It wasn’t the innkeeper who came from backstairs. Only a thin serving girl in a stained, knee-length brown tunic, barefoot, yellow-haired, carrying a stoppered jug of wine too heavy for her. She stopped dead when she saw him, staring openly, wide-eyed.
Crispin smiled briefly, ignoring the presumption of her gaze. ‘What do they call you, girl?’
She swallowed, looked down, mumbled, ‘Kitten.’
He felt himself grinning crookedly. ‘Why that?’
She swallowed again, seemed to be having trouble speaking. ‘Don’t know,’ she managed finally. ‘Someone thought I looked like one.’
Her eyes never left the floor, after that first naked stare. He realized he hadn’t spoken to anyone, other than some instructions to Vargos, all day. Was odd, he didn’t know how he felt about that. He did know he I wanted a bath, not to be making talk with a serving girl.
‘You don’t. What’s your proper name, then?’ She looked up at that, and then down again. ‘Kasia.’ ‘Well, Kasia, run find the ‘keeper for me. I’m wet outside and dry within. And never dream of telling me there are no rooms to be had.’
She didn’t move. Continued to stare at the floor, clutching at the heavy wine jug with both hands beneath it. She was quite young, very thin, wide-set blue eyes. From a northern tribe, obviously. Inicii, or one of the others. He wondered if she’d understood him, his jest; they’d been speaking Rhodian. He was about to repeat his request in Sarantine, without the witticism, when he saw her draw a breath.
‘They are going to kill me tomorrow,’ was what she said, quite clearly this time. She looked up at him. Her eyes were enormous, deep as a forest. ‘Will you take me away?’
Zagnes of Sarnica had not been willing, at all.
‘Are you simple?’ the man had cried the night before. In his agitation he had pushed Kasia right out of the bed to land sprawling on the floor. It was cold, even with the kitchen fires directly below. ‘What in Jad’s holy name would I do with a bought girl from Sauradia?’
‘I would do anything you like,’ she’d said, kneeling beside the bed, fighting back tears.
‘Of course you would. What else would you do? That is not the point.’ Zagnes was quite exercised.
It wasn’t the request to buy her and take her away. Imperial Couriers were used to such pleas. It must have been her reason. The very immediate, particular reason. But she’d had to tell him … otherwise there was no cause at all for him to even consider it, among all the usual requests. He was said to be a kindly man . . .
Not enough so, it seemed. Or not foolish enough. The courier was white-faced; she had given him a genuine fright. A balding, paunchy man, no longer young. Not cruel at all, merely refusing prudently to involve himself in the under-the-surface life of a Sauradian village, even if it involved the forbidden sacrifice of a girl to a pagan god. Perhaps especially so. What would happen if he reported this story to the clerics, or at the army camp east of them? An investigation, questions asked, probably painful questions-even fatal ones-for these were matters of holy faith. Stringent measures to follow against resurgent paganism? Fulminating clerics, soldiers quartered in the village, punitive taxes imposed? Morax and others might be punished; the innkeeper could be relieved of his position, his nose slit, hands cut off.
And no more of the best treatment, the warmest rooms at this inn or any of the others in Sauradia for Zagnes of Sarnica. Word travelled swiftly along the main roads, and no one, anywhere, liked an informer. He was an Imperial Officer, but he spent most of his days-and nights-far from Sarantium.
And all this for a serving girl? How could she possibly have expected him to help?
She hadn’t. But she didn’t want to die, and her options were narrowing by the moment.
‘Get back in bed,’ Zagnes had said brusquely. ‘You’ll freeze on the floor and then you’re no good to me at all. I’m always cold, these days,’ he’d added, with a contrived laugh. ‘Too many years on the road. Rain and wind get right inside my bones. Time to retire. I would, if my wife wasn’t at home.’ Another false, unconvincing laugh. ‘Girl, I’m sure you are frightened by nothing. I’ve known Morax for years. You girls are always afraid of shadows when this silly . . . when this day comes round.’