The Wise Man's Fear

CHAPTER SEVENTY-TWO Horses

Several days after Denna and I had our moonlit stroll in the garden, I finished a song for Meluan called “Nothing but Roses.” The Maer specifically requested it, and I had leapt to the project with a will, knowing that Denna would laugh herself sick when I played it for her.

I slid the Maer’s song into an envelope and looked at the clock. I’d thought I’d be busy the entire night finishing it, but it had come with surprising ease. Consequently, I had the rest of the evening free. It was late, but not terribly late. Not late for Cendling night in a lively city like Severen. Perhaps not too late to find Denna.

I threw on a set of fresh clothes and hurried out of the estates. Since the money in my purse came from selling pieces of Caudicus’ equipment and playing cards with nobles who knew more about fashion than statistics, I paid the full bit for the horse lifts, then jogged the half-mile to Newell Street. I slowed to a walk for the last several blocks. Enthusiasm is flattering, but I didn’t want to arrive at Denna’s inn panting and sweating like a lathered horse.

I wasn’t surprised when I didn’t find her at the Four Tapers. Denna wasn’t the sort to sit and twiddle her thumbs just because I was busy. But the two of us had spent the better part of a month exploring the city together, and I had a few good guesses as to where I might find her.

Five minutes later I spotted her. She was moving through the crowded street with a definite purpose, walking as if she had somewhere important to be.

I started to make my way toward her, then hesitated. Where would she be going so purposefully, alone, so late at night?

She was going to meet her patron.

I wish I could say I agonized before I decided to follow her, but I really didn’t. The temptation of finally learning the identity of her patron was simply too strong.

So I put up the hood of my cloak and began to ghost through the crowd behind Denna. It’s remarkably easy if you have a little practice. I used to make a game of it in Tarbean, seeing how far I could follow someone without being seen. It helped that Denna wasn’t a fool and stayed in the good parts of the city where the streets were busy, and in the dim light my cloak looked a nondescript black.

I followed her for half an hour. We passed cart vendors selling chestnuts and greasy meat pies. Guards mingled with the crowd, and the streets were bright with scattered streetlights and lanterns hung outside the doors of inns. An occasional out-at-the-heels musician played with his hat in front of him, and once we passed a troupe of mummers acting out a play in a small cobblestone square.

Then Denna turned and left the better streets behind. Soon there were fewer lights and tipsy revelers. The musicians gave way to beggars who called out or clutched at your clothes as you walked by. Lamplight still poured through the windows of nearby pubs and inns, but the street was no longer bustling. People clustered in twos or threes, women wearing corsets and men with hard eyes.

These streets weren’t dangerous, strictly speaking. Or rather, they were dangerous in a broken glass sort of way. Broken glass won’t go out of its way to hurt you. You can even touch it if you’re careful. Some streets are dangerous as frothing dogs, where no amount of care will keep you safe.

I was beginning to get nervous when I saw Denna stop suddenly at the mouth of a shadowed alley. She craned her neck for a moment, as if listening to something. Then, after peering into the dark, she darted inside.

Was this where she was meeting her patron? Was she taking a shortcut to a different street? Or was she simply following her paranoid patron’s instructions to make sure no one followed her?

I began to curse under my breath. If I followed her into the alley and she saw me, it would be obvious I’d been trailing her. But if I didn’t follow her, I’d lose her. And while this wasn’t a truly dangerous part of the city, I didn’t want to leave her walking alone so late at night.

So I scanned the nearby buildings and spotted one fronted with crumbling fieldstone. After a quick glance around, I climbed the face of it quick as a squirrel, another useful skill from my misspent youth.

Once I was on the roof, it was a simple matter to run over the tops of several other buildings, then slink into the shadow of a chimney before peering down into the alley. There was a sliver of moon overhead, and I expected to see Denna striding quickly along her shortcut, or having a hushed and hidden meeting with her dodgy patron.

But what I saw was nothing of the sort. Dim lamplight from an upstairs window showed a woman splayed out motionless on the ground. My heart thudded hard for several beats until I realized it wasn’t Denna. Denna was dressed in shirt and pants. This woman’s white dress was crumpled around her, her bare legs pale against the dark stone of the street.

