Keilin didn't even admit to himself that he was taking the desert slowly. It was secure. Its bleakness was clean. And here . . . Skyann's spirit roamed, and Keilin's spirits rose with it. To be honest, he didn't even notice the others' discomfort. Nor did it occur to him that anyone might be following them.
Thus, the first warning they had was the clinking of a horse's harness. It was midmorning, three days' ride out of Port Tinarana and they had come into the edges of Marou's old range. Around them the ochre hills already throbbed with heat. Sound carries a long way in the desert stillness . . . but they were close, too close. Keilin had made no attempt to hide their tracks up to this point, but now he led the camels across bare rock and over to a narrow gorge, hardly more than a crack in the red cliffs. Then, ghosting among the broken boulders on the high slopes he slipped back.
Down in the riverbed, following their tracks, were twenty-two horsemen. They'd stopped so that the tracker could examine the trail. Dust hung about them, and the figures shimmered in the heat. Keilin snaked closer. He could hear the voices. "Not more than a few minutes ahead, master. The dung is still moist," said the man who was squatting and examining the trail. He wore the red-and-yellow-striped tarboosh of a goatherd from the Thunder Gorge area of the Tinarana River. All the other men wore the sweat-stained uniforms of the Palace Guard.
"Damn good thing too. If we don't catch them soon we're out of water. They'd better have those jewels you promised us, Kemp," said one of the other riders, suspiciously.
"Believe me," the nasal tones washed away the years, "the Morkth will pay a king's ransom for them. I just wish I'd grabbed them back in the palace when I saw them. But the worm's eye was on me. He wanted to play his bloody games first, the fool."
"How do we know they're worth that much?" challenged another man.
"Actas, you can turn your bloody nag around and go back if you like! All I can tell you is that Vedas was prepared to pay five hundred in gold for that boy who had just one. How much do you think he was going to get for it?" Keilin had heard enough. He crossed the dry riverbed behind them, and then as they mounted again, sent an arrow winging silent to sprout from the tracker's neck. Then he took to his heels, jinking up the steep gully-ripped slope, and into the heat-splintered talus at the base of the red cliff.
A brief scramble up a rock chimney and he stood at the top, looking down on the heat-shivered figures still struggling after him. "Kemp!" he shouted, knowing his voice would carry up the valley to Cap and the others. "Do you know who I am, shitface?" The figures below were still. "I am the boy, the boy with the bull. I'm the one of your victims who got away, and I've the jewels here. Yah! Couldn't catch me then, can't catch me now. Kemp dogsbreath, you syphilitic offspring of a diseased camel, even the sows vomit when you screw them!"
An arrow struck upwards out of the valley. Keilin contemptuously watched it fall short. And pushed a rock shower down on them in return. "Yah! Useless bunch of turd brains! You couldn't catch a one-legged blind-drunk grandmother."
The chase was joined. They were pushing their horses, despite the heat, up the steep-sided valley to the left. Keilin watched with grim satisfaction and led off, away from the dry Syrah Valley, off into the twisted canyons of the badlands beyond.
By the time that the midday sun had turned the air in those ragged canyons into dragon's breath, the sixteen survivors had realized that their horses were just as useful as jellyfish out here. They set off up the sandstone ridge on foot, determined to surround him this time. After a futile hour, and losing another man to a deadfall, one of them had had enough. "We're not going to catch the little beggar, you know," he said. "He's just leading us a dance up here. Let's get back to the horses and get after the rest of them. The little hellion has shot my waterskin, and Actas's and yours, Kemp."
Kemp shook his fist at the mocking canyons. "You're right, I suppose. Get the others, and he'll be stuck out here alone. I'm damned thirsty. But sooner or later I'll get that little shit."
It took them hours to find their way back to where they'd left the wounded men and the horses. But the box canyon was empty. A note, written in dried red-brown fluid was pinned through the pile of empty waterskins with one of the swords of the wounded. It read: THIRSTY, DOG TURDS?
