The Towers of the Sunset - L. E. Modesitt [32]
Hylin shrugs. “You talk Temple like some fellows I knew from Suthya, but you’re fair, and I never saw anyone with real silver hair before.”
“Nor I, either,” laughs Creslin, though he has to quell his turning stomach as it reminds him of Llyse and a silver-haired man.
“We’re headed to Fenard, and then to Jellico. Derrild wouldn’t be adverse to having another blade. He’s tight. Probably wouldn’t pay more than a copper a day, but he’s got a spare mount. Berlis stayed in Cerlyn.” The thin man looked at the floor. “Could be better than walking. Faster anyway.”
“You are worried?” Creslin senses the uneasiness in the other man, like a dark fog hovering behind his eyes.
“Me? Devils be damned, I’m worried. A cart, two pack mules, and a fat trader, with just one blade?”
Creslin nods. “Two would be the right number?”
“Right. Three says Derrild’s carrying jewelry and perfumes, and one and an empty saddle says that we’re hurting.”
While he does not follow the logic, Creslin understands the feelings. “I am interested.”
“Show up at the second bell in the morning.”
Creslin raises his eyebrows again.
“You are from a long ways away. Second bell is right after the early breakfast for the hard travelers. Same in all the road inns, leastwise from the Westhorns east. Cerlyn’s as far west as I’ve been.”
“Second bell, then,” Creslin affirms.
The thin man starts to rise, then pauses. “You can ride?”
“Better than I walk,” Creslin responds with a chuckle.
Hylin nods and walks back to Derrild’s table, where he resumes his seat and begins talking in a low voice to the trader.
Creslin shifts his attention to the tall man seated alone at another table for two in the far corner, dark-haired and with a mustache, but wearing no beard. After a glance, the silver-haired youth looks away from the white mist that looms unseen around the single figure.
He almost laughs as he wonders what he would see were he to look at himself. Would the naivete be as obvious to others as it is to himself?
“The white bird and the shadow woman . . . trouble for someone tonight . . .”
Creslin’s ears burn at the low words, but he cannot distinguish from whose lips they issued, save that a man spoke them.
With a thud, a chipped gray mug filled with a soapy-looking liquid lands on the table. The thin serving woman is already two tables past him, unloading the rest of the meal from her wooden tray onto the table of the largest group: the man and woman with the three male blades, clearly an eastern party, beyond the impact of the Legend.
As he surveys the public room through the smoky haze from the fire and the kitchen, Creslin realizes that he is the only totally clean-shaven male in the inn. Most are bearded. Only Hylin and the dark man in the corner have no beards—only mustaches, and both seem clearly hired blades.
Is that coincidence? And what does being clean-shaven mean?
He takes a sip of the warm ale, carefully. His caution is rewarded as he is able to swallow that bitter sip rather than choke it down. As he waits for the stew, he listens, picking up fragments that those who spoke would not have believed could be overheard.
“. . . swear those are leathers of the Westwind guard . . . woman playing at being a man?”
“. . . heard him speak . . . doesn’t sound like a woman.”
“. . . weather witch says a cold blow coming out of the north . . .”
The smoke from the fire and haze from the kitchen thicken until Creslin’s eyes begin to burn. A pair of men in scuffed herdsmen’s jackets shuffle their worn boots across the stone floor and drop themselves at the table next to Creslin. Sheepherders or goatherders, by the smell, Creslin decides.
He gestures absently, his ears on the conversations surrounding him, and the smoke gently sifts away from his eyes.
“. . . look,” hisses a low voice. “The smoke . . .”
Creslin abruptly releases his hold on the air and the smoke, letting them swirl where they will.
“What about the smoke?”
“I could have sworn . . .”
The silver-haired youth takes a slow, deep breath, not quite cursing himself for