Chapter 22: Marta

It was well past noon when the sun broke between the sycamores through the windows of a cottage low on the seaward side of the western hill of Merendir. Marta kicked off the sheets and buried her face back into the pillow, but the room grew warm quickly, and so she stretched and sat up. In the daylight, the room was plain and clean and comfortable. Her head throbbed lightly and her mouth was very dry. She found her dress on the floor and pulled it back on. She ran her fingers through her hair until there were no more snags, and tied it back.

She sat on the edge of the bed for a while, waiting for Laird to return, before leaving the bedroom with some trepidation. She did not know who lived here, if anybody, aside from Laird. A short hall took her to a sitting room, and that was the end of the house. There were two couches in the sitting room, and a small table, all simple, but made well. There was a tea pot on the table, and two cups, and one of them was clean. She felt the tea pot, and it was still warm.

Marta sat and poured herself a cup of tea. The cups were made of delicate glass with gleaming copper handles, and there was a bowl of sugar on the table. The cottage was airy and light, the couches were comfortable. There was even art on the walls. It was a far cry from the dark and drafty flat above his store, and even that had been a far cry from anything in the Valley. Laird's store must have been doing well. She put a few liberal pinches of sugar in her tea, and then put a pinch in her mouth and let it sit there until in turned into water and went away. She reclined on one of the couches and looked out into the sycamore grove. The next property was close, but the trees provided an illusion of isolation. A squirrel chased a potential mate around a tree trunk, and then away. The tea was more fragrant and flowery than the black tea familiar to Marta, but it helped to clear her head a little.

It made her uneasy that Laird had gone out without waking her. He had told her that he would not be opening the store again until after the races. Things had ended badly enough between them that she doubted anybody would think to look for her here, but surely they had not ended badly enough that he would betray her to Berekker. Laird had seemed happy enough to see her last night, though she had let him misread her motives a bit. They had talked and gotten drunk and gone to bed together, and it had all felt more like it had when they were in love than when they annoyed each other constantly. He worked all the time at his store and seemed immensely pleased with himself for being an almost-completely upright citizen.

Laird had said something about meeting with Grainger today, about the festival that the Poorman's Union was throwing to coincide with the Emperor's. That explained his absence, but she still could not shake her ill ease, imagining absurdly that Berekker himself might appear at Laird's door at any moment— if Berekker even still lived. Marta had been fairly successful at putting the events in the warehouse out of her mind. She had even slept soundly, through a combination of exhaustion and drink.

Now she remembered Berekker’s motionless form, the Islander’s sword, dripping with blood. The image of the eye, and sound of the scream from inside the crate had come to her every so often when she and Laird were talking, and had certainly been one of the reasons she had thrown herself at the bottle. Whenever she saw the eye, it was human. She knew she was misremembering, but she could not unmake the image.

Shaking off the memory once again, Marta focused on her actual predicament. Idle worry did her no good. Marta chewed her lip and stared at the table in front of her. She could not stay here forever. She probably could not stay with Laird very long at all, even if last night had been surprisingly pleasant. There was no doubt that Berekker was a dangerous man, and little doubt that his men would be looking for her. With Sidill recognizing her in the warehouse, Berekker’s men would have plenty of information to begin to track her. She had antagonized Berekker, but she was reasonably certain that if she could talk to him, she could put the pieces together, figure out his game, and convince him that she could be useful.

Marta knew a couple people who worked for Berekker, people who liked her well enough. When she had spent a few months wasting her nights at the Red Clam, a young Southerner named Ayalud had been one of her best drinking companions. He was new to the continent and owed a good portion of his knowledge of Imperial Standard to her, especially the dirty words. He was very young, and seemed shy, though he had a quiet confidence that she began to see once he opened up to her. She was the only mainlander he talked to, and she thought he had developed a small obsession with her. Unfortunately, so had the proprietor of the Red Clam— a big-shouldered, small-minded drunk who had inherited the place from a greatly beloved uncle and immediately set about alienating anybody who crossed the threshold. This alienation had come for Marta when he had followed her into the outhouse, pinned her against the wall, and stuck a huge dirty hand inside her blouse. She had gouged him in the eyes, kneed him in the groin, and left quickly. She had assumed she was not welcome back after that night. Ayalud would take a message to Berekker, she just needed to lay low until she could find him.

The lock rattled on the front door, and Marta held her breath until the door opened and Laird came in and closed the door behind him. He looked tired, and a little old. He was not quite ten years older than Marta, so he was still reasonably young, but there were wrinkles in the corners of his eyes, and his hair was beginning to dull. It was not unappealing, just odd. She stood and he looked mildly surprised to see her. She leaned in without touching him and gave him a quick kiss on the cheek and he cleared his throat and smiled reluctantly and looked around the room, as if to check whether anything was missing.

"How was your day?" He asked as he stepped around her and went into his small pantry.

"Ok." Marta sat on the couch and smoothed her dress. "The tea was nice. Thank you."

Glass hit glass in the pantry, and Laird stood with his back to her.

"I like that tea. I get it from a Siltian with a shop on Upper Market," he said eventually, turning back toward the couch with two tumblers of dark liquor. She could tell he was preoccupied.

Marta smiled, and the anticipation of the smell took her back to summer nights not too long ago, under patches of clouds and constellations, watching the cast of the Street of Fools act out their parts from the roof of Laird's shop. He handed her a glass and she smelled herbs from places that she could hardly even imagine. This was the cheap stuff from the Blue Forest, where the priests rode wolves and never washed and worshiped the trees. She took a sip and it burned her mouth and all the way down her throat. Her stomach was empty and she was almost immediately light headed, though her headache was suddenly gone.

