Yarro couldn’t bring himself to blame his family for sleeping in a bit—though he fully intended to, at the very least, castigate his son-in-law for waking late. But between that anakore that attacked and the slavers deciding all of a sudden to leave in the middle of the night—and making a horrible racket as they did so—nobody in the caravan got a good night’s sleep.
Still, they needed to get a move on. That was three attacks on the caravan since they went out, and Yarro was starting to understand why caravan masters charged so much for their services.
He really hoped that the next couple of days of the trip would go more smoothly. Luckily, they had rid themselves of the slaver and still had their two new bodyguards.
Yarro didn’t really understand those two. If Storvis and Mandred grieved for their comrade, they didn’t really show it. In fact, based on how they deflected any attempt to even mention the man, Yarro wondered if they had even liked him all that much.
He stepped out of the tent, looking at the large gap in the gathered carriages where the slaver had been. If nothing else, not having them around would allow them to move faster, since it was all canvas carriages that were left.
Looking around, he couldn’t spot either Storvis or Mandred. The former, he knew, had been injured by the anakore, and it was possible that Mandred was sleeping somewhere.
He did see T’Kari, the warrior who was on her way to Raam to meet up with her ranger lover. She was traveling with a group of bards, who were contracted to do work for one of the Nawab-caste families. She was practicing some physical moves with a certain elegance. Yarro watched as she kicked and punched and blocked—and then stumbled.
“Fripping sand,” she muttered.
Since she was pausing, Yarro took advantage to speak to her. “T’Kari, have you seen Mandred or Storvis?”
“Who?”
“The bodyguards?”
T’Kari sneered, “What, the thugs? Couldn’t even handle an anakore.”
Yarro said nothing, preferring to remain civil, but he fumed over her criticism, since he’d asked her to protect the caravan, but she refused unless Yarro paid a price he could not afford.
“Anyway,” she continued, “didn’t you hear? They left with the slavers.”
“What?” Yarro blinked a few times. “Why did they do that?”
Shrugging, T’Kari said, “That’s what Tirana told me. When Calbit decided to head out in the middle of the night, Tirana told me that the thugs were going with them. I guess they figured they could squeeze more out of them—or maybe they thought Urik was a better destination.”
“That doesn’t make any sense,” Yarro said. “Storvis told me he was going to meet his sister. They even made sure to have their names on the messenger’s roster.”
“You’re assuming he told you the truth,” T’Kari said with another sneer.
Then she went back to her exercises.
With a sigh, Yarro turned to wake his family up. He needed to get everyone started sooner if they were to be denied their protection.
CHAPTER
FIVE
I’ve got a bad feeling about this,” Feena Storvis said as she stood near the caravan station outside Raam.
Next to her, Zabaj gripped her small hand in his large one and said, “So you say.”
“Don’t patronize me, please, Zabaj?” Feena glowered up at her lover. “I can feel that something bad happened to Gan.”
The caravan station was a shed in front of a clearing just outside the city-state’s main border. Caravan masters held offices there, and the large space was handy for loading and unloading carriages. According to the posted bulletin from a messenger, a large caravan with someone named Yarro listed as the master was coming in. Both Feena’s brother Gan and his friend and partner Rol were on the list of travelers. It was the only caravan due in that day, and so the space was clear, with only a few others like Feena and Zabaj, waiting for the caravan to arrive. A few merchants were selling food and drink, and Feena was seriously considering the latter, as the red sun was beating down on them. Sweat started to drip into her eyes despite a linen head wrap around her curly blond locks.
Zabaj looked down at her. “Is this the Way, or sisterly worry?”
“Both.” Feena let out a long breath and used her free hand to adjust her head wrap. “Besides, did you notice? Fehrd wasn’t on the list of travelers.”
With a shrug, Zabaj said, “Maybe Fehrd got fed up with those two idiots and left ’em.”
