Chapter 33: The Rumors Have Teeth

"They're saying other things as well," Patric said, after a while.

"Go on."

"About the woman up at the castle."

"I'd expect it."

"You'd expect the half of it." The needle did not pause. "Nan Weller has her a queen's daughter running from a marriage, which is nearly right, so I've stopped correcting Nan. The cooper's wife has her a witch, on the grounds that the Khesari came for her, and the Khesari would not come a hundred strong for a woman without a reason." Patric turned the hem. "That one's doing the rounds better than I like, because it's got the shape of an argument in it."

Osric's jaw set.

"And the third?"

"The third's the ugly one and I'd rather you had it from me than off a wall." Patric looked up then. "There's a version going about that she's the reason three men are under stones with nothing beneath them. Not that the Khesari killed them. That she did, by being here. Somebody's put it round as though there were a bill for it and she's not paid."

"Who's saying that?"

"You'll not have it off me and you know why."

Osric did know, and let it go, and the letting go took a moment.

"It's not wrong, though," Patric said, more quietly. "That's the difficulty with it. It's not a lie. Three men are dead and they'd not be dead if she'd not been on that road, and everybody in this village can do that sum, and the sum is true and the conclusion is filth, and the two are sat right next to each other."

"Aye."

"So you'll want to have an answer when somebody says it to your face, and somebody will, and I'd sooner you had one ready than made one up angry."

Osric turned his cap over in his hands.

"They'd not be dead if she'd not been on that road," he said. "And they'd not be dead if I'd sat on that ridge and let twelve men take her off a horse. And they'd

not be dead if the Baron had a finished wall or a full granary or a Count who'd looked east once in three years." He set his jaw. "You can run that reckoning all the way back to the founding of the county. It arrives everywhere except at her."

Patric considered this, and went back to the hem.

"That'll do," Patric said. "Say it just like that and don't get louder."

The needle finished and the thread was bitten off.

"Done. I've reinforced the hem while I was in there. It'll not split again unless he's aiming for it."

Osric took it with a nod.

"What do I owe you?"

"Just keep it clean." Patric turned back to the violet wool. "I can't keep mending the same patch every fortnight."

"Fair enough."

There was a village in the county somewhere, and a family in it, and a name that Patric had come out from under about nine years ago, and nobody in Valmarch had ever asked. Osric had worked most of it out inside a month and had said precisely nothing, and Aldric had worked it out inside a week and had said less, and between them they had let it be a settled matter for nine years.

It was none of his business what a person did with their own life, provided they mended a hem straight.

"Don't die in Auenstadt," Patric called, as they got to the door. "I'd hate to stitch funeral garb. Too dull."

Outside the air smelled of woodsmoke and cool loam, and the evening was coming down slow and grey.

"Sharp, that one," Aldric said, glancing back. "I'm not sure half this village knows how good they've got it."

"They will. One day."

The King Fish had thickened into its evening noise by the time they pushed the door: old ale and hearth smoke and roasted meat, familiar and comforting and faintly sour, as always.

Argilac spotted them first and raised a thick arm with half a mouthful of foam still on him.

"Late, you bastards. You'll be left with piss-warm dregs at this rate."

"Told him you'd dawdle," said Alden, lifting a tankard in mock salute. "I've already had two. And half his bread."

They made their way to the back corner where the others had claimed the sturdy oak table beside the hearth. The fire burned low and warm and threw orange across worn faces and older leather.

Voss was there with his foot up on a stool and his stick against the wall. Doran was nearest the corner with his back to the stone.

Osric lowered himself onto the bench and let the warmth get at his shoulder.

"How's the captain's road?" Alden asked.

"Four days to Branlind if the weather holds. He'll be sat at Marek's table by Thursday eating something with too much pepper in it."

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"And Tertius will be telling him about the Legion."

"Tertius will be telling him about a campaign that neither of them was at," said Osric, "which is the entire reason he's gone."

Doran raised his cup half an inch. "To the old man's knee."

"To the old man's knee."

They drank on that.

It might have gone on being that sort of night, which was what all of them wanted and none of them said. Loud, foolish, and mending.

Then Argilac cleared his throat, and Osric knew from the sound of it exactly what was coming and had about two seconds to decide what he was going to do about it, and used them badly.

"We'll be in Auenstadt in nine days," the boy said.

Nobody answered.

"He's still there. Theo."

Alden found something absorbing at the bottom of his cup. Voss became very interested in his own foot. Doran looked directly at Argilac with an expression that said he thought this was a poor place for it and was not going to say so.

"Working at Harbren's forge," Argilac went on, "off the coppersmiths' row. Leaner than he was. He's got a scar now, brow to cheek, from some business in a tavern he wouldn't tell me about."

