Part 14 (2/2)
As a result, he had enough funds to keep him and his sister at the inn for the present. He had hoped to use what remained of the money from his mother's jewels to buy a coat, but boots it would be instead. He carefully brushed his old coat one more time and set it over a chair, then laid down on the bench to try to doze for a little while.
He was awakened by the sound of the door to Sas.h.i.+e's chamber opening. She would come out of her room and sit with him these days and would even accompany him to the public room for meals. Her manner was civil, and she would answer any question he asked-though coolly, and she would volunteer no conversation on her own. She had made no attempt to approach Westen or in any way to break the command Eldyn had given her forbidding that relations.h.i.+p. Yet it was equally clear that she had not forgiven him.
”Good morning, dearest,” he said, sitting up on the bench as she exited her little chamber. He rubbed his neck; the bench was bare wood with only a blanket thrown over it.
”Good morning, brother,” she said, without a glance his way.
She wore her plainest dress and no ribbons in her hair, but her sadness made her look fragile and so all the more lovely, like a porcelain treasure from a Murghese palace. A fierce desire to do right by her came over him. He would give her all she deserved, all their father had promised and never given her, and then she would know that he loved her, that he wanted only the best for her. Despite his weariness, he stood.
”What would you like to do today?” he asked merrily. ”Come, we can do anything you wish.” He suggested several things that he thought might lift her spirits: a walk through a garden, or a boat ride on the river, or even a visit to the countryside. He had some coin; he could afford it. And such an expense would be worth the cost if it brought a little color to her cheeks and a smile to her lips.
Only she could not be compelled to leave their chambers, let alone the inn or the city. ”I will stay here today,” she said. ”If I sit by the window, I can just see the little pear tree in the courtyard. A lark comes there sometimes, and if I open the window I can hear its song. It's the prettiest thing. Nothing could give me more joy than to hear it.”
With that she sat by the window and gazed through the gla.s.s. His sister made no complaint about her situation, but as usual when he tried to engage her in conversation she responded with few words. If the lark came, he did not see it, and he heard no birdsong save for the inane cooing of the pigeons.
At last he could bear the confines of the room no longer. He had intended to stay with her all the day-a middle lumenal-so that she would not be alone so much, but the walls pressed closer with every hour, and each clatter of hooves he heard through the window belonged, in his imagination, to an agent of the Black Dog, come to question folk at the inn about traitors to the Crown.
”Perhaps you can be content here, but I must go out!” he cried at last, leaping up from the bench.
She said nothing, and only looked at him with languid eyes.
”I will be at Mrs. Haddon's,” he said. ”Tell Mr. Walpert if you need me for anything. He can send a boy to fetch me. I will bring you something sweet to eat when I return.”
She had already turned her gaze back out the window. Eldyn donned his coat, took his hat, and shut the door quietly behind him.
I T HAD BEEN some time since he had been to Mrs. Haddon's coffeehouse, and her business had not suffered in the interim. The place was, if anything, more crowded than ever.
”Yes, things are always mad after such a short night,” Mrs. Haddon said when he commented on her business. ”A brief umbral leaves little time for mischief, let alone sleep, and what can't be got in bed must be got in a cup instead if one is to stay awake through the day.” She gave his cheek a quick pinch, then hurried off.
Eldyn gaped after her. What did she mean by those words? A brief umbral leaves little time for mischief... Did Mrs. Haddon know something of what he had been doing at night? Only that was mad. She was the proprietor of a coffeehouse. What did she know of spies and rebels?
Perhaps more than he thought. He surveyed the room and saw plenty of young men reading The Fox and The Swift Arrow. In this place, criticism of the king and the magnates was consumed as eagerly as the contents of the cups Mrs. Haddon brought, and it similarly fueled the spirits of those who partook of it. He wondered if it was wise for him to be here. However, even as he considered this he saw Orris Jaimsley waving at him. His old cla.s.smates from St. Berndyn's College sat around their usual table. He went over to them.
They clapped Eldyn on the back as he sat down, got him a hot cup, and pa.s.sed him a flask under the table. ”By G.o.d, we've missed you, Garritt,” Jaimsley said. ”I haven't heard one bit of sense since you were last here. You're the only serious and sober one among us.”
”I warrant I'm as liable as any of you to lose my sobriety,” he said with a grin, and tipped the flask over his cup. They laughed, and Eldyn laughed with them, glad for the coffee, glad for the whiskey, glad for the company of familiar friends. It had been too long since he had done this.
He pa.s.sed the flask back and asked how they had been faring at tavern without him. Jaimsley treated him to a long description of Talinger's spectacular successes with the ladies, and of Warrett's equally spectacular failures, and his own amus.e.m.e.nt over it all. Then Eldyn asked how their studies for the term were progressing.
”But haven't you heard, Garritt?” Curren Talinger said. ”No one's been to cla.s.ses in a quarter month. Well, no one save those mealy-mouthed prigs at Gauldren's College. Precious little pets they are-they do anything the deans tell them to do. But not the rest of us. We came to university to learn how to think, not to think what they tell us to.”
Eldyn stared. ”You mean you're not attending lectures by choice?”
”No one is,” Dalby Warrett replied. The laconic young man was unusually animated, and his color high. ”Well, except at Gauldren's, as Jaimsley mentioned, and some of the men at Bishop's and Highhall. But the rest of us walked out, and we're not going back or paying our tuition. Not until they let Baddingdon go free.”
