Having been returned to ground level, with legs unexpectedly wobbly, she learned that her first duty was to erect the tent in which Azak and his supposed family would spend the night. Azak, she discovered, was now Third Lionslayer and hunting for Second, who had so far managed to avoid him.
The tent was erected, but Fooni did most of the work, while mocking and berating Inos for her incompetence with invective as shrill as a knife on glass.
Fooni was one of the sheik’s great-granddaughters. She had been attached to Inos as tutor and guide. Fooni was worse than the flies. Having seen only her eyes and hands, Inos had no clear idea of Fooni’s age, but she could be no more that twelve. She was tiny, shrill, impudent, and infuriatingly knowledgeable about the nomadic life of a camel train. She treated Inos as a moronic, benighted foreigner; nagged her, rode rings around her on one of the baggage camels, and wasted no chance to humiliate her. Inos spent the next half hour trying to locate Fooni accurately on her list of Those Who Deserve to Die, and eventually put her in fourth place, right after the dowager duchess of Kinvale.
But the tent was erected at last. It was emphatically not the neatest of the many black tents that had sprouted among the palms and it was the last to be completed. Inos was on the point of heading off to fetch water when she noticed that the other women were carrying their jars on their heads; she sent Fooni instead.
Then she busied herself with laying out the bedding mats. There was little room to spare, especially when she arranged a safety zone around Azak’s sleeping place. If any of the three women accidentally touched him in the night—his hand or even his hair—she would be burned.
Having done what she could in the stuffy, flapping dimness, Inos emerged into the twilight. Kade sat on the entrance mat amid a swirl of white feathers.
“By the sacred balance, Aunt, what are you doing?”
“Plucking the fowl, dear.”
Inos knelt down beside her on the rug, horrified and guilty. A royal princess plucking a miserable scrawny chicken? How could she have been so cruel as to subject the old woman to this? And her feelings were not helped by the twinkle of amusement in Kade’s blue eyes. She was apparently smiling under her yashmak.
Inos gulped. “I didn’t know . . . Where did you learn to do that?”
“In the palace kitchens, when I was small.”
“Let me.”
“No, it’s quite a restful occupation. You can gut it for me, if you know how.”
“I don’t!”
“Doesn’t matter,” Kade said contentedly. “I do. It is great fun to try something one has not done for so long. It all comes back!”
Inos said. “Oh.” And then words failed her. Dear Kade! She had obviously accepted this expedition and was making the best of it. Had Inos lost such an argument, she would have sulked for days.
Kade never sulked. “To be honest, dear, I was finding that opulent palace life a little dull. Travel is always very stimulating, is it not?”
“Yes. Very.” Inos decided she would peel the onions and enjoy a good weep. She glanced around the bustling campground and there was no sign of the despicable Fooni. She was probably deep in gossip with other children, or women.
“I never realized,” Kade said, “how beautiful the desert would be—in its own way, of course.”
Beautiful? Inos looked again, more carefully. The sky was blood-red behind the peaks, the first stars were twinkling in the east, and all around the campground the little braziers were glowing in the dusk. The wind had dwindled until now it seemed almost cool on her face.
“I suppose it has a certain . . . unusual charm,” she admitted. ”But the best part is that I think we have escaped from the sorceress!”
“Too early to tell, dear.” Kade held the runtish fowl at arm’s length and squinted at it.”If she knows where we are, she can come and get us any time, I’m sure.”
“You don’t seem too worried by that prospect.”
Kade sighed and picked at a few stray quills. “I am still inclined to trust Sultana Rasha, my dear. As for Hub—”
“What color pajamas,” Inos snarled, “does a goblin wear? Sugar pink, to set off his green skin? Or arterial red in case he spills something on them?”
Kade tut-tutted dismissively, although she kept her attention on the scraggy little carcass. “I’ve told you, dear, I can’t believe that they were serious about that. Certainly the imperor . . .”
Inos told her ears to stop listening. Kade had an unlimited ability to believe what she wanted to believe and she was determined not to admit that warlocks and imperors might ever do anything ungentlemanly, or a witch anything unladylike. Easy for her! She wasn’t going to be bearing ugly little green babies.
Before Inos could find a logical argument to rebut Kade’s impractical instincts, Azak came striding up with a swish of his long kibr. He sank down on his heels and stared at Inos.
“You survive, your Majesty?”
She thought he was being humorous, but she wasn’t sure; his moods were too hard to read. “Certainly I survive. I wouldn’t ache all over like this if I were dead.”
He nodded in satisfaction and glanced at Kade, who was raptly holding the chicken over the brazier, singeing pinfeathers. “We northern women are tough,” Inos said.
“I knew that, or I would not have planned this.”
Inos detected an odd note in his voice and wondered if she had at last managed to light a spark of admiration in the giant. Could tent erecting have succeeded where hawking and riding had failed? The idea brought a twinge of uneasiness, almost guilt. If anyone deserved admiration in this situation, it was Kade.
“Are you First Lionslayer yet?”
Azak grunted. “Second, still. First wishes to put the matter to the test. I do not anticipate any problems, but if he should be lucky enough to kill me, I am confident the sheik will see you safely to Ullacarn.”
Kade looked around sharply, Inos dropped the onion and knife. “Kill you? . . .”
“Unlikely, as I said. I am undoubtedly the better man, and a minor flesh wound is normally adequate in these cases.”
He was serious!
This was not the Impire.
And even in the Impire men fought duels.
Inos was so aghast that she could hardly find words. “What does it matter whether you are First or Second Lionslayer? Why—”
“It matters, “ he said flatly.
It mattered to him. Whether or not it mattered to anyone else was immaterial. Azak’s life was his own to risk; Inos and her aunt were mere passengers on his expedition. He was not their paid guide or guard. He owed them nothing; they had no hold upon him.
Somehow this new outrage seemed to throw the whole insane situation into a different focus. Camels . . . desert . . . hiding from a sorceress . . .
“Azak! That’s crazy! The whole thing is crazyl Surely everyone here knows who you really are, and—”
“Of course they know!” he snapped, his voice harsh enough to stop her protests dead in their tracks. “It will be the locals we must conceal you from.”
“What locals?” She looked around at the empty land beyond the tents.
“Most nights we shall stop at more settled places than this—at mines, and goat farms. Elkarath is a trader, remember, not a tourist. As a djinn, I shall not be noticed, except for my stature and remarkable physical presence, and I can do nothing to diminish those. You have green eyes; your aunt’s are blue. We do not want word of such freaks drifting back along the trade routes to Rasha. But the sheik’s people are almost all his relatives, and reliable.”
“Not the lionslayers, though. They’re not his relatives!”
“Of course not. Most of them are mine. First is a nephew I banished only a few months ago. That is why he feels the call of honor, that one of us must bleed. Quite understandable. In his place I should feel the same, and I shall let him off as lightly as I can. But the lionslayers will not betray me. You can always trust the code of the lionslayers.”
“I thought you despised lionslayers?”
Azak shook his head. In the fading light she could not make out his expression. “What leads you to think that?”
“Just something Kar said as we were leaving the palace.” That seemed like a long time ago.
“Kar may despise them. I neither know nor especially care what Kar thinks about lionslayers, I pity them. Their fathers ruled kingdoms; their sons will herd camels.”
“Talking of kingdoms, how can you possibly risk being absent from yours for three months?”