Chapter 2: Friends and Enemies
He woke to a weightless feeling, as though he was drifting in a cloud of fog through which light was faintly diffused. A vague blur.
Where was he? Why was his mind so hazy?
But he discerned no immediate threat, and the pain he felt was minimal – the consequence, he remembered, of the fight at Percival's Place. His back stung in a series of patches marching up his backbone, the scalded skin of his chest, back, and shoulder stung, too. But not unpleasantly.
He became aware of voices. Women's voices. No significant threat there, either, at least not usually. A woman's weapon was her tongue, but it only hurt if you cared. His mother had never wielded hers against Merlin.
"You can count his ribs from across the room." He could understand the words, now.
"Still, he's not bad-looking."
"He cleans up real nice."
Laughter. Oh, that was a nice sound. Pure and innocent joy. He felt safe.
"Wonder where he's from?"
"Not from around here, that's for sure."
He heard water noises, swishing and gurgling, trickling and pouring. The fog he was in was wet, and warm. But he could feel he was sitting on something solid, and his head was resting on something at once hard and padded.
"Did he get all those the other night?"
"Couldn't've."
Merlin distinguished two voices. Two women. And he realized they were talking about him. He should be able to open his eyes. To lift his head, his hands, which seemed to be floating out in front of him.
"Devil of a fighter, isn't he?" one woman casually observed. "What happened at the jail?"
"Gaius thought a fit of some kind."
"Maybe his heart?"
"Well, he wasn't breathing for a bit, there. Thought we'd lost him."
"Guess he's pretty sick."
"Gaius says it's not being sick, it's not having food or rest. Says the rest of it's likely in his head."
He strained all his muscles at once. His eyebrows felt like they were reaching for heaven, trying to open his eyes. The rest of his muscles wouldn't respond, though his skin sensed rhythmic moving, scraping. Maybe he was being skinned alive.
At the thought, his eyes popped open. For a moment he could only see a white blur, then he felt something soft and astringent-smelling spread across his face. His eyes focused on a thin line of silver light, moving toward him, a sharp line, a reflection, held in a human hand. He recognized the razor blade.
"He's awake!" one of them gasped. "Gaius said that stuff would last til tomorrow!"
"He's fighting it," the other answered.
"Should we give him more?"
"Don't know. We'll see." The razor moved toward him again, the reflection of light playing on the sharp edge. And he was helpless. He couldn't move.
Oh, yes, he could. He pushed one hand up, through the thickness of the air, wrapped his fingers around the wrist of the hand holding the razor, held on as hard as he could.
He tried to sit up, instead of sliding down – into a tub of soapy water, he realized. His eyes were clearing – his body sprawled in a tin tub, his head resting on a towel draped over the rim. He shoved his feet against the other side hard enough to splash water out on the floor, bracing himself to struggle upright. His free hand found the rim, and gripped.
The unfamiliar voice said uncertainly, "Shall I get Percival?"
He blinked. His body was leaning forward, almost enough to dunk his face in the water in front of him. He frowned at his reflection – there were suds all over his chin, down his throat. A shave, then. He looked at the hand that held the razor, followed it up the plump red arm – sleeve rolled above the elbow – to Shasta's round face.
Her green eyes pinned him. There was a calmness in her face, and no fear. "I don't believe so, Gwen," she said. "You'll behave, won't you, Merlin?"
He didn't let go of her hand. His brain felt wrapped in wool, thick and muffled. His tongue, too. How did they know his name?
"Because if you don't," Shasta continued, "Percival will pour the rest of Gaius' sleeping draft down your throat, and off you'll go for a few more days, pleasant as a sleeping babe."
He understood. He'd been drugged. But how? Had there been something in the bowl of stew? And why?
"Just a shave," Shasta coaxed. "Relax, now. Just a shave of your whiskers."
He swallowed and rasped, "If you cut me, I'll cut you."
Merlin's warning was seriously spoken, but she laughed like he'd made a fine joke. He sank back, exhausted. His hand was trembling from just that much exertion, so much that he caused her hand to shake, too. He let go, and closed his eyes again.
He didn't sleep, but rested as the razor scraped along his jaw and throat, over his chin. He didn't really care, did he, if she slipped and cut his throat? Did he?
"I knew there was a human being under here somewhere," Shasta joked.
"He looks right nice," the other voice commented, provokingly saucy. Gwen, Shasta had called her.
Then suddenly he had to step out of the room. He opened his eyes again and straightened, looking for his clothes, gripping the edge of the tub and shivering as the air hit his wet skin.
"I thought you were going to behave," Shasta reproached him. "What are you looking for?"
"My clothes." His lips were thick, his mouth dry. The outhouse, and then a drink, he thought. Water was free. He'd have to find some way of paying for the bath, though, because he couldn't skip this town. Not with Padlow coming right to him at the end of the year.