Eldyn listened as they spoke of the events that had transpired at the university over the last half month. It seemed that Professor Baddingdon, a popular lecturer in rhetoric, had become increasingly critical of the king. The dean of his college had cautioned him to cease such talk, but Baddingdon, a Torlander, had a reputation for being as quarrelsome as he was clever. In response to the warning, he delivered a lecture in which he likened the king to a sparrow charged with guarding a field rich with grain, while the members of a.s.sembly were cast as crows, pecking at the corn. And he said what Altania needed was a hawk with keen eyes and strong talons, one that would fly across the sea and send the crows scattering. Of course, it was plain to all that he spoke of the Usurper Huntley Morden, the hawk being the symbol of that house, and the verdant field was Altania itself.
”He said that during his lecture?” Eldyn said, astonished that a man of learning could be such a fool.
Jaimsley nodded. ”I suppose so many fawning freshmen have regarded him in awe for so long that he thought he was above any reproach. But no one is above their notice. They must have gotten wind of what he was intending to speak about, because they didn't even wait for him to finish his lecture but rather took him right there and then, in front of his students. He was put in chains and led out like a common criminal.”
”By agents of Lord Valhaine?”
”Not just any agents. Everyone said it was the White Lady herself who took him. She had been in the back of the hall with a hood pulled up, and as soon as he uttered the words about the hawk she put back her hood and stepped forward, and that was that. Baddingdon was done for. He started to rail against the king, but one look from her and his tongue froze in his mouth, and no one lifted a finger to help him.”
Talinger made a warding sign. ”It's said no one can bear her gaze, not even the king's Black Dog, and it's him that she serves.”
”Well, I should not have given way so easily had I been there,” Warrett proclaimed, making a fist and striking the table. ”I wouldn't have let anyone treat old Baddingdon like that.”
”You would have p.i.s.sed your pants when she glanced your way, is what you mean,” Jaimsley said, and though Warrett gave him a hot look, he did not argue the point.
”There's been talk, you know,” Talinger said then. The Torlander spoke in a low voice, so that the others had to lean in close to hear him.
”Talk of what?” Jaimsley said, a frown on his homely face.
”Surely you have heard it, Jaimsley. Some of the men-no, I would say a great many of them-say we should go fetch him from Barrowgate.”
Eldyn nearly laughed, but it was out of horror, not humor. ”You cannot be serious, Talinger. You cannot!”
”Why can't I? There's more than a thousand of us, even if you leave off them prigs from Gauldren's and Bishop's and Highhall. It's wrong that they've thrown him in the pits with murderers and wh.o.r.es. Baddingdon is old. He'll not last long in that prison. What should stop us from marching on Barrowgate, breaking down the gates, and setting him free?”
Because they'll cut you down, Eldyn wanted to say.
Only, Warrett spoke first. A hungry look had come over his face, erasing what had been soft and vaguely handsome and replacing it with a hard mask. ”Now you're talking sense, Talinger. Nothing can stop us. Not if we all stand together.”
Eldyn's stomach had gone sour, and Jaimsley was shaking his head.
”Why do you look at us like that, Jaimsley?” Talinger said, his accent reverting to a rolling Westland growl. ”Aren't you always telling us that it's the people who should rule?”
”Yes, and I still believe it. But talking of rebellion is one thing. Doing it...Well, that's another matter altogether.”
”Aye, it is at that,” Talinger said. ”You like to talk of it, but you're afraid to do anything about it. But not me. I'm not like you, Jaimsley. I'm not afraid.”
”Aren't you? Tell me, which one of you at this table has ever so much as broken one of those rules in a voice above a whisper?” He nodded toward the Rules of Citizens.h.i.+p posted on the wall nearby. Their sheepish expressions answered his question. ”And you speak of making rebellion.”
Eldyn started to let out a breath, thinking they were going to let the subject drop. But then Talinger leaped to his feet, his chair falling back with a clatter that suspended conversation in the shop.
”I'll show you what I think of those rules,” he said. He did not rush or go furtively. Rather, with deliberate motions, he walked to the wall, pulled down the Rules of Citizens.h.i.+p, and tore the paper they were printed on into halves, quarters, eighths. He let the pieces fall to the floor. ”That's what I think of someone else telling me what to do,” Talinger said in a loud voice. ”I don't care if it's pale ladies or black curs or kings giving the order. An unjust law is no law at all.”
All was silence. No one made a move. Talk of disobedience to the Crown was one thing, but action-everyone had seen what action got you when one of the king's men or an agent of the Gray Conclave was about. Eyes glanced back and forth. All waited for someone to stand up, point a finger, and call for soldiers to carry the young Torlander to Barrowgate.
Instead, after a terrible moment, it was Mrs. Haddon who bustled toward him, huffing, her frizzy wig aflutter. ”Well, well, a fine joke that was, young Mr. Talinger. A fine joke indeed. You know you could have simply told me that printing of the rules was out of date. You needn't have made such a silly little play of it. Here-this is the new one delivered just yesterday. I meant to put it up, but I quite forgot. Though I'm sure they won't throw a daft old woman in prison for being absentminded. I would hardly remember my own name these days if you boys weren't always calling it out to me: a cup, Mrs. Haddon, bring another cup!”
She unrolled a sheaf of paper and stuck it on the nail on the wall, then took Talinger's elbow and led him back to the table. Gradually, the sound of talk filled the coffeehouse again, though lower than before.
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