“No.” Turga was curt but not angry. It had crossed his own mind, if not for Rhus then for any, Axe-Wielder forfend, he might turn out to have poisoned. “You know as well as I—there are a hundred different so-called remedies for the Gray Veil, and not one is worth the time it takes to tell about it. Rhus is on his own.”
Still, it was an intriguing group. If he could buy up some jewelry, turn it around at a profit in Baskir, that might begin to make up for some of his recent losses. And the girl, yes, she sounded very promising indeed. But not for tonight. Tonight he wanted a sleeping draught, and he would not risk it with strangers in the compound.
“Tell them to camp outside the walls for tonight. I will see them tomorrow.”
CHAPTER TWENTY
GABRIELLE WATCHED ANXIOUSLY as Yolenka made their case to the guard. Two days’ dusty travel had only increased her sense of urgency. They were so close...and something was wrong, something beyond being held prisoner. She had to get to the children.
Dominic, beside her, shifted impatiently and glowered as the guard peered out at him from behind the heavy gate. It was almost more than he could endure, to stand outside politely knowing that his children were somewhere inside the clay-brick enclosure. His groan, when the guard’s head abruptly withdrew and the gate thudded shut, carried to Yolenka.
“Shhh!” She frowned at him. “He gets bigger boss is all. Is stronghold here, not village market. Hard to get in. Is time now for patience.”
Poor Dom, thought Gabrielle. His patience is already worn to a frazzle. Féolan must have sensed it as well, for he eased over and laid a steadying hand on Dominic’s shoulder. Dominic blew out air and gave a curt nod.
Yolenka’s sharp look softened. “Is hard, I know. Is good look, though, that frown. Like jealous husband.” Her teasing smile lightened their mood.
“Yolenka.” Derkh had kept his eyes trained on the gate. “He’s back.”
The man who came out to inspect them looked strong as a draft horse and only slightly smaller. His head, shaved or naturally bald, gleamed golden in the slanting rays of the sun. He examined each of them carefully as Yolenka gestured, evidently talking up their various and fantastic skills. Finally she gazed up from under her eyelids at him, flashed her teeth, raised her arms above her head and began to dance.
Only a few steps, a snatch of hummed song, a couple of languid undulations, but Gabrielle saw the effect it had. The man’s interest ratcheted up immediately. More snatches of conversation, and the door was shut again.
“He ask Turga.” Yolenka smiled. “We pass his main man. Is good.”
MATTHIEU WATCHED HIS sister eat. He didn’t need his aunt Gabrielle’s skills to notice that she lacked gusto, and not just because grief and shock had taken away her appetite.
He noted how she paused before swallowing and avoided the bread crusts and the meat. He had done exactly that just last year, when he had tonsillitis. He watched for the fleeting wince as the food went down—and didn’t have to wait long.
“Maddy.”
Her eyes when she looked up to him were dull. Well, she’d been crying for a long time, so that might be why. But he didn’t like how white her face looked.
“Does your throat hurt?”
She nodded. “And my head.” She attempted a smile. “I probably just wore myself out.”
Matthieu reached over and touched her forehead gingerly. It was warm and a bit damp.
“I think you have a fever.”
Madeleine took another careful sip of soup and set the cup on the floor. Her fingers trembled against the side of the cup.
“Don’t worry, Matthieu.” She slumped back into her blanket. “I just need to sleep. I’m sure I’ll be fine by morning.”
He watched her for a long time, wishing Gabrielle were there, wishing he knew what to do. Wondering if there was anyone in the fortress who would help, and if he could even make them understand what was needed. I’ll wait until tomorrow, he thought. If Maddy’s any worse tomorrow, I’ll holler and try to make them help her.
YOLENKA WAS UNPERTURBED at being shut out for the night. Dominic, frantic for his children and unused to taking orders, was livid.
Derkh, who had said very little since Rath Turga had loomed into sight, spoke up now.