"Well!" Shasta said. "You're welcome for scrubbing your stinking hide. We burned them."
That didn't sink in for a moment. Then he stared at her, aghast. He had a spare shirt, and socks, but no other changes of clothing, and here he sat in the cooling bath, naked. And two women in the room – he turned his head. The younger girl – the black-haired barmaid – crouched on the floor, her back against the wall and the skirt of a sunshine-yellow dress stretched across her knees, almost within arm's reach. And he had to leave the room quite urgently.
"A towel, then," he demanded.
"Why?"
He blushed, and glared at Shasta for causing it. "I'd like to leave the room for a moment," he said.
"Aha!" Shasta said. "Finally found our manners, did we?"
He leaned forward slowly, drawing his feet up under him, rocking onto his heels. It was going to take him a minute to stand up. He felt as weak as a kitten.
"Here, now, you're going to tip yourself over, and the bath with you," Shasta said. "Just wait – Gwen, get Percival, please?" Gwen pulled herself up, and he caught her peeking over the edge of the tub before she gave him an incorrigible grin and turned to leave the room. "Careful, now," Shasta said, tucking an arm around his back and helping to support him upright, though he was taller than she was; as a married woman she was confident and unembarrassed. "Here's a towel." She bent to pick it up.
The door opened behind them. "Shasta, Percival says he can't – oh!" said a musically feminine voice.
He turned as Shasta handed him the towel. The girl with black hair – Farya or Freya, he thought he remembered her name – stood sideways to them, shielding her eyes with her hand. Her ear was bright red.
"I'm so sorry," she said breathlessly. "I didn't realize… Shasta, Percival says he's busy, can it wait or can I help you instead…"
Shasta chuckled. "No, Freya, likely not. We can't have him knocking you over, now can we?"
Freya nodded without replying, and closed the door behind her. He wrapped the towel around his waist, and tucked the edge under at his hip, then held onto the tub to step out.
"Go slow," Shasta cautioned. "If you're feeling queasy or light in the head, just sit down a minute."
"I can make it," he said roughly, pushing her hands away. "Where –"
"Through this door, off to your left a ways," Shasta said. "We share with a couple of other folks. If you're not back in the count of a hundred, I'll send Percival."
He made the trip in the count of a hundred, and saw no one else, but staggered back to the flagstones squaring the back door of the tavern, all the world a filmy gray, and a roaring noise in his ears. Goosebumps were raised on his bare skin, the air still chilly in the spring, in the shade.
Percival was called to carry him up to the room he'd been sleeping in, but he refused the help, managing a ghost of his old surliness.
"You're nothing but skin and bones," the big bartender told him. "I could carry you with one hand behind my back."
Pride wouldn't let him give in, so instead Percival half-carried, half-supported him up the stairs. He collapsed on the cot, too tired even to straighten his limbs or cover himself with the blanket, or arrange the pillow under his head, which the older man did for him, with efficiency and a rough sort of self-conscious gentleness.
He hated this helpless, fuzzy-headed feeling. "Whatever it was the physician gave you for me, don't give me any more," he said in a voice that was barely more than a whisper.
"Behave yourself, and we won't," Percival returned.
The medicinal draft they had poured down his throat wasn't finished with him, however, because when he again opened his eyes, he felt more rested than he'd been in a long time, and remembered no dreams. He yawned. The light was low in the narrow room, but accustomed as he'd become to judging times and seasons, he knew it for dawn, and not twilight.
He swung his legs over the side of the cot and rested a moment longer before grabbing the pile of cast-off clothes someone had left for him at the foot of the bed. At least his boots, worn and scuffed as they were, had been spared.
Merlin made it halfway down the stairs, each hand steadying himself against the walls, bones and bruised muscles protesting stiffly at every step, before a wave of vertigo convinced him to sit down or risk falling the rest of the way. He closed his eyes and listened, heard the rhythmic chop of someone splitting firewood somewhere behind the tavern, voices shouting in the street, a woman humming downstairs.
And footsteps.
He opened his eyes as the dark-haired girl came around the corner, her arms full of sheets, and set one foot on the bottom stair before looking up and seeing him.
"Oh!" she said, startled. Then blushed a rosy red and dropped her eyes. "I really am sorry about walking in on you the other day. Gwen never said…"
He'd endured lots of reactions during his few years on the road, but embarrassment? For his sake? He interrupted gruffly, "Don't worry about it." He remembered then that this was the wife of the man who'd killed his family, and his own long-standing plan included killing her. He frowned. Scowled.
She hefted the sheets, climbed a few stairs, and sat down where her face was level with his knees. "How do you feel?" she asked. "Gaius was going to come later to check on you."
