“Excuse me, maester,” said the throaty voice. A personage loomed behind the innkeeper at the door of the supper room, its bright crest startling in the drab surroundings.
Andevai looked over, no doubt surprised to hear himself again improperly addressed by a stranger, and then doubly surprised to see a troll who was, after all, not speaking to him but to the innkeeper. I sucked back my tears as the prickling anticipation of destruction abruptly eased: He was too startled to be angry.
“You are quite run off your feet, maester—we can see that—but we have run out of wine, I am sorry to say, which comes about only because you offered us such an excellent vintage.” From a distance, trolls’ smooth, small feathers were easy to mistake for strangely textured skin, but this close, the drab brown feathers of this troll’s face stood in contrast to a crested mane of yellow feathers flaring over its head and down its neck. “If we might get more when you are able to fetch it. Our thanks.”
“I’ll bring it at once.” The innkeeper bolted across the common room to an opening hung with a curtain.
“And plates for the new guests,” called the troll as the curtain slashed down behind the innkeeper. The creature turned an eye toward me. It wrinkled its muzzle to expose teeth, a gesture perhaps meant to be a grin recognizable by humans as a friendly smile, but overall the effect was of a big, sleek, feathered lizard displaying its incisors as a threat. “We’d be honored to guest you. If you wish to sit with us, of course. My companions are good company, so they assure me. Witty, well read, and willing to put up with me, so that may be a point in their favor. Or it may not be. You will have to determine that for yourselves. I’m Chartji. I won’t trouble you with my full name, which you would not understand in any case. I’m a solicitor currently employed by the firm of Godwik and Clutch, which has offices in Havery and Camlun, although I’m originally from Expedition. I’ve been employed in Havery for the past four years, but we’re setting up new offices in Adurnam.”
It thrust out a hand, if one could call it a hand, what with its shiny claws curving from the ends of what might be fingers or talons, offering to shake in the style of the radicals and laboring classes. Andevai actually took a step back, and the troll’s head tilted, marking the movement.
“So it’s true what they say about trolls,” he said.
Fiery Shemesh! Could he never stop offending people?
“It is,” said the troll as its toothy grin sharpened, “but only we females.”
I stuck out my hand a little too jerkily. “Well met, Chartji. I’m called Catherine Hassi Barahal.” The name fell easily from my tongue; too late I recalled I was someone else now, although I did not know who.
The featherless skin of its—her!—palms was a little grainy, like touching a sun-warmed rock. For an instant I felt the scent of summer in my nostrils, a whisper like falling water, the breath of cut grass and the juice of crushed berries. Then she let go.
“Interesting,” she said as she looked me up and down, as if she saw something surprising in my height, my hair, my eyes, or my features. “Can it be you are a child of the Hassi Barahal house, originally established in Gadir? The old histories call your people ‘the messengers,’ known to bring messages across long distances in a short time. There’s a branch residing in Havery, founded by Anatta Hassi Barahal. The left-handed Barahals, they call them. I see you hold your… ah”—she seemed about to say one word but changed her mind—“your cane in your left hand.”
“Why, yes!” I laughed out of sheer surprise. Even in the cold common room, bereft of fire, the air felt abruptly balmier. “Almost no one knows the ancient origin of our House. I’m from Adurnam. The Havery Barahals are cousins. My aunt’s great-grandmother’s descendants, in fact.”
“They are acquaintances of ours. Come sit, come join our clutch.”
I followed her into the supper room, eager to stay within the orbit of one who linked me, however tenuously, to my family. She was tall, as trolls were, a hand taller than Andevai, graceful on her feet, although her gait hitched strangely. She seemed unaware of the glances fired her way from the other two tables of diners, well-to-do merchants or artisans by the look of their fashionable clothing, gold and silver necklaces and bracelets, and tiny leather charm cases sewn to their sleeves. Respectable people not happy to be sharing a supper room with a pair of trolls, even if the trolls were dining with people.
“I hope he did not insult you,” I murmured, feeling a flush creep up my cheeks.
“It’s a common observation made by humans who are born with this property you rats call cold magic. Now, here are my companions. Catherine Hassi Barahal of the Adurnam Hassi Barahals is joining us for supper. And…” She did not turn her torso to look back toward the door but swiveled her head so far around to get a look behind that I gasped. The toothy grin flickered. “My apologies,” she said, turning to face forward again as the two human companions hid smiles. “I forget how that startles your kind.”
I did not need to turn to know that Andevai had not entered the room, because the fires warming the supper room and the candelabra lighting continued to burn merrily.
“Here is Maester Godwik. Rats, pay attention.”
The two humans at the table rose to offer hands to shake in the same radical manner.
“I am Kehinde Nayo Kuti,” said the woman in a very pure, mannered accent that betrayed her origins from one of the Mediterranean cities. She was small framed and black skinned, with her hair done in multiple braids and a pair of thick spectacles riding on the bridge of her nose. She wore robes sewn of strips of patterned fabric dyed in deep oranges and yellows and browns quite unknown in these northern climates but ones that made her glow in contrast.
The man was considerably taller, one of the pale Celts with blond hair cut short and a luxuriant mustache in the old style, a local by his easy manner and casual working man’s dress of belted tunics and trousers. “Just call me Brennan Touré Du.”
“Du? That means ‘black-haired.’ ”
“It’s a long story, to be punctuated by a great deal of whiskey and several fistfights,” said Brennan with a charming smile, by which I understood I wasn’t going to hear it.
Kehinde chuckled, and the two trolls chuffed, almost like wheezing.
“My apologies for not standing.” Maester Godwik looked slighter and shorter than Chartji, but instead of drab brown, he was feathered in vivid blue with a handsomely contrasting pattern of black and green along his elaborate crest. He raised a cane as in salute. “Injury, I am sorry to say. Clumsiness comes with age. As the sages say, ‘wisdom achieved at long last, but now too damned frail to climb Triumph Spire where the young bucks preen.’ I am Godwik. A solicitor with the firm of Godwik and Clutch, with offices in Havery and Camlun and soon in Adurnam. Although if you are generous-hearted, you will not despise me on account of my having taken to the solicitor’s trade. Is your companion not coming in?”
“Sit, if you please,” said Chartji to me, kindly meant.
I found abruptly that my knees were weak and my chest empty of air, because Andevai had been going to wield his magic to punish the innkeeper for his disrespect, but then after all, he had not done it. I sagged into a chair at the end of the table, with Kehinde and Brennan to my right and Godwik facing me. Chartji kindly brought a pitcher and basin so I could wash. After setting these items beside me, the troll hoisted a bottle, poured the remainder of dark liquid into an empty cup, and shoved it over to me.
“You’re trembling,” she said. “This should fortify you.”
I downed the contents of the half-full cup in one gulp. A sherry burned straight down my throat, so strong the rush blew through my head as Brennan laughed, the trolls grinned, and Kehinde handed me the last hank of bread. It was good bread with a crisp crust and moist insides, still warm.