"We have to catch him now. He obviously knows where water is here. And I'm going to enjoy every minute of wringing it out of him." The nasal voice was thick with anger. "Now give us a drink, one of you."
Nobody moved. "I'll kill you if don't give me a drink!" Kemp screamed at the nearest man.
He got his drink. But an hour later, when he desperately needed another, he found that that fellow, and another six who still had waterskins, had slipped off, trying to backtrack the horses.
The moon was high and shining clear and cold through the desert night when Keilin walked quietly up to Beywulf, who was on watch.
"For crying out loud, Keil. I nearly split your bloody brisket. How's the pursuit? We heard you taunting them."
Keilin dropped down onto his haunches. "The pursuit is about eight miles away as the crow flies. Phew, I'm tired. Ol' Marou would have laughed at me, so unfit and water-fat. I had a couple of close shaves out there."
"Eight miles . . . are they still after you?"
"Yes. Some of them," said Keilin, taking a long pull from the waterskin.
"Well, that gives us about an hour. The animals are nicely rested anyway. I suppose I'd better rouse everyone. You rest for bit. I've left you a bite to eat."
"Don't wake anyone. They're eight miles off, as the crow flies. None of them are crows. Maybe thirty miles on foot, if they had the least idea where they were or where we were. And they don't have horses or water any more," said Keilin with grim finality. "Get some sleep old friend. The ones that were still trying to follow me were going in the wrong direction."
He stood up again. "I'm for bed. Sorry, but I won't bother with food tonight, Bey."
"How many of them . . ."
"Twenty-two."
"But Keil . . . some of them must still be following you? You haven't killed that many of them, surely?"
Keilin turned to face Beywulf, and in the moonlight his face was much older . . . almost a grim death's-head. "I didn't kill any of them. I darted a few with narca. It makes you lose your wits for a few days. I dropped a few rocks on some of them. Broke a few heads and limbs. Then I drove off their horses, and left them out there without water. Their own stupidity and the desert will kill them. You'll see the vultures tomorrow."
He turned and unrolled his bedding, and crawled into it. He saw that S'kith, lying in the rock shadows, was still awake too. He saw teeth reflect the moonlight. The shaven-headed man must be giving him one of his rare attempts at a smile. Somehow it comforted him.
"Cay."
He sighed and sat up. "Yes, Princess." She hadn't really spoken to him much since she had been liberated from the Patrician's torture chambers. He had a feeling she still blamed him for suggesting they come via Port Tinarana.
She looked at him, studying him. Even in the moonlight he could see the tiny wrinkles around her eyes as she peered at his face. Then she slapped him. "Don't you ever do that to me again. I . . . I've been so frightened."
He felt his throbbing cheek. "Don't worry, Princess, I really wouldn't have left you here."
"You idiot!" He ducked the second slap, and she stormed away, back to her own bedding.
The cool morning brought him more abuse. "Bey tells me you took on twenty-two men out there. And they're not coming back," Cap said, his voice hard.
For an answer Keilin pointed out into the desert landscape. In the clear, pale morning air a twist of black dots circled slowly. "More back that way," said Keilin quietly, pointing to a second flight of vultures.
This slap rocked him on his heels. "Don't ever get smart with me, boy. You think you're so bloody clever. Just remember, even here in this oven you call your own, Beywulf can track you by smell alone . . . And I can—and I will—kill you, if I have to," Cap said grimly. "Now, mount up and let's get out of here, before your big mouth proves to be wrong, again."
The day after, when the sun was starting to sink towards the west, they rounded a bare sheetrock bluff to confront a totally incongruous sight.
Cap put it into words for nearly all of them. "Just what the Hell is that?"
Keilin volunteered no reply.
It was a building, perched on a desert scree slope, sun-baked and torn by the desert storms but still very recognizably a town building. Some of the windows were still intact, as was the faded sign above the door.