Merlin shrugged. As soon as he felt he could make it, he was going to finish his descent, find out more about the town, and figure out a plan.
"He said he thought you had an attack of your heart, or lungs," she continued in her low, musical voice. "Or maybe a seizure. Has this ever happened to you before?"
Dreams? Oh, yeah. But usually there was no one around to care. This was a strange town.
She was watching him closely, waiting for an answer. Instead, he reached out to put a hand flat on the wall, tried to stand. She dropped her load of sheets, came right up under him, her shoulder under his arm, to support him, and he couldn't muster the strength to protest. Serve her right if he fell on top of her. Down the stairs they went, around the corner.
All the chairs were turned upside-down on the table-tops, the sawdust swept from the floors. Which had been scrubbed and sanded too, if he wasn't mistaken. Quite clean for this sort of establishment, in his experience.
He found himself wondering if she worked here. Maybe that was how Padlow had met her – but she had a look too innocent for a prostitute, she had blushed twice over her glimpse of him in his bath. Maybe she was a little slow in the head. Have to be, to marry a murderer.
Merlin pushed himself away from her then, steadied himself against a table. She didn't seem to notice his impatience with her, but pulled down a chair from the table, turned it clumsily, and pushed it toward him. He took down his own chair, but the righting of it almost over-balanced him.
"Be careful," she said, with a smile that lighted her eyes. "Gwen says there isn't any room on you for more bruises."
He sprawled in the chair, half-against the table. She stood by the second chair, uncertainty coming into her face as she watched him.
"You probably shouldn't be up yet," she said. "Maybe I should get Percival–"
"No," he said. "Go away and let me sit for a minute."
She backed away a step, but didn't appear to have taken offense at his brusqueness. "Whatever you say," she said. "I'll finish making the beds, and then see if I can find you something to eat." She turned and hurried away; he noticed that the hem of her skirt was frayed, and her shoes too large for her feet.
He felt tired again. He was still pushing himself too hard. That wouldn't do. No use trying to face Padlow the killer if he was too weak to best him and make him pay. He hadn't realized he was so close to the edge.
But now for a plan. He closed his eyes to think for a while. First he needed the effects of whatever drug was given to him to wear off, and then to regain his strength. He had to find work if he was going to stay here at the tavern, until the peddler returned, had to pay for his room and board, for new clothes and whatever supplies he needed. There were six months til the first snows of winter. Padlow, when he arrived, wouldn't suspect a thing – he'd never seen Merlin's face, either. So he'd have the element of surprise. He'd have to find out where Padlow lived, study the layout of his home, and learn the town and land like the back of his hand.
And steer clear of the girl. If he was going to kill her, he didn't want to regret it. He didn't want to like her, he didn't want to spend any more time looking at her or talking to her than he had to. Already he had an idea she was a likable girl, in spite of her bad choice in a husband.
Sitting there at the table, his eyes closed and his head drooped down to rest on his outstretched arm. How should he kill her? He didn't want her to suffer, there was no reason for that – he only wanted Padlow to feel the agony of losing someone he loved, losing everything he had in the world. Maybe he should kill her soon, so the peddler would also feel the helplessness that he wasn't there to protect her. But then, Merlin probably wouldn't be able to stay in town after killing one of its citizens. If they didn't hang him, they'd –
At the creak of the hinges of the swinging kitchen door, he lifted his head. And froze.
His father stood across the room from him, gray-skinned, hollow-eyed, blood dripping from more than twenty holes in his body, from the base of his throat to the lowest point of his belly. He stumbled forward, leaving bloody footprints on the newly-sanded floor.
"Merlin," he gasped. More blood poured from his mouth, down his throat. "What are you doing here?"
He couldn't breathe. As his father's body struggled across the tavern, and blood pooled across the floor in his wake, Merlin pushed himself back in his chair, leaning away from the gray hand that reached to touch him, to wrap its fingers around his throat and squeeze.
"Merlin!" The hand grasped his shoulder and shook, but more gently than he expected.
His throat was still too raw to scream, but it tried. He tipped over backwards, landed heavily on the floor, on his back. He heard the crack of his head on the floorboards.
…..*….. …..*….. …..*…..
"What happened?" Freya said, hurrying around one of the tables. Percival knelt over the body of the stranger, sprawled across an overturned chair.
"Don't know," Percival said, looking up at her. "I came through the door – he looked at me and tipped right over."
"You think he might suffer from fits?" Freya said, kneeling beside Merlin. His hair and skin were damp, his breathing rapid and almost panicky, though his body remained limp and unmoving. "Like the other night at the jail?"
"Don't know," Percival said again, sounding more uncertain. "When Reeve Whatley tried to wake him, he fought tooth and nail and never seemed to realize it."
