The Malmillard Codex (4 page)

"These will suit us very well, I thank you,"
said Madryn as she uncorked a bottle of wine and poured some of its
contents into two mugs. "Will this be enough for your trouble?"
Another silver coin appeared, to disappear as quickly.

"Thank you, milady, thank you," Radisin
bowed as he backed out of the room, dragging the now unburdened lad
with him, broad smiles on both their faces. "Someone will be along
to fetch you when your room is ready."

Madryn rose and latched the door behind
them. "There, I thought a room might suddenly appear," she said as
she returned to the table, "and now perhaps we can have a bit of
peace while we eat. Why don't you pull those clothes on and let's
get something hot inside us?"

Valerik seized the breeches, slid into them,
pulled the shirt over his head and buttoned it close about his
scarred neck, and was still but an instant later than she sitting
down. He watched, his mouth full of hot juices, as she heaped his
plate full of meat roasted with root vegetables and a huge hunk of
bread, then pulled it and a mug of wine across the table.

"I fear we cannot ask much of the house
wine, but one must travel rough when traveling fast," Madryn
murmured, and then gave a small grimace after her first sip.

Valerik had no such niceties. He tore into
the food, finishing his second plateful before Madryn had gone
through her first. Another bottle was opened and demolished and a
third was undertaken before they both slid their chairs back with
matching sighs of repletion. Not one word had been exchanged during
the meal, and neither said a word as they sipped their wine.

Valerik looked at his rescuer from under
lowered lids; now that his most pressing physical needs had been
met, he was back to wondering about her plans for him. Perhaps it
was her pleasure to help him escape, give him hope, and then turn
him back over to his owner? It wouldn't surprise him; in his
experience of nobles—admittedly not a vast one—they had such
depravity of tastes. His late mistress, for one…

Madryn gazed with absent interest towards
the fire. Valerik took full advantage of her distraction to examine
her. A tall woman, lean and quick and wiry, with little sign of the
softness he had noticed so often in the nobility and the very
rich—though her dress and habits marked her clearly as both the one
and the other. One of her hands lay upon the tabletop, clever brown
fingers turning a tiny salt spoon over and under like a conjurer
with a card. Short wisps of tawny hair escaped from a hasty braid
and framed a bronzed face, with a long narrow nose and a high
forehead. A faint scar jagged across her right temple, white
against the brown skin.

Not a beautiful face, by any means, but it
was saved from plainness by those eyes, those remarkable eyes with
their violet streaks against the gray. They reminded Valerik of a
sunset at the end of a stormy day.

The odd poetic image made him smile. He
could not remember the last time he had smiled. It felt strange as
it pulled on his weary face.

Yes, a strange feeling, he thought. But
stranger by far was Madryn's reaction to his smile. Without his
notice, so lost had he been in his thoughts, she had brought her
distant gazed back from the fire, to find his eyes full upon her.
He watched in amazement as her face paled, her eyes widened, and an
expression darted through their violet depths that looked almost
like—fear?

No. It was not fear, Valerik knew. He was
familiar with that particular emotion; none better. What was it,
then? Anger, perhaps?

No.

It was recognition.

Madryn jerked to her feet, rattling the
empty dishes and knocking an empty bottle on its side. Valerik
grabbed for it, caught it before it rolled off the table, and set
it back up on its stubby base. He watched Madryn as she took the
three short paces to the grate and kicked aimlessly at a dying log,
her back to him. Her back, rigid and straight, spoke of her
irritation.

"My lady," Valerik began, uncertain as to
how he'd offended her, but she interrupted with what sounded like
anger, though she did not turn to face him.

"Call me by my name, if you please. We must
give no one reason to doubt that we are equal companions, else
you'll be returned to your interrupted hunting expedition. Neither
of us wishes that, I believe?"

Valerik nodded, realized that she could not
see his response, and said in a low gruff voice, "I do not. I have
not thanked you for…all you have done for me. If we had been caught
by the hunters, you'd have been in as much danger as I was."

