“Stanchion still gives me a hard time about chasing after a girl half my age.” He shrugged his broad shoulders sheepishly. “For all that, I am still fond of her. These days she reminds me of my littlest sister more than anything.”
“How long have you known her?” I asked, curious.
“I wouldn’t say I really know her, lad. But I met her what, about two years back? Not that long, maybe a year and little change….” Deoch ran both of his hands through his blond hair and arched his back in a great stretch, the muscles in his arms straining against his shirt. Then he relaxed with an explosive sigh and looked out at the nearly empty courtyard. “The door won’t be busy for hours yet. Come give an old man an excuse to sit and have a drink?” He jerked his head in the direction of the bar.
I looked at Deoch: tall, muscular, and tan. “Old man? You’ve still got all your hair and your teeth, don’t you? What are you, thirty?”
“Nothing makes a man feel older than a young woman.” He laid a hand on my shoulder. “Come on, share a drink with me.” We made our way over to the long mahogany bar and he muttered as he looked over the bottles. “Beer dulls a memory, brand sets it burning, but wine is the best for a sore heart’s yearning.” He paused and turned to looked at me, his brow furrowed. “I can’t remember the rest of that. Can you?”
“Never heard it before,” I said. “But Teccam claims that out of all the spirits, only wine is suited to reminiscence. He said a good wine allows clarity and focus, while still allowing a bit of comforting coloration of the memory.”
“Fair enough,” he said, picking through the racks before drawing out a bottle and holding it up to a lamp, peering through it. “Let’s view her in a rosy light, shall we?” He grabbed two glasses and led us off to a secluded booth in the corner of the room.
“So you’ve known Denna for a while,” I prompted as he poured each of us a glass of pale red wine.
He slouched back against the wall. “Off and on. More off, honestly.”
“What was she like back then?”
Deoch spent several long moments pondering his answer, giving the question more serious consideration than I’d expected. He sipped his wine. “The same,” he said at last. “I suppose she was younger, but I can’t say she seems any older now. She always struck me as being older than her years.” He frowned. “Not old really, more…”
“Mature?” I suggested.
He shook his head. “No. I don’t know a good word for it. It’s like if you look at a great oak tree. You don’t appreciate it because it’s older than the other trees, or because it’s taller. It just has something that other younger trees don’t. Complexity, solidity, significance.” Deoch scowled, irritated. “Damn if that isn’t the worst comparison I’ve ever made.”
A smile broke onto my face. “It’s nice to see I’m not the only one who has trouble pinning her down with words.”
“She’s not much for being pinned down,” Deoch agreed and drank off the rest of his wine. He picked up the bottle and tapped the mouth of it lightly against my glass. I emptied it, and he poured again for both of us.
Deoch continued, “She was just as restless then, and wild. Just as pretty, prone to startle the eye and stutter the heart.” He shrugged again. “As I said, largely the same. Lovely voice, light of foot, quick of tongue, men’s adoration and women’s scorn in roughly equal amounts.”
“Scorn?” I asked.
Deoch looked at me as if he didn’t understand what I was asking. “Women hate Denna,” he said plainly, as if repeating something we both already knew.
“Hate her?” The thought baffled me. “Why?”
Deoch looked at me incredulously, then burst out laughing. “Good lord, you really don’t know anything about women, do you?” I would ordinarily have bristled at his comment, but Deoch was nothing but good natured. “Think of it. She’s pretty and charming. Men crowd round her like stags in rut.” He made a flippant gesture. “Women are bound to resent it.”
I remembered what Sim had said about Deoch not a span ago. He’s managed to get the most beautiful woman in the place again. It’s enough to make you hate a man. “I’ve always felt she was rather lonely,” I volunteered. “Maybe that’s why.”
Deoch nodded solemnly. “There’s truth to that. I never see her in the company of other womenfolk, and she has about as much luck with men as…” He paused, groping for a comparison. “As…damn.” He gave a frustrated sigh.
“Well, you know what they say: Finding the right analogy is as hard as…” I put on a thoughtful expression. “As hard as…” I made an inarticulate grasping gesture.
Deoch laughed and poured more wine for both of us. I began to relax. There is a sort of camaraderie that rarely exists except between men who have fought the same enemies and known the same women. “Did she tend to disappear back then, too?” I asked.
He nodded. “No warning, just suddenly gone. Sometimes for a span. Sometimes for months.”
“‘No fickleness in flight like that of wind or women’s fancy,’” I quoted. I meant it to be musing, but it came out bitter. “Do you have any guess as to why?”
“I’ve given some thought to that,” Deoch said philosophically. “In part I think it is her nature. It could be she simply has wandering blood.”
My irritation cooled a bit at his words. Back in my troupe, my father occasionally made us pull up stakes and leave a town despite the fact that we were welcome and the crowds were generous. Later, he would often explain his reasoning to me: a glare from the constable, too many fond sighs from the young wives in town….
But sometimes he had no reason. We Ruh are meant to travel, son. When my blood tells me to wander, I know enough to trust it.
“Her circumstances are probably responsible for most of it,” Deoch continued.
“Circumstances?” I asked, curious. She never talked of her past when we were together, and I was always careful not to press her. I knew what it was like, not wanting to talk too much about your past.
“Well, she doesn’t have any family or means of support. No long-standing friends able to help her out of a tight spot if the need arises.”
“I haven’t got any of those things either,” I groused, the wine making me a little surly.
“There’s more than a little difference there,” Deoch said with a hint of reproach. “A man has a great many opportunities to make his way in the world. You’ve found yourself a place at the University, and if you hadn’t you would still have options.” He looked at me with a knowing eye. “What options are available to a young, pretty girl with no family? No dowry? No home?”
He began to hold up fingers. “There’s begging and whoring. Or being some lord’s mistress, which is a different slice of the same loaf. And we know our Denna doesn’t have it in her to be a kept woman or someone’s dox.”
“There’s other work to be had,” I said holding up fingers of my own. “Seamstress, weaver, serving girl…”