"Why, Esmirrrrrrrrrelda," he called, loud enough to quiet some conversations and direct attention toward me. He had an annoying habit of drawing out rolling the 'r' in my name, making him sound like someone with a bad stutter calling for help while rolling down the side of a mountain. "Whatever are you doing in a place like this?"
"Correcting your mistakes, as usual," I replied.
Malak was all that most women would look for in a man. Tall and not overly slim, he was capped by a tousled shock of blond hair that occasionally obscured his bright blue eyes. His clothes fit so well they appeared tailored to him and they were always clean. Always. His jaw was well-defined, his teeth all present and relatively straight and his face was unblemished by scar or pox. A gold chain clung tightly to his neck and blue gems sparkled at his ears. A silver ring shaped like a serpent coiled around the middle finger of his right hand. His only other accessories were the black pouch slung over his shoulder, rectangular in shape and sturdy of material that held his assorted writing quills, inks and most likely an expensive spyglass and perhaps a compass or other tools. He wore a long knife on his left hip tucked into a scabbard of rich leather that looked fresh from its maker's hand.
"You wit is as quick as a snake, as always," he responded.
"Only to some." Another form filled the doorway, but the boy I had noticed earlier was still disappointed. I frowned, then turned back to Malak. "I should thank you. If it weren't for your traipsing about and misinterpreting basic history or your staggering inability to remember basic geography, I'd find little enough work."
"You can buy me an ale, then," he said with a broad smile.
I protested, but he already had his hand in the air. My night was going sour in a hurry.
Later, he waved off my complaint.
"What do you mean, who cares?" I felt warm and my head was buzzing slightly. The noise of the crowd had increased, too. Laughter drowned out even the sound of the minstrel—a blessing, because the man wasn't all that good to begin with. All seemed content to regale each other with stories of their day and spend whatever coin they had to forget their toils at the same time. All save the boy who stared intently at the door, his growing nervousness evident, and another man who I hadn't noticed before. He sat alone in the far corner, his back to the room. He was short, bald and thick and drank with a serious purpose. When had he come in? I hadn't noticed. But he was either a stranger to this town or not liked by anyone, for no one paid him any heed.
"I mean just what I said," Malak said. He shrugged his shoulders and gave me a look intended, I think, to disarm me. "A river here, hills there. It is all close enough."
"It's a map."
"It's still a map."
"People use maps to find their way."
"And they will! Think of the surprised they wouldn't otherwise find."
"It's irresponsible," I said. ""Doubly so if you don't even attempt to get things correct. This is why we're here; this is why we took the commission to begin with. Didn't you take the oath? Does it mean nothing to you?"
My questioning must have started to annoy him—either that or he sensed he would get no more drinks from my purse—because he sighed and looked around, trying to catch the attention of an unoccupied lass, or at least a willing one.
"It means something to me," I muttered. I thought of a scorched clearing that had once been a small village, the only remnants a child's toy I had pulled from the rubble. "These are important things."
He scoffed. "Important? That I got a few trees out of place on a map in the archives of a temple in a town nobody will even bother visit? How is that important?"
"Your name is on it, Malak. OUR order. If people cannot trust us on the little things, they won't trust us with the bigger things, their stories, their customs. If we can't be bothered to do the little things right, we might as well not do any of it right. It won't be true."
"Every story is true, depending on who writes it," he said.
I was about to say something else, but the door opened again and this time, the conversation did stop. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the boy stand slowly, his knees wobbling, as a man staggered into the tavern. He was a mess. His clothing was torn in several places and each rent in the fabric or split in the leather showed an angry red welt of blooming purple bruise. Blood was caked around his mouth and matted in his hair. He lurched forward, clutching the boy in a one-armed embrace—the other did not look like it worked properly.
"Papa?"
"I'm sorry lad, I'm sorry," he mumbled.
Several people broke away from their tables and approached the man concern and fear in their eyes. "Where are the others?" One of them asked. "What happened?"
"We were lost; misdirected," he managed. A mug was offered to him and he smiled, took his arm from the boy's shoulders and lifted it with a grimace. "Nothing was where it was supposed to be and then we were ambushed. The others...they are all dead, or soon will be."
The boy started to sob, then, and one of the tavern wenches pulled him close and patted his back. Connell Malak looked decidedly uncomfortable. I think he would have sprinted to the exit then, if the door was not blocked by the large crowd. I reached for my mug and eased myself closer to the group, so that I could overhear some more details.
My respite, as brief as it had been, was over. I smelled a story.
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