Touchstone by Melanie Rawn

Author:Melanie Rawn [Rawn, Melanie]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9781781166611
Publisher: Titan Books
Published: 2012-11-13T14:23:00+00:00

14

Keeping his mouth shut had never been Mieka Windthistle’s specialty. It wasn’t that he was untrustworthy, exactly, or that he lacked respect for other people’s private business. He’d found as he got older that if it was important enough, he could keep his silence, and sometimes without even having been told to do so.

It was just that sometimes he couldn’t help it—it was so much fun to shock, to provoke, and occasionally to avenge himself or someone he cared about. He had a true gift for outrage, and he knew it, and usually it was enough to keep him entertained without spilling other people’s secrets. But every so often it was irresistible, the prospect of revealing a not just surprising but downright shocking bit of information.

His own secrets, however, he knew very well how to keep. Life in a crowded home with all those brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles, cousins, and occasionally people he didn’t even recognize, had taught him how to give the appearance of blithe and innocent transparency while clutching his real feelings close and hidden.

Vered Goldbraider had no such restraint. As Mieka waited politely in the cozy, sunlit parlor of a very nice inn on the river while a servant went to find Chattim Czillag, he heard Vered’s distinctive down-province accents from the taproom. Come to think of it, he reflected, he’d rarely encountered Vered without receiving the impression that the man not only lacked several layers of skin, but that the skin he did have was always scraped raw by one thing or another. Gods, he was worse than Quill.

Rising from his chair in the entry hall, Mieka ambled towards the taproom doorway. Vered had warmed up and was now shouting at the top of his lungs. There were few people around to listen, but Mieka knew Vered wouldn’t have cared if the entire Court and its collected retinues and all their miscreate children were within earshot.

“Gods be damned to him, then! Won’t have him nor nobody else commandin’ me words, nor yet tellin’ me so much as what shirt I’ll wear or not wear! D’ye be hearin’ of me, then?”

Not just his accent but also his speech patterns had departed south without leaving a forwarding address, he was that angry. For a few moments Mieka thought he was railing at something Rauel had done—again—but then Rauel himself began yelling much the same thing.

“Who the fuck does he think he is, eh? Sendin’ some lackey round here, tryin’ to buy us—do we look like whores to you?”

A third voice, unfamiliar to him, spoke in low, soothing, yet slightly frightened tones. He didn’t catch the words as he crept into the taproom. It was gloomy in here, the low ceiling latticed with heavy black oak rafters, the murk eased somewhat by a variety of leafy plants in big iron cauldrons. Mieka wove his way amongst these towards the voices coming from the far corner.

“No!” Vered snarled. “Not now, not ever, and ye take that answer back to His

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