A. DYMETRAS. APOTHECARY.
MEDICATIONS, ASSAYING, CHARMS,
CONTRACEPTIVE POTIONS, ETC.
"Must be a hell of a demand for contraceptive potions around these parts," Bey snorted, looking at the barren hillsides. With an elbow that nearly sent Keilin flying and a wink as broad as his face, he said to Shael, "You'd better pop in and get a few, dear. Never know when you might next need one, hey broad beam."
She sniffed. "My morals aren't like yours, ape." It was a sign that she was beginning to recover from her ordeal in the Patrician's cellar room.
Bey chuckled. "Talking of some people coming out of other people's cabins . . ."
Coming closer there were other pieces of the story littered about. Two clean-picked human skeletons, their bare bones showing the gnawing of tiny teeth, as well as the attack of something that could split femurs.
"Hyena," was the only comment that Keilin vouchsafed.
Then Cap noticed the Morkth flying disk. He almost leapt from the saddle and jogged across to it. Kicking aside the scattered pieces of a carapace, he examined the machine with knowledgable care. Keilin saw he wore his shark smile of triumph. "Did you kill it, boy?"
"No. My partner. He got killed too," Keilin answered shortly, not caring if it angered the tall man.
Instead, the answer seemed to please Cap. "Hmm. Didn't think you were up to that level of combat. Still, unusual and lucky for you it had only one of them on board. There doesn't seem to be anything wrong with it." He took a black clip-on unit off the control panel. "I must keep this in mind," he said, as he turned to the others who had dismounted and were exploring the shop. "Come on, you lot. Time is awasting here. Pack it in with your looting and let's move along." Still for the first time in days he seemed pleased with life, and even was polite about the baked goanna they had that evening. Which, once she was told what the steaming, succulent flesh was, was what Shael tried to be.
Usually they'd ridden into the dusk. It was more pleasant to travel then. But this evening they had stopped early, before sundown. Keilin had used the nearby water cave and the relative abundance of thorny scrub for the camels as an excuse. Actually they were near a spot called Broken-Chimney Rock. He was wrapped in memories, and they were within a mile of the place where he had burned Marou. He wanted to go and pay his respects in private. Also he was mighty sick of that camel. He was already thinking about how to part with it.
He retired from the fire early, took his bedroll and moved well back into the shadows.
He was so damn transparent in some ways. He'd said more since they'd come into the desert than he normally did in a month. Mostly talking about the plants and animals he knew and had hunted, or about geology. Geology! And even Cap had acknowledged he knew what he was talking about. There'd been a sort of joy about him. Shael didn't even think he'd realized he was talking mostly to her. Even his destruction of the pursuit had not seemed to shatter his mood.
But since they'd come to the ruin of that shop he'd gone quiet, shifted into the reticence which was his norm, when he wasn't being a teenager showing off to the girls. Funny. She'd almost forgotten his performances back when he'd met her. The realization that he had been trying to impress her as a member of the opposite sex, back then, struck her abruptly. She'd been pretty dense, hadn't she? All she needed to have done at that stage was pretend to be awed, to have had him eating out of her hand. Still . . . how was Cay to have known he was a lot more impressive when he wasn't trying to show off his tricks? A sharp insight pecked at her quick mind: Did the same apply to her? No. Couldn't be.
She watched him like a hawk that evening, refusing even to let the fact that he and Beywulf had tried to feed her overgrown lizard distract her. When he made his excuses for going to bed, she followed within a minute, ignoring Bey's comment, and Leyla's searching look.
When he left the camp she was just behind him.
He'd been distracted when he left camp. But not that distracted. She made more noise than the Tinarana Brass Band, for heaven's sake.
"Go back, Princess."
She stepped out from behind the rock where she'd been ineffectually skulking. "Cay. . . . I'm not sure of the way back. Can't I . . . come with you? Are you leaving us?"
