Madelon looked up, puzzled. “Done what?” Dirk started to answer, then clamped his mouth shut, remembering that the churls didn’t know what a clone was.
And if they learned, what would it do to them? “Set up the Games.” And, quickly: “All right, we’re here. Now where do we go?”
“In there.” She pointed to a tavern.
Dirk looked up at the sign. “There’ll be Soldiers.”
“We are dead—don’t you remember?” She pushed him through the door.
The common room was paneled in dark wood and greasy smoke. They found seats at the long central table, and Dirk tried not to breathe too deeply. It was early; there were only a few other people at the board, eating what passed for breakfast.
“What do we do now?”
“Eat,” she replied sweetly. “Or aren’t you hungry?”
Dirk’s belly answered her with a sudden, mutinous rumble. He remembered their last meal—an overly optimistic chicken who had foolishly gone out for a stroll; it had really been too young to go out alone—and fumbled in his purse, relieved to find all his money still there.
The innkeeper came up, wiping his hands on his apron—a fat Merchant type, with a smile pasted on for the gentry. “Your pleasure, Gentleman and Lady?”
“The best of whatever you have to break fast with.” Madelon gestured airily with two fingers. The smile vanished. Its owner peered more closely into her face, while he said, much too casually, “There is roast fowl and wine, Lady. All else is too coarse for the palate of Gentry.” Madelon nodded judiciously. “That will do. Bring the wine quickly, please.”
The innkeeper bowed and turned away, moving as calmly and deliberately as though he’d seen nothing out of the ordinary.
Dirk pitched his voice low. “Whose is that sign?”
She stared at him a moment; then she smiled sweetly. “If you do not know it already, you have no right to.”
Dirk’s eyes narrowed; but before he could speak, the innkeeper was back, setting two wineglasses and a bottle before them, then bowing and turning away.
Madelon filled the glasses and handed one to Dirk. “For a man who claims to be of us, you seem to know little about us.”
Dirk glanced uneasily down the table; which one of the other customers was the Lord’s spy? But he’d have to have an amplifier to hear more than a low murmur. Not impossible—but Dirk didn’t see any hearing aids.
He turned back to Madelon. “You don’t learn very much about rebels when you’re ten. You certainly don’t meet any—except the ones who smuggle you out, and they don’t tip you any secrets.”
“Of course,” she murmured. “Then you have met the Guild?”
“You could say so,” Dirk said slowly. “But even after I was away, it was several years before I realized what they meant when they said the Guild. I mean, when the men helped me escape, I saw their guild-patches on their arms—but they were all from different guilds. And when I was a boy in the village, I knew the local Tradesmen were members of different guilds, and I got a hazy impression that there was a guild governing each trade, keeping up the quality of the product and doing the paper work—but never trying to improve the lot of their members, or doing collective pushing on the Lords…”
Madelon’s eyes widened. Then she propped her chin on a fist, musing. “An interesting thought, that …”
“Yes.” Dirk smiled wryly. “Bizarre new concept, isn’t it? … So after I was … ‘away’ … it took me a while to realize that since anybody who wanted to oppose the Lords couldn’t do it through his guild, they’d set up another, secret Guild for the purpose.”
“It is confusing.” She smiled sweetly. “We hope the Lords find it so, too. But do not your people deal with the Guild?”
“Oh yes, quite often—but mostly just to smuggle the occasional child off to us, or to assure them we’re still working for them. They always keep us at arm’s length—deal with us, but don’t trust us.”
“Small wonder, since you take only children. Why do you not take grown men and women, too?”
Dirk shook his head. “If we started doing that, every churl on Mélange would be trying to join us—and with that kind of rush, the Lords’d be onto us in no time and shut us down. Escaping children are rare—and a child can learn more than an adult. Learn faster, too—and our operations require a lot of book knowledge. An awful lot.”
“So you take only the brighter children,” Madelon said crisply. “The others must stay with the outlaws, in the forest—and you wonder why we do not trust you! One would think you know nothing of us, had no idea of our sufferings!”
Dirk stiffened, “I know. I know well. My mother died in the dead of winter because Lord Core wouldn’t give my father the medicine—even though he stood outside the portal all day in the snow. Then Lord Core rode through the village and spotted my sister and gave orders that she be brought to his castle. My father hustled her off into the forest before the Soldiers could get there, and I never saw her again. But Core had him whipped to death for it—and he made me watch with the rest of the village.”
She stared into his eyes, surprised by the hate in his voice. Then her gaze softened. “And that is when you ran.”
“Yes—before my father was buried, while they thought I was still too numb to do anything. But I vowed to come back and avenge them.”
“And now you are back.”
Dirk nodded. “And we’re working on the other part.”
Her eyes were wide, staring into his—and, Dirk realized, not black, but a very deep violet. Very deep—he seemed to feel himself losing hold of the hard wood beneath him, being drawn into those eyes, very deeply …
Her lashes fluttered, and broke the spell. She dropped her eyes. “The tale of your sister is … familiar.”
Like her own, Dirk realized; and it hit him like a pile driver. Pity and tenderness welled up in him; outrage surged. If they had dared touch her, he’d …
Whoa. He hauled himself back, shaken as he realized the emotions he’d just felt. What was it with this girl, anyway?
She looked up at him. “I cannot doubt you now, Dirk Dulain. You tell your tale with too much will; only one who has suffered as we have could feel so much hate.” She reached out and took his hand. “I have helped you only with an ill will, so far; but now, we will be together in this, with all my will—and, I think, my heart.”
Dirk sat, frozen by the spark-gap of her touch, fighting to contain the sudden surge of elation, to clear the subtle distortion that seemed to have come over the room.
Then he remembered that Gar wasn’t around at the moment, and reason returned.
The innkeeper came up with the two roasted birds, and Dirk dropped Madelon’s hand—with, it must be admitted, a little relief.
The fowls were small and they were both very hungry, so conversation lapsed while they both paid tribute to the cook. When the bulk of the meat was gone, Dirk shoved his plate away with regret—picking the bones wasn’t seemly for gentlefolk. Madelon looked up, caught on, and, for once, followed his lead.
Dirk reached forward and refilled both glasses for the third time. “Next?”
“We wait.” Madelon sat back and sipped. “It shouldn’t be long.”
It wasn’t. A wiry, fox-faced man with a bolt of cloth materialized at their table. “Here are the goods you wished to see, Lady.”
Madelon looked up with only the slightest trace of surprise. She recovered quickly and unrolled a yard or so, spreading it out over her lap and feeling, pinching, running her hands over it. “Yes, it is excellent stuff, but the color is not quite right. I wish a little more red in it.”