“This is what it’s like all over Greffier. You don’t enter towns at night. You don’t see important people without going through channels. This guy is a warlord—he has a lot of enemies; he has to be careful. Honestly, Dominic, I think if we get in tomorrow, we’re doing pretty well.”
“What are we supposed to do then—just sit here and mumble our tongues?” Dominic’s hand clenched again around the hilt of his sword.
“You are joking, yes?” Yolenka was already halfway inside the wagon, rummaging in the storage bins. She grunted as she hauled out Derkh’s anvil and let it thud to the ground. She unhooked the portable brazier hanging on the outside of the wagon and flipped down the horizontal wooden shutter at the back and propped it up with a board to make a little table.
She straightened and swept her eyes around the little group like a general about to address his troops.
“We are open for business.”
Gabrielle stared at her. They all did. Yolenka didn’t actually expect her to peddle remedies and charms when her niece and nephew were in who knew what straits?
Yolenka huffed and flapped her hands at them. “Is work time! You think I am not real? We do good trade tonight, or Turga will know it.”
She clambered over the propped shutter and into the wagon. Untying the canvas curtain, she addressed them once more. “I put on costume. Derkh starts up fire. Then we set up remedies on table here. You—she pointed at Féolan—start playing, let people know we are here.”
The curtain flapped shut.
DERKH HAMMERED THE last ring closed, doused it in his bucket and gave all the fittings a final check before handing the ox-yoke back to the silent farmer who stood waiting beside him. Yolenka, dazzling in her bright silks and paint, had already negotiated the price of Derkh’s repair and insisted on payment in advance.
She was tireless, everywhere at once: translating, haggling, changing money. Whenever a cluster of men appeared at their camp through the fortress gates or from the surrounding countryside, she summoned Féolan to play and mesmerized them with the sultry undulating dance that made Derkh feel as though the coals in his smith’s brazier had fanned into sudden flame deep within his own body. He hated that she did this for strangers, hated to see his own feelings mirrored in their rough faces. But she only laughed as she collected their coins and tucked them provocatively into her waist or between her breasts. She bent down to whisper in Derkh’s ear as she passed. “This is just fool playing. I save real dancing for boss-man, tomorrow.”
For me! Derkh wanted to shout. Save the real dancing for me! But he said nothing, bent his arm to his task and brought his mind back to their purpose. His feelings for Yolenka would have to wait.
Amazing, it was, how customers had appeared out of nowhere once they had set up shop. Word must have spread that day as they traveled through villages and farms, the people just waiting for them to set down. Their first visitor had slipped from within the gates of Rath Turga minutes after Féolan began to play—not the rough pirate Derkh had expected, but a worried mother with a coughing child. Gabrielle had had a steady trickle of patients ever since. Derkh hoped she wouldn’t have any serious cases—he knew how hard she would find it to turn anyone away, but they couldn’t afford to let her exhaust herself now. That thought had barely been formed when his memory protested: She exhausted herself for you, when you were an enemy soldier. Derkh snorted, impatient with his own thoughts, and turned to the leaky bucket his next customer presented. Just as well I’m a tradesman, not a judge, he thought.
And so the strange night passed, all of them busy except for Dominic, who was relegated to security and smith’s helper. The poor guy, Derkh thought, watching him pace the perimeter of their little camp yet
again. He had never seen a man more in need of action.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
TURGA SLEPT LATE AND TOOK HIS TIME with his food and his toilet. He was much restored, the gloom of the previous night dispelled by his usual alert confidence. By early afternoon, when he called for an audience with the peddlers, he was ready to relish both profitable trade and a beautiful woman.
Zhirak had not exaggerated about the woman. She was glorious, pacing into his chamber like a tawny panther.
The others paled by comparison, but still he observed them closely as they were introduced. The husband seemed rather on edge—one would be, he supposed, married to a woman who made men pant over her like dogs for a living. He didn’t envy the fellow his role. It was the musician who caught his eye—Zhirak’s description had not prepared him for the man’s unusual presence. Brightness, you could almost call it. Burning with an artist’s vision, no doubt, Turga thought with dry amusement. Well, he wasn’t here to admire pretty eyes, not on a man at least.