"I made my promise, Princess. I'll see you to your father, if I can. I won't run off before that," he said dismissively.
"We could still just go on alone . . ." she said softly.
He shook his head. "I'm ashamed of you, Princess. They'd all die out here, without me to find them water. Now, I'll take you back to where you can see the fire."
She twined her fingers in his. "Can't I just come with you? You . . . seemed to be climbing into yourself for the last couple of hours. What's wrong?"
He sighed. "I'm just going to pay my respects. I'm going back to the place where I burned the body of the man who was like a father to me. My first real friend. He made me what I am."
He stood silent for a while, seemingly unaware that he still held her hand. "Back in Port T. people put flowers on the graves. Ol' Marou wouldn't want flowers. I'm taking him a piece of goanna and a bottle of beer. To remember."
She said nothing, just squeezed his hand. "Come," he said roughly. "Come and see the last resting place of the lord of the desert."
In the stark moonlight he led her up between the shadowed buttes and then into a narrow ravine, dark and cruel-edged in the sharp moonlight, and then out onto the naked sheetrock at the top. In the moonlight the tangled weave of sharp-edged valleys lay like some gargantuan mauled tapestry below them. "In the early morning, after a storm, you can see both the mountains and the sea from up here. The old man loved it," said Keilin, as Shael tried to catch her breath. He walked forward to a few charred remains of the cedar logs. He stood for a moment, with only the sound of her panting stirring the still, cold air. Then he set down the piece of goanna, and poured the beer onto the bare stones.
"Cheers, Marou, you ol' bastard."
After a long silence he turned to Shael. "He lived out here for seventy years at least. He couldn't read or write. He never had a bath in his life. Every year or so he'd go across the mountains, drink himself blind, stink out the whorehouse . . . and leave before morning. He could kill you in thirty ways . . . he could slip up to you without you even knowing he was there. He could keep alive on country so bare an ant would starve. He taught me nearly everything I know. He showed me things no king ever saw. He was rich. Richer than any other man I ever saw. Yet all he had was a knife, a spear and a few old bits and pieces. God, I miss him. I miss him."
The wind came breathing out of the night, and the stars and moon burned coldly on the little plateau. She looked at him, finding her own lower lip quivering. "He'd be proud of you, Cay."
"I've no doubt he'd kick my butt. Come on. He left me a legacy. I'm going to need a bit of it." They set off down and across the open mesa top. Shael was just beginning to wonder how much further she could go when they came to yet another ravine. This led them into an area of twisted and jumbled rock formations. Keilin found his way to a narrow spire of water-worn rock, broken halfway and leaning precariously against the next spike. There were a number of black cave maws which dribbled bats when disturbed. Keilin peered at the mouth of each in turn, and then had her scramble up the rotting tiers of sedimentary cheese-rock and into one of these dark places.
He lit a crude torch made of a pitch-pine knot with paraffin bush bound roughly around it. Then he went to the back of the cave and reached for the high shelf he knew should be there. It was. But it was also difficult to reach. "If I pick you up on my shoulders, will you look and see what's back there?" he asked.
She almost fell off her perch. Glowing out of the darkness in the flickering ruddy torchlight were hundreds and hundreds of deep-blue eyes. Some handsized. Some as big as her head. "What are they? Cay . . . there's just blue eyes . . . sort of soft glowy ones."
"Turquoise, you nit. Pass some down. Nothing too big to carry."
She handed down piece after piece. Then when Keilin thought it was enough she came down and helped him to put them into the sack he'd brought along.
"Is there much left?" he asked cheerfully.
"It just goes back and back, as far as I could see. I only passed down the pieces I could handle with one hand. This is really only the tiniest bit."
"Good," said Keilin. "Nice to know there is something left for a rainy day."
"I'd say," she said with conviction, "that there is enough for a rainy year. I don't know much about the value of this stuff, but I should think it must be worth a good few fortunes. I thought you said your `old man' only had a knife and a spear and few bits and pieces."
