by Holly Lisle
The tabletop had been the masterwork of a genius—Ry wondered how the captain could bear to set her plate on top of it.
Nor was the table the only thing in the room to catch the eye. Panels of pale gold raw silk and panels of deep carved black velvet alternated along the walls and a deep, plush rug of amazing softness and intricate design covered the floor, its black mazes, gold background, and red accents perfectly harmonizing with the silk and velvet wall coverings. The ceiling boasted a central light fixture that was clearly of solid gold, with the light itself of Ancients’ make—a coldlamp that would prevent any use of open flame in this tiny mirror of palatial splendor. The pale cypress ceiling glowed with hand waxing and made the room seem both larger and more subdued. Ivory silk reclining couches in the Strithian style flanked the walls, the perfect final touch.
Opulence. Decadence. Power. The room spoke of all of them—and even, Ry thought, of good taste, something he hadn’t noted in the rest of the ship’s decoration.
“Please be seated,” Katanapalita said, still speaking in Tagata. Ry noted that she had removed her shoes, too, and had replaced them with little satin slippers. She handed a pair of soft black doeskin slippers to each man and bowed her retreat. “I shall tell the captain that you have arrived. And while you await her, if there is anything I could bring you, please don’t hesitate to ask.”
“We await your captain’s pleasure,” Ry said, and took a seat on one of the couches.
Katanapalita left them with another bow, closing the door behind her.
“She didn’t ask us to leave our swords outside,” Jaim said.
Yanth snorted. “Or to bond them.”
“She seemed quite charming.”
“A bit old for my tastes.” Yanth shrugged. “But nice enough, and certainly taken with you—you and that Wilhene jabber of yours.”
Jaim gave Yanth an exasperated look. “Must every woman you see first pass through the filter of whether or not you want to bed her before you can decide on her other qualities?”
“What other qualities does a woman need to have?” Yanth ran his finger along the tabletop and raised an eyebrow. “It’s the first thing you think, too, Jaim—you’ve simply spent so many years hiding the fact from yourself that you don’t notice it anymore.”
“And now you know what I think.”
“I know what any man thinks.” He waved a thumb in Ry’s direction. “He’ll tell you. Pretending you’re some fine, civilized exception to the rule doesn’t make you better. It just makes you silly. Isn’t that so, Ry?”
Ry was looking around the room, only half-listening to this latest incarnation of their oldest argument. With senses sharpened to the aching point by his increasing nearness to Shift, he smelled fresh air and felt its movement over his skin even after the door was closed, but sitting where he was, he could see no place where it might originate. He suspected, too, that the three of them were being watched; he felt the little burr of tension that raised the hair on the back of his neck and on his arms, though he could hear nothing that would help him locate any watchers.
He rose and walked to the table, saying, “I suppose it’s the first thing that most men think. I can’t say all.” He didn’t look directly at either of his friends, but he could see them plainly from the corners of his eyes. They had taken positions on two of the other couches; Yanth struck a casual pose, leaning back against the couch’s headrest-arm, with one slippered foot on the couch and the other trailing on the floor. He appeared to be completely relaxed, but his right hand rested near the hilt of his sword, and Ry had seen him leap from that pose to full fight before. Jaim, on his couch, sat with both feet on the ground, back stiff, hands on lap. He looked the part of a yokel out of his element, and that was as much a pose as Yanth’s posturing.
“But isn’t it the first thing you think?”
“Of course.”
“There. You see?”
Ry ran his hands over the tabletop and said, “This is beautiful workmanship,” all the while following the scent of that fresh air.
Yes. The back wall, the central carved velvet panel. He didn’t look at it directly, but he’d bet his life that no wooden wall lay behind that panel—that it was, if not a passageway through which fighters could move with ease, at least a niche into which a single spy could drop from the deck above.
He smelled nothing that would tell him a spy already hid there, and he heard nothing out of place. But his senses, refined though they were, were not perfect. And the crawling skin on the back of his neck suggested that he and his men were being watched.
From the known hallway, a chorus of tiny bells jingling, and the light tread of several pairs of feet.
The door opened, and all three men stood and turned to face it.
Katanapalita came first, bowing again in greeting. She stepped to the side and said, “I present Captain Rrru-eeth Y’tallin, Princess of the Jerrpu of Tarrajanta-Kevalta, and her first concubine, Greten Kastawoehr.”
Ry returned her bow and said, “I am Ry dem Arin, and these are my friends and colleagues, Jaim dem Naore, and Yanth dem Fanthard.”
The captain, dressed gorgeously in fitted red silk tunic and breeches and soft black calf-high suede-soled boots, was the iridescent-skinned creature they had seen in the inn eating with the humans and the Keshi Scarred. She smiled and said, “Sonderrans by name, with Calimekkan accents and the faces and bearings of those Family-born. What unusual birds you are who have flown into my nest. Greten brought you my gifts, I trust?”
Greten bowed and looked directly into Ry’s eyes, her expression one of both challenge and seduction. The bells sewn to the hem of her nearly transparent silk dress jingled softly.
