Likewise, the offer to entrust Scrainwood with the DragonCrown fragment was one that really cost Augustus nothing. Because Scrainwood knew of it, there was no way to prevent him from getting his hands on it. All he had to do was cordon off the inn, have his troops take possession of the place, and it was his. And while it might have been a mistake to reveal its presence directly to him, Augustus had to have assumed that since Chytrine knew it was here, she would pressure Scrainwood to get it for her regardless.
The bargain did work. Alcida would keep its army intact and could be later invited into Oriosa to preserve the nation. They got Crow back and elation filled her at this prospect. What she hated about the bargain was that she knew Scrainwood had in mind to fashion some trap for Crow that he could spring later. The very idea that someone would hurt him, and that someone would pull them apart, angered her.
Scrainwood’s right hand convulsed down into a fist and he glared at her. “Something not to your liking, Princess? You are getting all you want. We are all working together now.”
“Now, yes. I fear for the future.”
“As do we all.” Scrainwood gave her an oily smile. “A black bargain today, for a brilliant tomorrow. It is not what we would wish, but in dark days like this, we could not have done better.”
24
Her mother had been correct. Even with the thick layer of snow blanketing Meredo, the city’s stench proved strong enough to bring tears to Isaura’s eyes. Cart wheels churned horse dung, mud, and snow into a soupy brown sludge that spattered pristine snow and passersby alike, then slowly froze as night came on.
The people unsettled Isaura. She had traveled with Nefrai-kesh and Vionna via arcane ways that left her and the pirate queen on the verge of exhaustion. Nefrai-kesh, being a sullanciri, did not suffer from the journey and had been about his appointed tasks. Likewise, Spyr’skara weathered the journey well in his shell. Vionna released him and he quickly grew from the size of a large spider into a man-sized arachnomorph. Isaura linked Spyr’skara to the decoy fragment, letting magick direct the sullanciri to its target. Spyr’skara snapped its mandibles at his former lover, then leaped away to the rooftops.
They watched the new sullanciri for a while, then Vionna led Isaura off to secure rooms in the King’s Masque Inn. The place appeared, as nearly as Isaura could determine, to be largely populated by Okrans refugees in service to some noble or other. They were to wait there for the return of Spyr’skara and the ruby fragment of the DragonCrown.
The innkeeper did have two rooms available, though he was reluctant to rent them both to Vionna. The pirate found this curious, since Isaura, wearing a hooded cloak of whitest ermine, stood behind her as she made her request. The innkeeper refused to acknowledge Isaura’s presence, but acquiesced when Vionna paid double the night’s rate in gold and in advance.
Isaura felt no compunction to tell the pirate that she was using magick to conceal her presence. It was not a spell that prevented people from seeing her per se, for that would be impractical at best and was, as nearly as she knew, impossible. Instead the magick just made it simple for people to forget they had seen her. Her mother had taught her the complex spell and had worked with her until she had perfected its casting and maintenance.
Chytrine had explained it rather simply, despite the spell’s being quite a twisted confluence of magickal energies. Most individuals, men chiefly among them, take every bit of information they learn in a day and sort it like with like. What the spell did was to soften the points used to make such matches. Anyone looking at her would see a woman in a hooded cloak of white, but as they sought a similar image to compare her against, they might lose white or cloak or woman. As they tried to find another point, it, too, would vanish. Chytrine had likened it to trying to identify a wine by taste. After four mouthfuls, you might think you had it, but by then the wine would be gone. In the mind of the observer, there would be nothing to remember.
Vionna could see her because Isaura chose to permit it. Aside from not wanting to be rude to a traveling companion, Isaura did need someone who had experience of the Southlands to help her. Anytime she wished Vionna to forget she existed, well… The girl smiled; the pirate queen was not possessed of so sharp a mind that she could pierce the spell unaided.
The inn’s common room held both horror and delight for Isaura. The acrid scent of unwashed bodies, sour beer, urine, and woodsmoke from the huge hearth assaulted her. Even the heat was oppressive, with the blazing fire raising temperatures to a hedonistic level that would have consumed a week’s cooking wood in Aurolan in a night here. The fire’s ashes, from what little she had seen of the city, would not be used to fertilize a field, but would be tossed into the streets to darken snow and hasten its melting.
The people also surprised her. They presented a panoply of humanity, with hair of every hue and length. People tall and lean spoke with the short and fat. Twisted, humpbacked old women huddled in a corner, rocking, talking, watching with squinted eyes in puckered faces. Young men said things to a servant that made her stop, and her return comment made one of them turn a hot red. Clothing, most of it filthy, covered them in layers and seemed less meant to keep them warm than to make some sort of display.
She found it all repellent, and would have dashed away up the stairs in Vionna’s wake save for one thing. The old women, and the companions of the reddened youth, and most everyone else, laughed. Some were hearty laughs, some giggles, and some cackles of triumph or disgust, but they were laughs. Isaura could identify it as laughter easily enough, but had never heard so much in one place. And it made her smile.
Vionna tugged on her arm. “I said, come on.”
Isaura blinked her silver eyes. “Yes, forgive me.”
The Aurolani princess followed quietly, less hoping for useful instruction from Vionna than to catch any further laughter from below. The pirate led her up the stairs and down a narrow corridor. She pushed open a door, then took a candle from a wall sconce and used it to light the lamp on the small table beside the bed.
Isaura shivered. While she approved of the room’s size—small enough to be a proper Aurolani room built to warm easily—the low pallet on which she was to sleep had a thin blanket and a thinner mattress. The scent of moldy straw filled the room, though the lamp’s burning oil competed for domination. The tall ceiling bothered her, since all the warm air rose there, but a constant supply could stream up through the gaps between the floorboards from the common room below.
She pointed to the mattress. “This is soiled.”
Vionna bent over and took a deep sniff. “Only a couple of weeks old. There’s nothing here that will hurt you.”
“But I do not wish to sleep on it.”
Vionna straightened up, quickly covering the contempt flashing over her face. “Then I shall take this room and you may have the other.”
They crossed the hallway and found another similarly snug room, and the mattress did, indeed, have more and fresher straw. Vionna made a big show of sniffing the straw, then waving a hand toward it. “Perhaps more to your liking, Princess.”
“Perhaps.” Isaura sat on the edge of the bed. “I am fatigued. You may call upon me later.”
The pirate nodded. “As you wish.” The disdain she kept off her face still seeped into her words. “Later we shall explore, if that is what you want.”
Isaura nodded, then waved her out of the room with a light flick of her right hand. “That would please me.”