"Yeah, well. He said he didn't want to leave the desert. He said he had enough, and I guess he was right. Come on. We've got a long hike back, and I'd like to move off early tomorrow morning."
"Wondered whether you'd be coming back last night," Bey said calmly to Keilin as they prepared breakfast.
"You should have S'kith's level of faith in your friends, Bey. Mind you I don't know if you are a friend of mine. You won't come scorpion hunting with me, even though I've told you there's nothing quite like them for flavor."
Bey shook his head. "I'd love to, Keil. But you know how it is. You can do it, but me . . . people 'ud say the monkey genes were coming to the surface at last. Next thing they'd be feeding me bananas and presenting their heads for grooming. But if you want to go, and I don't mean scorpion hunting, youth, I owe you. I'll fail to find you after great effort."
Keilin smiled. "Give me a tin, Bey, I'll bring you a few choice fat stingy tails to try, without you having to demean yourself by squatting on the hillside, turning over rocks. Funny . . . that's the same shade of green the princess went. Look, Bey, I promised her I'd get her back to her dear papa. Then I'll run like hell. I gather he's not a very nice man. I'll rejoin you lot as soon as that is done." His face went deadly serious. "Nobody ever asked me why I've stayed. Maybe Cap believes his threats, but there's been lots of water, and lots of desert beyond it. I could have slipped off many times. The world is big and I'm small. But the truth is I'm hunting. Hunting Morkth. They killed Marou and I'm going to destroy them. The core sections will make sure they come to me and die. And I know now that getting our starship going again will hurt the Morkth worst of all."
It was Beywulf's turn to look serious. "The Tyrant is `not nice' like terminal VD is `not nice,' son. He's as cunning and vicious as a wolverine. And don't underestimate Cap. I'd rather take on the Tyrant, myself. Forget your vendetta against the Morkth. They can't breed. They lost their queen or we'd all be neck-deep in little chittering bugs by now. Another hundred to a hundred and fifty years and they'll all be dead anyhow."
"How do you know so much about them?" Keilin asked.
"Cap is the planet's Morkth expert. He's lived in Dublin Moss for hundreds of years. He doesn't give information out easily, but over the years it's sort of leaked out in dribs and drabs to our folk. He's always known he can just outlive them," said Beywulf.
"Then what persuaded him to start on this quest?" asked Keilin, suspicious.
"Now there you've got me. . . ."
The mountains stood cold now, in the mouth of winter. Keilin's tensions had begun to ease. Now all he had to worry about was a blizzard or two in the passes. He wondered if any of the others had realized how the party was watched through the fossicker's heartlands in the foothills. Only his wariness, and the turquoise-concha belt he wore proclaiming his status as an experienced local had stopped them from getting their throats cut. Those who lived along the final section of the way were really little more than bandits. They would allow anyone across from the east to spread out along the mountain/desert front, knowing that if they lived, and tried to return . . . Still, this high, with small drifts of snow in the shadows and wind lees, and a greasy-rag sky promising worse, they should be left in peace.
Shael shivered. "To think a few days ago I was so hot, every time I breathed out I was scared I'd set fire to this horrible animal. Still, the worst is over now, isn't it, Keilin?"
It was Bey who answered, however. "I smell snow. That gray sky is starting to look soft. How much longer to shelter . . . and how much higher?"
"Two passes. I was planning to overnight before the last neck. It was about three to four hours from there to Steyir . . . that's the nearest village, where the turquoise traders and the fossickers meet and cheat each other."
"Youth, if we spend tonight up here these beasts'll freeze, and we might be here for a month. There's really bad weather coming up. I say we stop skulking along and ride as fast as we can."
