"That ugly, huh?"
"I can't answer that, Ouleh. Just be good and tell your friends, all right?"
"Me? Be good? Oh, Ahdio! Qualis and Red Gold 'stead of True Blue Brew for them, hmmm? Didn't know you had moneyed relatives, bigun, in Twand or anyplace else." She flashed him a teasing smile; Ouleh was good at that. "I've got me an idea that we're being treated to a visit by the mysterious Veiled Lady just everybody's talking about! Your cousin, Ahdio?"
Ahdio gazed at her, blinking. The mysterious veiled lady everyone was talking about? In that case, why hadn't he heard about her? True, it seemed not the sort of gossip that interested his patrons. They tended to talk about their work, to damn anyone with authority or wealth, to talk about who was doing what with and to whom, and who was going to get into whom, how and when, and who was going to get into Ouleh next. He glanced past her at the two newcomers over there, waiting for him to bring their order. His patrons' favorite breasty blowze had just described her, all right: a mysterious veiled lady. On the other hand, within and under cloak and hood and veil she might as well be Ouleh or any other easygirl.
No; not with the aura he felt about her; she even moved-even sat with class.
"Just be good, Man-killer. Or be bad as usual, but leave her alone; physically and with that mouth of yours." Hearing how harsh that sounded, he smiled and added, "Please. Tell you what. Anyone who gives her or her escort trouble is out of here on his tailbone."
It was Ouleh's turn to blink, in surprise. "Es-cort! That's Wints, bigun. He's no escort-not for the likes of her. Bodyguard, maybe. Lackey. Someone she found to guide her in what she's doing-slumming. I'll spread your word, bigun-for you," she said, glancing back at many men at many tables. "But others're going to think she's slumming, and that Wints is putting on airs, and there's likely to be trouble."
"Anyone starts any trouble tonight, Ouleh, it's going to be me who ends it."
She gave him a lazy grin, again leaning forward onto the bar to show him a pair of pale mountains and the deep dark canyon dividing them. "Isn't it always, big boy? All I'm sayin' is that it may happen anyhow."
He sighed. Not sure why, he said, "Ouleh-keep a secret?"
"Me? Betray a confidence? Cross my treasure chest and hope to die!" Her finger slid down one mountain and into the valley, up the other slope, and back in a necessarily large X. Ahdio immediately looked ceilingward. "What's the matter, Ah-dio? Can't look? Want me to start wearing loose robes to the chin?"
I'd have fewer fights and shouting matches if you did, he mused, but said, "Just looking for the thunderbolt, after that oath of yours. Anyhow. First, here. You take this cup of qualis, on ole Ahdio. Second: Spread the word as I said. Third, and this is the secret now, Man-killer: The reason is that's my ... lady. She just came here to see me. You can understand that I have to watch out for her. Here's your wine, dear. Start helping me out, all right?"
"Ohh, Ahdio! Reeeeally? Your la-oh, Ahdio, you devil! And here I've had my cap set on you for years!"
Why am I doing this for some slumming stranger who may well be a Bey, come to spy on us with an Ilsigi sell-out, he demanded of himself, and said, "Sure, sure you have. You don't even have a cap."
She gripped the nice goblet with one hand and the rim of her bodice with the other. "No? What d'you call this?" She whipped the blouse down below the salient of her leftward mountain, held it there for two or three beats, and flipped it up over her nipple again. Then she swung away, laughing.
Briefly closing his eyes while he shook his head, Ahdio filled another goblet with that best of wines and topped off the mug for Wints, the head having subsided. He headed for the table against the wall, his scintillant coat jingling softly. Just as he passed a regular named or rather called Weasel, Ahdio heard his loud conversation topper: "In a pig's ass!"
"Someone call for my special sausage?" Ahdio called en passant, and went on, ahead of a wake of laughter.
He set wine and beer before the strange couple, and noted the coins on the table. He smiled at the invisible face that, judging from the angle of the hood, seemed to be looking up at him. "In this place, those who put coins on the table are running a tab. Unless you think you're just going to have one and run." There. That would get a few words from the woman who had eased coin onto the table while no one was looking.
Wrong. Wints looked at his companion/employer a moment, then up at the huge man looming over their table and occluding an immoderate number of tables. "Thanks, taverner. We'll be here awhile. My lady would like to know why you wear that chain-coat."
Ahdio shook his arm to emphasize the jing-jing of the mail that covered him from collarbone to wristbone and to a point just below his loins. "For effect," he said with an easy smile. "Ambience? A conversation piece. A little added color in a place I can't afford to fancy up much."
Wints glanced at the veiled lady and gave the taverner a knowing grin. "With the price of a coat of good butted chainmail being what it is? You sure that's the reason?"
Ahdio shrugged, jing-jing. "Maybe I wear it for the same reason a soldier does in battle. This is a tough dive with me as proprietor, bartender and bouncer. Maybe I'd be dead or full of scars by now if I didn't wear these forty-seven pounds of linked steel."
Wints's grin broadened and just as he started to laugh, Ahdio heard the first sound from the man's companion: a nascent chuckle swiftly drowned by his full laugh.
"Hey, Ahdio, you still sellin' ale around here?"
Ahdio swung away from the strangers. "Ale! In this place? Glayph, you wouldn't know ale if I poured some in your ear! Want another mug of junk beer?"
"Junk beer's right," another man said, as Ahdio moved that way. "Is it true you've got that beer-drinkin' demon-cat you keep back there trained to take his leaks in the kegs?"
"No," Ahdio said with an easy grin, "just in the qualis." When the laughter subsided, he made his face serious and added, "But I'll tell you this. I accused my brewer of that, just this afternoon. I also put him on notice that I'm lookin' around for another supplier. I am. All right, how many?"
"Two for me; I just got here. Is it true that's your girl over there, Ahdio, all bundled up?"
"My cousin Phlegmy brews good brew, Ahdy!"
"Girl! I'm too old for girls, two-beers. You think I put this gray in my beard with chalk? Now who's been blabbing that I have a secret lady who dropped in tonight to watch me work?" /( worked, he thought. Good old Ouleh-all you have to do is ask her to keep a secret and it's the same as hiring thirty boys to shout the news!
Laughter and shouts followed him to the bar, and he made sure that he gave Ouleh a scowl. She bit her lip in the manner of a chastised child. While sitting on Tervy's knee with her hand inside the shirt of Frax, former palace guardsman. Someone reached out and yanked at the hem of Throde's tunic, in back. Throde reeled and his tray tipped. A mug dropped off into someone's lap. That someone cursed and came up fast, drawing back a fist. One moment he was looking at Throde's whimpery face saying "Oh, oh, I'm sorry" while his peripheral hearing reported the steel-jingle sound of a battlefield; the next he was staring at Ahdio's chest and it was too late to arrest his swing.
His fist slammed into quintuply-linked chain that seemed to be backed by a wall of stone.
"Yaaowww!"
"You don't want to go hittin' my cousin's boy Throde, friend," the chainmailed stone wall said, while the subject of his pleasant-voiced address danced and clutched his wounded fist. Tears welled out of his eyes. "It wasn't his fault somebody grabbed his tunic from behind and don't ask who. Besides, that mug didn't hurt your jewels or you'd never uv got up so fast. Sit down now and I'll bring you a full one."