“I’d rather the gardens for me,” said Ornery, making conversation to keep Mouche’s mind off the wound. “I was raised a farm boy, and I can do gardening without thinking about it. It would smell better out there, too. It really stinks in here.”
Mouche wrinkled his nose, testing. It did indeed stink in the stable, and he knew that the stench was not entirely horse. The fetid odor was the same as he had smelt years ago in the cave, and on his dog, and later in Madame’s front parlor. He knew it came from the brothers below, though they had not smelled like this at House Genevois.
Mouche was unaware of the special bath soaps, the additives in their food, the unusual unguents used during morning massage. Today there had been no morning bath, no morning meal, no morning massage. Bane and Dyre had come a long way in an open cart, sweating under the sun and had begun to smell very much as they had smelled at the Dutter farm.
Ornery murmured, “We can talk to that head man, if he comes back down here today. Personal, I think he won’t remember us until nighttime comes, and maybe not then. This place is in a uproar, just as Sendoph probably is, all at greasy glasses and burned biscuits, I’d warrant. Everbody depending on those Timmys, years and years the way they have … “
“ … ou ha … nt?” Mouche whispered.
“No, I haven’t. No Timmys on ships. No sir. They don’t like the water, and that’s a fact. You find ‘em on the wharf and you find ‘em stowing stuff in the hold, but you don’t find ‘em once the ship goes out on water. No Timmys on the Bouncing Isles. No Timmys at the sea farms … “
“Sea … arns?”
“Out there in the Jellied Sea, they got sea farms. There’s a kind of weed draws gold out of the seawater and fixes it in the leaves, and they hook it and tie it to a hawser and pull it in by the quarter mile into a great pile, and they dry it and burn it and mix the ashes with water to make bricks, and they send the bricks back to the smelter, to get the gold out. And it’s not just gold! There’s other good metal in the ashes. There’s fishes out there, too, kinds we can eat, and dried Purse fish eggs, for making jelly … “ She went cheerfully on, trying to keep Mouche’s mind occupied.
Though the two below continued to search for some way of reaching their prey, they had not accomplished it by the time the stable door opened with a crash. Both Bane and Dyre turned their angry faces to confront the steward once more, along with several Haggers. In the loft, Ornery urged Mouche to the edge of the loft and arranged his veil so the wound would show while Mouche quivered with newly kindled rage and shock.
“You’ve got the stalls mucked out?” demanded the steward.
Bane said something about the other two taking a rest.
“No rest, sir,” said Ornery in as respectful a voice as she could muster. “They tried to kill us, sir. We came up here to get away from them. They’ve cut Mouche all to bits.”
An argument below built rapidly into shouting and threats, falling silent as suddenly as another voice cut into the fray: “Silence.”
It was Marool herself. “Who has cut whom?”
Explanations. More argument. More yelling. Through all of which Mouche and Ornery quietly sat at the edge of the loft, their veils so arranged as to allow a full view of their battered faces in the light falling through the air vent.
“Well, boy,” said Marool to Bane, who was by this time held in the grip of several Haggers. “Look at them up there. Their little faces all beaten and bruised, one of them possibly scarred for life, and who’s to pay for it? Ah? You baby Hunks have to be returned untouched, unharmed, and here you are, already costing me money. Well, boy, you owe me. I can’t get it out of your pockets, so I’ll take it in services.” And she jerked her head backward. Two Haggers took Bane away, still yelling, while the others restrained Dyre from following.