"But," Freya said, "he doesn't seem violent–" Her friend raised one eyebrow at her, and she added, "Not like…"
Percival nodded quickly, knowing who she meant. She reached to straighten a short black curl on the stranger's forehead. He was alone, just as she had been, without the benefit of friends. Maybe she could be his friend… Percival shot her a disapproving glance. "Freya," he said.
"What?"
"You've got enough trouble already," he said, his deep voice quiet. "You don't want to take up with this one."
She sat back on her heels, steadying herself with a hand on the seat of the chair the stranger had rejected, and feeling her face flush warm. "Percival," she said, her voice sounding odd to her own ears. "You know I'm married."
Merlin shifted, opened his eyes, blinked at the rafters. Shut them again for a moment. And even as she observed the incredible luminous blue of his eyes, she noticed that a tear had squeezed out between his long dark lashes.
"Hey, stranger," Percival said, reaching a hand into his view as an invitation. He grasped it almost involuntarily, tensing his muscles so the bigger man could pull him upright.
"Are you all right?" Freya said hesitantly, moving back from him.
After a moment he pushed himself to his feet; Percival and Freya rose also. But when he said nothing, Percival grunted, shrugged and turned back to the bar. Freya reached for the overturned chair, but the stranger was there first, righting it a little awkwardly – he must still be weak.
"Thank you," she said.
He captured her gaze with a single hard look – she saw so much anger there, and hatred – for her, she was stunned to realize. No, not quite hatred – the desire to hate. That was even more confusing; he didn't know her, why should he want to hate her? A thought chilled her – could he see what the others already knew? What had the reeve told him during his time in the jail?
Merlin turned and headed for the door, but hadn't taken more than two steps when Reeve Whatley pushed his way in and surveyed the room, his beady black eyes darting between the three occupants. The stranger's steps didn't slow, til the reeve closed the door behind him and leaned against it, tapping his walking stick against his boot, a wolfish grin spread across his dark-stubbled face.
"Well, what have we got here," he drawled.
The stranger stopped, half-turned as if he were contemplating seeking another exit. Freya saw the twitch of muscles in his lean body when he made his decision to stand his ground. His fists clenched by his sides – she wondered if he knew he was doing it.
"So the patient has recovered," the reeve said, sarcasm thick in his tone as he gave his attention to the stranger.
Percival rounded the edge of the bar and busied himself behind the counter. Sheet changes being finished, Freya drifted slowly, quietly, toward the kitchen.
"The way I see it, stranger, you've got two choices," the reeve continued. "Jail or the road."
Freya stopped, surprised. Percival said, "Why?"
At the same time as Merlin said, "No."
The reeve pushed away from the door, his eyes again flicking between the three of them. Freya took a few more steps so his attention would shift away from her. "I said to you, we don't want no trouble," Whatley reminded the stranger, "then you go and start a fight – twice."
Merlin seemed to grow taller. "If you don't want any trouble, then leave me alone," he said. His tone was still quiet, but Freya shivered involuntarily at the iciness of it.
The reeve advanced, lifting his chin and pointing to a large but fading bruise on the left side of his face, visible above the unshaven whiskers. "You attacked me, and others," he accused. "You caused damage here and at the jail. If you're not leaving, tell me what your plans are, stranger."
Percival and Freya were waiting for the answer, too, but the stranger said nothing. Freya put her hand on the door to the kitchen, while Percival rubbed a glass beer mug round and round, watching. The reeve took a few more steps, a look of curiosity growing.
"No one in this town knows you," he said. "You got money to stay here? What are your plans? I don't want you starting any trouble," he repeated.
"I have business here," Merlin said. "I plan to stay until I finish it."
"Business with who? How long will it take you?"
The stranger shifted his weight; he was growing impatient. "It is my own concern." His voice contained a warning. "I give you my word I won't cause… unnecessary trouble."
Freya wondered, abruptly, what he might consider necessary trouble.
"I don't know you, stranger," the reeve protested. "I can't take your word for nothing. How am I supposed to protect my citizens from someone like you?"
Merlin was sideways to Freya as he stepped right up to the reeve, and she could see the corner of a grim smile on his face. She also saw that the reeve disliked the emphasis on the finger's-breadth difference in their height.
"Leave me alone," the stranger repeated, almost too softly for Freyato hear. "Punish me when I break your laws, but leave me alone til then and we'll have no trouble." And as suddenly as a blowing breeze, the stranger passed the reeve and was out the door. Percival set down the mug he'd been continually polishing, and grinned to himself at the reeve's consternation.
"You stay out of it," the reeve warned him sharply. He yanked the door open, lifted the walking stick, and looked around before stepping out, as though he feared an ambush.
"Reeve's in a bad temper," Percival observed to Freya, and she smiled at the big bartender's satisfaction.
