Juliet McKenna: The Gambler's Fortune

My smile faded. “Now I come to think of it, we might take a look at the assize tomorrow evening, if we haven’t had word from Sorgrad. If ’Gren’s landed himself in trouble, that could explain why they haven’t got any of my messages.”

I stepped around a knot of women pinning little bows of ribbon to the doorpost of a shrine to Drianon. The usual tokens of festival pieties fluttered bravely, gold in gratitude that the fruits of last year’s harvest had seen them through the winter, white in hopes that sons wouldn’t come home with a dose of the itch. With the lesser moon at dark and the greater waning through its last quarter, the older people on the road had been muttering about ill omens. Even the rest of us who barely spare the gods a thought from day to day tend to hedge our bets around festival time. I decided to find time to make a decent offering to Halcarion and one to Trimon as well.

“Is it likely they’ve fallen foul of the authorities?” inquired Usara disapprovingly.

“It’s possible,” I said shortly. I hoped I was wrong; the success of my plans depended on Usara and the brothers working together and I was already concerned about Sorgren’s admittedly volatile personality starting him off on the wrong foot with the sedate wizard. Even after a season’s traveling together, I was still getting Usara’s measure; I couldn’t see the mage being any too impressed if he learned about some of ’Gren’s more notorious exploits. Even I’d been startled to learn he’d burned down an apothecary’s shop after the owner made some disparaging remarks about Mountain blood.

It wasn’t a subject I wanted Usara to pursue. “I’d rather not find myself trying to explain our little sideshow to the liverymen on assize duty, so perhaps we’d better try and stay inconspicuous. Not that I’m not grateful for your help, of course,” I added hastily.

“I wasn’t sure what was going on when I lost sight of you, but I didn’t fancy my chances of taking that brute on in a fist fight.” Usara shrugged his undeniably scrawny shoulders.

“It was an excellent diversion,” I reassured him. I’ve had plenty of practice of getting myself out of awkward corners but having to cut my sweaty suitor’s ardor down to size risked causing more problems than it solved. We came to a crossroads and I checked the skyline for the Conclave Tower before turning past a marble worthy brandishing a scroll.

“What exactly did he want?” asked Usara hesitantly.

I looked at him, surprised. “What do you think? Just another one who thinks that all Forest girls are a carpenter’s delight.”

“A what?” The mage’s bemusement was plainly genuine.

“Lies flat as a board and waits to be nailed?” I giggled as Usara’s fair skin betrayed his blush. “You wizards do lead a sheltered life, don’t you?”

“I heard you telling those people we were both Forest Folk.” Usara halted. “Do their men have a similar reputation?”

“Forest minstrels are reckoned to be able to charm their way inside most bed-curtains, if they put their mind to it.” Which was what had happened to my mother, leaving her with me to hamper her skirts and ensure she was never going to make a respectable match. I’d been barely as high as her waist before I understood the pity in the eyes of her family and friends, the strictures confining her to life as a housekeeper. I shrugged. “Don’t feel obliged to try living up to the ballads, Usara.”

A group of youths dashing out of a side street nearly bowled us over, dodging to either side, muddy boots skidding. “What’s your hurry?” I called to a straggler hampered by a large, fetid sack.

“Wardmote offenders are about to be pilloried,” he shouted with evident glee.

“That’s something we should take a look at,” I said to Usara.

“You enjoy seeing people pelted with dung, do you?” His distaste was apparent.

“No,” I answered a little reluctantly, “but ’Gren does. He has rather straightforward notions of entertainment.”

Usara let out a long resigned breath. “Very well.”

We followed the eager youths and soon found ourselves in the long paved precinct before the law courts. A tall frontage of new stonework, proud with a pediment of statues, disguised the jumble of mismatched roofs that I had once scrambled over to freedom. The first handful of wretched men shivering bare-arsed in their shirts were about to be locked into the unforgiving jaws of the pillories and face the punishment their peers deemed fit.

“In the name of Raeponin, I call all gathered here to give balanced judgment to the offenders presented.” The first of the ward constables claiming citizen’s rights by serving his year keeping order in his neighborhood stepped forward. He opened a substantial ledger, imposing in his cockaded hat, scarlet sash of office bright. “Markel Galerene, for selling bread loaded with alum.” The pillory snapped shut on its struggling victim, the scales of the god of justice burned crudely into the wood.

A roar went up from the crowd and a scatter of decaying carrots came shying in to batter the disgraced baker, one vindictive stone gashing his cheek amid turnips foul from the store at the end of a long winter.

“Ansin Shammel, for giving short weight.” The luckless Shammel looked to be a butcher and suffered accordingly, bombarded with the knuckle ends of old bones, scraps of hide and fat, finally getting the noisome entrails of some family’s festival mutton full in the face, which raised a cheer to echo all around the square. Some housewife must have felt revenge was worth more than a sheep’s paunch pudding.

“Is this really necessary?” murmured Usara with discreet contempt.

“Ask these women what being cheated a pennyweight of meat for every Mark they spend means.” A stout female beside me flung a handful of nameless filth, face ugly with outrage. “It’s their children who go hungry.” Hard times in my childhood had wrung double duty out of every penny before my mother swallowed her pride and hired herself out as a maidservant. As far as I was concerned, these thieves deserved every chime of their five days of humiliation and pain. When necessity obliges me to relieve someone of coin or valuables, I make sure that those who suffer can stand the loss, and not just to avoid loading Raeponin’s scales too heavily against that day when I answer to Saedrin for passage into the Otherworld.

Usara’s lips were pursed with that unconscious air of wizardry superiority that so irritates me. I ignored him and scanned the intent assembly for blond heads, not just pale or sandy hair but the true corn-colored locks that denote undiluted Mountain blood.

The pitch of the clamoring crowd rose as a man whose name escaped me was pilloried on account of a vicious dog, but more insults than missiles were flung at him. As we waited, all of those who’d failed to abide by the laws of the city were duly chastised, the last man choking in a cloud of ash and clinker, since he’d allowed a fire to spread from his property. The crowd drifted away to other amusements, leaving the square to relatives of those pilloried offering comfort or water while a few persistent accusers harangued them with further rebukes. Beggars twisted with injury or disease scurried to glean the best of the spoiled food that now littered the pavement, glowering at the ragged paupers who challenged them.

“Why are these unfortunates scavenging like this?” The outrage in Usara’s voice startled me. “There should be no need for this! Who takes care of such matters?”

“People are hard enough pressed to keep their families fed and warm without worrying about beggars they don’t even know.” I suppressed my irritation at his naïveté. “Shrines give alms to the needy, same as everywhere else, and the guilds run their own charities. Beyond that, they’re on their own. This isn’t Hadrumal, spells to solve your problems or earning coin for any lack.”