Worse, Star likely would understand.
“I wonder what Setios is keeping for her,” the caravan master whis- pered, so softly that the child could not hear even though Samlor’s lips brushed her fine hair as he spoke.
“Is it going to rain?” Star asked sleepily from the cradle of Samlor’s arm.
The caravan master glanced at the sky. There were stars, but a scud of high clouds blocked and cleared streaks across them at rapid intervals. There was an edge in the air which might well be harbinger of a storm poised to sweep from the hills to the west of town and wash the air at least briefly clean.
“Perhaps, dearest,” the Cirdonian said. “But we’ll be all right.”
They’d be under cover, he hoped; or, better yet, back in a bolted cham- ber of the caravansary on the White Foal River before the storm broke.
Khamwas began to mutter something with his fingers interlaced on the top of his staff. Star shook herself into supple alertness and hopped off her uncle’s supporting arm. She did not touch the Napatan, but she watched his face closely as he mouthed words in a language the caravan master did not recognize.
Left to his own devices-unwilling to consider what his niece was teaching herself now, and barely unwilling to order her to turn away- Samlor surveyed the houses in their immediate neighborhood.
It was an old section of the city, but wealthy and fashionable enough that there had been considerable rebuilding to modify the original Ilsigi character. Directly across from Samlor’s vantage place, the front of a house had been demolished and was being replaced by a two-story por- tico with columns of colored marble. A lamp burned brightly on a shack amid the construction rubble, and a watchman’s eyes peered toward the trio from its unglazed window.