“Verdor?”
His frown froze and then began to unwind as his eyes widened. “Is this who I think it is?” He smiled broadly, and the men at the bar stools relaxed, more because they could hear his tone of voice than see his expression.
Erin nodded, her own smile both friendly and uncertain.
“So it is!” He strode over, covering the distance in four large strides. “Lorie—and who’s this giant beside you?”
“It’s me, Darin.”
“Impossible—I remember him. He was just a small boy.” Then he laughed, that deep-throated, friendly roar that was so unmistakable. His arms came out, and he caught them both in a bear of a hug.
“Astor!”
“Dad?”
“Go tell your ma we’ve got real guests!”
“Real guests?” someone shouted. “Does that mean they don’t have to drink this swill?”
That someone was elbowed in the ribs by his drinking partner before Verdor could find him.
“So, how’s the half-wit? I’ve heard rumors that he’s got his backside stuck to the highest chair in Marantine.” He chuckled, turning them around without releasing them. “Let’s head into the back rooms.”
“Well, we’re here with someone.”
“Who?”
“A merchant from Marantine. I think you might—”
“Hildy?”
Darin nodded. He edged out of Verdor’s hug as the bartender turned, yet again, to face the door—and to face Hildy, who stood patiently blocking the path, her mittens in her hands.
“Hildy!”
“A nice man,” Hildy said to Erin, “but not the most observant.”
“Hildy ...”
She sighed, looking very much like a put-upon older relative. “Hello, Verdor dear. I see you’ve met my friends before.”
“Astor!” There was no answer. “Now where has that boy gone?”
“Well.” Hildy leaned back into the comfortably worn cloth of the love seat that she occupied by herself. Her fingers played gently against the twirling patterns of delicate china that held a much better tea than Burrows had been able to offer.
Verdor was smiling. He took a swig from a large, thick mug and set it down on the table. It contained tea, but as he had reasonably explained to all present, a man his size could barely get his fingers around the handle of a teacup. “So you have been busy.”
She nodded at Erin, Tiras, and Darin. “These three have. Putting Marantine into proper order hasn’t been easy. It’s a good thing the Empire was only there for five years.”
“And half-wit?”
Erin smiled.
“Half-wit, dear,” Hildy admonished sternly, “is not a fit appellation for a king.”
“He really did it?”
“Oh yes.” It was Tiras who spoke. Erin wondered if her memory played false with her; she remembered his strutting pose as Lord Brownbur and couldn’t easily reconcile it with his grim silence here. Gone were frills and rich-hued velvet, gone was the jovial wordiness.
Verdor didn’t blink. “Does he like it?”
“As much as one would expect.”
“Ah well. I expect I’ll see him this way soon, then.”
“You had better not.”
“He didn’t want to stay,” Darin added. “But someone had to watch the throne.”
Verdor’s smile gentled. “So this is how kings are made. Ah well. If you can keep him there, he’ll do a good job.”
“I’m sure he will, dear.” Hildy set her cup aside firmly. “But we’ve all got our work to do.”
Verdor grew more somber. “Business already?”
She nodded. “Burrows tells me that you’ve three here that need help.”
“Three.” He nodded, setting his own mug aside. “But to be honest, Hildy, it may well be two by the time everything’s said and done.”
“How so?”
He grimaced slightly. “One of them’s pretty bad. Older man—almost my age. He had some trouble getting down here. Aquitted himself well enough to make it.” He leaned back in the chair. “We’ve had a doctor in twice, but he’s got two wounds that’re infected. He’s fevering now.”
“Oh.” Hildy’s face developed a few more lines, giving those who watched their first true impression of her age. “Are they staying here?”
Verdor nodded quietly. There wasn’t very much left to say. And words couldn’t have captured the expression on either the innkeeper’s or the merchant’s face as they turned to look at Erin.
She had already half risen, but those looks stopped her with her hands on the table and her knees half-bent beneath it. Verdor’s expression she could understand; his life had been the first step on the path out of shadow.
But Hildy ...
As ever, Hildy understood the unspoken confusion and smiled gravely. “They talk of you often, dear. King’s friend, king’s captain. The royals in particular—the guards, mind—have nothing but praise to sing of you.” She too rose. “Of you, dear, and your skill.”
Erin stared awkwardly at her hands, unsure of what to say in response.
“The royal guards don’t place their affections on nothing.” Hildy offered a hand.
After a pause, Erin took it, surprised as always at the strength in its grip.
“You aren’t used to being complimented, are you? Probably just as well. Verdor?”
“I’d best lead. They’re all a bit jumpy.”
Tiras rose, silent, and Darin rose last. Very carefully he picked up the staff of his office and glanced at Erin’s retreating back.
She will be fine, Initiate.
He barely heard Bethany’s voice. Instead, Stev’s jaunty whistling returned in a slave’s song. A song to the Lady of Mercy. Somehow it wasn’t out of place here, and that worried him.
The uncarpeted halls of the third floor of Verdor’s inn were narrow and tall; clean, unadorned wooden doors punctuated them every few feet. All were closed, and all were silent. At the end of the hall, a large rectangular window let daylight in through the bars of a thick grill. Even this high up, the warrens still had some effect.
