The elder shook his head again, then turned to receive two mugs of ale from the barkeep. With a smiling nod to seal the end of our conversation, he took himself and his young companion away. I shifted to watch their progress and caught a glimpse through the crowd of a table half hidden by the big brick hearth in the corner of the room closest to the blazing fire. A clean-shaven and rather light-skinned young man sat there, hands on the table and a cap held in slim fingers; he had Avarian eyes, slant-folded, and an oval face with broad cheekbones. After a moment I realized, with a start, that he was a woman, older than I had first thought, with black hair cropped short and an old scar on her left cheek, and in all ways dressed exactly as a man.
The bartender leaned across the bar to follow my gaze with his own. “Foreigners,” he said. “Five of ’em. They’re staying at the Lamb, across the way. Got here yesterday with ten mules and twenty bundles of wool cloth from Camlun. But the warden’s sure they were smuggling rifles. He meant to take them before Lord Owen, but then a lad come in this morning with the cry of sheep stealing and off the warden must go. He told this lot to stay put until he come back or he’d ask Lord Owen to set the militia after them.”
“Rifles!” I thought of the rifles the eru and coachman had claimed to have destroyed in Southbridge. The men pursuing Andevai: It’s time the mages feel the sting of our anger.
“You heard of them? It’s a new kind of musket, like.”
Emilia finished her song to a burst of acclaim and cries for a new song. Someone said he’d go for his fiddle, and another pair left to get drum and lute. Emilia leaned over Roderic, flirting as he sipped ale and imbibed her attentions.
The bartender glanced once around the room as if fearing eavesdroppers, then bent closer. I bent closer as well, his mouth close to my ear and his breath strong with ale as he whispered, “Mages hate rifles, anything like that. And foreigners are usually radicals, aren’t they? Still.” His hand brushed mine. “If there’s no illegal merchandise, there’s no proof, is there?”
“Where would rifles be coming from?” I asked, wondering what he would answer.
“I wouldn’t know about that,” he said with a grin. “Still, she’s a fierce-looking woman, isn’t she? Seems a shame to me for a woman to go cutting her hair all short like a man’s, though. Yours, for instance. You have hair as black and lovely as a raven’s wing.”