The Gathering Storm (Crown of Stars #5)

The Gathering Storm (Crown of Stars #5) Page 262

Better, really, not to allow men to conceal themselves so.

He splashed water on his face, glad of the cool touch on his hot face.

Wolfhere sniffed, casting back his head. “It’s said that you can smell thyme in any place where a murder has been committed. Can you smell it?”

“I don’t know what it smells like. That strong scent—that’s the jessamine, isn’t it?”

“And the other—can you smell it? That is thyme.”

Zacharias glanced around. Meriam haggled with the hospice master while Marcus looked on contemptuously and her servants waited patiently with the baggage. Elene had pulled a scarf on over her dark hair, clutching the ends of the scarf in each hand just under her sharp chin. She stood in shadow with a fierce frown on her handsome face and anger in the stiffness of her shoulders.

The frater dropped his voice to a whisper. “Do you think a murder was committed here?”

“I know one was. Long ago. I saw the body.”

“You’ve been in this place before?”

“I have.”

The hospice master was a middle-aged man with a lean face and skin twice as dark as Meriam’s. He glanced their way, did a double take, and bowed hastily to Meriam before hurrying over to confront Wolfhere. He genuflected before grasping the Eagle’s hand and patting it with evident joy.

“Friend! Friend!” he said in accented Wendish. “Friend!”

Perhaps it was the only word in that language he knew. He returned to Meriam.

“What is he saying?” Zacharias asked as he watched the innkeeper gesticulate enthusiastically.

“I don’t know. I know only a few words in the local speech.” But his narrowed eyes and intent expression, as he scrutinized the exchange between the innkeeper and Sister Meriam, suggested otherwise.

“Allowed to stay one night for nothing, no payment at all, and he will lend us a guide to escort us to Kartiako. All as recompense for a service you did him ten years ago. What might that have been?”

“Nothing that matters to you, Marcus, or to our purpose in coming here.”

The servingmen had settled their baggage in the spacious room to which the men of the party were escorted—the women resided in a separate wing—and now, as the sun set and lamps were lit, Marcus, Wolfhere, and Zacharias seated themselves on pillows while youths from the hospice brought around a basin of water in which they washed their hands before eating.

“Are there no chairs or benches?” Zacharias whispered. “Do we not eat at a table like civilized people?”

“This is the custom of the country,” said Wolfhere.

“Where are Sister Meriam and Lady Elene?”

“They will dine separately.”

“Is it also the custom of the country to separate men and women as though men, like beasts, must be kept apart?” Marcus’ lips curled in a sneer.

“No doubt the Jinna find Wendish customs as strange as we find theirs.”

Marcus snorted, but since trays laden with food arrived, he let the conversation lapse. He proved to be a fussy eater, scorning most of the dishes because of their spicy flavor, but Zacharias had suffered hunger too many times to let food go to waste. That one dish contained chicken he recognized, although the heat of the sauce burned his tongue, but he had a name for none of the other foods arranged before him. Still, he ate as much as he could stuff into his stomach and suffered for it later when he bedded down with the servants on hard pallets on the floor.

He tossed and turned, throat burning, and stifled his burps. His belly churned. In time he had to get up to relieve himself. He felt his way to the curtained door and slipped outside. The moon’s light gilded the courtyard in silver, and he padded as silently as he could along the pathway that led under the archway into the stable yard, where the hospice’s necessarium stood. Some kindly soul had left an oil lamp burning inside.

After he finished his business, he found he was not particularly tired. He crept back to the shadowed archway and paused there to look up at the stars. The air had a clarity here that caused the stars to look brighter than in the north, and the spherical curve of the rising quarter moon showed in stark contrast to the night sky.

Someone—nay, two people—stood by the fountain, speaking in low voices. He slipped from shadow to shadow until he crept close enough to hear.

“How can this be? You no longer trust him?”

“Sister Anne no longer trusts him. I found him in the company of Prince Sanglant. I tell you, he did not seem overeager to leave the prince and his retinue, yet he claims to have no knowledge of the prince’s plans. He says he was kept an outsider to the prince’s council.”