"Have you eaten?" Laird asked, and she shook her head.

He went back to the pantry. Marta smiled at the familiarity of his movements. He came back with an apple and a crusty roll slathered with lard. She tore into the roll enthusiastically.

"What's Grainger planning?" Marta asked, around a mouthful of food.

"He's going to try to give the commoners an even better time that the Emperor gives the nobles, but the money's going to come from giving the nobles all the things they can't get inside the palace."

Laird sat next to Marta and knocked back his drink.

"One example... he's going to have a joust on the Street of Fools, and all the knights are going to be people that everybody in the Valley knows, but everybody's kept quiet about who's competing. You know Lighthall's patrolman, Chasky? He came by to show off his armor... Marta, it's great. He's taken hundreds of pottery shards and laced them together like scales and then painted them with an emblem of a screaming rat. They'll all be riding donkeys, so everything's going to happen really slowly, and their lances are all going to be crooked, and every time somebody wins, they'll have to drink a glass of liquor."

Marta laughed, more at Laird's excitement than at the image of the joust.

"Who's going to be competing?"

Laird looked at her for a second and then stood and went back to the pantry.

"This has to be a secret, you understand?"

Laird headed back to the couch with the bottle of Blue Forest liquor. Marta curled her feet up underneath her and held out her glass. She smiled mostly to herself as Laird poured them each a shot and drank his in a gulp.

"Falson, the doorman at the Lady's Cup; Hedekker, Grainger's chief watchman at the arch; Houthhall, the card player; Brastan, the cripple... all sorts of people that you see everywhere. Grainger's bookkeepers will be everywhere in the crowds, and he'll have plenty of other people there to make sure all the bets go through him. He's got a real Knight of Merendir who's going to compete in the joust, plus Rayley, who's going to be Grainger's champion..."

Laird poured himself another drink. Marta finished her drink and moved closer to Laird on the couch. He filled her glass obligingly.

"...and there will be whores dressed like ladies, and they'll give locks of their hair to the knights who they choose as their champions, and then the biggest bettor on a knight will get to take away the knight's lady after he's defeated."

Marta laughed, and offered a toast to the ladies of the Empire. They both finished their glasses and Marta pressed her shoulder up against Laird's. Laird poured more from the bottle and put an arm around Marta.

"Grainger needs to find more ladies before the joust. It pays really well…" Laird said, and Marta rested her head on his shoulder and closed her eyes and felt the warmth of the liquor flow through her. "...I told him that you might be interested."

Marta sat up straight and looked at Laird in disbelief, but he looked back at her earnestly.

"You want me to sell myself to the highest bettor in some farcical joust on the Street of Fools?" She asked, incredulous. Some kind of regret crept into Laird's face, and he opened his mouth, but said nothing.

Marta went to the bedroom and shouldered her pack. Laird was standing when she went back into the sitting room, and he looked at her with a hint of pleading in his eyes, but he said nothing. She stopped in front of him, and he still said nothing, so she stepped around him and left the cottage. She was on the street before she realized she was still holding his glass. She poured out the rest of the liquor, dashed the glass against the paving stones, and went to find Ayalud.

The street looked wrong. The stone fences and shade trees seemed silent and insincere, and there was not a single person or animal, or even a breeze to stir leaves and the shadows. Marta felt tears forming in her eyes, and she blinked them away and sneered at herself. She walked quickly and she could smell the Street of Fools before she saw it, dominated by slow roasting mutton, bubbling Island stew, and refuse heaps baking in the sun. She heard notes from a clavichord, the only one on the Street of Fools, and then an earnest and melodious voice, high-pitched and singing in a language that Marta did not understand.

Marta stepped out on the street and stopped to watch Duxe play for the uninterested throng, attended by a pair of rapt, equally serious and unpopular, musicians. Duxe sang with his head turned and his eyes closed, his face so contorted by emotion that when he had an audience they were always a little embarrassed. He wore colorful skin tight cloth under a black satin tunic with a bandolier of tiny daggers across his chest. His voice was too high, his chords too intricate, and his lyrics too lofty, but he showed such skill and passion, that the people of Merendir supported him even though he baffled them and they snickered as they passed.

The people were out this afternoon, but the whole street had a preoccupied air, strangely quiet, like everybody was on some last important errand before the holiday. Duxe finished a song with a piercingly sustained note, and his audience of two applauded him loudly for a while. Only then did he open his eyes to look at her, cocking his head.

"Well, Marta."

In speech, his voice was always a little cool and his pronunciation immaculate.

"Hiya, Duxe. I'm looking for the kid Southerner that works for Berekker. The shy one. You seen him?"

"I'm wonderful, thank you so much for asking," Duxe said, inspecting his knuckles one by one.

"Well, I'm not. I'm in trouble, Duxe. We'll catch up later. I'll even buy us a bottle of wine. Right now, though, I really need to find that kid."

"Ayalud? As a matter of fact, I saw him going into Food and Ale no more than a half an hour ago."

Leward's tavern was called "Food and Ale" because that was all there was on his simple sign. Marta did not relish the idea of showing up there, because Leward was surely angry at her for running off, especially during dinner. Nevertheless, she patted Duxe on the cheek and set off down the street toward the tavern. She thought she was in great luck when, just as she was nearing the place, Ayalud stepped out into the street. He noticed her coming toward him and she grinned and waved at him. He grinned too, but something was wrong. His eyes darted away from her for an instant, across the street, to where two other Southerners stood at the mouth of an alley. Ayalud had never patronized Food and Ale. She turned to run and the three men came after her, and she wondered whether Ayalud had betrayed his companions to her on purpose.

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