“I’m told you are a fine dancer,” he said. To his surprise, the woman who had introduced herself as Yolenka laughed scornfully.
“Your men said that?” Her golden eyes flashed at him from under dark eyelashes, teasing and intimate. Like he was an old friend, not a feared warlord. Her voice lowered.
“I gave them garbage—dance you can see in any cheap tavern. Just a sniff from the wine bottle, yes?”
She had come closer to him as she spoke, floated maybe for he hadn’t noticed her take a step. He could smell the scent on her hair, see the black paint that accentuated the line of her eyes. She flashed white teeth at him.
“The wine I saved for you. I wanted to offer you a personal performance—just you in the audience, or you and your invited guests. Both, if you like. Your choice, of course.”
As though just noticing her own forwardness, Yolenka offered an apologetic smile and returned to the others—giving him the opportunity to watch her shoulders and hips as she glided away. Mother of all, she was good. Her every breath was a performance. She spoke over her shoulder as she took her place with the others.
“It’s not home brew I offer. I was first dancer with Riko’s troupe. Perhaps you have heard of him?”
Turga had heard—he had seen the troupe perform. The dancers had been stunning, all of them.
He narrowed his eyes, suspicious of this new claim.
“Why did you leave?”
Yolenka shrugged, a languid ripple that was worlds away from any man’s version of the same gesture.
“I hurt my knee touring in the north of the Krylian lands. That’s where I met this lot. So I’ll admit right now—I can’t do a series of backflips and land on one leg. But,”—and again the eyes and teeth flashed at him—”everything else works just fine, I promise you.”
That business was soon concluded. Turga didn’t even haggle much over the price, or demand that she end her performance in his bed. Like all Tarzines, he held true artistry in high respect.
FÉOLAN FOUND IT HARD to follow Turga’s unfamiliar voice, but he was able to understand much of Yolenka’s end of the negotiation. He too saw the skill in her performance, but he also felt a twinge on Derkh’s behalf. He hoped he wouldn’t be asked to translate.
When they moved on to Derkh’s jewelry, however, Yolenka became all business. Turga noticed this with, Féolan thought, amused respect. Yolenka had kept the jewelry under wraps the night before, wanting to offer Turga the chance of an exclusive purchase. “Also, you don’t have so much,” she pointed out. “We save until we get inside.” Turga clearly liked the pieces, though Féolan gathered he was disappointed there weren’t more in gold. Rather heated negotiations followed, before Yolenka announced that Turga had commissioned gold ear pendants and bracelets like the ones Derkh was displaying in silver, as well as two neck-plates in the same style as hers, and that she had agreed on condition that he purchase their entire existing stock.
“Yolenka,” Derkh protested, “I can’t—” And was cut off with a hissed admonition: “You are trader. Traders always have time to fill rich orders.” Derkh gulped and nodded meekly.
More followed—talk of lodging, meals, free passage to offer trade outside the walls or shipside. Soon they were unloading their clothes from the caravan into a large communal room beside the scullery at the back of the fortress and setting Derkh and Gabrielle up for business in its treeless courtyard.
“Is too hot here,” Yolenka proclaimed. “Patients will burn in Derkh’s fire. I go ask for”—she waved vaguely above her head to indicate shade—”tent thing.”
THE AWNING HELPED, Derkh had to admit. So did the two proper workbenches—one for his jewelry work, the other to display swords and knives—that Yolenka managed to scare up. Gabrielle’s remedies were once again displayed on the little shelf, with the emptied caravan serving as clinic. If this were really their business, they’d be in pretty good shape.
Yolenka had more than done her part. Now it was up to them to find the children and get them away. Derkh had no idea where to start—and would have little chance to think about it between Turga’s order and the repairs that were already coming in. His role, it seemed, would be to act busy and provide a screen for the real players. Dominic and Féolan were slumped in the scant shade of the outer wall, deep in talk.
