“Believe so. Are you sure he won’t bite?”
“He?” The troll looked around. “Ah, it is Vaqana you are meaning. She. No, she will not bite.” He looked up. Several locals were watching their conversation, and not all of them looked particularly friendly. “She will not bite unless I am telling her, Bite,” the troll corrected himself.
Morgan ignored the offered hand and climbed slowly to his feet, just in case the wolf was not as committed to pacifism as her master. He noticed that he had not done up his clothing quite as well as he’d thought, and paused to remedy the situation, grateful he had not pissed himself completely at the unexpected sight of the white wolf. He felt quite sober now. Terror might have been the cause, but he told himself it was the cold wind. Living in such a chilly, gray place, it was a miracle these Rimmersgard folk ever chose to be sober.
Finished with the laces on his breeks, he regarded the troll and the grinning wolf. “Umm,” he managed at last. “Ah. I have to go back to my friends now.” He knew he should say something else, because his grandparents were bound to hear of the meeting, so he added “I give you good day,” with all the drunken articulation he could muster. But the little man would not stop staring at him. The troll’s eyes were brown and quite disturbingly intent.
“I was seeing you in the church earlier, when they spoke for Duke Isgrimnur,” Binabik said. “You had a look of sadness, was my thought. Were you knowing that good old man well?”
Oh, God save me, Morgan thought. He knows I’m drunk, and he’s forcing me to talk to him on purpose. “I never met the duke before the day he died,” he said. “No, once, I think, when I was a boy. He was big, and he had a loud voice.” Unlike the lie he had told about his father, this was true: Morgan had not accompanied his grandfather on his last trip north, and almost all his knowledge about the Duke of Elvritshalla came from his grandfather’s long and doubtless exaggerated stories.
Binabik’s smile was wider this time. “Loud voice, with certainty! Like a great ram bellowing at his rivals. But there was being more to Isgrimnur. Much more.”
“I don’t doubt it.” Morgan wanted only to escape back into the lamplit dark and the company of ordinary people—and ale. Why did everyone insist on talking to him about dead people today? “Still, I should find . . .”
“My family and I have been walking about the city in this evening, once the duke’s funeral was ended,” said Binabik. “Your grandmother the queen had worry that we would be abused by the people here, because for long years these folk and mine were being each other’s enemies, and still there are many Croohok—Rimmersmen—who are not liking to see trolls. But I like learning always, and seeing and doing is being the best way for that learning. Are you not thinking the same?”
“Huh? I suppose. Yes.” Morgan was a hair’s breadth from turning his back and going inside. “Yes, learning . . . is certainly good.”
“I am glad we have agreeing,” Binabik said, nodding and smiling. “Because here is coming my daughter Qina and Little Snenneq, her nukapik—her ‘betrothed,’ you would be saying. Qina has a weariness of the city now and would return to the place where we sleep, but Snenneq still has a desire to learn more of Rimmersgard ways. It would be a kindness for you to show him something of this place.”
“Show him . . . ?”
“Yes, Prince Morgan, this place where you and your friends are resting and eating would be something he would like, I think. Little Snenneq is loving to join in such pastimes, and is considered very skillful at singing, games, and contests.” Binabik must have seen the expression of horror on Morgan’s face, because he quickly added, “You are not to be fearing. Snenneq has coins of his own.”
“But . . .”
“Ah, and here they are coming to us now.” Binabik turned and waved to a pair of figures approaching through the narrow, night-dark street. Both were dressed in thick hide jackets and both seemed small to Morgan, although one was much smaller than the other—the troll’s daughter, he guessed: he could tell by the curve of her hips and an indefinable something in her round face that the smaller one was female.
Morgan had seen dwarfs in Erchester and occasionally the Hayholt, mostly with troops of traveling players, but trolls seemed to be different. They were stocky and short-legged, but otherwise their proportions were more like that of other folk. The troll’s daughter had a pretty face with almond eyes and smooth tan skin, and she was even shapely, as far as could be told under such heavy garments, but she stood no higher than Morgan’s own little sister Lillia. By contrast, the top of the young male troll’s thatch of black hair reached almost to Morgan’s breastbone.
“Ah, Qina my daughter, you are here!” said Binabik. “Come and greet Prince Morgan. And this fellow is being her friend Little Snenneq.”
“It does pleasure to meet you, Highness Morgan.” Qina crossed her arms before her chest in a gesture Morgan didn’t understand. Was she bowing, or did it mean something else? He was still dizzily full of juniper-scented ale and seemed to have missed his chance to flee, so he gave her a sickly smile and nodded and mumbled the sort of thing he did when he was talking to people he didn’t know but his grandparents were watching.
Little Snenneq did not look particularly awed to be meeting a prince of the High Royal Household, but crossed his arms the same way Qina had, bobbed his head like a quail, and announced, “Ah, of course. This is a momentous meeting.”
Morgan had no idea what that meant either. As Binabik spoke rapidly in the troll tongue to the new arrivals, the prince cast his eyes desperately toward the alehouse door, hoping one of his friends might come out to look for him. He felt a small, cool pressure on his hand and looked down to see that Qina had removed her glove and was squeezing the tips of his fingers. “Hmmmmm . . . ?” he said, rather helplessly.
“I taught to her the handclasp of friendship that you utku— ‘lowlanders’ as we say in Yiqanuc—are using,” Binabik explained.
“Friendship and thank you,” she said, still holding the end of his hand in her small, solid grip. “For showing to Little Snenneq more of this place. Because of my wearying now, it is kindness and you are showing to be a true primp.”
“Prince,” said Binabik gently.
“Prince,” said Qina, blushing a little and finally letting go of his hand. “You are a true prince.”
Escape impossible and all other resistance now thoroughly dismantled, Morgan could only wait as the young troll woman rubbed cheeks with her betrothed, then followed her father back down the long street in the direction of Elvritshalla Castle, the massive white wolf pacing beside them. Loiterers who might otherwise have been calling abuse at the trolls took one look at Vaqana and slipped away.
Morgan was not entirely certain what had just happened, but he was already wishing it hadn’t.
“And so we will entertain ourselves like true Rimmersgarders now, eh?” announced his new companion, his grin so wide it seemed to squeeze his eyes shut. “The prince and Little Snenneq! Bring out ale and stinking fish!” Then, as they made their way back inside, the troll suddenly said, “My someday father-in-law is a very good man.”
The prince did not reply. Most of the alehouse denizens had looked up when they pushed open the squeaking door, and many of them looked displeased by his new companion.
“Because I told him it was needed for you and I to meet,” the troll went on. “I am going to help you, you see.”
“Help me?” By the love of all the saints, Morgan wondered, how far back into this poxy place were his friends sitting? Surely he hadn’t traveled such a distance on the way out. “How are you going to help me?”
“As I told my father-in-law to-be, the Singing Man Binabik, I will help you to find your destiny, just as he was doing for your illustrious grandsire, the king Seoman.”
The prince made a firm decision to ignore everything this little moon-mad creature said from that point onward. Also, his grandfather’s tiny friend Binnywick had deliberately picked Morgan out for this suffering, and he would neither forget nor forgive.
Olveris was right—little people can’t be trusted.
“And who is your new companion?” asked Porto when Morgan finally discovered the table in the opposite dark corner from the one in which he’d been searching. The old knight squinted. “He has not the look of the Rimmersgarders I’ve seen. One of their country cousins from up north?”
“This is . . .” Morgan couldn’t precisely remember. “Snow-Neck. Or is it No-Neck . . .?”
“Snenneq,” the troll said. “Little Snenneq, they are calling me, because it was also the name of my father and grandfather.”