Darin noticed all of this, but to Verdor it was part of the everyday business of running his inn. He walked down the hall toward the light and turned at the third door from the end. There he gestured for quiet, then knocked very precisely; five times, three short and two long, each blow echoing dully behind him.
There was the sound of shuffling, then the door creaked open a few inches.
“It’s Verdor,” the innkeeper said quietly. “I’ve come with another doctor.”
Someone nodded—that much could be seen, although little else—and the door swung more fully open.
A woman, dressed in simple clothing, stared apprehensively out at that company gathered before her. One slim, callused hand fell into thick, brown folds of linen, the other remained glued to the door. She wasn’t old, but her face was lined, and her hair was silvered brown. Along one cheek the remnants of an old scar lingered.
“Maya.”
She smiled hesitantly up at the much taller man.
“How’s Horvath?”
“He’s better ...” She stepped aside almost helplessly.
“It’s all right. We’ll see for ourselves. Is Gareth—”
“I’m here.” A younger voice came, male from the sound of it. Looking into the room, Darin could see someone nearly his own age. He wore familiar clothing—Astor’s regular work tunic—and sat in the room’s single chair. It had been pulled up beside the bed, as close to the man that slept there as possible.
At least at first glance, it appeared that he slept. But even to Darin’s untrained eye, it became readily apparent that that wasn’t the case. Horvath’s skin was sallow, almost green, and sweat beaded his brow. His hair, which was thin, whether from age or illness, was plastered to forehead and pillow in damp, greasy curls.
Erin’s sharp breath made Darin move out of the way to let her pass. “I’m sorry,” she said softly to Gar
eth. “I think I’ll need the chair.”
He had already gotten to his feet. He started to walk to his mother, then stopped as the lady sat down. He watched her push her sword hilt to one side and forget about it.
“What’re you going to do?”
“Gareth.”
He knew the tone well. It was the shut-up-and-get-over-here voice that his mother only used when there was a chance of danger. He shut up. But he lingered over Erin’s shoulder, watching as her hands, smaller than his, reached out to cup his father’s face. They were, it seemed, very gentle; he had trouble believing they could hold the sword at her side.
She murmured something clearly, but he didn’t understand the words she used. Her hands fluttered a moment, then came back to touch his father’s cheek and brow.
“Can you—can you do anything?”
Just like a mother. She could talk; he had to be quiet.
The lady in the chair nodded quietly. “Verdor—maybe you should clear the room.”
“What’re you going to do?” Gareth’s voice was distinctly louder, and the words more urgent.
“Gareth!”
He swung around, to see his mother edging her way past the burly innkeeper. With quickness that spoke of experience, he dodged around to the other side of the bed and wedged himself between it and the blank wall. He bit his lip and caught the bed frame between clenched fingers.
“We came this far together,” he said to his mother, between equally clenched teeth. “And I ain’t leaving yet.”
“Verdor, I’m sorry,” Maya began, as she walked over to her boy. “It’s just that ...”
“Don’t worry about it.” Verdor caught her shoulders in one arm, letting her know again the strength of the comfort he could offer. “My own son’s none better behaved than yours.”
And Erin looked up. Her eyes were glowing with the green, living light of the lines.
Neither Maya nor her son knew the lines. In a silence uncomfortably stretched between fear and awe, they both stopped moving.
“Stay, then,” Erin said softly, her voice low. “I mean this man no harm and will help him if I can.”
Maya nodded dumbly.
And Darin, silent until now, knew what Erin intended to do. He walked into the room, but not to her. The floorboards creaked loudly, unnaturally so—no one else was moving.
“Maya,” he said, trying to lower his voice as much as possible in an effort to be adult in her eyes, “I’ve traveled with her for a long time. She’s saved many lives.”
Maya looked down at him and saw him as he was: a boy maybe a year older than her son, walking with a staff, wearing a cream-colored shirt that was a little too large for him. She nodded, and her eyes flickered away, to be held once again by Erin.
“She’s special,” Darin continued, although Maya did not look down again. “And what she’s about to do may seem odd.”
His words, if they might have had their desired effect, had no time to sink in before Erin reached down to her leg to pull out a simple, unadorned dagger in a slim, steady hand.
Both mother and son stiffened, and then Gareth began to crawl up on the bed, his mouth wide with shock.
“Gareth!” Verdor’s voice had the effect that Darin’s did not. “Hold!”
“What are you doing?” he demanded, his fists clutching thick wool blankets.
But the light in her eyes was growing still, and she had no answer to give.
“She’s trying to touch God,” Darin answered, and then bit his lip. Had it been so long? Had he forgotten so much of life as a slave that he could say this without realizing immediately what its effect would be?
He reached forward, staff in hand, and swung it lightly into Gareth’s chest. Light limned staff and boy as if they were one single object, but it was light that Gareth’s eyes would never see. Yet he felt it still, as Bethany’s power enveloped him, giving peace in almost equal measure to his fear.
Maya swiveled to Verdor with a look of horror and betrayal writ large across her gaunt, angular face. Her hands came up to frame her cheeks as she shook her head from side to side.
