Behind her, the others huddling near were waiting for the answer.
The Minstrel was a folk legend, then, Radstac thought, shooting Deo a fast glance. He gave her a scarcely perceptible nod.
She studied the faces, noting that the entire room had gone quiet. At last she said, "Maybe we are friends of the Minstrel. But that doesn't mean we know him."
The patrons tried to absorb that. They had the same faces and demeanors one could find in any drinking establishment. Vaguely vacuous. Adult countenances reduced to the simplistic expressions of children. Emotions, too, were diminished in their complexity. It was why fights could start so easily when alcohol was liberally present. Anger was a hot and simple emotion, and it came readily to the surface when all the civilized checks were removed.
"Do you know anything about the uprising in Windal, then?" another asked, a small shrunken man who appeared to be accompanying the crone.
Windal. The name was familiar. Vaguely so. Some Isthmus city, presumably already conquered by the Felk. Rumors of an uprising there? It sounded like more of the inciting gossip from the Minstrel. In fact, hadn't she read of this very rumor in the report Aquint had first shown her?
"I don't know anything about that," Radstac said.
There was a small collective groan of disappointment.
Radstac hid an appreciative smile. She understood in that moment just how effectively and subtly the one called the Minstrel had spread dissent. These people were receiving no news whatsoever from beyond the borders of this city. So it was that a rousing story about an uprising in Windal couldn't be refuted. The Minstrel had no doubt plucked it entirely from his imagination, giving these downtrodden Callahans the very news they most wanted to hear—that someone somewhere was successfully resisting the Felk invaders.
"I do know," Radstac added, "that Governor Jesile and his whole garrison haven't been able to find the Minstrel. Or stop the Broken Circle from doing whatever they please."
They grinned at her for that. They slapped tables and applauded and ordered fresh drinks and congratulated each other for feats they themselves had nothing to do with. The tavern's owners looked pleased, too.
Deo was fiddling with the stringbox, snapping random chords. No one in their audience had questioned that someone so obviously mentally flawed could be so deft on the instrument. Deo made it look natural.
"Ish it time to play shome more?" he asked her in a giggly voice, his mouth slack and wet.
Radstac nodded. Deo started winding and plucking. It was a faster tempo, and she leapt on it, skimming the words off the tops of the musical undulations. Another drearily predictable tirade against Callah's interlopers. Aquint's hope was that these songs would attract members of the Broken Circle. After these tunes had circulated awhile, as they most certainly would, perhaps the rebels might approach her and Deo. Then they could make their arrests.
As Radstac sang, she was at the same time detached from her performance, thereby able to observe the audience closely. She watched them picking up the chorus, learning it, memorizing it, singing along with it. Yes, these silly songs would indeed circulate. But wouldn't they, in the course of being repeated and passed around, hopefully to be heard eventually by someone in the Broken Circle, wouldn't such songs inevitably incite certain thoughts and attitudes in these Callahans? Wouldn't they generate rebellious inclinations? Wouldn't they, despite Aquint's plan, actually do more damage to the Felk... and lend more aid to the rebels?
It wasn't her problem. She could go along with this charade of being an Internal Security agent for as long as necessary. At some point a means of escaping this city would present itself, and she and Deo would take it.
So she continued singing. And when the room turned very suddenly and very disconcertingly blue, she kept the song moving, digging her fingers into her legs and trying to control her pounding heartbeat. The urge, of course, was to get up and flee. Simply run. Actually outrun. For what was coming for her was terrible. A great terrible beast that hunted her footsteps.
Deo sensed that something was wrong, but he was the only one. He cut short the song and turned to her.
How blue he was...
Radstac reached for the water jug, but her hand was wavering beyond her control. She returned it to her lap. The audience was applauding and cheering once more. The matted-haired old woman was the nearest one.
She would have to do. Radstac caught her good eye, motioned her even closer, and said in a tight, aching, very earnest voice, "I shall need some mansid leaves. As quickly as possible."
The popular narcotic in Callah, it seemed, were phato blossoms. These were pink and delicate, and they were smoked in a pipe and produced effects not entirely unlike those one could get from alcohol. Radstac had no interest in the drug. It was mansid or nothing. And for a while it appeared she was going to have to settle for nothing.
She had chewed the final tiny rationed fragment of her last leaf two days ago. She had made efforts to replenish her supply, but all the likely places she visited had nothing to offer. Whatever drug dens there were in Callah had evidently been cleaned out during the Felk invasion. Legitimate narcotic trade had continued in the marketplaces awhile, but, she had learned, the supplies had dried up. There were no traders on the roads anymore. Nothing was getting into the city.
But addicts, Radstac knew, weathered all calamities. No matter what the circumstances, they could always find what they absolutely required.
Which meant that someone in Callah, some other user, had what she needed.
So various members of their audience, caught up in the spirit of revolutionary camaraderie, volunteered to help find her what she required. They scattered half-drunkenly out of the tavern, whistling and humming and muttering those songs she'd been singing.
Meanwhile, Radstac's world was blue.
She handled it. It was a very unsettling experience, but she had faced physical terrors on battlefields that would shrink most men and women just to hear of them. She remained in her chair and maintained a calm veneer, even as the lack of clarity engulfing everything around her deepened, so that the sense of things broke apart at a more profound level with nearly every passing moment.
She had certainly experienced this before. She came north habitually, traveling from the Southsoil to seek out the Isthmus's petty little wars, so to sell her sword to one side or the other. It never mattered who she fought for. She had survived many of those trifling skirmishes between Isthmus states.
What mattered was the procurement of her leaves. Fresh and potent. In quality, far beyond the dried specimens the trade caravans brought back home from the Isthmus. And while she was here, pursuing her mercenary livelihood, she enjoyed the awesome penetrating clarity that came from chewing mansid.
But she did not remain here on this Isthmus year-round. Eventually she would return home, taking with her as much of her drug as would last before losing its potency. And, just as inevitably, those supplies would be gone, and she would undergo this same withdrawal. And she would handle it. And survive it. And live her life in Dilloqi without the daily stimulus of mansid. Until it was time to once more go north.
Radstac was aware, in an increasingly abstract way, that Deo was by her side trying to comfort her, while maintaining his imbecilic pretense. She was finding herself less and less able to understand words. She still recognized them individually, but whenever someone spoke to her, she could barely manage to put them into a coherent order.