Jo Clayton - Drinker of Souls

She walked slowly down the rush matting toward the stairs at the end of the corridor, her stride growing firmer, steadier. At the landing she touched the scarf to see if it was still in place, a concession to uncertainty, then started down.

A younger version of last night’s host, so exact a copy he had to be the owner’s son, looked up as she stopped by the counter. “You wish, athin?”

“I’d like, athno, something to eat.”

“Certainly, athin. It is a bit early,” he went on as he flipped the hinged section of counter top and came out to escort her to the table she’d chosen the night before. “It’ll take a breath or two to prepare, but ‘tis just as well to be early this day, the diligence from Tavisteen is due to stop here soon for the fastbreaking and we’ll be busier than broody hens and wishing for more hands, trying to feed them and the escort too.” She said nothing, but he must have read something in her silence because he came around and stood beside her. “Traveling was near impossible till the Temuengs started sending patrols with the packtrains and the diligences. Now, we have eggs fried or poached, fresh baked rolls, sausages, they’re the family’s special blend and many the praises we’ve got for them, though it’s me who says it. Or a nice steak? Or we’ve some young rockquail, or some fish my middle son caught from the river this morning. For drinking, there’s ale, cider, tea or something called kaffeh a trader left with us a month ago. Some seem to like it, though I must say I think it’s an acquired taste.” He turned his head to listen to the rain coming steadily down outside. “The highroad will be awash if this keeps up, athin; for your comfort you might consider staying until the storm blows out.”

Having waited for him to finish, she did not bother to answer his discreet attempt to wring another day’s coin out of her, but simply ordered a hot ample breakfast with a pot of tea to wash it down. His amiable chatter had put her at ease and now she was merely hungry.

The children came in befOre she was done with the meal, soaked and waiflike one moment, dry the next. Silent and undisturbed by the stares of the fastbreakers in the slowly filling room, they threaded through the tables and came to stand beside her. Brann scowled at the stare-eyes and they looked hastily away, wary of her. Rumors, she thought, worse than midges for getting about. She sipped at the hot tea, saying nothing until she’d emptied the cup. She set it down with a small definite click, turned to Jaril. “Have you paid for our room and meals?”

“No mistress, nor for the stable and worn.” His back to the rest of the room, Jaril grinned and winked at her.

“See to it then; I shall be annoyed if you allow yourself to be treated like a country fool.”

Jaril winked again, went trotting off to pay the rate Yaril had won by bargaining with the host. Brann relaxed a bit more, squeezed a last half cup from the pot and sat sipping at it, looking about the room. A number of new faces, probably they’d been in bed when she reached the Inn last night, up now to get their morning’s meal before the inundation from the diligence and the Temueng patrol. An odd mix. Alike in their wariness, not alike in other ways. A merchant with a duplicate-in-little of his opulent dress, bland ungiving face and tight little hands seated beside him, a son most likely learning the business. Several scarred, harsh-featured men in worn leathers with more cutlery hitched to their bodies than she’d seen outside of Migel’s smithy. They reminded her immediately of the Temueng invaders, different racial types, but a sameness to them that overrode the minor differences of build or skin color. Half a dozen older men seated about, mostly with their hacks to the walls, their clothing and demeanor giving little clue as to who they were or why they were on the move, the only thing she could be sure of was that they weren’t Temuengs.

Jaril looked in through the archway, nodded. Keeping her face expressionless, Brann slid from her chair and walked without haste between the tables, feeling eyes on her all the way. In the foyer she lifted a hand to the young host, pushed through the main door and stopped under the bit of roof that kept the rain off her head. It was coming down harder than she’d expected, in gray sheets that hid everything more than a body-length away. Coier stood saddled and ready, hitched to a ring in one of the several wayposts before the Inn, sidling and unhappy, not liking the rain very much. She felt for him, reluctant herself to leave the shelter of the roof, but there was no help for it, she had to be long gone when Yaril’s sleep spinning wore off and the enforcers woke to find the Censor vanished. She stomped through the wet and pulled herself into the saddle, sitting with a squishy splat, took the reins when Jaril handed them up to her, looked at him with envy. His clothing wasn’t clothing at all, but a part of his substance and when he chose, it shed the wet better than any duck’s back. She sighed. “The trouble you two get me into.” With a gentle kick she started Coier toward the highroad, keeping him at a walk. “No doubt they all think I’m a horrible monster, riding while I make you children run in the mud.” She bent down, called to Yaril, “How long’s the spinning going to last without you there to freshen it?”

Yaril turned her face up. The rain slid away without wetting her. She held up her hands and Brann swung her onto the saddle in front of her. “Till the diligence gets there probably. I’d say the noise of it is enough to wake them.”

“What’ll they do?”

“Considering what happened in the taproom, raise one holy stink and get half the Temueng army looking for us.”

“Sheee, Yaro, we can’t handle that.”

“Can’t fight something, then run like sheol and hope you lose it.” Yaril patted her arm. “Just have to be smarter than they are, that’s all.”

“Not so great a start, was it.”

AN HOUR LATER the diligence came out of the rain at her. She heard it before she saw it, its creaks, rattles, cadenced sloppy thuds, windy snorts, a snatch or two of voices, mostly bits of curses; she nudged Coier off the road, pushing up tight against the hedgerow trying to ignore the clawing thorns. The rain was coming down harder than ever and from the sound of the thing whoever was driving it expected the world to get out of his way. The large mild heads of Takhill Drays came out of the rain, their black manes plastered down over the white stripes that ran ear to nose, the leather blinder on the offside lead gleaming like the glaze of das’n vuor. Their brown hides dripped water and looked almost as black as the harness. The feathers on their massive shapely hocks were smoothed down with rain and mud but their sturdy legs lifted and fell with the regularity of a pendulum, tick-tock, tick-took. Two first, then two more, then the two wheelers, larger than the others. A fine hitch. The driver hunched over the reins, cowl pulled so far forward she couldn’t see his face, only the large gnarled hands so deftly holding the black leather straps. He was silent, his silence making a space about him that the second man on the perch made no attempt to breach. He was a Temueng with a short bow held across his knees that he was trying to protect with his cloak, a quiver full of arrows clipped to the inside of one leg. He was cursing steadily, stopping only to wipe at his face. He saw her, looked indifferently away. She watched him with a surge of hatred that twisted her stomach into knots.

The diligence was a long boxy vehicle creaking along on three pairs of oversize wheels that cast up broad sheets of brown water. Oiled silk curtains were drawn tight against the rain but there was some sort of lamp burning inside, probably more than one, because she saw the shadows of the passengers moving across the silk. Six high narrow windows filled with profiles and the rounds of swaying heads. She watched them and wondered what was so important it took those people out into weather like this. The last window slid past, then she saw the piles of luggage strapped behind. And felt again that helplessness that had engulfed her as she walked into the Inn, an ignorance of life down here so complete that moving into it was like stepping off Tincreal onto a low-hanging cloud.