glad in this surly lot that I had managed some change in Hrisbarg. “You’ll break a traveler in this weather.”
“You could stay outside.” She slipped the coins through a narrow slot into a locked and hardened leather purse on an equally heavy leather belt, and handed me a wooden token. Then she was picking up mugs and coins all the way along the table, passing out tokens as she stacked the empty mugs on the heavy wooden tray.
The door behind me opened, and another rush of cold chilled the back side of the common room again.
A pair of road soldiers stood there, wearing heavy short riding jackets, swords, and carrying long-barreled rifles—used in peace-keeping, not in warfare, not when the smallest of chaos-spells destroyed their effectiveness.
A thin man, wearing a greasy brown apron and waving a truncheon, waved toward the pair. “Areillas, Storznoy!”
The bigger soldier—four cubits tall, with as much flab as muscle—jabbed the other, a man not much taller than the serving-girl. Then the two walked toward the innkeeper and the kitchen.
Conversations dropped off to whispers, or less, as the two made their way toward the innkeeper.
The heavier soldier said something to the thin innkeeper, who looked puzzled. The soldier raised his voice.
“…said…demon horseman seen on the Duke of Freetown’s deadlands…” repeated the smaller soldier.
The innkeeper shrugged. “Demon weather anyway.”
“Roaches…” mumbled Arlyn the carpenter.
“Why?” I asked, wondering about the demon horseman.
“Paid by the Montgren Council to keep the road safe between the border and Howlett…paid by the Thieves’ Guild for an exemption…” Arlyn looked for the serving-girl. “Where’s the cider?”
The road soldiers went through the wide stone arch into the kitchen and the serving-girl came out, holding high a tray of mugs, somehow not spilling a one. Vapor whispered from the hot cider as she neared the chilly end of the common area where we sat.
Thunk.
Thunk. The dark-haired server avoided my eyes as she set the mug down before me and the next before Arlyn.
Thunk.
“Look!” I yelled in Arlyn’s ear, pointing toward the wizard in white.
The carpenter started, and I switched mugs with him.
“Look where…just Antonin…”
“He pointed this way,” I tried to explain.
“Yell not at me…youth…” Arlyn growled.
“I am sorry…” And I was, but not because I had yelled.
Arlyn looked at the cider, but did not drink immediately.
I took a sip of mine. “Oooo…” The searing of my tongue and throat explained why the carpenter had waited.
A hush dropped over both the gentry and common areas of the Snug Inn. I saw that the man in white was standing, looking over at Justen, the gray wizard, whatever a gray wizard was.
“A deed more than a deed…” said Justen, so softly that I could not hear all of his words.
“A deed is a deed. Do appearances really deceive, Justen the Gray?” Antonin stood by his table.
The woman in the green tunic ignored Antonin, her veiled face turned toward Justen. The gray wizard said nothing, nor did he even stand.
“Actions speak louder than words. There