"I think Merlin can handle him," she said.
"Reeve Whatley, sure," Percival said slowly. "But Burton and Padlow? if he stays that long…" Freya's cheerful mood immediately dissipated. Percival noticed and said, "I'm sorry, Freya. I didn't mean to –"
There was nothing for her to say. She continued to the kitchen as Percival reached for another mug. Then a thought stopped her in her tracks.
The stranger had said, punish me when I break your laws. Not if, but when.
…..*….. …..*….. …..*…..
Merlin crossed the street quickly and ducked under the overhang of the livery, next to the smith's forge. So help him, if the reeve followed him… but Reeve Whatley peered out the tavern door, up the street and down, and headed in the opposite direction.
"Can I help you, stranger?" The drawl came from behind him, but he wasn't surprised. He'd heard the grunt and puff of the attendant forking hay in the back of the stable.
"I need to board my nag there for a few days at least," he answered, turning to face the attendant, a skinny young man with a bored expression. "Maybe for longer, I don't know yet. Can I pay you when I leave?"
The attendant leaned on the fork, studying him. "It isn't Elyan's habit to board without pay first," he informed him.
"Care to buy the horse?" Merlin suggested. "I've got no coin yet, I'm new in town."
The attendant smirked. "I heard." Of course, the excitement of the fight the night he'd come to town must have spread by now, the best rumor a small town had heard in a while. "Well, I can do this – I'll suggest to Elyan that we board the nag til you owe as much as it's worth, then it's ours. If you can pay anything before then, we'll work out the boarding fees."
"Good enough," Merlin said, taking a few quick steps to shake the man's hand. Then he returned to his fork and hay, and Merlin strolled down the main street, studying the town.
After listening to the rhythmic clang-clang-clunk of the dark-skinned smith's hammer on anvil, he noticed the duller tone of a hammer on wood, and an accompanying cheerful whistle. He crossed the street, following the sound down the alley by the burned building – the fresh-planked roof had been painted with pitch, the next step of reconstruction complete - and came out behind the row of frontage shops.
Hammering and whistling both came from a short, round man whose white hair was a long curtain down onto his collar. He wore the drab dusty overalls of a day-laborer, and stood on the third-to-the-top rung of a rickety ladder leaning against the side wall of the building. A sling supported his left arm; he didn't seem to notice Merlin's arrival.
He took a deep breath of the fresh air, feeling better than he had for – well, several days now, he supposed – and rested both hands loosely on his hips, watching. Any building or repair work needed in a farming community was usually a joint effort of any neighbor close enough to come for a day or two. But this workman was alone, and handicapped. That increased the curiosity he'd felt seeing the fire-damaged building itself, as he rode into town.
The workman slipped the hammer through his belt, reached into a front pocket for another nail, fitting it one-handed into a pre-drilled hole in a wide wooden shingle, then reached for the hammer to pound it into place. An awl lay on the ground by Merlin's feet, next to a stack of pine shingles and a twist of paper open to reveal a jumble of nails. Merlin wondered cynically how the man managed to bore holes in the shingles with only one hand. Apparently his handicap hadn't bothered the laborer; the whistle swung into another melody with scarce time for breath.
Merlin watched him pound two more nails, then the workman laid his hammer on the edge of the roof and carefully descended the ladder. When he turned, he stopped abruptly upon seeing the silent stranger.
"Ah," the old man said. "Hello."
"Morning," he said neutrally. He wondered how long before the workman's whistling was replaced by cursing at the awkwardness of his useless arm. The man studied him keenly in return, the color of his eyes lost in the wrinkles of friendliness.
"How are you feeling?" he said at length, and didn't do more than pause, when it became obvious Merlin wasn't going to respond. "Glad to see you up and around."
When Merlin still offered nothing, the old workman pursed his lips to continue his whistled tune, and bent to pick up another shingle – a one-by-one arrangement that would take him months to finish. When he tucked it into the sling with a grimace before turning to climb the ladder, Merlin's feet followed of their own accord.
"Are they paying you by the hour?" he asked.
"Not exactly," the workman said. "By the job, is more like it." He paused one rung up to adjust his awkward elbow-grip on the shingle, a pause which brought him a bare hand's-width higher than Merlin.
A clatter sounded on the edge of the roof above them – the workman looked up and instinctively ducked as the hammer, dislodged by the ladder's movement, came hurtling down. Merlin reached out and caught it easily. A moment passed before the workman realized the deft movement that had saved him, then, unbalanced, stumbled back down to the ground. Merlin sighed, took the shingle from the crippled workman, and swung himself up the ladder, muscles only faintly protesting.
"Don't say it," he gritted between his teeth.
Just as the man, startled, said, "Thank you."