My eyes darted around until I saw Denna outside the window’s light. She stood close to a broad-shouldered man with moonlight shining on his bald head. Was she embracing him? Was this her patron?

Finally my eyes adjusted enough that I could see the truth: the two were standing very close and still, but she wasn’t holding him. She had one hand hard against his neck, and I saw white moonlight glitter on metal there, like a distant star.

The woman on the ground started to stir, and Denna called out to her. The woman climbed unsteadily to her feet, staggering a bit as she stepped on her own dress, then edged slowly past them, keeping close to the wall as she made her way to the mouth of the alley.

Once the woman was behind her, Denna said something else. I was too far away to make out any of the words, but her voice was hard and angry enough to raise the hair on the back of my arms.

Denna stepped away from the man and he backed away, one hand going to the side of his throat. He began to curse her viciously, spitting and making grasping motions with his free hand. His voice was louder than hers, but slurred enough that I couldn’t make out much of what he said, though I did identify the word “whore” several times.

But for all his talk, he didn’t come anywhere close to within arm’s reach of her. Denna simply stood facing him, her feet set squarely on the ground. She held the knife low in front of her, tilted at an angle. Her posture was almost casual. Almost.

After cursing for a minute or so, the man took half a shuffling step forward, shaking a fist. Denna said something and made a short, sharp gesture with the knife towards the man’s groin. Silence filled the alley and the man’s shoulders shifted a bit. Denna made the gesture again, and the man began to curse more softly, turning away and walking down the alley, his hand still pressed to the side of his neck.

Denna watched him go, then relaxed and slid the knife carefully into her pocket. She turned and walked to the mouth of the alleyway.

I scurried to the front of the building. On the street below I saw Denna and the other woman standing under a streetlamp. In the better light I saw the woman was much younger than I’d thought, just a slip of a girl, her shoulders heaving with sobs. Denna rubbed her back in small circles, and the girl slowly calmed down. After a moment they began walking down the street.

I hurried back to the alley where I had spotted an old iron drainpipe, a relatively easy way to get back down onto the street. But even so it cost me two long minutes and most of the skin off my knuckles to get cobblestones back under my feet.

Only through a pure effort of will did I keep myself from running out of the alley to catch up with Denna and the girl. The last thing I wanted was for Denna to discover I’d been following her.

Luckily, they weren’t moving very fast, and I caught sight of them easily. Denna led the girl back to the nicer part of the city, then took her into a respectable-looking inn with a painted rooster on the sign.

I stood outside for a minute, peering at the layout of the inn through one of the windows. Then I settled my hood more firmly over my face, walked casually around the back portion of the inn, and slid into a seat on the other side of a dividing wall, just around the corner from Denna and the young girl. If I’d wanted to, I could have leaned forward to peer at their table, but as it was, neither one of us could see the other.

The taproom was mostly empty, and a serving girl came up to me almost as soon as I took my seat. She eyed the rich fabric of my cloak and smiled. “What can I get you?”

I eyed the impressive array of polished glass behind the bar. I motioned the serving girl closer and spoke softly, with a rasp in my throat, as if I were recovering from the croup cough. “I’ll take a tumble of your best whiskey,” I said. “And a glass of fine Feloran red.”

She nodded and left.

I turned my finely tuned eavesdroppers’ ears to the next table.

“. . . your accent,” I heard Denna say. “Where are you from?”

There was a pause and a murmur as the girl spoke. Since she was facing away from me, I couldn’t hear what she said.

“That’s in the western farrel isn’t it?” Denna asked. “You’re a long way from home.”

There was murmuring from the girl. Then a long pause where I couldn’t hear anything. I couldn’t tell if she’d stopped talking, or if she was speaking too quietly for me to hear. I fought the urge to lean forward and peer at their table.

Then the murmuring came back, very soft.

“I know he said he loved you,” Denna said, her voice gentle. “They all say that.”

The serving girl set a tall wineglass in front of me and handed me my tumble. “Two bits.”