Not knowing what else to do, Derkh added fuel to his little forge and worked the bellows vigorously. A portable brazier took constant tending to reach a temperature high enough to turn an iron rod first red, then white-hot. He thrust one now into the fire’s incandescent heart and turned to his next task.
“SO—WHAT HAVE we learned?”
It was late, past midnight, before they were able to gather together in their room. Dominic, cross-legged on his mattress and intent, nodded at Derkh to start.
Precious little, it seemed. Derkh had learned that the Tarzine pirates would pay handsomely for Basin-style swords and knives. It was a good thing he had stowed away enough weapons to keep their own party well outfitted. Gabrielle learned which men wanted love charms and which had foot ulcers, but Yolenka’s bright chatter with the various customers had failed to turn up any rumor of the captive children.
Dominic had gone to check on their mule—an excuse for getting inside the stables. There were only about a dozen horses, he reported. “It doesn’t seem much for all the men here.”
“Turga’s ships are his horses,” Yolenka reminded them.
“Anyway, if we do manage to find the children, steal some horses and get away, there won’t be many left to chase us on,” Dominic concluded glumly. “Féolan, I assume if you had found them we’d know?”
Féolan nodded. He had managed to explore a fair bit of the fortress unobserved and had found more than one passageway kept off-limits by a guard, but had not been able to discover whether those halls led to Turga’s private chambers, the women’s quarters, a treasury—or a jail block.
“I did discover one odd thing,” he said. “There’s a man locked in one of the outbuildings. You know that jumble of sheds against the wall—they are pretty much all locked, but I was knocking on the walls, thinking if the children were inside they would answer. And when this fellow yelled back to me, Great Mother, I was sure I had found them. But it was only the one Tarzine man.”
And they had all learned that Yolenka was, indeed, a glorious dancer. She had performed that evening in the courtyard with the entire fortress in attendance, and it was lucky she had warned them to act “bored” with the show because they had all been transfixed. They had already seen how seductive she could be, but even Féolan had not been prepared for what she could do with room to move. The following evening was to be a private performance for Turga alone, and she had promised him “even better.”
None of which got them any closer to a rescue.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
MADELEINE SEEMED A LITTLE BETTER the next morning. She’d had a proper sleep, her first since Luc’s death, and she looked herself again. The
sore throat was worse, though—that was obvious even before breakfast, as soon as she took her first sip of water. Matthieu couldn’t tell if she really felt better, or if she was just trying harder.
“I don’t feel too bad, really,” she insisted. Matthieu looked pointedly at the remains of her breakfast. She had left everything that wasn’t either liquid or mushy. “Apart from my throat, I mean,” Madeleine said. “It’s really sore. But I’m not horribly feverish or achy. I don’t think it’s anything very serious.”
By lunchtime, Matthieu wasn’t so sure. Madeleine was back in bed, headachy and weak. She didn’t even try to eat.
It was time to start hollering.
YOLENKA HAD LEFT Gabrielle and Derkh to their work, leaving Féolan as halting translator, to investigate the guardhouse by the gate.
“I wish I could get in there,” Dominic had said that morning. “How many guards are on duty at a time? What kind of alarm do they have?”
Yolenka had grinned, and slowly, teasingly, pulled an intricately carved little box from some hidden pocket in her skirts. It rattled as she shook it.
“Leave this to me.”
“What is that?” Dominic spoke for them all.
“Is reneñas.” The grin became broader. “I have not met a soldier who can resist a game...or who can win over me.”
So in the sleepy heat of midafternoon, when Gabrielle’s trickle of patients had dried up to nothing and Derkh had pulled out his jeweler’s tools to begin roughing out Turga’s order, Yolenka ambled off to play reneñas with the guards.
With no patients, without Yolenka to give them the illusion of purpose, the futility of their charade crept over Gabrielle like some waking version of the gray fog of her dream. It was pointless, this busy hammering and dancing and doling out of tonics. Urgency drummed within her, goading her to hurry—if only she knew where.
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