"Can you afford my help?" he growled, fitting the shingle into place and reaching down for a nail. He snapped his fingers, impatient until the man realized what he wanted, and handed one up to him.
"Are you well enough to help?" the other returned.
Merlin shrugged. "I'm staying at the tavern, and I owe them, as well as the physician and the stables," he added.
The old man's eyes twinkled. "I'm sure we can work something out," he said. "Enough to cover your keep, anyway."
"Done," Merlin said, and pounded the nail in. So the workman wasn't just another day-laborer, but someone in a position of some authority. "What is this place, anyway?"
"Doc's office," the other said shortly, with some private amusement.
"And what happened? The fire, I mean?"
Rounded shoulders shrugged; the old man's eyes and face entirely unreadable, even to one as observant as Merlin. "No one knows for sure."
At noon the spring sun was bright and warm, and the workman persuaded Merlin to share his lunch in the minimal shade behind the repaired pharmacy. The morning had passed without any conversation, for Merlin had ignored all of the old man's overtures to friendship, and he, without offense, had taken up his whistling again, though he'd watched Merlin closely the while.
Merlin ate quickly and without politeness. Inactivity inevitably resulted in thoughtfulness, which he avoided at all costs. His thoughts haunted him as nightmares all night, and only exhausting physical activity kept him sane during the day.
"No rush," the workman objected when Merlin swallowed the last of his share while pushing himself upright.
"I have debts to repay," Merlin answered. He headed for the ladder, but was met at the corner of the building by a plump middle-aged woman with gray eyes, and a gray-and-brown streaked braid wound around her head, coming down the alley. Her shawl was tucked in comfortably at her elbows and she carried a black leather bag, long and triangular-shaped, with a flat base and the hinged top clasped shut under a curved handle.
"What are you doing out of bed?" she demanded of him.
"Excuse me?" he said, and her eyes went past him to the workman.
"Gaius?" she said disapprovingly.
The physician? He turned around, accusingly, to watch the old man labor to his feet.
"He has quite a constitution, Alice," Gaius said. "I expected the effects of the sleeping draft would keep him in bed today, especially after he was up yesterday, but here he is."
There was a fond mock-reproachful tone to the woman's voice. "So you've been working your patient? What if he got light-headed and tumbled from the roof?"
"He's been working himself," Gaius answered, without offense. "I've kept an eye on him. But now that you've brought my bag…"
Merlin made a move to bypass the woman Alice, who stopped him. "I don't need a physician anymore," he said to her. And over his shoulder to Gaius, "You could've said who you were."
His eyebrow rose. "You could have asked," the old man reminded him. "Now, until you pay your debt, you're under my care, like it or not. Strip off your shirt – or shall I call Shasta? She seems to think she can handle you."
"I may owe you for my care," Merlin said, side-stepping and turning to see them both at once. At the very least he could simply walk away down the alley… "But that puts me under no obligation to deepen my debt at your request."
"I'll make you a deal," Gaius proposed. "You pay your debt to me by cooperating, and by answering questions – indulge an old man. And I'll square it with Percival and Shasta, your room and board for your work on my roof."
Merlin's lip curled. "Then you had better take care what questions you ask," he responded, "if you expect to be paid." He took another step back and unbuttoned his shirt to discard it on the ground.
Gaius nodded, unperturbed. "Answer as you like," he said. "You interest me, and that's a fact." He walked around Merlin in a circle, poking at bruises and mumbling to himself, running surprisingly gentle fingers one-handed over the scalded skin, still pink and sensitive though it hadn't blistered. "You have quite a few scars," Gaius finally remarked. Alice unlatched the black bag and held it open, and the old man reached inside for an instrument shaped like a cow's horn. "Will you answer a question how you came by them?"
When Merlin didn't speak, Alice advised Gaius with unexpected humor, "Ask Percival. Or the reeve."
Gaius glanced at her, then up at Merlin for confirmation, and smiled at what he saw. "Can I ask why?" he said. Then he put the wide end of the black horn against Merlin's chest, and the other end into his ear.
Merlin shrugged. "I only ask to be left alone," he said.
"There are those who find that hard to do," Alice sighed, with a cryptic glance sideways at the physician's office.
"Breathe," Gaius told him. He listened a moment, shifted the horn, and repeated his order, and the procedure, several times, moving around to listen to Merlin's back. "Sound as a horse," he proclaimed, tucking the odd horn back into the bag in Alice's hands.
"What do you think?" Alice asked quietly.
"No physical cause for that fit the other night," Gaius said, holding Merlin's wrist palm up and counting as he felt his pulse. "Do you have these fits often?"
Merlin let him know it wasn't his business, throwing in a rude city expletive for emphasis, and deliberately not excusing himself for female presence.
