“Not all of them are frightened,” Tesh said, pointing in the direction of the house Malcolm had lived in.
Raithe recognized Meryl, Malcolm’s onetime partner in servitude—the coward who’d ridden away while screaming, “Murderer, murderer.” Meryl stepped out of the too-pretty-to-be-true house, and leaving the door wide, took four steps. This left him still in the front yard, still behind the little decorative wall. He glared at them from his tiny battlement.
“Meryl!” Malcolm greeted him happily and walked over.
“Murderer!” Meryl shouted back in Fhrey.
Malcolm stopped. “I didn’t kill—”
Raithe didn’t catch everything they said. They spoke quickly in Fhrey. All he caught were the words bloodthirsty, cannibalism, and monsters. He wasn’t even certain of those due to Meryl’s thick accent.
Malcolm was trying to calm his old roommate. Raithe didn’t need to understand the words to know that, but Meryl was having none of it. He shouted his replies and grew more red-faced with each round. Before long he was slapping the top of the wall. Other doors opened. Ghostly faces materialized at windows. Fhrey couples appeared on balconies. From the third floor of what looked to be a leather shop, Raithe heard a reedy Fhrey say, “Please come away. It’s dangerous.”
More were coming out, standing on stoops with folded arms, stiff lips, and nodding heads. “Maybe we should move on,” Raithe said. “Let’s head back and find Moya and Tekchin. Or maybe Roan needs a hand with the wagons.”
Raithe tugged on Malcolm’s sleeve.
The ex-slave waved back at him with one hand. As he did, Raithe noticed another pair of eyes looking down from the upper-story window of Meryl’s house. Remembering Malcolm’s question about who lived there now, Raithe tilted his head up for a better look, and the figure withdrew into the shadows. All that remained was the flutter of a curtain.
It took a full-out drag by his wrist to get Malcolm walking, but Raithe outweighed his friend by no small amount, and Malcolm soon gave in to the idea.
“Idiot,” Malcolm grumbled. “He’s completely forgotten who he is. He actually thinks being a slave is a privilege. A privilege! Can you believe that? And he refuses to even admit he’s human—or Rhune, as he so derisively refers to us. The little partisan bigot—traitor is what he is.” Malcolm marched up the street with loud slaps of his feet.
“You used to think of us as Rhunes, too.”
“That’s before I knew better.” Malcolm jabbed his pointed finger at Raithe. “See, right there; I can be reasoned with. But not him. Oh, no, not Meryl, the little weasel. He knows—he thinks he knows—everything, except that he’s no better than anyone else. I honestly don’t know how the man manages to dress himself in the morning.”
Malcolm continued to fume, but more quietly as they rounded a wall painted with crude images.
“So, did you find out who his new master is?”
“Doesn’t have one,” Malcolm said. “He empties chamber pots in the Kype and cleans out cells in the duryngon now. Not too happy about the change. Blames me for tarnishing his otherwise impeccable reputation. I don’t know what he’s complaining about. He still gets to live in one of the best houses in the city, and he has the whole place to himself.”
“Then who was in there with him?”
“Meryl made it very clear he was alone, and how it was my fault he was now a pariah.”
“I saw someone upstairs.”
Malcolm looked at him skeptically. “Really? Why would Meryl lie about something like that?”
Raithe shrugged. “Take it up with him the next time we never come down here again, okay? Nyphron just gifted us this pretty place; might not be a good idea to get exiled before we’ve tasted the veal.”
This made Malcolm smile. “They do have wonderful veal.”
CHAPTER FOUR
Council of the Keenig
Persephone was my hero. I am proud to say she was also my friend—nearly a second mother. She was also the keenig. But that was just a word, just a title that did not mean anything until she stood beneath that dome and we heard the thunder of her voice.
—THE BOOK OF BRIN
Nyphron called the meeting.