Please leave comments for me. Thank you! (Diolch.)
*****
Vadya walked Midnight slowly down the hill into the river port of Paviat. He had enjoyed a riotous three day journey with Tashka and Pava doing imitations along the way. Pava had made up a particularly successful one of an amorous old court Lady, pretending to look over a fan at the two of them and calling them 'naughty boys' and making Tashka giggle so much that once he fell off Jewel.
Vadya was nervous coming into a Sietter town although there was currently no open enmity between H'las and Sietter and he and Tashka were in civilian clothes, not the black and blue H'las uniform. He wondered whether to give another name at the inn.
As he looked about him he was disagreeably struck by the dingy evidence of poverty. The Vail country villages they had passed through had seemed prosperous and healthy. Was it because Paviat was so much bigger a town that its people seemed ragged and thinner? Surely in Port H'las there were not so many empty shops. He saw that Tashka had dismounted beside a group of pinch-faced women queuing at a bread shop with children clustered to their skirts.
Pava was smiling affectionately. "The little lamb had always a tender heart," he said. "He feels the responsibility - as if it is any matter of his."
"Responsibility to Sietter folk?" Vadya asked, frowning.
"Uh, er, to the poor," Pava said. "Because his family is also so poor." He grinned.
"Oh yes!" Vadya said scornfully. "That is so evident from his wardrobe!"
Tashka's summer riding suit was of cool black linen and he was even wearing a gold bird studded in his ear on a simple journey through the countryside. Vadya saw Tashka swing up onto Jewel away from the women whose grey faces were raised to him with grateful expressions. Vadya's mouth quirked in a smile, Tashka never could bear to see children in poverty. Tashka's face as he rode up to them was angry and he rode past without speaking of the low quality bread the women were trying to buy, the miserable wares set out in the few shops that were not boarded up, the people who sat in huddled groups on street corners instead of enjoying a cake and a bowl of tea in a comfortable café.
As they rode on into Paviat, the road changed from mud to cobblestones and the shops became bigger and full of choicer goods: a rainbow of silks on display, a row of jewellers' stalls, a vegetable stall with fresh greenery and colourful young root vegetables. There seemed to be few people out buying, however. The shopkeepers wore anxious frowns as they idled by the racks of goods they had laid out so tidily that it was evident they had too much time on their hands.
"There will be little custom at the Ship Inn," Tashka said when Vadya suggested Pava give his name for all their rooms. "Since there is no accord with H'las, the merchants do not come up from Port H'las and this town is empty. The landlord will be well glad to have someone of your quality to stay. He may even give you a better room in hopes that you will tell the H'las merchants to come back to Paviat." He looked sombrely at a row of seamstresses' workshops where the women were sitting out on the pavement in the summer sunshine, chatting and playing with their children because they had no work and no money to send the children to school. In H'las there was free schooling but that was not an expenditure Lord Pava el Maien van Sietter found useful. He argued that allowing children to work cheaply instead of getting learning beyond their proper place in life encouraged business to come to Sietter.
They clattered into the cobbled yard of the old Ship Inn. The cheery yellow paint on its timber-framed front was peeling but the yard was kept weed-free. Two grooms came straight out of the stables to take their horses' reins with faces bright and eager to see well-appointed travellers come to Paviat.
The landlord himself had come out, he came down the stairs at the front of the inn. Even his plump cheerful beaming smile seemed muted, his skin hung around his jowls and his jacket on his shoulders loose as if he had recently lost some firm fat that had sat comfortably around his tummy and hips. However he spoke up pleasantly: "Commander-Lord el Gaiel, Commander-Lord el Jien, Captain Maien. This way, your Lordships ... Captain." He looked uncertainly at Tashka, Tashka gave him a long hard stare and he smiled deprecatingly, bowed low and ushered them into the inn. "You have had letters," he added, handing a packet each to Pava and Tashka.
"Some coffee? Some wine?" he offered, directing them into the sitting-room. The big light room looked out over the stables opposite and you could see through the many little panes in the window all the way down the hill to the boats tied up at the dock. There were comfortable armchairs and sofas in cheerful colours pulled up to make companionable groups around the room but they were all empty apart from one armchair near the fireplace where a lean young Knight in the livery of King's Herald was dozing with his despatch-box chained to his wrist.
Pava and Tashka drifted over to the broad wooden sill of the window where some cushions were arranged to make an appealing seat, tearing open the packets of paper in which their letters were wrapped. The yellow sealing wax on each packet had no seal stamped into it, Pava was grumbling that it must be his tailor, how had the man found out his direction. Vadya asked for beer for them all and picking up a newssheet he flopped into one of the squashy comfortable armchairs.
"Gracious Angels!" Pava exclaimed loudly. Vadya looked up at him. Pava was staring at his letter. Tashka gave him a savage shove. He looked at the young officer then at Vadya and said in a careless tone, "what an invoice. I am sure I must have had a suit dripping with darling emeralds all the way from the mines of the H'velst Mountains to cost this much!"
Vadya looked back at his newssheet. It was full of speculation about better trade relations between H'las and Sietter. Vadya thought what that might mean for Port Paviat and also for Port H'las where he knew that his father had had to pay out heavily in order to keep businesses that would otherwise have been prosperous from being ruined.
"It is from Anna," he heard Pava hiss, "inviting me to the Castle!"
He was not interested in Pava's affairs but he was surprised to hear Tashka whisper back: "Yes, I know. Shall you come then?"
"What, I come to Clair's place?" Pava murmured in a sour tone.
