"I’ll be a moment, finding out whether this is the right place. If it is, they’ll need oats and warm mash. It’s been a long day."
The foyer was warm and clean, with stairs straight ahead and a dining room to the right. For a moment the squat, burly man who emerged from a back room looked inclined to send her straight back out the door. "May I help you?"
"I hope so," Medair replied. "I have a message – and a delivery – for a woman called Jedda las Theomain, who has been staying here. Is she still here?"
The man seemed puzzled by her voice, which was neither coarse nor uneducated. In fact, the faintly outdated way she had of speaking gave her a certain air of aristocracy. Or so she’d been told by a young man with bed on his mind. The accents of the highest nobility, he had assured her, not knowing that she had been on nodding terms with half the ruling families of the Empire, even before she became a Herald. And that she’d practically had to relearn Parlance on her return, because people insisted on pronouncing words in the strangest ways, besides mixing it freely with Ibis-laran. She’d found him trying to cut open her satchel the next morning and had thereafter not attempted to find oblivion in the arms of attractive men.
"Keris las Theomain does indeed extend us her patronage," said the innkeep briskly, apparently marking her down as a messenger. "I will pass on any deliveries."
"I’m afraid I have to talk to her myself. And her package is still out tied to the horse. She’ll probably want to look at it before accepting delivery." She smiled, feeling quixotic. "I’ll need a room for a couple of nights, by the way," she added, catching sight of a pale, silk-clad woman watching her from the stair. There would not be many White Snakes in Kyledra, so the odds were good that this woman was Jedda las Theomain herself.
"Ah…" She waited while he decided whether or not he wanted to have her lingering any longer than necessary. "Of course, madam," he said, apparently preferring to err on the side of caution. "One gold half-nedra per day for a three-room suite."
Dropping two gold coins in his palm, she informed him she’d be seeing to her horses. "And Keris las Theomain’s package," she added, and told herself the situation wasn’t funny. It felt so very strange to be dealing with people again. To be arranging meetings with White Snakes who didn’t have the least idea who she was.
"–it is!" she heard a boy’s voice insisting as she returned to the yard. She found the ostler and stable boys gathered around the grey mare. They all started and looked towards her with wide wary eyes, then towards the unconscious Ibisian. The hood was partly drawn back from his face.
"You can put the dun to," she told the ostler. This was beginning to turn into a farce. "We’ll have to get him off before the grey can be stabled. Do you have a knife?"
Medair reached up and checked the adept’s pulse, finding it faint but steady. She rubbed her fingers on her trousers, frowned at herself for feeling a need to wipe the Ibisian off, then looked toward her audience. "Did I not tell you to stable the dun?"
Two of the boys hastily led her mount away, but the ostler’s fumbling for a knife was interrupted by movement at the doorway of the inn. Medair turned to face three people: a pair of Ibisian women, and one sandy-haired Farakkian man. Two of them had their hands on the hilts of swords, the third was the woman Medair had seen on the stair. The White Snake had apparently thought it best to muster reinforcements before joining Medair in the yard.
"I am Jedda Seht las Theomain," the woman said, jade in her ear and disdain in her eyes. "What is your message?"
Irritated, but not anxious to deliver even silly cryptic offerings before an audience, Medair settled for stepping to one side so that the group at the door could see the adept more clearly. The response was quite satisfactory.
"'Lukar!" gasped the second woman, who was in her early twenties, her hair white-blonde and her skin tinted with too much colour to be pure Ibisian.
In an instant they were clustered about him, cutting him down. Medair waited patiently, keeping her nervous desire to flee under control as Jedda las Theomain had her escorted upstairs.
The White Snakes had engaged half the second floor. Inside the main suite were four other people, three Ibisian. Two were obviously servants. The third, an elegant youth in white silk, stared intently at the adept’s still figure, then withdrew to stand near the window. He also wore jade in his ear, a tear-drop depending from a thin chain so long it almost brushed his shoulder. The last in the suite was a Farakkian woman, her flaming hair as startling as her clothing was subdued. A sword rested at one hip and she touched the hilt lightly, then stayed in the background, watching Medair.
The adept was taken away to the depths of the suite, while Medair was directed to a chair in the well-appointed sitting room, and set there to listen to people moving about behind closed doors. Travel-grimed and tired, stomach beginning to rumble audibly, Medair wondered just who "Lukar" was. These people were acting as if they’d found Farak herself tied to the back of the grey.
Eventually, Jedda las Theomain returned. She did not take a seat but stood examining Medair minutely. Medair compensated by staring back just as directly. Full-blood, as Medair guessed Lukar and the youth by the window were. There weren’t that many full-blood Ibisians left, she had found. You could usually tell mix-breed by the blond hair or the skin, which lost the precise paleness of a full Ibisian. This woman’s eyes were blue, the jade in her left ear proclaimed nobility, a single silver in her right meant she was an adept, unmarried. Lady las Theomain – or, more correctly, Keris las Theomain. Keris for lady, Kerin for lord.
"Tell me your message now," said the woman, not even clothing the order in the stark Ibisian courtesy which had made the invaders seem so bloodless.
"He said to say the nest was robbed," Medair replied, stifling her resentment. Perhaps she might be released from the geas now that the Ibisian had a whole group of people to run after him. Behind her, someone cursed, but neither Medair nor Jedda las Theomain reacted.
"That was all? You are certain?"
Medair nodded slowly.
"Where did you find him?" asked the younger Ibisian woman, seating herself on a brocaded couch to Medair’s left. Medair shifted her gaze, and found concern instead of hauteur. Part of this White Snake was Farakkian.
"Bariback Forest," she said, keeping herself factual. She’d known she’d be interrogated, and it was no good glowering at them. "I saw some smoke and went to investigate and found…a lot of dead people. A couple of different mercenary groups, Kyledrans, Decians, merchants. A blast of fire had taken out about a hundred feet of the forest. It looked like they’d been fighting before that, though, because I found bodies at the edge with battle injuries. Your adept was in the circle but unburnt. Spell shocked and wearing the form of a Kyledran boy. The shape-change wore off yesterday and he…obliged me to bring him here and tell you that."
"Your mishandling of him may cost him his life," las Theomain informed her in a cold yet absentminded voice. "He is not fit to travel."
Sweet, Medair thought, lifting a shoulder. "He wanted the speed. Something about people being due to leave this morning but having problems with obedience."
"Indeed?" Jedda las Theomain asked, her full attention shifting back to Medair. She lifted a hand and began speaking words for truth and binding. Medair hesitated, her fingers closing over the arm of the chair, but she didn’t move. The spell could not force honesty from her, only indicate when she lied. And protesting might prompt them to lock her up somewhere.