The Yellow Silk - Don Bassingthwaite [5]
He worked the edges of the crowd like a herding dog. Slowly, people began to move back into the tavern. The ground was a treacherous churned surface in their wake, but Tycho danced back and forth across it, bow on strilling keeping perfect time. His calls turned into a patter, rolling off his tongue. "Ervis. Pitch. Blike. Come on, inside with all of you. Drink one for Ton and remember an old mate. Sing a song for him. Umbero, you were his friend. You, too-" Tycho turned around one more time and found himself face to chest with a dark-red tunic. He looked up to the raw-boned face above it and finished smoothly "-Lander."
The thug smiled like a shark. "Oh yes," he said. "Like two peas in a pod we were." A couple of the men who stood with him laughed.
Tycho returned the smile. "Like two dice in a cup," he added, "or two fish in a net." His bow paused for a moment on the strilling. "No, forgive me. Two fish in a net would have been Ton and Ardo."
Lander's eyes narrowed. "You want to watch what you say about dead people."
"I never say anything ill of the dead." Tycho's smile narrowed as well. "The living, on the other hand, are another matter." He sent new sound rippling from his instrument and spun around to usher the last of the crowd back into the Wench's Ease. "Come in and drink, Lander," he called back. "You owe Ton that."
He didn't wait to see if Lander took up the gauntlet, but just followed the stragglers through the door and into the tavern. Warm air embraced him like a lover and he gasped with relief. The crowd had already settled back into their familiar places, filling the Ease almost completely. Many already had more ale in their hands and Muire's serving women were scrambling to keep up with the demands of those who didn't. Tycho let the strilling slide down from his shoulder and wove his way through to the bar. "There you go, Muire," he said, tugging open his coat and loosening his scarf. "Your customers are back again and drinking. Now how about a hot one?"
On the other side of the smoke-darkened wood counter, Muire grunted and turned to draw a tankard of ale from a cask. "You've got the gift," she admitted grudgingly.
"What was that, Muire?" asked Tycho in a mock shout over the noise of the tavern's patrons. "I didn't quite catch it."
"Don't try me, Tycho. Just because you've been traveling doesn't make you a wit. I still remember when you were just another Spandeliyon dock rat, squeaking out songs for a copper and getting into trouble." The tavern door opened again, letting in another gust of cold air. Muire glanced up and her gaze hardened. "Some things don't change."
Tycho twisted around to follow her glare. The Ease's door was just closing behind Lander and his men. The thugs began making their way around the outside of the room to a table-hastily vacated by the customers who had been occupying it-close to the big stone fireplace. Lander gave Tycho a harsh stare. The curly haired man just turned back to Muire. "No," he said, "I guess they don't."
"What did you say to him?" asked Muire.
"Nothing that he'd understand," Tycho told her with a crooked grin.
Muire shook her head. She took a stout iron from a rack over a brazier and plunged it into the tankard of ale. The iron hissed and the ale seethed briefly. Muire passed the tankard across the bar. Tycho shifted strilling and bow into one hand and raised the warm drink with the other. "To Ton and Ardo," he said quietly. Muire retrieved a tankard of her own and clacked it against his.
Tycho barely had a mouthful of ale down his throat, though, before there was a shout from the tavern floor. "Hoy, bard! How about a song?" Tycho gave Muire another crooked grin.
"No, things don't change, do they?" He set his tankard down and shrugged out of his coat then turned around, settling his strilling back against his shoulder. "All right, Rana, you want a song?" He rubbed his bow against the