‘Duty, my poet? What would you know of duty?’
He chuckled. ‘Very little – but I always pay my debts; it is my last finger-hold on the cliff of respectability. I will see you later.’ He bowed, then walked across the street.
The tavern was an old, three-storeyed building with a high gallery on the second floor overlooking a long room with open fires at both ends. There was a score of bench tables and seats and a sixty-foot brass-inlaid bar behind which six tavern maids were serving ale, mead and mulled wine. The tavern was crowded, unusually so, but this was market day and fanners and cattle-breeders from all over the region had gathered for the auctions. Sieben stepped to the long bar, where a young tavern maid with honey-blonde hair smiled and approached him. ‘At last you visit me,’ she said.
‘Who could stay away from you for long, dear heart?’ he said with a smile, straining to remember her name.
‘I will be finished here by second watch,’ she told him.
‘Where’s my ale?’ shouted a burly farmer, some way to the left.
‘I was before you, goat-face!’ came another voice. The girl gave a shy smile to Sieben, then moved down the bar to quell the threatened row.
‘Here I am now, sirs, and I’ve only one pair of hands. Give me a moment, won’t you?’
Sieben strolled through the crowds, seeking out the axeman, and found him sitting alone by a narrow, open window. Sieben eased on to the bench alongside him. ‘Might be a good idea to start again,’ said the poet. ‘Let me buy you a jug of ale.’
‘I buy my own ale,’ grunted the axeman. ‘And don’t sit so close.’
Sieben stood and moved to the far side of the table, seating himself opposite the young man. ‘Is that more to your liking?’ he asked, with heavy sarcasm.
‘Aye, it is. Are you wearing perfume?’
‘Scented oil on the hair. You like it?’
The axeman shook his head, but refrained from comment. He cleared his throat. ‘My wife has been taken by slavers. She is in Mashrapur.’
Sieben sat back and gazed at the young man. ‘I take it you weren’t home at the time,’ he said.
‘No. They took all the women. I freed them. But Rowena wasn’t with them; she was with someone called Collan. He left before I got to the other raiders.’
‘Before you got to the other raiders?’ repeated Sieben. ‘Isn’t there a little more to it?’
‘To what?’
‘How did you free the other women?’
‘What in Hell’s name does that matter? I killed a few of them and the rest ran away. But that’s not the point. Rowena wasn’t there – she’s in Mashrapur.’
Sieben raised a slender hand. ‘Slow down, there’s a good fellow. Firstly, how does Shadak come into this? And secondly, are you saying that you single-handedly attacked Harib Ka and his killers?’
‘Not single-handedly. Shadak was there; they were going to torture him. Also I had two girls with me; good archers. Anyway, all that is past. Shadak said you could help me to find Rowena and come up with a plan to rescue her.’
‘From Collan?’
‘Yes, from Collan,’ stormed the axeman. ‘Are you deaf or stupid?’
Sieben’s dark eyes narrowed and he leaned forward. ‘You have an appealing way of asking for help, my large and ugly friend. Good luck with your quest!’ He rose and moved back through the throng, emerging into the late afternoon sunlight. Two men were lounging close to the entrance, a third was whittling a length of wood with a razor-sharp hunting-knife.
The first of the men moved in front of the poet; it was the warrior who had first lost money at the barrel head. ‘Get your emerald back, did you?’
‘No,’ answered Sieben, still angry. ‘What a bumptious, ill-bred boor!’
‘Not a friend, then?’
‘Hardly. I don’t even know his name. More to the point, I don’t want to.’
‘It’s said you’re crafty with those knives,’ said the warrior, pointing to the throwing-blades. ‘Is it true?’
‘Why do you ask?’
‘Could be you’ll get the emerald back if you are.’
‘You plan to attack him? Why? As far as I could see he carries no wealth.’