The Yellow Silk - Don Bassingthwaite [9]
The only people in the place not laughing were the stranger and Muire. The stranger stepped into the tavern, slamming the door shut behind him, and stalked over to the bar. Muire gave Tycho a fierce look. The bard swallowed a laugh and reached out to the stranger as he passed. "Olore, friend," he choked. "Welcome to the Wench's Ease." He couldn't hold back a crooked smile. "The merriest tavern in Spandeliyon."
The stranger twitched away from his hand as though Tycho carried the Thayan pox himself. "Leave me, singer," he said in a thick accent and walked on.
At the nearest table, Rana's laughter turned into an ugly snort. "Arrogant elf-blood," she spat at the stranger's retreating back.
"He's not elf-blood, Rana," Tycho told her, straightening' up. "He's a Shou."
"Elf, Shou-you don't see much of neither in Spandeliyon."
"No," agreed Tycho, "you don't." He nodded distracted acknowledgment as others in the crowd shouted for another song, but didn't raise his strilling again. Instead, he turned and went after the stranger.
The Shou was just stepping up to the bar. Tycho gave him a surreptitious examination as he approached. The Shou was tall, lean, and stiff, a sturdy doorpost of a man. The pack he carried slung over one shoulder was large and heavy. The wool of his coat was dusty, dirt muting the fine blue of the quilted fabric. It was fraying slightly along the hem and at the cuffs and elbows. Unless he missed his guess, the man had come a long, long way. Clipping his bow to the strap of his strilling and shifting the instrument around to ride on his back once more, Tycho bellied up to the bar beside him. The Shou glanced at him out of the corner of his almond-shaped eyes.
"I said leave me, singer. I do not want a song." The Shou man turned away as if Tycho were already gone from his mind and set a scabbard containing a heavy Shou saber on the bar. He looked to Muire. "A clean cup with good wine or pale ale." He set some coins on the bar.
Sembian copper pennies. A scant price for a mug of ale in another port, but just right for dockside Spandeliyon. The man, Tycho judged, was an experienced traveler.
Muire glanced down at the pennies, not even blinking at the saber beside them. "A clean cup I can give you," she said, "but we only have dark ale here." The Shou nodded and Muire turned away to the ale casks. Conversation in the tavern was returning to normal, laughter dying out to be replaced by the usual hum and murmur. Much of it, Tycho was fairly certain, would be about this unusual visitor.
The Ease's patrons were whetting their appetites for a good story and, bind him, he'd be the one to give it to them! He leaned in. The Shou fixed him with an angry glare, but Tycho didn't back away. Instead he smiled at him. "You've come to a poor town on a cold night, honored lord," he said in the musical Shou tongue.
He had the satisfaction of seeing the stranger's eyes widen ever so slightly in surprise. "You speak Shou," he replied in the same language.
"A little bit," Tycho told him modestly. "You aren't the only traveler here. I had the pleasure of spending some time in the Shou town of Telflamm in Thesk and learned your language there."
The stranger nodded. "Ah," he said. He looked directly at Tycho. "That would explain why you speak it like a lisping whore from Ch'ing Tung."
Blood rushed to Tycho's face. He opened his mouth, a stinging insult rising to his lips, but Muire cut him off before he could deliver it. "Your ale, sir," she said, setting a tankard down before the Shou-and one before Tycho as well, foamy, thick, and hastily drawn. "And yours." The Shou man picked up his tankard and nodded to her. When Tycho reached for his own, though, Muire gave the tankard a