Ry looked from captain to concubine and back, and without a word held out his right hand—the ring adorned his index finger.
Rrru-eeth smiled more broadly this time, revealing small, pointed, perfectly white teeth. “And the other gifts?”
“Those as well, though I could not begin to guess their meaning.” He held out his left hand and displayed the pearl, the tree, the coin, and the little box. “My gratitude—they are exquisite—and they were presented exquisitely.” He bowed slightly in the Calimekkan fashion and gave both Rrru-eeth and her concubine Greten a warm smile.
He had a hard time reading Rrru-eeth’s face—its configuration was nearly human, but her expressions were something other. He had an easier time reading her scent. She was excited, aroused, even . . . triumphant. He wondered who she thought he was; he wondered what she hoped to get from him. And he wondered how he could deliver her to the people she had betrayed.
Chapter 37
Rrru-eeth and Greten led them through every form of small talk as the dinner progressed; they discussed travel, trade, the weather, the odious condition of Heymar, and adventures they had experienced on the sea—though these last Ry suspected were carefully edited by each teller to reveal nothing of importance. By the time dessert arrived, Ry had noted that everyone who entered the room was a woman, and human, and that none of the women bore any sort of weapon. Each server wore a dress similar to the one worn by Greten, though without the bells—they could as easily have hidden a weapon on themselves when they were naked and fresh from the bath.
He and Jaim and Yanth found it easy to be charming and entertaining; but all of them remained cautious. They did no more than sip their wine, though both the captain and Greten drank freely. They always made sure their swords hung unencumbered at their sides, the hilts loose in their scabbards and easy to reach. They ate a food only after the captain or Greten had taken bites of it and swallowed them.
With the dessert behind them, the captain sighed. “You are fighters, ever wary, while we are women born to the arts of pleasure and love. Will you not relax just a bit and let us entertain you?”
Jaim, sipping cordial, inhaled it and choked, and emerald-green droplets sprayed from his nose. Yanth turned a startled laugh into a cough.
Ry, however, showed the wom
en—and the guards he suspected of watching from behind the secret panel—nothing but a faint smile. He said, “Captain Rrru-eeth, I find your offer both generous and tempting, but we are strangers to you, and you to us. We have no idea why you’ve invited us to dine with you, nor what you hope will come from this meeting. Please . . . tell me why you have given me such fine gifts, why you have welcomed me as if I were a prince, why you have sought the three of us out to be your guests for this evening.”
Rrru-eeth rose and walked to the back of the room, to stop in front of the panel that Ry suspected held the watcher he couldn’t hear or smell. She stood with her back to the table, so that he could see the way her braid hung down her back nearly to her knees before looping back up to tuck in a coil into her belt. From the back, the narrowness of her shoulders, the almost stemlike quality of her waist, and the rounded flare of her hips were evident. “You would find it so hard to believe that I saw you sitting at that table and wanted you?”
“I remember how I looked and how I smelled sitting at that table, and I would have to say that if you saw me then and found me desirable, I would have to question your taste.” He gestured at the room. “And from the appearance of this place, I would not dare to question that.”
She turned and laughed. “What a very pretty way to call me a liar.” Her pointed little teeth gleamed in the soft light. “And perhaps in a way I am, though not in the manner you might think.” She settled on one of the white couches and sighed. “Ah, my lovely fellow, my story is such a sad one. I loved a man once—the previous captain of this ship, in fact. And he loved me. We sailed together for long years, and in those long years I never knew a moment of sorrow. We found a city of the Ancients on the far shores of Novtierra together, and gathered unimaginable treasures, and when our holds were full to brimming, we sailed back toward Ibera, hoping to sell our riches. From them we hoped to acquire the wealth to buy an island we both loved, far from the world that would never have accepted our love. Ian had promised me he would give up the sea. But fate was . . . cruel. We sailed into a Wizards’ Circle, and the magic within it first becalmed us, then devoured many of those aboard the ship. He died trying to save the life of one not worthy to scrub the decks he walked on.”
A tiny tear crept from the corner of her eye and slipped down her jewellike cheek, and the quaver in her voice sounded heartfelt. Ry was almost impressed. “I’m sorry,” he said, managing to sound both sympathetic and genuine.
She smiled bravely, and her upper lip quivered the tiniest bit. Even the scent she gave off suggested absolute sincerity. Had he not known the truth, he would never have suspected her of lying.
“When I saw you sitting in the Long Comfort, I thought at first that I had seen a ghost. Then, that perhaps my eyes had deceived me, and I had not seen him devoured by the wizard-water. I tried to tell myself that he had, instead, been swept overboard and had somehow managed to survive, and had even more miraculously found his way across the vast expanse of the Bregian Ocean and into my waiting arms.” She looked down at her hands lying still and small in her lap, and she shook her head sadly. “And then I realized that you only look very like him, and I had to hurry away from there before I started to weep in front of my officers.” Her tiny smile when she glanced up at him offered to share a confidence with him. “That sort of thing is very bad for shipboard discipline.”
“It would be,” Ry agreed.