Valerik paused at the image of this elegant
woman in black, stripped naked and bleeding, running through the
forest at his side with the hounds at both their backs.

To help a hunted slave was punishable by
death. She knew that, he was sure. A cold chill ran over him.

As if she had seen what was in his mind
instead of the fire that crackled before her eyes, and answering
shudder ran through Madryn's body. She turned to face him at last,
leaned back against the mantel. There was a crooked smile on her
long mouth, but Valerik didn't think it had been there long.

"Yes, not a pretty thought, is it? But the
main thing is, what am I to do with you? Taking you with me would
cause problems. Leaving you here could potentially bring about
more. Master Frague has decided that I've picked you up somewhere
as a bedmate, so to leave you here would draw his attention all the
more, and to both of us. It's an interesting conundrum…that I
believe I'll sleep on."

As if in answer to her words, there came a
knock at the door. Valerik, after a nod from Madryn, unlatched it
and flung it open.

"My lady," Frague intoned, broad grin
illuminating broader face, "after much travail and endless trouble,
I have managed to find you a room for the night. If you are quite
finished here, it would be my honor to take you to it, you and your
gentleman."

"We were just wondering, and hoping, that
you'd be able to accommodate us, Master Frague," said Madryn as she
buckled on her sword. "Weren't we, Val?"

Valerik felt a shock of pleased surprise go
through him at the sound of his new name…so short, so clean, so…not
a slave. Not daring to risk a word, he nodded in mute agreement and
gathered up in one hand the cloak and his new boots and stockings,
which he'd not bothered to don until his feet warmed. Seizing the
saddlebag with his free hand, he followed Madryn and Frague out the
door.

***

"Here we are, my lady and sir, here we are,"
burbled Frague as his row of bellies and chins shook in some secret
delight. "A fine room—clean as a needle, as the ole ones say—with a
bed big enough for…well, quite big enough for comfort, as I was
about to say, milady, if you'll pardon me, I'm sure."

Valerik had followed Madryn and their host
down a long corridor, out of the inn proper, across a damp covered
porch and into an ell that had obviously been built at a somewhat
later date than the rest of the inn. Several doors, heavily barred,
lined a long passageway that smelled of apples and vinegar and
beer. Frague stopped at the very last door on the right. A window,
shuttered against the rain that had begun to fall with abandon, was
the centerpiece of the end of the hallway, a length or two from
their door. The candle in Frague's flabby hand threw intriguing
shadows in the wisps of cold breeze that crept through the window's
slotted shutters. Frague fumbled with a key, then flung open the
door with the air of a conjurer presenting a dazzling trick.

The room was small. It contained only a low
broad shelf on the far wall, piled with a feather bed and a covey
of blankets and pillows; above the bed was another window,
shuttered just as the one in the hallway. A rock fireplace occupied
the wall to their left, doubtless the end wall of the building. To
one side of the fireplace was a small alcove containing a bowl and
pitcher on a stand. A candlestick of polished pewter, replete with
a fresh fat candle, rested on the low mantelpiece beside a thick
pottery jar with three dark red autumn roses, overblown and far
past their prime. Two low chairs stood before the cheerful fire
that crackled and muttered secrets to itself.

"Those flowers cannot stay. Take them with
you, please. And that window over the bed, Master Frague," said
Madryn as she stood in the doorway, with a nod towards the shutters
that creaked in the wind, "what's on the other side?"

"Oh, never you fear, milady. There's naught
out there but the forest," was the soothing reply. "Naught but
trees and such. This part of the inn was added on in my old dad's
day, when we needed more storage. I thought as how you might like
it better here, being quiet and all, away from the bar and the
other rooms. There be nothing but barrels of ale and side of bacon
and such like in the other rooms." The burly innkeeper waddled over
to the mantel and scooped up the flowers, pot and all, into one
meaty hand.

"My thanks, Master Frague," said Madryn as
she entered the room at last. Valerik watched in astonishment as
she made a wide berth around the innkeeper and his burden of
blooms.

