Wynn stepped close to Leesil, shivering in the dank afternoon. She was so small that she could have stood beneath his chin. With her hood up over her hair, only her oval face showed, making her anxious eyes seem rounder as she looked up at him. Magiere stood to his other side, unblinking.
Two men stood inside the courtyard near the keep's front doors. They talked quietly to each other, while a third led a horse to the side stable and a water trough.
"Are we still going in?" Wynn asked.
"Magiere… you know the way," Leesil said.
"No," she replied. "I don't."
He raised an eyebrow.
"This is as far as I've ever come," she said. "I was forbidden to come here… No one from the village ever came here by choice."
"But you spent your whole childhood living nearby," Wynn asked in surprise. "You must have-"
"I sneaked up here alone a few times," Magiere said, "but never farther than the tree line."
Leesil put his arm around behind Magiere and walked forward slowly. As he and Magiere passed through the doorless gate, the two men near the keep stopped talking. Each guard carried a spear, as well as a long-knife sheathed on his belt, but their clothes were plain and threadbare. They were likely no more than locals engaged by the zupan.
"Can I help you?" the shorter one asked, and his tone suggested that they state their business quickly.
"We need to speak with the zupan," Leesil said.
"Is he expecting you?"
Leesil felt Magiere's hand clench his with a shudder. She let go and stepped forward, her voice polite but cold.
"We arrived only last night. It's important that I see him."
The man shook his head. "Leave your petition with me, and I'll see that he gets it. If you come tomorrow, perhaps he will-"
"Oh, stop with your pretense, Cherock," a deep voice called out. "Father missed lunch, and he's having an early supper. Today's no more exciting than the rest, and he won't mind a few visitors."
Leesil turned, searching for the speaker.
In the keep's open doorway stood a slender man with coal-black hair that hung to his shoulders in a wild, unruly mass. His dusky complexion almost matched Wynn's olive tone, unlike the pale villagers and the would-be guards. He wore russet breeches with high boots and a baggy shirt of sea green with the cuffs rolled halfway up his arms. In one hand he held a fiddle, and in the other he lightly gripped a player's bow. The instrument's finish was worn away where the man's chin would rest. He smiled openly as he gestured them inside with the bow, and Leesil saw nothing behind the expression but a friendly welcome.
"Come, come," the young man called. "Cherock is doing his little duty, but my father doesn't stand on ceremony. Join us."
Such a relaxed invitation was unexpected, but Leesil and Wynn followed Magiere to the doorway. The young man looked over all three visitors but gave Wynn a longer appraisal as his smile broadened.
"I am Jan. Cherock acts as if my father has the schedule of a capital potentate, but we're not quite so overrun. Before we took to the keep, we lived in my father's central village or visited among my mother's people… and I'm dying for any company besides these courtyard hang-abouts."
As Leesil stepped past Jan to the keep's doorway, he noted a series of three silver hoops in the young man's left earlobe.
"And when was the last time he held an audience?"
Jan paused a moment. "Late summer, I think. One village needed coin for a new mule. I don't suppose you need an ass for your labors?" He nodded toward Wynn with a conspiratorial whisper. "I could give you a bargain on Cherock, if you like. A little exercise might improve his nature."
Wynn backed toward Leesil as she eyed the young man and tried not to smile.
"She's not familiar with the local language," Leesil said.
"Ah, lost in foreign lands, are we?" Jan opened his arms in a grand gesture. "My mother's people are well traveled. Vidaty vraveti Belaskina?"
Wynn seemed charmed and relieved that the zupan's son had formally asked her if she spoke Belaskian. However, it made Leesil suspicious about how a backwoods peasant had become so fluent in the language.
Jan ushered them through the short entryway into the keep's main hall, chattering at Wynn all the while. The main hall was little more than a large chamber, and it felt overly hot to Leesil after the chill outside.
Stairs circled up along the wall to the left, and matching ones went down below to the right. The timbered ceiling was twice a man's height and less aged than the stone, likely having been expanded well after the structure had been first built. The original fire pit in the hall's center was filled in with newer floor stones, and a hearth large enough to crawl into had been added to the far wall. A fire blazed therein, its smoke drafting up through a mortared chimney. An older man and woman sat at a table eating flatbread and roasted mutton.
"Visitors," Jan announced, plopping into a spare chair. "Cherock nearly turned them away. Father, you must speak to that man. Give him something more important to do than run off anyone of interest."
Jan's father looked up with a chunk of bread halfway into his mouth. Unlike his son, the zupan was a barrel of a man with pale skin, fading freckles, and cropped red hair peppered by gray flecks. He turned a discerning gaze upon Leesil and Magiere before pulling the bread strip from his mouth as he stood up.
"My son's good nature overbears his good manners," he said. "I'm Cadell, overseer of this fief and zupan to one of its clans. This is my wife, Nadja."
The woman stood, offering a smile, and motioned them to sit. Her manner was closer to that of Jan, and the son's resemblance to his mother was striking. She, too, was slender with wild black hair, and her complexion was darker than Wynn's. She wore gold earrings and a cyan dress tied at the waist by an orange paisley sash. Around one forearm wrapped a bracelet of ruddy metal, possibly a mix of copper and brass. It wasn't until they stepped near the table that Leesil saw the detailed engraving upon it of twining birds with long tail plumes and flecks of green stone for eyes.
Wynn turned her head several times between Jan and Nadja.
"You are mountain nomads… the Tzigan?" she blurted out in Belaskian. "I read a brief mention of your people. What are you doing so far south? What do you eat in those barren mountains? Is it true that you can read future happenings?"
Leesil let out a sigh that turned to groan before he could stop it. He and Magiere had rarely traveled the mountains, but he'd heard enough of the Tzigan to be wary. Not that they were dangerous, but things had a way of turning up missing when these people were about. Both Nadja and Jan blinked in surprise at Wynn's barrage of questions, and Jan burst out laughing. He set his fiddle upon the table and patted the chair nearest his own.
"Come sit with me, little one, and I'll tell you all. First, that we prefer the name Mondyalitko. That Belaskian word is… somewhat unflattering."
It certainly was, thought Leesil, but appropriate for vagabond thieves. This situation was getting out of hand, and he turned to Zupan Cadell.
"That isn't why we came. " And he nodded to Magiere. "My companion and I seek information and hoped you could help."
Nadja watched Magiere with open curiosity and held out her hand. "Come, sit. What is it you wish to know?"
"My father," Magiere answered, and shook her head at the offered chair. "I'm looking for some way to trace him. He held this fief twenty-five years ago when I was born, and that is the last I know of his whereabouts. The few villagers who knew of him don't remember his name or won't talk. I hoped you'd have records."
Nadja's olive brow wrinkled as she turned to her husband. Cadell rubbed his wide jaw as he stared down at the table a moment and then shook his head.
"When we arrived, the keep was in shambles," he said. "Some furnishings had been looted. No lord had lived here for nearly two years. Neither had any taxes been collected. I agreed to manage the fief on the condition that Prince Rodek forgo the lost taxes and allow me time to reorganize."