Alice's face was pink, but Gaius only grunted, his eyebrow lifting again. "That means yes," he informed his lady friend – assistant? wife? "You see, if the answer had been no, he would have said, what fits?"
Merlin snagged his shirt from the ground and shoved his arms through the sleeves, heading once more for the ladder. Alice stayed a few minutes more to speak to Gaius, to poke at and fiddle with the old man's sling. Merlin kept up a flurry of hammering to better ignore them… but wondered if the old man had injured the arm at the same time as the fire.
They worked until the shadows lay too darkly across the shingles for accuracy, and Merlin slammed his thumb instead of the nail with the hammer. He spat out a bitter curse, shaking his hand.
"Are you all right?" Gaius asked from the ground, but Merlin ignored the question. Thumb throbbing, he climbed down and handed the hammer back to its owner.
"I'll be back in the morning," he said only, and turned to leave.
"Merlin," the physician said – how did everyone know his name? He shivered like someone had just walked over his grave. "It's been nice to work with you – thank you again." He stretched out his right hand. Merlin considered not taking it, but the old man's smile was so kindly, he found himself reaching across before he meant to.
"I haven't told anyone my name," he said. "How did you come to know it?"
Gaius looked puzzled. "I believe it was Freya who told us – your name is Merlin, isn't it?"
"How did she know?"
Gaius shrugged, smiling again. "That's a question to ask her, my young friend."
"I'm not your friend," Merlin said, not unkindly. Just stating a fact.
"I'll be by the tavern later," Gaius promised, unperturbed, "to talk to Percival about our arrangement."
Merlin took the back alley to return to Percival's Place, avoiding the rubble heaps, the thudding of his boots on the ground the only sound in his immediate vicinity. Plenty noise, though, from the main street. Always was, in a town this size.
His head was up as he walked, scanning and studying the buildings, the windows, the roofs, always always – as Morgana made sure that Gwaine drilled into the apprentices – watchful and alert. The quarry that he in his profession hunted were by definition guilty of some sort of deceit and most times of violence, and were not without wiles and tricks, not above ambush if they discovered him tailing them. All would fight when brought to bay. So it was by now second nature to Merlin to process swiftly what his senses brought to him, to prepare for possible danger and to record information for future use.
There was no shadow, walking as he was into the west as the last slice of the sun slid into the distant treetops of the horizon. There might have been a whisper of sound, the high thin whir-whistle of a blade swung in menace. It might even have been his nose that warned him, bringing him the message of unwashed body and old blood like a butcher that has worked a long day in the heat.
Whatever it was, Merlin ducked as he stepped around the building next to the tavern, balance perfect as he came back up with the knife from his belt in his left hand, not really surprised to find that the neck his blade pressed against belonged to Burton the trapper, the peddler's partner, the point entering his greasy queue of hair.
An instant later the ax from Percival's woodpile thunked into the side of the building and Merlin's right hand grasped the haft firmly. Both Burton's hands gripped the ax with no chance of going for another weapon. Merlin noted distantly that his left ear had a large and nasty-looking scab.
"You want me to finish this right here?" he said softly. Give me a reason. There's none to see. Some would surely suspect, but there were no witnesses, and he could easily avoid the spray of blood from a slit throat at this angle… if he were willing to put his greater purpose in Emmett's Creek in jeopardy.
A sick pallor slid over the trapper's face, and the skin of his neck parted a little beneath the blade as he swallowed. He didn't answer. He didn't have to, as far as Merlin was concerned. This man would never fight fair, would never face him equally. But this man would also never quit trying to catch his back turned, his guard down.
"Don't start this again," Merlin warned, still without raising his voice. "I never cared much for generosity. Or mercy."
He pulled the knife away and backed down the alley between the tavern and the next establishment, never taking his eyes from the other, keeping the knife ready to throw if that should become a good idea. Burton's hands dropped to his side and he watched Merlin, but made no other move.
Reaching the street, and the edge of the walkway in front of the tavern, Merlin twisted around to keep his back to the tavern wall as he faced the busyness of the main thoroughfare at twilight. A few lanterns were lit above the doors lining the street; as he turned he saw the reeve in his red shirt come out of the jail, fifty yards or so eastward down the street, to light his own.
Whatley caught sight of him as well and paused. Merlin felt his lips pull back from his teeth in a wolfish grin, and flipped the knife once in the air before sliding it back into his belt, and entered the tavern.
Fryea, the thin drab girl with beautiful sad eyes and a musical voice, the girl who knew his name and was the wife of his enemy, was at the tavern again that night, helping Gwen serve drinks and dinners. Merlin sat alone in the corner table by the staircase and watched the room, the farmers and ranchers and townsmen, their sons, their hired hands, sometimes their wives.
Mostly he watched her. Gathering what information he could about the one the murderer was closest to.
