"Aye," Avery said, sipping from his own glass. " 'Tis the honey that makes it so fearsome. Eh, Dave?"
The deputy with (he monocle smiled from his place by the notice-hoard. "1 believe so, but Judy don't like to say. She had the recipe from her mother."
"Aye, we must remember the faces of our mothers, too, so we must." Sheriff Avery looked sentimental for a moment, but Roland had an idea that the face of his mother was the furthest thing from the big man's mind just then. He turned to Alain, and sentiment was replaced by a surprising shrewdness.
"Ye're wondering about the ice, Master Stockworth."
Alain started. "Well, I..."
"Ye expected no such amenity in a backwater like Hambry, I'll warrant," Avery said, and although there was a joshing quality on top of his voice, Roland thought there was something else entirely underneath.
He doesn't like us. He doesn't like what he thinks of as our "city ways. " He hasn't known us long enough to know what kind of ways we have, if any at all, but already he doesn't like them. He thinks we're a trio of snotnoses; that we see him and everyone else here as country bumpkins.
"Not just Hambry," Alain said quietly. "Ice is as rare in the Inner Arc these days as anywhere else, Sheriff Avery. When I grew up, I saw it mostly as a special treat at birthday parties and such."
"There was always ice on Glowing Day," Cuthbert put in. He spoke with very un-Cuthbertian quiet. "Except for the fireworks, that's what we liked about it most."
"Is that so, is that so," Sheriff Avery said in an amazed, wonders-will-never-cease tone. Avery perhaps didn't like them riding in like this, didn't like having to take up what he would probably call "half the damn morning" with them; he didn't like their clothes, their fancy identification papers, their accents, or their youth. Least of all their youth. Roland could understand all that, but wondered if it was the whole story. If there was something else going on here, what was it?
"There's a gas-fired refrigerator and stove in the Town Gathering Hall," Avery said. "Both work. There's plenty of earth-gas out at Citgo - that's the oil patch east of town. Yer passed it on yer way in, I wot."
They nodded.
"Stove's nobbut a curiosity these days - a history lesson for the schoolchildren - but the refrigerator comes in handy, so it does." Avery held up his glass and looked through the side. " 'Specially in summer."
He sipped some tea, smacked his lips, and smiled at Alain, "You see? No mystery."
"I'm surprised you haven't found use for the oil," Roland said. "No generators in town, Sheriff?"
"Aye, there be four or five," Avery said. "The biggest is out at Francis Lengyll's Rocking B ranch, and I recall when it useter run. It's HONDA. Do ye kennit that name, boys? HONDA?"
"I've seen it once or twice," Roland said, "on old motor-driven bicycles."
"Aye? In any case, none of the generators will run on the oil from the Citgo patch. Tis too thick. Tarry goo, is all. We have no refineries here."
"I see," Alain said. "In any case, ice in summer's a treat. However it comes to the glass." He let one of the chunks slip into his mouth, and crunched it between his teeth.
Avery looked at him a moment longer, as if to make sure the subject was closed, then switched his gaze back to Roland. His fat face was once more radiant with his broad, untrustworthy smile.
"Mayor Thorin has asked me to extend ye his very best greetings, and convey his regrets for not bein here today - very busy is our Lord Mayor, very busy indeed. But he's laid on a dinner-party at Mayor's House tomorrow evening - seven o' the clock for most folk, eight for you young fellows ... so you can make a bit of an entrance, I imagine, add a touch o' drama, like. And I need not tell such as yourselves, who've probably attended more such parties than I've had hot dinners, that it would be best to arrive pretty much on the dot."
"Is it fancy-dress?" Cuthbert asked uneasily. "Because we've come a long way, almost four hundred wheels, and we didn't pack formal wear and sashes, none of us."
Avery was chuckling - more honestly this time, Roland thought, perhaps because he felt "Arthur" had displayed a streak of unsophistication and insecurity. "Nay, young master, Thorin understands ye've come to do a job - next door to workin cowboys, ye be! 'Ware they don't have ye out draggin nets in the bay next!"
From the comer, Dave - the deputy with the monocle - honked unexpected laughter. Perhaps it was the sort of joke you had to be local to understand, Roland thought.
"Wear the best ye have, and ye'll be fine. There'll be no one there in sashes, in any case - that's not how things are done in Hambry." Again