Merciful Tehlu. With prices like that, no wonder the place was nearly empty.

I tossed back the whiskey in a single swallow, fighting the urge to cough as it burned down my throat. Then I drew a full silver round out of my purse, set the heavy coin on the table, and put the empty tumble down over the top of it.

I motioned the serving girl close again. “I have a proposal for you,” I said quietly. “Right now I want nothing more than to sit here quietly, drink my wine, and think my thoughts.”

I tapped the overturned tumble with the coin underneath. “If I am allowed to do this without interruption, all of this, less the cost of my drinks, is yours.” Her eyes went a little wide at that, darting down to the coin again. “But if anyone comes over to bother me, even in a helpful way, even to ask if I would like anything to drink, I will simply pay and leave.” I looked up at her. “Can you help me get a little privacy tonight?”

She nodded eagerly.

“Thank you,” I said.

She hurried away and went immediately to another woman standing behind the bar, making a few gestures in my direction. I relaxed a bit, reasonably certain they wouldn’t be drawing any attention to me.

I sipped my wine and listened.

“. . . does your father do?” Denna asked. I recognized the pitch of her voice. It was the same low, gentle tone my father had used when talking to skittish animals. A tone designed to calm someone and set them at their ease.

The girl murmured, and Denna responded. “That’s a fine job. What are you doing here then?”

Another murmur.

“Got handsy, did he?” Denna said matter-of-factly. “Well that’s the nature of eldest sons.”

The girl spoke up again, this time with some fire in her voice, though I still couldn’t make out any of the words.

I buffed the surface of my wineglass a little with the edge of my cloak, then tipped it out and away from me a bit. The wine was so deep a red that it was almost black. It made the side of the glass act like a mirror. Not a wonderful mirror, but I could see tiny shapes at the table around the corner.

I heard Denna sigh, cutting off the low murmur of the girl’s voice. “Let me guess,” Denna said, sounding exasperated. “You stole the silver, or something similar, then ran off to the city.”

The small reflection of the girl just sat there.

“But it wasn’t like you thought it would be, was it?” Denna said, more gently this time.

I could see the girl’s shoulders begin to shake and heard a series of faint, heartbreaking sobs. I looked away from the wineglass and set it back on the table.

“Here.” There was the sound of a glass being knocked onto the table. “Drink that,” Denna said. “It will help a bit. Not a lot. But a bit.”

The sobbing stopped. The girl gave a surprised cough, choking a little.

“You poor, silly thing,” Denna said softly. “Meeting you is worse than looking in a mirror.”

For the first time, the girl spoke loudly enough for me to hear her. “I thought, if he’s going to take me anyway and get it for free, I might as well go somewhere I can pick and choose and get paid for it. . . .”

Her voice trailed off until I couldn’t make out any words, leaving only the low rise and fall of her muffled voice.

“The Tenpenny King?” Denna interrupted incredulously. Her tone more venomous than anything I’d ever heard from her before. “Kist and crayle, I hate that Goddamn play. Modegan faerie-story trash. The world doesn’t work like that.”

“But . . .” the girl began.

Denna cut her off. “There’s no young prince out there, dressed in rags and waiting to save you. Even if there were, where would you be? You’d be like a dog he’d found in the gutter. He’d own you. After he took you home, who would save you from him?”

A piece of silence. The girl coughed again, but only a little.

“So what are we going to do with you?” Denna said.

The girl sniffed and said something.

“If you could take care of yourself we wouldn’t be sitting here,” Denna said.

A murmur.

“It’s an option,” Denna said. “They’ll take half of what you make, but that’s better than getting nothing and having your throat slit on top of it. I’m guessing you figured that out yourself tonight.”

There was the sound of cloth on cloth. I tipped my wineglass to get a look, but all I saw was Denna making some indistinct motion. “Let’s see what we have here,” she said. Then there came the familiar clatter of coins on a table.

The girl made an awed murmur.

“No, I’m not,” Denna said. “It’s not so much when it’s all your money in the world. You should know by now how expensive it is to make your own way in the city.”

A murmur that rose at the end. A question.