The lights of Steyir shone like a beacon through the wind-driven snow. For the last hour Keilin had seriously thought they weren't going to make it. It wasn't a mean, smelly village now. It was a haven of light and warmth. Especially warmth. As they'd mounted the last pass, the wind, funnelled by the towering snowcaps all around them, had suddenly come howling and whimpering at them like a wolf in pain. With it came the first tiny flakes. As the afternoon died, more snow had begun to fall. So had the temperature with the coming of darkness. Once over the pass and down to the treeline they'd had to follow Beywulf's nose, hunting fire smoke. Seeing the lights of the town, Keilin silently swore that he'd never belittle the sensitivity of that organ again. No wonder the man was such a master of food.
"S'truth. I never thought a measly village could look so good," Cap said. "Has it got an inn, boy, or do we knock on doors for shelter?" His voice suggested that he'd knock a few down if he didn't get it.
"There's a tavern . . . but it's just a bar really. Mostly the fossickers sleep over at Lucy's . . ." said Keilin, the cold in his ears and nose overriding his brain for a while.
"Well, I suppose their doss house will do, boy. Lead us there, and be quick about it."
The glow spreading up Keilin's face partly thawed his nose. "Er . . . I've another idea."
He led them off up a small lane to the house where he'd parted from Honest Clarence. It was more prosperous looking than most in the village, and set apart from them, with a view out into a deep valley. "This is one of the jewel buyers. He actually stays here in winter, whereas most of the others go south. Let me just go ahead and try my credit here. Um . . . Lucy's is a very dirty, cheap brothel."
He knocked.
"Who is it, at this time of night?" came a suspicious voice from inside.
"Keilin Skyann. I've just come over the pass, and brought some fine stones from the desert. You said you wanted to do business with me if I came back," said Keilin, trying to keep his teeth from chattering.
A peephole opened.
"Good Lord, boy! It is you!" The door was opened. "Come in. Come in. You're letting the cold in."
Keilin's sharp eyes noted the boar spear still rocking against the wall. "I've some friends back there, sir. Womenfolk too. Not fitting to take them to Lucy's . . . can we have some shelter?"
Honest Clarence looked him up and down. And then smiled and beckoned the others forward. "I wouldn't leave a dog out on a night like this, least of all Skyann's boy. Besides there's a story in this, an' maybe some good stones? Bring your beasts around the house. The stable door is on the slope. It leads under the house." He looked at the dejected animals with surprise. "Camels, eh! Haven't seen those since my young days down south! Hope they don't frighten the horses too badly."
Ten minutes later they were all sitting in front of a roaring fire, in a warm wood-panelled room soft with fine carpets from the far-off southlands. Clarence's wife, a short, plump little woman was having the time of her life, plying them with hot drinks and fussing over the arrangement of the chairs. She was city-born, and found the long winters here in this remote village gave her scant opportunity to do what she enjoyed most: entertaining. And those she saw during the summer were other gem buyers and occasional traders. This group was something different and exciting.
Soon she fussed off into the kitchen, and subtle appetizing smells began to emerge. Clarence produced a bottle of red wine. By the dust on its shoulders, it had waited some years for this. "With the diggers in the Margery, I drink that pigswill beer they serve. It's what the diggers want an' expect. But I'm a wine lover myself. An' seeing as you're the first digger to come to my house you can drink my tipple for a change."
He poured the wine. It was deep red tinged with a faint chestnut brown edging, heavy with a complex amalgam of the summer scents of berries and fungus-touched leather. A sigh of sheer contentment came from Beywulf's beatific face. "And to think I was regretting not spending the night at what my young friend described as `a cheap brothel.' Magnificent . . . fourteen years old . . . Shiraz Cabernet-Sauv blend . . . from the heavy granitic soils around southern Ormsburg I'd guess."
Clarence looked at him, startled, and then a vast smile broke across his face. "You, sir, are a marvel, and a connoisseur to boot. It's a pleasure to meet you. Most of the folk around here can describe a wine as red or white . . . with difficulty. Come. Tell me. How did you fall in with young Skyann? Last I saw he was goin' west. He never came back through Steyir. I'd have known."