Feena gently smacked the mul on his huge arm. “Stop that—my brother’s not an idiot, and Rol’s smarter than both of them.”
“Not so’s you’d notice,” Zabaj muttered.
That got Zabaj another smack, which prompted him to smile down at her with his sharpened teeth. He’d had them filed down to points during his time in the arena in Tyr, before Komir and Karalith managed to free him as part of a game they were running on the arena trainer.
Since then, he’d worked for the Serthlara Emporium as their strongman. He enjoyed using his half-breed might for more practical purposes.
When Feena had first met Zabaj, she’d assumed him to be just another arena thug with what little brains he had having been punched to mulch. His taciturn manner did nothing to change that feeling—but she also was able to sense something more to him.
Eventually, she was able to see the thoughtfulness behind his blunt, laconic manner.
It was all just impressions. Feena’s mind-magic was unfocused and not always reliable, but she generally trusted her instincts. She often wondered how her life would have been different if she had been able to properly study the Way, but such options were not available to one of her station.
However, she could trust what she felt more often than not—including Zabaj’s personality. Plus, she liked the way he smelled. He had a pleasant musk about him—one that caused many people to walk in the other direction, but which she found oddly enticing. And it intensified when he got sweaty.
Zabaj scratched his wide forehead with his free hand. His head was bald everywhere except right on the crown—there, he had grown his dark hair out and tied it into a topknot.
Then he squinted and pointed toward the wastes with his free hand. “I think that might be them.” Tiny dots on the horizon seemed to be coalescing into actual carriages and mounts as they grew larger.
Feena bit her lower lip. That close, she should have been able to feel Gan’s presence. But she felt nothing of him at all.
About twenty minutes later, a huge caravan of sand-caked canvas carriages that were carried by just-as-sand-caked crodlus ambled into the receiving area. Staff immediately started splashing the crodlus with buckets of water, and the people on the carriages were greeted by those who were waiting for them.
Feena didn’t see Gan or Rol—or, for that matter, Fehrd. More to the point, though, she still didn’t sense Gan.
Zabaj looked down at her with his big green eyes. “Maybe he’s sleeping or something. Or unconscious. He might’ve been hurt.”
“I hope so,” was all Feena would say, and even that was agonizing. The only way for Gan to be so close and Feena not sense him would be if he was so badly hurt as to be near death.
Either option didn’t bear thinking about.
After nearly half an hour of not seeing any of them, Zabaj let out a snort. “Let’s talk to somebody.”
Noticing a man with his hair in dark ringlets who was talking to the area supervisor, Feena said, “That’s probably the caravan master.”
The pair of them walked over, still hand in hand, and waited a respectful distance from the conversation until it ended. Once the supervisor broke off to take care of some other business, Feena approached the man in the ringlets.
“Excuse me, are you Yarro? The caravan master?”
The man frowned. “Well, I am the master of this caravan, but I don’t believe the title—” He shook his head. “Never mind. Yes, I am Yarro. May I help you?”
“My name is Feen
a Storvis—I was supposed to meet some people traveling with you—my brother, Gan Storvis, as well as Rol Mandred and Fehrd Anspah.”
Yarro’s eyes went wide. “Was that the other one’s name? Huh.” Again, he shook his head. “My apologies—they did travel with us on the Great Road up until the Dragon’s Bowl, then they continued on with the slavers to Urik.”
Zabaj barked a noise that made Yarro jump. Then he added: “Slavers? No.”
“Yes,” Yarro said, rather nervously.
“You’ll have to excuse my friend,” Feena said with a glare at Zabaj. “Please, tell me what happened.”
Yarro quickly—and with several furtive glances at Zabaj—told Feena about the caravan being menaced, the three men who saved them, one of whom died, the other two agreeing to protect the caravan the rest of the way to Raam.
“They said they were going to Raam?” Feena asked.
Yarro nodded. “In fact, your brother mentioned you specifically—not by name, but that he and Mandred were meeting with his sister. I guess the other one was too. They didn’t really talk about him much.”
