Oath of Swords

“That it would, My Lady. That it certainly would.” The sergeant beckoned to his corporal again. “Go down to the Needle Street station and bring back a couple more men and a wagon to collect the trash, Rahlath,” he said.

“Aye!” The corporal trotted off, boots clattering on the uneven cobbles, and the sergeant looked back at Zarantha.

“Now, the way I see it, ‘My Lady,’ I really should take your armsman in-and maybe you, too, for all I know. But it’s a busy night, and I’ve got a lot on my mind already. If it should happen that the two of you were to, ah, wander off before Corporal Rahlath gets back here, why, I’d probably be too occupied to look for you. And if you keep right on wandering fast enough, ni’Tarth might not even realize where he ought to look for you . . . and your ‘armsman,’ of course, if you take my meaning?”

“I do, Sergeant.” Zarantha looked up over her shoulder at Bahzell. “I believe you said you were on your way to your friend?” she suggested.

“Aye, but-”

“In that case, I think we should be going,” she interrupted, and his mouth closed with a click. The ground seemed to be slipping away beneath his feet, and try as he might, he couldn’t make it hold still. “Yes, I definitely think we should be on our way,” she said firmly, and he nodded.

There was nothing else he could do.

Chapter Fifteen

Bahzell led his new employer through the deserted streets in glum silence. He’d done it again. Poked his nose into something that was none of his affair because he simply couldn’t leave well enough alone, and now look what he’d landed himself in! Of all the-!

Yet for all his self-disgust, he saw no escape. He owed Zarantha something for keeping him out of jail; no doubt this ni’Tarth would have found him easy to get to there. By the same token, ni’Tarth left him no choice but to get out of Riverside, jail or no jail. Of course, none of that would have been true if he hadn’t tried to help Zarantha, but he couldn’t really blame her for that. He’d known better and done it anyway, which only made him angrier with himself. The best he could hope for now was that her family truly would be able to pay a little something for getting her home . . . which didn’t seem likely. Whatever she claimed, even a hradani knew you didn’t find noblewomen dressed like peasants-and poor peasants, at that-creeping around the stews and alleys of a place like Riverside in the middle of the night!

He growled an oath and stalked onward. At least, he told himself morosely, it gave him someplace to go instead of squatting in this miserable city while the money ran out, but he hated to imagine Brandark’s reaction.

They reached the tavern where he and Brandark lodged, and the slatternly landlady looked up from behind the bar as he led Zarantha in. Beady eyes brightened in their harridan net of wrinkles as she saw the young woman at the hradani’s side, but she put what she fondly imagined was a prim look of disapproval on her face and waved a bony finger at Bahzell.

“Here, now! This here’s a decent place, it is. I’ll not have ye bringin’ yer fancy pieces an’ gods know what pox or flux back to my beds!”

The Horse Stealer’s foxlike ears flattened, and the landlady paled as he glared down at her. He truly couldn’t have said which infuriated him more-the insult to Zarantha, the notion that he might dally with a whore, or the leering, knowing note in her voice-but any of them would have been enough tonight.

Silence hovered for a long, fragile moment before he made his fury relax and gave her a thin smile. “You were saying?” he rumbled.

The slattern swallowed nervously, but then she straightened, and defiant spite flashed in her eyes, made even stronger by the shame of her own fear as she realized he wasn’t going to attack her after all.

“No need t’ take that tone wi’ me , master high an’ mighty! It’s me as is mistress o’ this house, an’ ye’ll bide by my rules, or out ye goes!” She sniffed with growing confidence, for she knew how long and hard the hradani had looked before they found lodging in the first place. “Maybe ye can find someplace else as’ll take yer kind, but if yer minded t’ bed that hussy in my house, ye’ll be payin’ two silver extra to futter her, me lad!”

“And what,” Zarantha asked, a note of amusement in her musically accented Axeman, “makes you assume that’s what he has in mind?”

“Hoo! A furriner, are ye?” The landlady cackled. “Well now, missy, just what d’ye think I’m a-thinkin’? The shame of it, spreadin’ yer legs fer the likes o’ him, an’ him not even human!”

Bahzell’s ears went flat once more, and the slattern’s vicious smile vanished as he stalked wordlessly towards her. The Horse Stealer had endured enough this night, but he reminded himself sternly that his hostess was a woman-a loathsome, disgusting woman, but a woman-and so he reached out to the thirty-gallon beer keg on the bar instead of her scrawny neck. It was half full, and beer sloshed noisily as he plucked it from its chocks.

“I’m thinking,” he said softly, holding the keg out straight-armed, directly over her head, “that you’re after owing this lady an apology.”

The landlady looked up and blanched. The keg hung motionless above her, not even quivering, and her eyes darted back to the hradani’s expressionless face and then to Zarantha.

“T-T-To be sure, I meant ye no offense, and-and I humbly begs yer pardon,” she gabbled, and Bahzell allowed himself another thin smile.

“Good,” he said in that same, soft voice. He replaced the keg in its chocks with neat precision and waved Zarantha towards the stairs. She inclined her head to the landlady in a gracious nod and swished up them in her torn homespun skirt, and Bahzell gave the harridan one last blood-chilling smile, patted the keg lightly, and followed her.

Brandark was still up, nursing a bottle before the tiny fire on the smoky hearth, when Bahzell and Zarantha entered the cheap room. He looked up at the opening door, and his eyes widened as he saw Zarantha. But he recovered quickly and scrambled to his feet, and her lips quirked as he twitched his lacy shirt straight and bestowed a graceful bow upon her.

“Will you stop that?” Bahzell growled. Something suspiciously like a chuckle came from Zarantha, and Brandark bobbed back up with a twinkle. Bahzell saw it and growled again, but Brandark only cocked his ears in polite inquiry.

“And who might your lovely companion be?”

“I’ll ‘companion’ you one, for half a copper kormak!” Bahzell rumbled in an overtried voice.

“Now, Bahzell!” Unholy amusement danced in Brandark’s eyes as he added the dried blood on Bahzell’s right hand to Zarantha’s general dishevelment, and he shook his head. “I apologize for my friend,” he told Zarantha in his smoothest tones. “It’s his hand, I think. For some reason, his brain never works too well when his hand’s bloody. It seems to make him remarkably irritable for some reason, too.”

“Listen, you runty, undersized, pipsqueak excuse for a hradani, I’ve been having about all-!”

“Now, now! Not in front of company.” Brandark smiled dazzlingly. “You can abuse me all you like later,” he soothed.

Bahzell made a sound midway between a growl, a sigh, and a groan, and Brandark laughed. He waggled his ears outrageously at the Horse Stealer, and, despite himself, Bahzell’s lips twitched in a weary grin.

“That’s better! And now if you’d introduce us?”

“Brandark Brandarkson of Navahk, be known to-” Bahzell frowned and looked at Zarantha. “What was it you were calling yourself?”

“My name is Zarantha,” she said, smiling at Brandark, and the Bloody Sword’s ears perked up at her accent. “Lady Zarantha Hûrâka, of Clan Hûrâka.”

“Do you know,” Brandark murmured, “I think you actually may be.”