Ki shrugged, feeling tired, frustrated and angry. 'I don't know. I suppose. Can't you give me any idea of where to look for Vandien?'
'I know no more than you know yourself, if you would only listen to yourself. He's here, somewhere. The link between you is not a thread that can be followed, but is more like the echo of your voice bouncing back to you. Go feeling for him; you'll find him.'
'I suppose so.' Ki tried to keep the scepticism out of her voice. She must be crazy to even believe this man at all. Maybe she was only going looking for Vandien because she so desperately wanted to believe he was alive. To keep the darkness at bay.
Dellin led the mule away, across the pasture. She listened to the animal's splayed hooves crunchingthrough the dry grasses until their silhouettes merged with the darkness. Then she moved on. The night seemed blacker now that she walked alone, but she found herself keeping to the side of the road and listening for other footsteps. Yet when she did encounter other folk, they paid little mind to her. She had reached the tree-lined street by then, and could make out the shards of glass and tiny bells that caught the yellow light of the torches and shimmered with it. The people who moved through the streets behaved as if it were full daylight, and a market day at that. A suppressed excitement seemed to shiver through the night air. Folk spoke to one another in rushed whispers, interspersed with much laughter. Ki wondered what the energy flowing through the night portended, then pushed the thought from her mind. As long as it kept other folk busy, it was all to her good. She moved like a ghost through the streets, untouched by the hilarity of Festival, keeping to the shadows, seeking only a man with dark hair and dark eyes and a narrow, crooked smile that kept her heart alive.
She passed cooking stalls, smelled the tantalizing odors of dough cooking in hot fat, of spiced meat and simmering gravy. Her stomach snapped at her throat angrily. Well, no help for it. She should have asked Dellin if he had any coins. She certainly didn't, not on her, and the wagon would certainly have been looted. She tried to worry about her destitute status, couldn't. Find the damn man first; after that, the other would fall into place. Or it wouldn't.
She found herself standing in the innyard of the Two Ducks. It was crowded tonight with wagons and carts. Riding animals, their bits slipped and grain spilled before them, were tethered at the rail. Light and noise came through the open door. It was as good a place as any to begin.
She slipped in the door, timing her entry to coincide with three men leaving, and sought the shadowed end of the room. The night was warm, but a fire still blazed on the hearth and meat was roasting over it. The room was chaotic. In one corner a handsome but mediocre harpist was playing for a rapt circle of mostly young girls. They did not seem to mind the shouted conversations that were being carried on behind them, or the sudden gusts of laughter or cursing that occasionally swept the room. Ki picked up a half-empty mug that someone had abandoned and leaned against the wall, trying to look as if she were paying attention to the harper while covertly eavesdropping on other conversations.
The harper couldn't sing very well, either. Ki listened in on a man telling the woman with him that she was going to have to tell Broderick she wouldn't see him anymore, and then to two farmers discussing whether the Windsingers would send rain right before haying time like they did last year. Three other men were hotly discussing the day's fencing contest, arguing about whether someone was justified in being as savage as he had been. A mixed group of young folk at the next table were playing a game that involved guessing whether the down sides of some tiles were red, black or blue. Just as Ki was going to abandon this tavern and try another, she heard a name she recognized.
'Kellich wouldn't have had to do it that way!' a man was saying. He was among the ones who had earlier been discussing the fencing. Ki edged closer, keeping her eyes on the warbling harper.
'Damn right about that!' agreed the short man in the group. 'Kellich was a damn fine swordsman. He'd have won clean, made it clear he was the best without having to cut anybody up. That bastard was no more than a butcher ... just a damn butcher. Blume isn't going to last the night. And he was just getting set to ask Aria to join with him.'