Osric turned his cup on the wood.

"You've seen him."

"Aye."

"When?"

"Every time I've been in that city since the spring." Argilac said it steadily, and it was plain he had been waiting a long while to say it and had chosen a table full of witnesses on purpose. "Four times. Five, counting the summer."

Osric said nothing at all.

"I'd have told you," Argilac said. "I'd have told you the first time. But you've a way of shutting a door with your face before a man's got the sentence out, and I'd only have had to stop going, or lie about it, and I'd rather have gone."

"You've not lied about it."

"I've not mentioned it. That's near enough the same and I know it is."

Doran got up quietly and went to the bar and stayed there, which was the kindest available action and everybody noticed it.

Osric looked at his son and did not say anything.

"How is he?"

Argilac blinked.

He had plainly come armed for about four other answers and had not prepared for that one.

"He's" He stopped and started again. "He's big. He's got shoulders on him like a barn door and he's the only man in that yard who can do the heavy draw work, and Harbren's told him he'll have a bench of his own in two years if he stops brawling."

"And does he brawl?"

"Less than he did."

"That's not a no."

"It's not a no." Argilac almost smiled. "He's got a temper he doesn't know what to do with and he goes looking for somewhere to put it, and I've told him that and he's told me to mind my own business, and then he paid for my supper."

Osric drank.

"Does he ask after me?"

The table had gone very quiet.

"No," said Argilac.

"Right."

"He asks after Anna. Every time. He asks whether she's still painting and whether the roof's fixed and whether she's married anybody." The boy turned his own cup round. "And then about the fourth time, in the summer, he asked me whether you'd been in the city that spring. And I said aye. And he said nothing at all for about a hundred paces and then he asked me a different question."

Osric put the cup down.

"He knew I was there."

"He knows every time. It's a city, Father, and you come in with a baronial party and put up at an inn on the main square and half the coppersmiths' row shoes the horses of men who drink where your men drink." Argilac shrugged. "He knows. He's known every time."

The fire cracked.

"He's not asked me to come."

"No. And he'll not, and you'll wait on it forever." Argilac leaned forward. "He's seventeen. You're forty-three. One of you knows how this works and it isn't him."

Aldric spoke for the first time, from the end of the bench.

"He's not wrong, Osric."

"I know he's not wrong."

That came out harder than he had meant it and the table felt it, and Osric put his hand flat on the wood for a moment and let it pass.

"I've thought about it," he said, more evenly. "Every time I've been in that city. Twice I've got to the end of that row and stood at the corner and looked at the smoke coming off the forges and I couldn't tell you which one was his, and I didn't ask anybody, because asking would have meant somebody knew I was there."

Argilac stared at him.

"You never said."

"No."

"Twice."

"Twice." Osric turned the cup. "That's not a defence. There isn't one. But you asked me why I've not gone, and the answer's that I got within four hundred yards of it twice and turned round, and I'd rather you had that than something better."

Nobody said anything for a while.

Then Alden, who had been silent longer than anybody had ever known him to be, spoke to the table without looking up.

"You'd want a reason to be there," he said. "That's all it wants. Not a speech. A reason. A man doesn't walk into a forge and say I have come to mend twelve years, he walks in and says I've a mail shirt with the rings gone under the arm and I hear you're the one to see about it."

Osric looked at him.

"I have a mail shirt with the rings gone under the arm."

"I know you do," said Alden. "I've been looking at it since the tower."

Voss made a small sound that might have been a laugh, and it was the first out of him in three weeks, and every man at that table registered it and none of them was fool enough to mention it.

"Well," said Argilac, after a moment. "That's better than anything I had."

Osric sat with it.

"I'll think on it," he said at last. "That's what I can promise."

"That's more than last time."

"Aye. It is."

Doran came back from the bar with a jug and set it down and sat, and the table found its way back onto easier ground by talking loudly about nothing for a quarter of an hour, and Alden had opinions about the Auenstadt bathhouse, and Argilac had opinions about Alden's opinions, and the evening closed over the top of it.

Osric drank his one cup slowly and let it go over him.

He looked round the table at some point near the end and did the count, because he could not stop himself doing it any more.

Five of us going and two of us staying, and the two staying are the two who can't ride.

And the last time I put a party together in this village it was nine.

He got up and left before the others, which was unusual, and nobody remarked on it, which was not.

Outside, the night had gone hard and clear and there was frost coming already on the thatch. Up on the hill the castle stood black against the stars with two lights burning in it, and one of them was the third floor.

He looked at it for a moment and then went down the lane toward home, and thought about a mail shirt with the rings gone under the arm, and did not decide anything at all.