Frague gave a nod for answer and shut the
door on his way out. They could hear his heavy body stamping down
the hallway away from their room.

Madryn sniffed. "Cider turned to vinegar,"
she identified, and then grimaced. Valerik could smell nothing but
the vanished roses. "Still, that's far better than those damned
flowers. I don't think this room has been used for much of anything
for some time, do you? Definitely not for sleeping, at any rate. I
suppose our host didn't want us to wake his other guests with our
noisy carryings on." A crooked smile crossed her face, was gone in
an instant. "It's warm and dry, at any rate; neither of which we'd
be, if we were out in that."

A draft swirled under the ill-fitting door.
Valerik watched the shutter over the bed rattle and shake, and
heard the one in the hallway give reply. The storm was gaining
intensity.

He flung his boots down before the fire, set
the saddlebag on a chair and pulled another chair in front of the
door. Even as he did so, Madryn was climbing onto the bed shelf to
unlatch the window shutter.

"Fresh nails and new boards for this, and
that right recently. But there're bars behind it—Damn it!—rusty and
loose, thank the gods."

Valerik looked to see the cause of her
curse. She was shaking a finger that showed a thin streak of
blood.

"Caught it on a nail," she said as she
climbed back down from the bed. "Val, see if you can get one of
those bars loose, if you please?"

Valerik climbed up in his turn, opened wide
the shutters and seized a bar in both hands. With a series of soft
grunts, he pulled first one, then another, then a third completely
out of the old dry wood into which they were set. Then he carefully
reinserted them into their shattered holes, so it looked to the
casual observer that they were still firmly in place."

"You're quite obviously a mind reader," was
Madryn's comment as he clambered down. "I'll take the first watch.
You get some sleep."

Valerik opened his mouth to argue, but it
turned into a yawn instead. He gave into it, stretching his long
arms out to the side.

"Yes, we're both tired, but I think you need
sleep more than I just now," Madryn said as if he'd spoken.

Valerik didn't argue further. He picked up a
blanket from the pile on the shelf and offered it to her, but
Madryn shook her head. She took up her fur-lined cloak and settled
into a chair before the fire, her face towards the door. Valerik
shucked out of his so recently donned new breeches and shirt, laid
them on the floor beside the bed, then lay down and huddled under a
cocoon of blankets.

He watched Madryn's profile, outlined by the
fire, as she stared into the dimness of the room, wondering. Who
was she, where was she going, this strange woman who had decided to
help him? His mind whirled with old thought and new
feelings…feelings he had never dared to feel before. He knew he
would not be able to sleep for a long time, tired though he
was.

Moments later, he was lost in deep black
slumber.

***

An instant later, so it seemed—though he
knew it must be longer, by the depth that the fat candle had sunk
in its pewter holder—someone was shaking him. Valerik sat up.

"Listen," Madryn whispered, her mouth so
close to his ear that he could feel her breath. "Do you hear
that?"

He could. It came from outside the door, in
the hallway…the hallway that Frague had said was seldom used. A
slithering kind of noise, as if bodies were congregating in a
silent, watchful mass. There…a tiny click of metal against
metal.

Madryn pressed a dagger into Valerik's hand.
He looked around the room, his eyes bleary from disturbed sleep.
The fur-lined cloak was spread across the chair and a fresh log
from the pile next to the fireplace lay on simmering coals.
Madryn's tall boots were on the hearth, gleaming black against the
cheerful orange light.

"I heard it when I rose to put wood on the
fire," Madryn breathed. Valerik suppressed a chill of excitement.
"Get dressed. If they're after you, we may have to go out the
window."

She tiptoed on silent feet, sword in hand,
to lay her ear against the wood of the door. Valerik struggled into
his unaccustomed clothing, striving mightily for silence, and then
followed her. He had no need to catch her sense of danger; he had
his own. He held his ear against the battered wood, listening for
his life.

Almost at once, a look of relief spread
across the narrow brown face so close to his own. She nodded to
Valerik, a grin on her long mouth.

"Sorry," she murmured and gave a rueful
laugh before flinging the door open.