“And plenty who won’t thank him.”
“Plenty who curse him, eh, Ghost-Killer? How many curses fly down the roads with you? Is that what keeps you looking young?”
“You were lamed by a malediction, isn’t that so?”
“No. Not that way. One of his victims stuck a claw in him at the gate out. He hasn’t aged since then.”
All around the spinning currents of these unanswered sallies, the room grew quieter and quieter. Dro heard the singing fade out, but the music went out too. He did not look about, just waited for the cue that must inevitably come. He finished what he wanted of his meal, and was drinking the last stinging mouthful from his cup when the cue dropped into the pool.
“Well, you’ve had a wasted journey to this place, Parl Dro. We haven’t any deadalive here.”
“Oh, but you’re wrong,” he said, and they jumped at his immaculate voice, which had been silent such a while. “Half a mile back along the road. The leaning house with the stone tower.”
He could have portioned the silence with the boy’s meat knife after he said that. It was not exactly that they knew and had been withholding it from him, more that they had suspected, and the confirmation chilled them. Of course, there was no need to tell them it had been another place he was making for altogether, that this was an unscheduled task.
The first of the men who had baa-ed, said very low, “He means the Soban house.”
Another of the men added, “That’s Ciddey’s house. There’s nothing there. Except poverty, a little kiss of madness.”
The boy in the leather apron was at Dro’s shoulder, leaning to refill Dro’s cup. Dro put his hand over the cup. The boy poured words instead.
“The Sobans were the masters here five years ago. Old Soban and his two daughters. But they lost their money and the village bought the land.”
“They lost their money because the father drank it. He was drinking it before Ciddey was old enough to bite.”
“Then he’d sell things,” said the first man. “Botched-up rubbish—ridiculous stuff.”
“There was a wonderful thing, supposed to come from some foreign place, wasn’t there? And it was just a couple of old scythes welded together. He’d get the smith to help him, Soban would. The carpenter, the mason. Everyone—”
“Someone told me,” said another of the men, “he sold Ciddey’s baby teeth as a charm necklace.”
“That’s crazy.”
“Ciddey’s crazy too. Pity, because she’s nice-looking enough. We leave her to herself, for old time’s sake. She lives alone in that house.”
“Not quite alone,” said Dro.
“The father drank himself into the graveyard years before,” the first man said. “Do you mean him?”
“I don’t think so.”
“There was a story,” said the first man. “The girls played about with herbs. Witch charms, poisons maybe. They got sick of the father drinking and... saw to him.”
“And that’s a lie,” said someone.
Dro was aware of the singing group detaching itself from the hearth and swarming over. The minstrel who had played the exquisite music was beginning to appear in fragments, now a threadbare red sleeve, now a dirty green sleeve, now a dark gold head and a long nose, between the shoulders and gesticulations of the crowd.
They were excited, and nervous. An event was happening in the midst of uneventfulness. The musician, staying clear, carefully keeping his head down over retuning the peculiar instrument beside the spits, showed a desire to remain uninvolved, and thereby a derivation not of this village.
“There was the second daughter,” someone said finally, just behind Dro’s left ear.
“Ciddey’s sister? Nothing funny there.”
“Yes, there was. Didn’t Cilny Soban run off and drown herself in the stream the north side of the mountain? Not exactly what I’d call normal.”