He found himself wondering what else the peddler was guilty of, what crimes he had committed here in his hometown, how much the townspeople knew of it. Freya was everywhere ignored, sometimes in a scornful, sometimes pitying way. No one spoke a word to her, and few even nodded thanks for her service. And she seemed content not to be noticed, almost like he himself.
Gaius came in like he'd promised, spoke to Percival across the bar, pointing him out. Percival nodded, his eyes on Merlin, and Gaius headed across the noisy, crowded room. As if to punctuate the comparison between the physician and the girl, almost everyone had a smile and a word for the old man, a noted deference – which made him wonder, then why not help with his roof?
The old physician stopped in the middle of it all to speak to the girl, putting one hand gentle on her elbow, and she smiled for the first time since Merlin had come in.
"Percival and I have reached an agreement," Gaius said when he reached Merlin, but didn't join him in a seat at the table. "If you want to keep roofing my office, Percival and Shasta will see to it that you have one over your head, and all your meals."
Merlin nodded, not thanking the man, just approving the arrangement, acknowledging his understanding.
"I'll see you in the morning, then," Gaius said, and moved away, greeting one or two others in the crowd as he made his way to the door.
Merlin's eyes shifted back to the murderer's wife, watching her thin form weave between tables and people who didn't bother themselves to clear her way, watching her remain gracious despite the contempt of the people. There was something to her, something maybe even special, but he couldn't for the life of him figure why she had married a man who'd wring the necks of two sweet little girls like barnyard chickens.
He hated her. He had to hate her if he was going to kill her.
A scrawny middle-aged man with thin dark hair – head and chin – stopped next to the table where Merlin sat alone; he smelled faintly like a hog barn. "Ah, Mister–" he began uncertainly, squeezing a straw hat between his hands.
Merlin looked up, deliberately letting the other see the raging fury in his eyes. You have terrible timing. "Leave me alone," he said tonelessly.
The man stumbled backward a step, confusion covering his face. "Ah," he said again, glancing behind him to a table of three others dressed in similarly dingy clothes, ragged suspenders, straw hats. He looked to be the oldest of the four, and the other three were obviously awaiting the results of the interview. "If I could have just a minute of your time–" he started again, tentatively obsequious.
"No," Merlin said, not even raising his voice, looking past him to continue scanning the room.
"Well, you see–" the scrawny man said, but swallowed his sentence when Merlin rose abruptly from the chair, concentrating his glare. He was taller than the man, but maybe as much as two decades younger. Harder. And meaner.
"Go. Away," Merlin said softly. He didn't want to make another scene, this sleepy little town knew too much of him already. He couldn't imagine why this yokel would so persistently wish to speak to him.
The pig farmer stumbled back again, then turned and hurried back to his companions. It was obvious that Merlin remained the subject of their discussion from the quick glances sent his way, but he ignored them, choosing to return to the half-tumbler full of amber liquid in front of him. And listen.
The gossip was ordinary – wives, children, crops, livestock, business. Guesses predicting the season's weather. A muscular dark-skinned man told an amusing story of shoeing a fractious horse with a few short, pithy statements, and Merlin recognized him as the blacksmith – Elyan, the stable attendant had said, and probably the father of the boy Merlin had met; he seemed to be a particular friend of the big bartender.
A few young cowhands walked through the door and called flirtatiously to Gwen, but no one took any offense; she answered in kind, and the bartender made nothing of it. That was another curious thing about this tavern. Aside from Freya and Gwen, there didn't seem to be any other young women employed, for serving or for – serving. Unusual, but not unheard of, and it said something significant about the tavern-keepers. If there were such women in town, and there always were, their trade was at least not plied openly. It said something about the town, too.
Merlin's ears had always been sharp, and his few years of living off his wits had taught him how to use his senses without appearing to do so. To look like you're watching and listening was never safe.
Two topics, he soon discovered, were spoken of seldom, but never with neutrality. Taxes, and Padlow – though neither Burton nor the reeve were present, and he wondered if that had anything to do with it. The two, it seemed, were nearly inseparable. And anything to do with Padlow, anything at all, interested Merlin greatly.
Tonight, it seemed, was a cursing night, and no one liked Padlow. Merlin grinned fiercely into his mug. He fit right in. Maybe there would be no punishment for Padlow's murder.
Merlin stayed in the corner until Percival led the last stumbling patron to the door. He'd kept his drinks to a minimum, as he could little afford excess, either physically or monetarily. Freya appeared from the kitchen, stifling a yawn behind the back of her hand, and began to straighten chairs and wipe tables with a rag. She glanced up as he rose to make his way upstairs, and smiled tentatively at him.
He hated her – how could she be married to a baby-killer? He turned his back and took the stairs two at a time.