The Yellow Silk - Don Bassingthwaite [8]
The thieves must have heard him. One looked up, yelped at the sight of an armed man, and slapped his partner. Both fled, leaving the dead man turning slowly in the cold air, pants dangling loose around his knees. Li averted his eyes as he passed.
Only one of the buildings around the tree bore any sign at all. Not that a sign seemed truly necessary-light and song seeped through gaps around the door. Some of the light splashed across the sign above as well, revealing a lurid painting of a laughing woman so buxom she almost spilled out of her bodice. Li guessed that he had found out what "wench" meant. He averted his eyes again, shifting his gaze to the ground, apparently the only safe place, to look.
It wasn't. The snow and muck between tree and tavern had been churned up, as if by many feet. The hanged man's killers had emerged from under the sign of the wench. His hand squeezed the scabbard of his dao and he glanced up briefly at the corpse dangling from the tree. "May the Immortals grant me better luck in this place than they did you," he said. He reached out and opened the tavern door.
There was nothing better than a good song to loosen hearts-and more important, Tycho thought, throats. He grinned to himself as he sawed his bow across the strilling. The dark ale of the Wench's Ease was flowing as smooth as bait on a hook. Even Lander and his men were drinking and singing along with the tavern regulars. Muire and her serving maids were busier than they had been in a tenday and if Muire was happy enough at the end of the night, there might even be a little extra coin for him. All he needed to do was keep the mood up. "How about another?" he bellowed over the din,
A cheer came back to him. Tycho sent a ripple of music dancing out from the strilling then scraped the bow slowly, drawing the crowd's attention to him. "Ahhh," he rasped sadly as his audience fell quiet, "the wizards of Thay, they have a way with magic and with spells. They shave the hair on their head and they dress all in red, and they're dour like clams in their shells.''
The bow scratched a string for emphasis. A few people laughed and Tycho flashed them a smile. "But there's a reason they're bald-ed, and dress like they're scalded and all have the humor of rocks." He paused and the crowd leaned forward in anticipation. "That isn't a pimple… " He winked at one of the serving maids. "… you see on their… dimple… "
"It's pox!" he yelled and the crowd joined in, banging tables and singing lustily. "It's pox, it's pox, they've got the Thayan pox!"
Tycho strutted out into the middle of the floor and spun around to the shouts of the crowd, playing fast and hard. "Well, there's Thayan pox in every port, in sailor's shack and prince's court-"
"The pox, the pox, they've got the Thayan pox!"
"When'ere you see a wizard itch, you know what is that makes 'em twitch!"
"The pox, the pox, they've got the Thayan pox!"
In Tycho's head, the trickle of coins that Muire usually doled out at the end of the night was turning into a small flood. He laughed. "Even temples aren't safe anymore," he sang, "you never know who walked through that door!" He swept out his arm and pointed his bow at the Ease's own rickety portal-
–which opened.
For one moment, the slightest fraction of a heartbeat, the crowd-and Tycho-paused. Framed in the tavern doorway was a tall man dressed in a long quilted coat of blue wool. Snow clung to his shoulders and to the fur-edged cap that he wore. If the snow bothered him, however, there was no trace of it in his travel-tanned, fine-boned face. He stood straight as a mast, stern and dignified.
For a moment.
"The pox!" howled the crowd in perfect time. "The pox! He's got the Thayan pox!"
The stranger's mouth drew a thin line across his face.
It wasn't clear who in the crowd laughed first.