Maggie realized it had been an unwarranted thought, but tried to explain. “You never know.” She shook her head. “He’s the damnedest man I’ve ever had the misfortune of meeting. I’ve thought of stabbing him today-more than once!”
“Well, don’t!” Gallen laughed. Ann Dilley plodded back into the room, frowned at Maggie as she got a flagon of wine and pulled some rolls from the oven. “Look, I can tell you’re busy,” Gallen said. “Let’s talk tonight, after you close up. It’s important.”
Gallen left.
Maggie was grateful when the wagon rolled into town moments later, and for a while nearly everyone cleared out while Thomas displayed the corpses in the stable. That gave time for the meat to cook. And yet, it was only the beginning of the night. Soon the tables began to fill with villagers from An Cochan, three miles away. They were coming as fast as they heard the news, walking over the mountain road by lantern light, the wights be damned, bringing whole families by wagon.
Thomas raised the price on his rooms and food and liquor and stabling, and by eleven he was selling sleeping space on the floor of the common room, and he’d rented out the lawn to campers.
The amount of work to be done piled up like snow before an avalanche, ready to topple at any moment. There was more work than twenty people could do. Maggie was forced to just grit her teeth and bear it. She cooked and served dinner, took money, cleaned the cooking pots, churned the butter, and prepared the ingredients for breakfast. By twelve-thirty the common room was more crowded than she’d ever seen it, and Gallen came to help her wash dishes, while every other person who’d ever lent a hand during the traveling season helped prepare food for the morrow.
Maggie could sense that Gallen wanted to speak to her as he worked, but with a dozen people bustling in and out of the room, he didn’t dare. There was a certain tenseness in his movements, and twice she put her wet arms around him to hug him, give him comfort, wondering what was on his mind.
By two in the morning, the place was a madhouse-folks had come from twelve miles away, and Maggie wondered at how they were all making the trip so fast, on such a dark night.
They closed the common room then, with four dozen folks asleep on the floor, and every bed in the house taken. Thomas came to the kitchens. “Leave the rest of those dishes until morning, darlin’,” Thomas said. “I’d like you to lock up the stable. I don’t want folks mucking about there in the middle of the night.”
“And what will you be doing, your lordship?” Maggie asked. Thomas hefted a bag of coins-more money than Maggie had ever seen in one spot. “I’ll be tallying receipts.”
“Uncle Thomas,” Maggie said angrily, “what will you be doing with all that money? It’s a shame before God for a man to make so much in one day! Why, it would serve you right if someone knocked you in the head and danced off with your purse!”
Thomas laughed. “As the good Lord said, ‘The poor you have with you always’-and might I add, they’re always red-faced indignant when someone else falls into a bit of money. So don’t go getting all self-righteous on me, Maggie Flynn. After alclass="underline" you own this inn. I’m just helping you run it, until you’re eighteen. I’ll take a cut for showing the demon, but the vast majority of this fortune is yours!”
“And you can have it all, for all that I care!” Maggie said. “And the inn with it!” For I’m going away, and plan never to return, she wanted to say. Thomas grinned. “Oh, you’re speaking out of your anger and weariness. Get some sleep, and your head will be clearer in the morning.” Thomas looked at Gallen as if he’d just seen him. “This purse would make a fine start for a dowry, don’t you think, Mr. O’Day?”
“Aye,” Gallen nodded. “A start.”
“I meant to have a talk with you, Mr. O’Day, about your intentions toward my niece-”
“Let’s talk, then.” Gallen pulled a worn chair away from the cutting table. The cooking fire was nearly out, and the oil lamp above the sinks was burning low so that Gallen was just a shadow moving in the dark.
“I know you’re in a hurry, young man. In a hurry to talk, in a hurry to marry my niece. But it would be impolitic to hurry the marriage, and as for the talk-I’m afraid I’m all stove in for the night,” Thomas said. “Besides, it wouldn’t be proper to discuss the matter in front of her … you know.” He nodded toward Maggie.
“I’m not some heifer that you’ll be bartering over,” Maggie said. “I should have a say in any deals you go making. It’s my money you’ll be spending for the dowry!”
“I didn’t say you were some heifer,” Thomas growled. “But you’re young. You’re just too damned young, and your mind isn’t as fully developed as”-he waved vaguely toward her breasts-“the rest of your body. So I’d like to have a delicate talk with Gallen, man-to-man, and I don’t need your meddling!”
Maggie stared hard at him, and she could feel her face burning. She wanted to scream or shove him into the big baking oven in the corner till his skin turned black, but she only glared at him.
Thomas said to Gallen, “It’s time for you to go, young sir. I suspect you’re an honorable man, but it wouldn’t be proper for you to be skulking around here so late of the night without an escort.”
Thomas turned and disappeared into the common room through the swinging doors, giving them one last moment alone. Maggie was so mad she wanted to follow Thomas out and shout to his back as he walked up the stairs to count the money, but there were too many folks camped out on the floor of the common room, and she didn’t want to make a scene. So she just stood with her fists clenched until she realized that she still held a wet washrag and she had squeezed water from it onto her foot.
She spun and tossed the rag into the sink. “Well, how do you like him?”
Gallen chuckled at Thomas’s back. “I see what you meant about wanting to stab him. ‘Skulking around’ he calls it. The nerve of him! Well, he’s a nuisance, all right. But don’t judge him too harshly. He thinks he’s making you rich, and you can’t fault him for that. And if your mother or father were alive, they wouldn’t be talking to you much different. They’d be against you marrying so young, too.”
“Oh, don’t take his side. He’s just a big tick trying to suck the blood from me, and he wants me to feel fine about it.”
“Any sixteen-year-old woman,” Gallen whispered, “who can steal a key to the Gate of the World, make her way across half a dozen planets, pilot a hovercar under a nuclear mushroom cloud, and face up to the Dronon Lords of the Swarm is surely a match for one dried-up old crooked uncle,” Gallen whispered. “I’m sure you can handle him.”
Maggie smiled, still angry, but subdued by weariness. “Sure, I’d gut him in a second if he wasn’t my only kin,” she teased. She buried her head in his chest, just resting her eyes, swaying gently. “Gallen, we’ve got to get out of here. I won’t stay here and be his slave, working in this place for another year!”
“Of course not,” Gallen said. He wrapped his strong arms around her and just held her. She could feel his heart beating strong and steady in his chest, smelled the clean scent of his cotton tunic. He didn’t speak for a long time. The cooking fire crackled as a log shifted.
“Let’s go lock up the stables,” he whispered. “We can talk in there.”
Maggie went to the cabinet where John Mahoney had kept his locks, took out the big iron lock that he used for the stables when he bothered to lock them at all. Gallen went to a peg by the back door, took down Maggie’s shawl and put it over her shoulders, and they hurried out under the boughs of the house-pine.
A blustery wind was blowing, and all under the tree that formed the inn there were tents pitched, and up on the hill north of town, Maggie could hear whinnying. She looked up, and spaced along the mountain road were lanterns as people wended their way down the road.
“This is madness,” Gallen whispered, watching the lanterns. “I’ve never seen the likes.”