Chapter 197 The Eastern Inn

Roland's whole account told, Lora knew at last: Susannah was dead.

"She was only a bond-maid and bed-mate — and nobody in the house had ever shorted her. What sent her running into Webb's arms? And in the end he sold her off at Dunford.

Even Webb hadn't looked for that: sold twice on, hand to hand, she had come up at the capital of all places, and we found her — but by the time we traced her to the Rouge House, she was taking a guest, and somehow gave him offense, and he beat her to death on the spot.

The courtesan who had taken Susannah's jewelry swallowed it whole; the brothel-man, afraid she'd find out, had filched one damaged piece out of the lot to pawn. I've recovered Mother's jewelry and no more — and I've sent men to Dunford to pull the thread."

Lora and her third brother sighed together.

She propped her cheek in her hand and said, half under her breath: "You're a man — you can't feel what she felt. Mother is a duke's daughter out of a great house; she can require that a bed-maid bear no child. But Susannah was a woman too. Years on end, and a woman comes to have her own mind."

Roland sat with that a while — then laughed suddenly:

"If a man can't let his woman bear her own child aboveboard, then better no such bed-maid at all. Lora — once Alvin's match is settled, I mean to speak to Mother about Faye and me.

We can marry late, and gladly. But let us be betrothed first, come what may, so she can rest easier. And when the hour comes — you'll put in a good word for me with Father and Mother."

"Leave that to me!"

Brother and sister were still at their talk when a servant showed Weldon in. He passed over the food-box in his hands, smiling:

"The lord dined tonight at the palace — this box came back with him, a gift from the King. The moment he reached his own mansion he sent it over — he says it's a reward for Chance and Belle."

He set the box on the table. His left hand, kept behind his back till now, came out into the light — and in it was a rose bloom:

"The lord says this flower is for the young lady to wear. His answer, he says, to that 'True-Love' carnation you sent him last time."

"An—an answer?" Lora took the flower, puzzled:

"Don't paeonies bloom in spring and summer? It's hard on winter — where did a rose come from?"

"To answer the young lady: the Palace of the Holy Crown has hot springs, and the flowers planted near the spring water bloom all the year round. The lord dined tonight in the Warm Chamber — he saw this bloom outside it, and broke off the one stem."

"My thanks to him for his kind thought."

He wanted to come, of course. But in Augustburg, watched from every corner, there was none of the ease of the Grand Princess's mansion in Lohenheim.

That carnation — the name he had put to it, "True-Love," told her plain he had read her meaning. And now he sent back a rose. In the old tale, the rose was a maiden transformed — a maiden waiting for her beloved to come home.

He was telling her to wait.

Weldon gone, Lora opened the food-box. Inside, steamed: a pair of chicken legs, a pair of duck legs, and a pair of goose legs.

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A flash of anger crossed Roland's eyes.

No guessing needed, what a dinner that had been for Leon. Whether the King's notion or Voss's, someone had chosen those legs on purpose, to make sport of his crippled ones.

Lora half-guessed as much too. The King — what a petty piece of work.

No wonder that when Gawain came to the throne in the after-years, he let it be known that what he most hated in the world was those two kings, his nephews, forever baiting and shaming him; and their sons, near every one of them, met ends the histories set down no word of.

Insulted at their table in the palace hall — and out of it, he had stopped, even-tempered, to break her a flower... Lora smiled:

"Lucy — feed it to the dogs. They did great work on the road, and they've earned this."

Roland gave a cold laugh: "A dog that lies down with Voss gets chicken legs tomorrow, right enough. That's what I call more than he can eat — and the rest to carry home."

"Corin's already moving?"

"Today Goldwater's birth-tribute reached the Eastern Inn outside the Thornsgate — and Corin, Shawn, and Armand have their bad coin inside the same walls. Tonight they move."

Lora put it together: the Thornsgate — the east gate she and the rest had come in by today.

Augustburg kept no moat. Outside the gate lay a bare sweep of ground, not a blade on it, and thronged like the city itself — folk coming and going, shoulder to shoulder.

The outer town by now housed plenty of common folk, and markets had grown up of themselves; and the Thornsgate being the gate the post road ran straight out toward Lohenheim, folk seeing friends off walked them as far as the Barrow Bridge east of the city.

Year after year, willows green — the sorrow of parting at the Barrow.

And it was from the Barrow on, that league-long stretch, that the hostel-depots ran several in a row — warehousing chiefly: the Lohenheim-side merchants stored their goods there, went into the city, struck their buyer, and came out again to take delivery.

The Eastern Inn was the first of them off the gate. An old, long-established house, grown outward by degrees as the years went — with snug cellars run underground, storey under storey, and a name for honest keeping.

Merchants made it their first choice — and Goldwater was no different.

The Empire's freight crates all ran near one shape: long boxes with a rounded lid. Crates for silks or for gold and silver plate might vary a size — coin crates came in one size only.

That, too, was for easy reckoning of how much copper a crate held.

Goldwater's million florins of birth-tribute were not all copper: spices, silks, gold and silver plate, gold and silver ingots — the coin came last, a hundred florins to the crate.

One hundred florins in copper ran to six hundred pounds or near. More than that, and a porter could not walk under it.

Crates in that age were mostly a dusty red-brown. To tell them apart, the depot pasted a sealed slip on each crate at intake, bearing the owner's code-sign — checked and peeled off again at departure.

The signs ran not in figures but in the old calendar letters — the Dominical Letters and the Golden Numbers: A, B, C, D... and I, II, III...

Shawn and Conan, and the covert guards of their stamp, had more than stealth to keep their lord safe — they drilled a second craft besides, and that was listening at walls.

Call it a low craft if you like. In an age without one instrument of science, the spy services of the later dynasties — the Palace Office, the Brocade Guard — drew their news by many roads, and the plainest-useful of them all was this one: an ear to the wall.

The two of them, patient past patient, had kept their ears to Goldwater's wall a long while, and so had the birth-tribute's resting places ahead of time — and a rough count of the crates.

Good fortune that Josiah Waite had set his face against sweeping down to Southmarch to buy up bad coin in one gulp — and had said instead: small lots, bought near at hand.

Good fortune, too, that Leon was a man who lent his ear to his own men.

Fifty crates of the same size was all they needed to switch out.

The count being known, Waite had soon found them their half million florins of bad coin — and pressed hard, and got it into the Eastern Inn one day ahead.

Two days earlier still, Corin and Nansen had come in with a dozen-odd cartloads of charcoal; the loads had gone out through the depot, and the men had waited for hauling work — they could hardly run the wagons home empty.

The depot had made its money off them — they paid for their lodging like anyone — and so put hauling jobs their way daily.

Two were offered, and Corin found fault with both: wrong direction, no go. Then came Armand's job, the depot played matchmaker, the two sides struck hands at once — and the depot pocketed its broker's fee, delighted.

"Keeper — no wine for us tonight; we're on the road at first light. Chicken, duck, fish — set out what you have. The brothers will fill their bellies and turn in."

"Right away!"

Corin called his order to the keeper, traded one glance with Nansen, and slipped out alone.