He growled an oath and stalked onward. At least, he told himself morosely, it gave him someplace to go instead of squatting in this miserable city while the money ran out, but he hated to imagine Brandark’s reaction.
They reached the tavern where he and Brandark lodged, and the slatternly landlady looked up from behind the bar as he led Zarantha in. Beady eyes brightened in their harridan net of wrinkles as she saw the young woman at the hradani’s side, but she put what she fondly imagined was a prim look of disapproval on her face and waved a bony finger at Bahzell.
“Here, now! This here’s a decent place, it is. I’ll not have ye bringin’ yer fancy pieces an’ gods know what pox or flux back to my beds!”
The Horse Stealer’s foxlike ears flattened, and the landlady paled as he glared down at her. He truly couldn’t have said which infuriated him more-the insult to Zarantha, the notion that he might dally with a whore, or the leering, knowing note in her voice-but any of them would have been enough tonight.
Silence hovered for a long, fragile moment before he made his fury relax and gave her a thin smile. “You were saying?” he rumbled.
The slattern swallowed nervously, but then she straightened, and defiant spite flashed in her eyes, made even stronger by the shame of her own fear as she realized he wasn’t going to attack her after all.
“No need t’ take that tone wi’ me , master high an’ mighty! It’s me as is mistress o’ this house, an’ ye’ll bide by my rules, or out ye goes!” She sniffed with growing confidence, for she knew how long and hard the hradani had looked before they found lodging in the first place. “Maybe ye can find someplace else as’ll take yer kind, but if yer minded t’ bed that hussy in my house, ye’ll be payin’ two silver extra to futter her, me lad!”
“And what,” Zarantha asked, a note of amusement in her musically accented Axeman, “makes you assume that’s what he has in mind?”
“Hoo! A furriner, are ye?” The landlady cackled. “Well now, missy, just what d’ye think I’m a-thinkin’? The shame of it, spreadin’ yer legs fer the likes o’ him, an’ him not even human!”
Bahzell’s ears went flat once more, and the slattern’s vicious smile vanished as he stalked wordlessly towards her. The Horse Stealer had endured enough this night, but he reminded himself sternly that his hostess was a woman-a loathsome, disgusting woman, but a woman-and so he reached out to the thirty-gallon beer keg on the bar instead of her scrawny neck. It was half full, and beer sloshed noisily as he plucked it from its chocks.
“I’m thinking,” he said softly, holding the keg out straight-armed, directly over her head, “that you’re after owing this lady an apology.”
The landlady looked up and blanched. The keg hung motionless above her, not even quivering, and her eyes darted back to the hradani’s expressionless face and then to Zarantha.
“T-T-To be sure, I meant ye no offense, and-and I humbly begs yer pardon,” she gabbled, and Bahzell allowed himself another thin smile.
“Good,” he said in that same, soft voice. He replaced the keg in its chocks with neat precision and waved Zarantha towards the stairs. She inclined her head to the landlady in a gracious nod and swished up them in her torn homespun skirt, and Bahzell gave the harridan one last blood-chilling smile, patted the keg lightly, and followed her.
Brandark was still up, nursing a bottle before the tiny fire on the smoky hearth, when Bahzell and Zarantha entered the cheap room. He looked up at the opening door, and his eyes widened as he saw Zarantha. But he recovered quickly and scrambled to his feet, and her lips quirked as he twitched his lacy shirt straight and bestowed a graceful bow upon her.
“Will you stop that?” Bahzell growled. Something suspiciously like a chuckle came from Zarantha, and Brandark bobbed back up with a twinkle. Bahzell saw it and growled again, but Brandark only cocked his ears in polite inquiry.
“And who might your lovely companion be?”
“I’ll ‘companion’ you one, for half a copper kormak!” Bahzell rumbled in an overtried voice.
“Now, Bahzell!” Unholy amusement danced in Brandark’s eyes as he added the dried blood on Bahzell’s right hand to Zarantha’s general dishevelment, and he shook his head. “I apologize for my friend,” he told Zarantha in his smoothest tones. “It’s his hand, I think. For some reason, his brain never works too well when his hand’s bloody. It seems to make him remarkably irritable for some reason, too.”
“Listen, you runty, undersized, pipsqueak excuse for a hradani, I’ve been having about all-!”
“Now, now! Not in front of company.” Brandark smiled dazzlingly. “You can abuse me all you like later,” he soothed.
Bahzell made a sound midway between a growl, a sigh, and a groan, and Brandark laughed. He waggled his ears outrageously at the Horse Stealer, and, despite himself, Bahzell’s lips twitched in a weary grin.
“That’s better! And now if you’d introduce us?”
“Brandark Brandarkson of Navahk, be known to-” Bahzell frowned and looked at Zarantha. “What was it you were calling yourself?”
“My name is Zarantha,” she said, smiling at Brandark, and the Bloody Sword’s ears perked up at her accent. “Lady Zarantha Hûrâka, of Clan Hûrâka.”
“Do you know,” Brandark murmured, “I think you actually may be.”
“Why, thank you, sir,” she said with a deeper smile, and swept him a curtsy she’d never learned in the alleys of Riverside.
“But I trust you’ll forgive me,” he went on, “if exactly what a Spearman lady is doing in Riverside, and how we can serve her, eludes me?”
“You didn’t tell me your friend was so charming,” she murmured to Bahzell, and the Horse Stealer snorted.
“Aye, isn’t he just?”
“Of course I am.” Brandark drew the second rickety chair back from the equally unsteady table for their guest. She seated herself with a regal air, and the Bloody Sword looked expectantly back at his friend. “I assume from the state of your hand that you’ve been up to your old tricks. Would you care to tell me exactly what you’ve landed us in this time?”
Brandark took the explanation better than Bahzell had feared, though the Horse Stealer was none too sure his gales of laughter at the description of the fight in the alley were truly preferable. He sobered-some-on hearing the sergeant’s warning about ni’Tarth, but he only shrugged at the revelation that he and Bahzell were now bound for the Empire of the Spear.
“Well, you said you wanted to go east,” he murmured, “and you do have a way of, ah, expediting your departures, don’t you?” Bahzell snorted in his throat, and the Bloody Sword chuckled. “Yes, you do. In fact, I think I feel an inspiration coming on.”
“Oh, no, you don’t!” Bahzell said hastily.
“Oh, but I do!” Brandark’s eyes glinted at him. “I think I’ll call it . . . The Lay of Bahzell Bloody-Hand. How does that sound?”
“Like a just enough cause for murder!”
“Nonsense! Why, I’ll make you famous , Bahzell! Everywhere you go, folk will know of your heroic deeds and towering nobility!”
“You’d best give the idea over while you’ve still two hands to write with,” Bahzell growled, but his own lips twitched, and Zarantha chuckled again. Then the Horse Stealer sobered. “Aye, that’s well enough, Brandark, but we’ve landed neck-deep in trouble again, and it’s me that’s put us there.”