That was typical of Gan and Rol—and of Fehrd, for that matter. If they were working a job, they said almost nothing personal. Feena was surprised that Gan even mentioned her at all, under those circumstances.
She also was stunned that Fehrd got himself killed by some Black Sands bandit. Yarro went on at great length about how fearsome the raiders were, but Gan, Rol, and Fehrd should have been able to take care of them in their sleep.
Then Yarro said, “And then they went off with the slavers.”
Zabaj’s grip on Feena’s hand tightened at that last word. “That’s not possible.”
Yarro swallowed audibly. “I’m telling you, that’s what happened.”
“No.” Zabaj was suddenly looming over Yarro.
Quickly, Feena said, “I’m sure that Rol and Gan did leave with the slavers—what isn’t possible is that they ‘went off’ with them. At least, willingly.”
“I—I can’t speak to that,” Yarro stammered. “I was asleep when it happened. I just know what I was told by one of the other people in the caravan.”
“Who?” Zabaj managed to cram considerable menace into that single syllable.
Frantically looking around the receiving area, Yarro’s eyes eventually settled on a woman wearing a brocade jacket. “Her—T’Kari. She told me that the two of them went off with the slavers.”
Zabaj immediately made a beeline for the woman, practically dragging Feena along. Turning back to Yarro as she half-walked, half-ran to keep up with the mul, Feena said a quick thank you to the caravan master.
Whatever response he might have made was lost to Zabaj’s determination to get to T’Kari.
“Slow down,” Feena cried.
At that, Zabaj did reduce his pace to one more suited to Feena’s shorter legs.
“Thank you,” she said. “Look, I know how you feel about slavers, but—”
“No,” Zabaj said very quietly, “you don’t.”
She moved in front of him, forcing him to stop walking, and reached up to cup his cheek in her hand. “Yes,” she whispered, “I do.”
They said nothing for a moment. Feena stared into Zabaj’s green eyes, and saw the sadness there, as well as the anger over what he went through in the arena.
Then Feena added, “And you and I both know that my brother would rather die than willingly go with slavers, and Rol wouldn’t be caught dead in the arena of his own free will. They had to have been kidnapped.”
“I know that your brother and Mandred are decent fighters. You really think they got kidnapped?”
“They’d lost Fehrd and fought an anakore. Gan was hurt, they were both tired—sure, it’s possible.”
Zabaj turned back to look at Yarro, who was consulting with a woman and several younger people—probably his family. “Assuming he told the truth.”
“He did.”
Zabaj turned back to Feena with a dubious expression.
She sighed loudly, her tiny nostrils flaring. “Look, I can’t always spot a lie, but someone like that? He was tired, had dozens of things on his mind—he didn’t have the wherewithal to lie. What he told is us what he believes happened.”
“Then let’s see what that woman believes happened.” Zabaj looked over Feena’s head at the woman in the brocade jacket. She was staring off at the entrance to the city.
“Excuse me,” Feena said as they approached her. “Are you T’Kari?”
“Unless you’re here to tell me where—” Then she looked at them. “No, you couldn’t be. Never mind, I’m not interested.”
“We need information,” Feena said insistently. “There were two men who protected your caravan. Yarro said that you saw them leave with the slavers?”
T’Kari shrugged. “Maybe. I don’t remember,” she muttered as she looked past them back at the city.
Zabaj stepped right into her line of sight and growled, “Try.”
She frowned. “Look, I don’t have time for this.”
Feena smiled. “Seems to me you have plenty of time, since whoever you’re waiting for hasn’t shown up yet. Until they do show up, you can answer a simple question, can’t you?”
Letting out a lengthy sigh, T’Kari said, “Look, I saw each of them go into the slaver carriage at different times, and they were both being physically supported by someone else when they went in—the first one by the slaver and his daughter, the other one just by the daughter about half an hour later. I got woken up by the slavers leaving in the middle of the damned night after that. Now, can I please get back to my life?”