“So. I asked around about you—just a bit. You’ve been quiet about your reasons for being in this appalling mud hole. Very circumspect.”
He nodded but said nothing, and after a moment of uncomfortable silence, she smiled again. “And you’re now going to be circumspect with me.” Her head tipped to one side, birdlike, and her enormous black eyes blinked.
They both waited. He felt her nearing her actual objective, and he could not on his life imagine what she wanted of him and his men.
Again she smiled, and again spoke into the silence. “Since you will not tell me your troubles, I will leave them for later. You may someday wish to confide in me.” She shrugged. “You have clearly fallen upon hard times. You are no more Sonderran than I am. You are purely Calimekkan; you are, unless I miss my guess terribly, estranged from your Family, with no one in the world save these your two friends; and you are short of money and uncertain about the direction you should next take with your life.”
Ry laughed and said, “You could not be more correct, Parata. You are an exquisite judge of the truth.”
Rrru-eeth lay her head back on the curving arm of the couch and watched him through heavy-lidded eyes. “If I’m lucky, I will prove an equally good judge of character.”
Ry waited.
“I miss my lover and my friend. I know you aren’t him. But nothing I can do can bring him back, and you remind me of him so much that when I see you I almost can’t breathe. I want you to be my concubine.”
Ry thanked every god whose name he could recall in that instant for years of diplomatic training and years of practice in hiding what he was from the world; had he not had it, he would have burst out laughing. Or maybe he would have strangled her. Instead, he simply nodded. “A . . . fascinating offer, Parata.”
Her smile was intended to be seductive. “Isn’t it?” she asked. “Of course I will keep Greten—she and I do so enjoy each other’s company. And no doubt you would enjoy both of us. Together. You will want for nothing.” Her smile grew more suggestive. “Nothing.”
To Ry’s left, Yanth had grown so still he seemed not to breathe. But beneath the table his right foot, crossed over his left knee, bounced up and down so fast it was nothing but a blur in the corner of Ry’s eye. To Ry’s right, Jaim moved bits of crust across his dessert plate, staring downward as if he thought to read his future in those crumbs the way seers read the patterns of the leaves left in a glass of tea.
And Ry sat weighing all the meanings in her offer, and considering what he could say that would get him what he wanted. A trap lay in the room, in the puzzle she presented him, in her words and her actions—he could sense it in the sudden weight of the air in his lungs and the heaviness of the food that lay in his knotted gut and the way her eyes and Greten’s watched him while trying hard to appear not to. He needed to thread his way through the trap without springing it, and he could not see what it was or even where it lay.
At last he decided that all he could do was be the man he truly was. “I’m a freeman. And a fighter,” Ry said quietly. “As are my friends. We were not born to spend our days being bathed and perfumed and powdered, nor our nights primping and dancing and posturing for the entertainment of owners. I don’t think I could turn myself into a stud for pay. I won’t pretend we aren’t in trouble—we are. And I won’t pretend that an offer of a secure bed and secure pay doesn’t fall pleasantly on the ears. But not that way. My men and I could offer you our services as bodyguards,” he said. “We could protect you and your friends and servants.” He looked at her and shrugged slightly. “But, Captain, I cannot sell myself to you as your toy. I couldn’t guarantee that the, ah, toy would even work under such circumstances.”
She closed her eyes and sighed, but her smile grew broader. The feeling in the air lightened, and he sensed that somehow, that answer was the right one.
“You do sound so like him.” She sat up then, and the seductress fell away from her and left in her place a woman used to getting what she wanted. “He could never have been a woman’s plaything, either.” She rubbed her hands together briskly and said, “Please bring me the gifts that I sent to you.”
He removed the items from his pouch, and slipped the ring from his finger, and carried them to her. “You wish to have them back?” he asked, placing them in her hand.
She waved off the suggestion with a dismissive flick of her wrist. “I would not give a gift only to demand it back if I didn’t get my way. But let me tell you about these,” she said. “The little tree—it was something Ian had done for him when we were in the islands of the Devil’
s Trail. He said the tree was his Family’s crest. He claimed to be of Sabir birth, but his name was Ian Draclas, and though he owned this ship, which is of Sabir make, he never flew the Sabir flag.”
Ry said, “If he were one of the uvestos, that would not be so hard to understand.”
“Uvestos?”
“In the highest Families, children born illegitimately who are acknowledged by their Family parent but not by that parent’s legitimate mate still have certain Family rights. They cannot use the Family name, nor can they hold position within the Family or inherit title or land. But they can claim Family kinship, inherit and receive Family properties, and pass on these rights to their own children. These people and their sons and daughters are uvestos.”
“Ian never called himself such to me, but the story he told me would make him one of these.” She looked at Ry. “So that was him. Uvesto. Unlike him, you are truly Sabir, are you not?”
“Not anymore.”
She frowned a little. “You have the look, the bones, the carriage. And the crest on the hilt of your sword. You had it covered earlier today, but I see it clearly now. Forgive me for noticing, but I do recognize that. And if you ever were a Sabir, you still are. Blood is blood.”