Beywulf smiled tolerantly at him. "You talk to Cap and the rest about all that. I'm going to check out what your lady wife is doing to that ham and those"—his nose twitched—"dried chantrelles, while I enjoy this truly superb wine."
The succulent ham with its apricot glaze was a thing of yesteryear. So too was the thick golden-crusted clove-laced apple pie, and the big jug of steaming yellow custard. Several dusty wine bottles were unforgettable history too. Now they were facing a soft and creamy greeny-blue veined cheese with a life of its own, with smaller glasses of yet another of the gem buyer's vintages. Keilin hoped the flinty-flowery yellow stuff was a match for that truly evil cheese he was obliged from sheer politeness to finish. Clarence was saying to his wife for perhaps the thirty-third time, "From Port Tinarana! It's a bloody marvel. I don't know if you see the commercial possibilities. It's a good thing our boy's not here . . ."
He could have been telling her that the privy in the garden was haunted by fifteen-foot harpies and green pigs for what it was worth. Sometime during the evening she'd gathered that she was entertaining a Princess and a member of the Cru. Her happiness would have been complete if Mari could have had her sister in Polstra witness the dinner. And Ella had thought she was so grand when she had the mere burgomeister to tea . . .
Soon the party headed for the soft beds that had been made up for them in the loft and spare bedrooms. All except Keilin, and because of a soft pull on her hand as she turned to go, Shael. When the others were upstairs, Keilin tapped his host's shoulder, distracting him from his contemplation of the balloon glass and the firelight. "Eh! What's that? Sorry, young Skyann. Haven't made such a night of it for many a year. What can I do for you then?"
"You wanted to see some stones?" said Keilin quietly.
The buyer enjoyed fine wines, good company and dreams of grand ventures. But there was no doubt where his heart really lay. It was why he was here in this bleak mountain fastness and not in a major trading center, where wines and company would have been far more available. He sat up at once, set aside the glass, and then went to turn up the lamp that hung above the table. Without ceremony he pushed the remains of supper aside to make space for the turquoise.
Looking at the first rough nodule carefully, his voice was reverent. "Ol' Marou's pipe. Thank God. I thought it was lost with him." He caressed the roughness. "Of course the price is not what it should be . . ."
"Ol' Marou said I should deal with Deep-Pockets," said Keilin with a smile. He knew full well that Marou had sold his turquoise to Clarence and to Clarence's father for six decades. He also knew this had been Marou's threat for all those years.
The gem buyer was not to be distracted. He went on examining and sorting all sixty-three pieces. Finally he looked up, a little smile on his mouth. "What!? Y'don' trust Honest Clarence!" Then he smiled, and looked at his hands. "Tell you a little secret, but don't ever let it leak out. I'm the only game in town. Me, Deep-Pockets, Square-Deal, even True-Blue Jonny, we're all part of the same syndicate. Now . . . as to price. Who am I dickering with? You, or this young lady?"
"She's my partner."
"What?" said Shael, unprepared and feeling suddenly both hot and foolish.
Keilin spat on his palm and held out his hand. She looked startled and backed off a step.
"Why are you doing that?" she asked warily.
Clarence intervened. "If you want a partnership, girl, spit on your hand and shake. It's worth more than any piece of paper, on the other side of the mountains."
Cautiously she spat, sealed the sticky handclasp, and then wiped her hand rather gingerly on her dress.
"Now let's talk money. Let me try your new partner, Master Skyann," said the gem buyer, rubbing his hands.
It was a decision he regretted. She knew nothing of the value of turquoise, but Shael had been trained to read the smallest nuances of speech and gesture. She got far closer to the precise values than Keilin would have. Her hands sweated furiously through the first two transactions, but her brief glance at Keilin brought a nod of reassurance. Suddenly she knew she had the edge and, relaxing, she had the time of her life. At the end Clarence shook his head and stood up. "Phew! You've got yourself a damn fine partner there, young man. Next time I'll dicker with you, I think. Now, I owe you, let me see . . ." He totted up the figures, and then got up to go and fetch the money.