Feena rolled her eyes. Zabaj just growled. Quickly, Feena said, “Thanks for your time,” and pulled on Zabaj’s arm so that they could walk away together.
“This is bad,” Feena said.
Zabaj nodded, his topknot waving back and forth. “Yes. We need to talk to the others.”
“Well, we need to get out of Raam before Belrik realizes we sold him a fake map. Urik’s as good a place as any to go, right?”
“We’re about to find out,” Zabaj said as they headed back to the bazaar.
Komir hated emporium meetings.
Generally, he preferred decisions to simply be made. Talking it over just gave him a headache. Take the Belrik game, for example. The nobleman screwed Lyd over, so it was simple: they would screw him back. They took a thousand gold and a hundred copper off him, gave Lyd a chance to start over, and the bastard would spend months digging in the wastes for a nonexistent treasure where—if the desert could be trusted—he’d get eaten by something with big teeth and chronic indigestion.
Regardless, forcing Komir to sit around the carriage with his sister, his parents, Feena, Zabaj, and Tricht’tha just meant they’d be going around and around and around for hours without actually doing anything. He was seated at the head of the carriage, near the reins of the crodlus. The mounts weren’t even hooked on yet—they were off at the stables being watered and fed before their journey to wherever they were going next. However, the carriage was packed and ready to go, awaiting only a decision as to what their destination was.
Komir liked it better when Shira and Torthal simply ran things. They told everyone what to do, and that was the end of it.
But they were aging, and they both thought it was important for Komir and Karalith to be able to make decisions for the emporium in the future.
Which meant that every decision had to be examined and discussed and dissected.
“It is possible that they went on purpose,” Tricht’tha said with a chitter of disapproval.
“No, it isn’t,” Zabaj said sternly. “They would never travel with a slaver.”
“They would if the slaver hired them,” Torthal said quietly. “That is what they do for a living. And from what you and Feena were told, they were already protecting the caravan.”
Karalith shook her head. “Because it was on the way to Raam in any case. Gan even mentioned Feena to the
caravan master. They were intending to come here.”
“Perhaps they’re running a game on the slavers,” Shira said. “I wouldn’t put it past either of those two to try something idiotic like that and leave Feena twisting in the sand.”
Komir finally spoke. “Why not just go to Urik and find out for ourselves? We have to go somewhere, why not there?”
“We’re far better off heading to Tyr,” Torthal said. “King Hamanu’s insane.”
Snorting, Komir asked, “Which makes him different from every other sorcerer-king how, exactly?”
Ignoring him, Torthal continued: “Besides, Belrik might have friends in Urik.”
Tricht’tha chittered something in Chachik, then said in Common: “It’ll be weeks before he even realizes he’s been gamed.”
“You hope,” Zabaj said.
The thri-kreen glowered at the mul. “I know.”
“Really? How?”
Komir smiled. He knew where Zabaj was going with this.
“I’ve been in this hunt for half my life,” Tricht’tha said haughtily. That much was true—by the standards of the short-lived thri-kreen, she was an old hand at the game, having been involved with the emporium for four years. “I know how the prey thinks, and this one bought into it. He won’t even consider the map to be false until he’s been out digging for weeks.”
Zabaj smirked. “Exactly.”
With a grateful look at her lover, Feena said, “I know my brother, Tricht’tha—as well as you know the game. And I’m telling you, he and Rol are prisoners of those slavers.”
Torthal scowled. “They’re not close enough for your mind-magic to work.”
“It has nothing to do with that, Father,” Komir said before Feena could defend herself. “You’re always telling us to trust what we know. Well—Feena knows Gan. And so do I. If he agreed to meet Feena, he’d have tunneled through the sand to get here. I’m with her and Zabaj, they were kidnapped.”
“And so what if they were?” Tricht’tha spoke up again. “We’re not their keepers.”
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