'No.' The man speaking now was more soft-spoken than the other two. He pushed brown hair back from his eyes. 'I'm no happier than you two are about Blume and Kurtis. And what he did to Darnell was a shameful thing to see. But he's a swordsman, through and through. He gave back to each what they offered him. Kurtis and Blume thought they'd have an easy time of it; they weren't even trying to look like they were fighting till he stung them. And Darnell, well, if there was another way to stop Darnell, I don'tknow what it is. But when he took on Farrick ... Moon's breath, but that was something to see. That was bladework, and I'd swear not even Kellich had that kind of grace in him.'
'Horsedung!' The short man looked angry that anyone would dare disagree with him. He spoke as if he were several mugs ahead of his companions. 'All that pausing and tapping blades and moving up and back ... looked more like a spring dance than two men with swords. If you ask me, he and Farrick know each other from somewhere, otherwise how could they have moved together like that, like some kind of jugglers or acrobats or ...'
'You damn dumb plow-pusher, that's Harperian fencing,' Brown-hair laughed. 'I saw it once before, when I travelled up north to the horse fair with my father. That's how it's done, though what I saw today made the horse-fair swordsmen look like sheepboys with sticks. It must be true what they say of Farrick, that his family had land and monies once and that he came south when ...'
'Farrick ain't no better than the rest of us, I don't care what kind of manners he puts on. And this damn Harperian fencing you keep talking about is more dancing fit for maids and boys than a way to treat a sword. And Kellich could have put him down as jerky before he could have gotten near him, if he'd tried those fancy dance steps when he fought him.'
'Kellich couldn't even have touched blades with him if they'd been fencing Harperian!'
'Damn you, Yency, you saying that outlander was better than our own Kellich?' The short man picked up his mug with no intention of drinking from it. The third man intervened hastily.
Settle down, settle down, no one's arguing with you, man. Yency was just saying he liked the man's style, that's all. And what's it to us, anyway? Tomorrow will tell.' The peacemaker's voice sank suddenly to a near whisper that Ki strained to hear. 'If the Duke's dead, we'll say the man was a good fencer. But in any case, the outlander will be dead. Got to admit, Yency, that when he fenced with Kellich, he fenced with death. Even if the poor bastard didn't know it. Buy us another round, Yency, and let's talk about something else.'
Ki drank from the mug before she realized it wasn't really hers, then set it down quickly. Her mind was struggling to piece together what she had heard. None of it made sense. She'd been expecting to find Vandien held hostage somewhere, probably badly injured, perhaps barely alive. But who else could those men have been talking about? Who else had fenced Kellich lately and beaten him? By the way they had been talking, it sounded as if Vandien had been competing in the fencing exhibition today. And winning, very bloodily. But he wouldn't do that! He wouldn't kill as part of a bout. And if he'd been capable of moving around, he'd have been looking for her, not fencing in some contest.
She found her way to the door, paused in the shadows outside. Harperian fencing. That's what he'd taught her. He'd told her it was an old style, perhaps the oldest known, and becoming rarer in the world. But it couldn't have been Vandien. It must have been some other outlander come into town for the festival. She'd look and listen elsewhere. Where? She thought of the inn across town, where they had stopped before, for no other reason than that they had been there together once. Follow her feelings, Dellin had told her. She tried to still the turmoil inside her, tried to 'feel' where Vandien might be in this frantic town. Nothing. Stupidity to even try. She thought briefly of going back inside the Two Ducks and trying to corner that Yency person and find out more about the fencing tournament today. But the Two Ducks seemed a bad place to call attention to herself; if they remembered Kellich's dying there, they'd remember the woman who'd been with his killer. She pushed herself away from the wall, started up the street. She moved through the shadowed areas of the street, avoiding the torches on their poles and the folk that clustered around them, laughing and talking and swatting at the swarming insects. Once more she heard the day's fencing mentioned, though never Vandien's name, only that 'The stranger and the Duke will make a fine pair of it, and who cares who comes out of it alive?' The folk gathered about the speaker generally laughed at that. She ventured a few steps closer, hoping to hear more, but was then distracted by a woman in a sere robe and hood hastening down the street. There was something naggingly familiar about her purposeful walk, and Ki trailed after her, scarcely daring to hope.