"Cay, what does this mean?" she held out the hand she'd spat on.
"It means you get half of the money," he said with a grin. "You could live for a couple of years on it, cautiously."
"But . . . why, Cay? I mean, it's yours. The old man left it to you, not me."
"There's plenty. And I noticed you don't have any spending money. You rely on the stuff Cap buys for you, and Leyla's castoffs. It's cold up here. You'll need some warm things. Also, it's kind of what Marou did for me. Besides, I'm going after the Morkth. I probably won't get a chance to spend too much. I'm going to give S'kith some, too."
She felt the hot prickle of tears behind her eyelids, her throat tighten. What right had he to know how it galled her to be always beholden? How had he known? Why was he doing this? Was he trying to buy her? Logic struggled with this idea. Hell. On the voyage from Port Lockry he had done everything to avoid her physical snares. It had been different since . . . since that cellar. She was scared of physical contact now. In a sudden flash of insight she realized that he did know just how she felt. He was an empathic psi. He probably didn't even know that he responded to other people's feelings . . . but that was what made him the person he was. And that was why he'd been so glad to be in the desert. She shrank within herself. No wonder he'd avoided her snares.
Then Clarence bustled in with a small sack of silver.
"By the way," he said, "there's a description out of Amphir circulating to all jewel buyers. If I didn't know you better, youngster, I'd say it was yours. They're offering a fair reward for news of this feller that looks rather like you."
He smiled at the alarm on Keilin's face. "I never saw anyone coming up from Amphir. Only an old friend coming over the mountains. And it'll be spring before Mari gets a chance to tell her big-mouthed sister. You'll be long gone by then. An' I wish them luck followin' you into the desert."
Keilin would have headed straight for bed, but Shael now touched his hand and gestured with a nod toward the fire. They walked back to the dying embers and waited until their understanding host had drained his glass and taken himself off to bed.
"Cay. How did you know you could trust him?" she asked finally, when the only sounds were those of the wind and the occasional crackle of the fire.
Keilin looked confused. "I don't know. But you can trust him . . . about big things I mean. Not bargaining. That's like a game to him."
"You feel other people's emotions. Especially," she swallowed, "if you're physically attracted to them."
"Not all the time. That . . . would be dreadful. Just sometimes . . . when the feelings are . . . too big. Really happy. Desperately sad. Anger too," he said quietly.
"You knew I was being raped in that cellar. That was why you came running."
He nodded, looking at the fire.
"It was the other one. Not the man I killed. The one I killed . . . just steadied the pentacle. That's when I managed to claw him. When he fell down, the man who . . . was busy with me nearly didn't even notice. I had to stop screaming so he would hear his disgusting master dying."
"He's dead, you know." There was no emotion in his voice.
"I know. You don't recover from tetrodotoxins. I just wish I had managed to scratch the other one, the Guard Commander, too."
"Not the Patrician . . . the man you scratched. The Guard Commander is dead. His name was Kemp." He saw recognition dart across her face.
"The one who followed us . . . followed you off into the desert," she said.
"Yes. He . . . assaulted me, too, long ago. When I was small and . . . pretty. He wasn't fussy about taking boys or girls . . . as long as there was pain," he said evenly. "He would have killed me, but I was lucky. I escaped to the desert. He's haunted my nightmares ever since. But he won't any more. I went back the next night to make absolutely sure. I found him, or what was left of him. He had located one of the few aquifers in the desert. He could hear water dripping. Only, it was inside the rock. He ripped all the flesh off his own fingers trying to get to it. Then the vultures came down and tore his liver out. By the blood trails, he was still alive while they did it. He was less than ten feet from a cistern full of cold, clear water when he died."
He held her small sobbing body for a long time in the soft firelight.