“Hold, Maya,” Verdor said again. “This God is not the God of Veriloth. Trust us.”
Trust a free man. As a slave.
This, this Darin understood. And he knew what he might do to help her. An act, not of power, but of powerlessness. With only a thought of Bethany, he dropped his staff and began to fumble with the buttons on his long, right sleeve. He rolled up the linen past the elbow, then shouted her name—the name she had given in trust and hope to a free man.
This time, when she looked at Darin, she saw him as he had once been. The white lines of House Damion curled around the soft inner skin of his arm like a bracelet.
They were kin, in a way. They had suffered the same small deaths, and the same losses; the same helplessness and the same dying dreams. “Please,” he said. “I’m Darin. Trust us.”
And she bit her lip and turned to face Erin again.
To face the Sarillorn of Elliath.
Blood dripped from Erin’s palm to splash the worn, scuffed wood of the floor and the rough, pale brown of blanket. The dagger stayed suspended in Erin’s left hand a moment and then fell, gently, to the bed. She released it and brought her arms across her chest. Her throat rose suddenly like a pillar of human fire; her hair, dark without sun to glint along its copper edge, seemed to crackle in electric wind. For a moment her eyes were too green, too bright to countenance, and then they went out beneath the curtains of lids and lashes.
Darin felt the stirring of blood at the sight of the Sarillorn. He had never met a Servant, but knew now, again and as always, that this is what they would have looked like—living, burning statues in the hand of God. He reached for Bethany and held her tightly.
Maya’s trembling lips began to stumble over words that sounded strangely familiar to Darin. Her fear was suddenly guttered, gone as if it had never had the time and the years to grow so large and all-encompassing. She was singing.
“Lady of Mercy, please hear us
Lady of Mercy, be near us
We who have toiled, still wait
The hand that will free us from fate. ”
Another voice joined hers, lower, younger, but less tremulous in its hope. Youth did that.
“Lady of Mercy, you sleep
In darkness, yet faith shall you keep
We know, we who wait, that you’ll come
Love and Mercy, your will will be done.”
She moved to the beat of that chorus of two as the last of the ward was done. Her hands, one clean and one bloodied, came to rest upon the brow of the dying man.
Three people were healed by the hands that touched only one. Power, Leman’s, flowed through the vessel she had made of herself. Life answered His call; infection withered and died as she weeded it from his system like a master gardener.
And when she was done, she slumped forward in the chair as if strings had been cut at the shoulder. But her image remained, both in the room, and in the markets and squares of the Empire.
The Lady of Mercy returned and triumphant.
She smiled wanly, and her voice was impossibly human, impossibly tired as she met Maya’s eyes. “I think—I think he’ll be all right now.”
Maya fell to her knees. There were tears streaming down her cheeks, and she did nothing to check them, even though they blurred the edges of the woman who had saved her husband’s life.
“Oh Lady, Lady.” She whispered it again and again, giving the words the tone and timbre of the litany that they had become in her life. “Oh Lady, thank you, thank you.”
Even Gareth half bent to the floor, but his mouth was wide and still.
Erin’s brow creased in confusion. “He’ll be fine, now. Are you all right?”
Maya laughed, and the laugh was a girl’s laugh, a child’s laugh. It was that open and that vulnerable.
The eyes of the man on the bed flickered open at the sound. “Maya?” the man w
hispered. “What’s going on?”
It was Erin who answered. “I’m not sure.”
He swiveled his head to look at her with suspicion and confusion. “Who are you?”
And Maya laughed again, sweeping herself to her feet in such a lithe motion that she left the years behind. She ran to the bed and threw herself across her husband’s chest. The wound that had been there was now a thin white line; the body’s memory of something painful in the distant past.
“The Lady of Mercy,” she said softly.
“Girl, have you been drinking something?”
“Oh Horvath, don’t you understand?”
“Maya? Why are you crying?”
“We’re free,” she said, and then the tears became too strong to let words pass.
chapter seven
It was Darin who explained things to Erin.
He was young enough not to be able to find the right words and close enough to his past not to want to try too hard. But he knew, in the sleepless dark of a night with Tiras’ snores for company, that until he made her understand, he would see her a little as Maya and Gareth now did: too distant. He had to make her see what Maya and Gareth saw. There was an easy way to do it, but he would have to brave the market of Verdann. The very market that he watched the last emblems of his free life be sold away in. He didn’t want to go.
In the morning, tired and drawn, he avoided breakfast and spoke with Verdor for a few minutes.
That afternoon, Erin, Darin, Tiras, and Verdor headed out to the West Market Square. They dressed much as they had for their journey; like travelers, still a little dirt-stained from the toil of the road. And they carried the grants of House Boradil as protection against unwanted inquisition.
“But I don’t understand why we have to go to a market—isn’t that more visibility than we should have?”
“Lass,” Verdor said easily, his arm around her shoulders, “I go there all the time on errands from the wife. It’ll be safe; you’re with me.”
But it wasn’t Verdor she asked the question of, and Darin would only look away and shake his head. He looked younger and older both, and he had left his staff behind at the inn. It troubled her; he seldom left Bethany’s voice anywhere that he couldn’t see her.