Dana Stabenow: Powers of Detection

“Goodman,” Sharryn said pleasantly. “What’s all the fuss about?”

“It’s nothing, Seer. A fight.”

Crow surveyed the growing crowd, exchanged a raised eyebrow with Sharryn, and said, “A fight with a large audience. Is this part of the festival? Does one buy a ticket?”

“It’s nothing,” he repeated, with an involuntary look over his shoulder. “A fight over a girl, merely.”

Crow stood in the stirrups and saw a tangled ball of two men crash into the side of a cart loaded with nuts. The cart went over, the nuts went everywhere, and the vendor burned his hands catching the brazier. The two men were forcibly separated by a couple of stern townsmen, and stood revealed to be a young, slight man with dark hair, dressed in the charred leather apron of the smith, and a much larger man of roughly the same age, towheaded, pale-skinned and lantern-jawed, wearing a fletcher’s gauntlet. One of the townsmen, fists on his hips, surveyed the two pugilists with palpable scorn, addressed them with what appeared to be a pithy homily, and set them to work to right the nut vendor’s cart and recompense him for his lost revenue. The crowd began to disperse, but Crow saw the looks exchanged by the two young men and thought that there would be more trouble before long.

“Were you making for the inn?” She looked down to see the eyes of the townsman fixed on her.

“We were.”

“Allow me to lead you there.” He accomplished this with no unnecessary pushing and shoving, Sharryn noted with approval, but a tap on the shoulder, a nod, and a smile; and then there was the massive shadow of Blanca looming behind him, before which people naturally fell back.

They were dismounting in front of the inn when a big burly man burst out of the door, crying loudly in a strange tongue, and swept Sharryn up into a comprehensive embrace. It was returned with enthusiasm. Crow busied herself with an unnecessary adjustment to the left stirrup of her saddle. Blanca snorted. Pedro whinnied. The townsman looked a little startled.

After a while Sharryn came up for air, pink-cheeked and bright-eyed. “This is Makarios,” she said.

“I should think so,” Crow said.

“Zeno!” Makarios roared. He had a robust baritone that was easily heard over the noise of the crowd. A sharp-featured boy with untidy dark hair and a sly grin scrambled from beneath a forest of legs. “Master Makarios?”

“Take the pony and the destrier to the stables. Water them, feed them, groom them, clean their tack.” He cocked an eye at Crow. “Anything else?”

She shook her head. The boy gave her a quick grin bracketed with mischievous dimples, but his hand on the halters was steady and sure, and Blanca and Pedro allowed themselves to be led away without complaint.

“Makarios,” Sharryn said, “this is Crowfoot, my Sword.”

“So I see. Well, well.” He eyed the townsman. “How did you happen to fall in with such rabble, Cornelius?”

Cornelius grinned. “They needed an escort through the crowd.” He hooked a thumb over his shoulder.

Makarios remembered his duties as host. “You must be thirsty, come in, come in! Sofronia! Beer!” He unceremoniously dislodged a dozing patron from a large table comfortably close to the fireplace and disappeared for a moment, to reappear again with a tray loaded with meat rolls, cheese, and fruit. Crow’s stomach chose that moment to growl, loudly, which made Makarios grin and shove the platter closer to her. Her mouth was full when Sofronia, a plump woman with red cheeks and thick gray hair in a plait hanging to her waist bustled out with four tankards in one hand and an enormous earthenware pitcher in the other, which, pour as they would, never seemed to empty. Makarios grinned at Crow when she noticed this. “You’re drinking on the king’s coin, aren’t you?” and she had to admit that they were. The lager was cold and crisp, tasting of sun on grain, and good, rich earth, and deep, clear water.

Sharryn polished off the last crumble of cheese and sat back with a satisfied sigh. “That was worth the ride.” She smiled at Makarios, who was looking at her with love in his eyes.

Cornelius drained his tankard and went to refill it, but the pitcher was empty this time. “Sofronia!” Makarios bellowed. “Knock the bung out of another keg!”

“You don’t have to get me drunk,” Sharryn told him.

His smile could only be described as lecherous. “Yes, but it’s more fun when I do.”

Cornelius burped. “Excuse me, Sword.”

“The name is Crowfoot, Cornelius.”

She had unbuckled the sword. It rested against the arm of her chair. He eyed it. It was almost as tall as he was. “Do you mind if I ask how heavy it is?”

He was angling for an invitation to test the heft and balance of the weapon. She ignored the bait, more out of a care for his health than for any proprietary feel for the sword. “Heavy enough for justice,” she said, and wished the truth sounded less sanctimonious.

“Of course, of course,” he said hastily. Cornelius was square-jawed and solid, with dark hair neatly combed over dark, steady eyes, jerkin and leggings made with quality but not luxury, knee boots well traveled but also well kept. He wore a guild badge with a Catherine wheel embroidered on it. A trader, then.

“You recognized us,” Crow said.

He nodded. “I was trading in the capital two years ago when the king announced the Treaty of the Nine, along with the Charter of Mnemosynea and the conditions thereof.”

“And what do you think of it?”

He gave her question serious consideration, ignoring for the moment the din rising in back of them as the common room filled with the evening crowd. “If it will bring peace to the Nine Provinces and safe roads to get my goods to market, I’m for it.”

“And do you think it will?”

Their eyes met for a long moment. “I don’t know.”

The corners of her mouth quirked. “I don’t either, Cornelius.”

Night had fallen, and, at a look from Makarios, Sofronia lit the oil lamps hanging from brackets on the walls with a snap of fingers. Crow decided to stretch her legs in the direction of the stables, a glance enough to keep Cornelius in his seat. Sharryn made a face at her just before Makarios pulled Sharryn toward the stairs.

Blanca and Pedro had been brushed to a dull gleam, their hooves looked as if they had been polished, and both had buckets of water and troughs of hay and grain in their stalls. In the third stall down, she found Zeno industriously polishing the metal bits of her tack. Made of the finest steel from the king’s forges, they shone silver in the lamplight, Sofronia’s evening lighting task having apparently extended to the outbuildings. Crow wondered if that included the necessary. She hoped so; one of the less pleasant aspects of being continually on the road was trying to find an unfamiliar outhouse in the middle of the night.

“There must be some magic in your polish, boy,” she said. “That bridle hasn’t looked that good since we left the capital.”

He gave a proud nod. “My Talent is for horses, and anything to do with them.”

“You’re young to know that.” It happened, though, and often enough not to occasion more than idle comment.

Everyone in the Nine Provinces was born with the gift of magic. What kind and how much was usually revealed to them at the onset of puberty, but sometimes it happened earlier. Crow herself had been thirteen when she felt herself drawn to a former soldier who had lost a leg in battle and stumped into her village on a wooden replacement, there to buy out the local stable and begin an ambitious breeding program. He had found her on the back of a fiery-tempered mare, sans bridle or saddle, and his first and last glimpse of her for the afternoon was her gripping the mare’s black mane as both of them went over the fence and disappeared into the forest at a gallop.