I heard Denna draw a breath, then let it out again slowly. “Because someone helped me once when I needed it,” she said. “And because if you don’t get some help you’ll be dead in a span of days. Take it from someone who’s made her own share of bad decisions.”

There was the sound of coins sliding on the table. “Okay,” Denna said. “First option. We get you apprenticed up. You’re a little old, and it will cost, but we could do it. Nothing fancy. Weaving. Cobbling. They’ll work you hard, but you’d have your room and board, and you’d learn a trade.”

A questioning murmur.

“With your accent?” Denna asked archly. “Can you curl a lady’s hair? Paint her face? Mend her dress? Tat lace?” A pause. “No, you don’t have the training to be a maidservant, and I wouldn’t know who to bribe.”

The sound of coins being gathered together. “Option two,” Denna said. “We get you a room until that bruise is gone.” Coins sliding. “Then buy you a seat on a coach back home.” More coins. “You’ve been gone a month. That’s the perfect amount of time for some serious worry to set in. When you come home they’ll just be happy you’re alive.”

Murmur.

“Tell them whatever you like,” Denna said. “But if you’ve got half a brain in your head you’ll make it sensible. Nobody’s going to believe you met some prince who sent you home.”

A murmur so soft I could hardly hear it.

“Of course it will be hard, you silly little bint,” Denna said sharply. “They’ll hold it over your head for the rest of your life. Folk will whisper when you walk by on the street. It will be hard to find a husband. You’ll lose friends. But that’s the price you’ll have to pay if you want to have anything like your normal life back again.”

The coins clinked as they were gathered together again. “Third option. If you’re certain you want to make a go of whoring, we can arrange it so you don’t end up dead in a ditch. You’ve got a nice face, but you’ll need proper clothes.” Coins sliding. “And someone to teach you manners.” More coins. “And someone else to get rid of that accent of yours.” Coins again.

Murmur.

“Because it’s the only sensible way to do it,” Denna said flatly.

Another murmur.

Denna gave a tight, irritated sigh. “Okay. Your father’s stable master, right? Think about the different horses the baron owns: plow horses, carriage horses, hunting horses. . . .”

Excited murmur.

“Exactly,” Denna said. “So if you had to pick, what sort of horse would you want to be? A plow horse works hard, but does it get the best stall? The best feed?”

Murmur.

“That’s right. That goes to the fancy horses. They get petted and fed and only have to work when there’s a parade or someone goes hunting.”

Denna continued, “So if you’re going to be a whore, you do it smart. You don’t want to be some dockside drab, you want to be a duchess. You want men to court you. Send you gifts.”

Murmur.

“Yes, gifts. If they pay, they’ll feel like they own you. You saw how that turned out tonight. You can keep your accent and that low bodice and have sailors paw you for ha’penny a throw. Or you can learn some manners, get your hair done, and start entertaining gentlemen callers. If you’re interesting, and pretty, and you know how to listen, men will desire your company. They’ll want to take you dancing as much as take you to bed. Then you have the control. Nobody makes a duchess pay for her room in advance. Nobody bends a duchess over a barrel in an alley then kicks out her teeth once he’s had his fun.”

Murmur.

“No.” Denna said, her voice grim. There was the sound of coins being clinked softly into a purse. “Don’t lie to yourself. Even the fanciest horse is still a horse. That means sooner or later, you’re going to get ridden.”

A questioning murmur.

“Then you leave,” Denna said. “If they want more than you’re willing to give, that’s the only way. You leave, quick and quiet in the night. But if you do, you’ll burn your bridges. That’s the price you pay.”

A hesitant murmur.

“I can’t tell you that,” Denna said. “You need to decide what you want for yourself. You want to go home? There’s a price. You want control over your life? There’s a price. You want the freedom to say no? There’s a price. There’s always a price.”

There was the sound of a chair being pushed away from a table, and I pressed myself back against the wall as I heard the two of them stand up. “It’s something everyone has to figure out on their own,” Denna said, her voice growing more distant. “What do you want more than anything else? What do you want so badly you’ll pay anything to get it?”

I sat for a long time after they left, trying to drink my wine.