She decided to follow his example and disappear. She withdrew into her tent, dismissing Zana and the other women who expected to attend her. Anything that she could possibly require had been brought and was already set up, including a soft and commodious bed.
She was exhausted by a wearying day, yet for a long while sleep evaded her. She lay and studied the centipede tracks on the tent roof, where moonlight peeked through needleholes. It was not the festive sounds from the shore that kept her awake, nor the distant boom of the surf beyond the headland. The flapping of a tent was a familiar lullaby.
Strangely, she did not even feel like gloating over her victory. If she had indeed won an ally, it was because in the end Azak had proved to be very vulnerable. Rasha had shattered his mystique as a sultan when she flaunted him before Inos as her plaything. Rasha had erred there, and she had certainly erred earlier in placing that fiendish second curse on him. More than anything else, that intolerable burden must be driving him to seek out the Four, even if he would not admit it. So Rasha had overreached herself, but Inos had learned of the second curse through sheer folly, not by any great triumph of wits. She was happy to believe that she had won, but she felt no need to celebrate yet.
The greater battle lay ahead. Her new ally must prove his worth by organizing their escape, and obviously Azak usually lost matches with the sorceress. The whole mad idea might vanish like a soap bubble before the hard edges of reality. Inos did not dwell much on that, either.
From time to time she would hear some particularly rousing chorus from the fireside, or an especially loud peal of laughter, but those disturbances were too filled with joy to be annoying, and in a way they were even reassuring. If what she had been told was true, then at least some of those women had come from the same poverty that had so shocked her that day. There could be happiness in Arakkaran, for some.
No, it was the faces of children that haunted her tent. She kept remembering the shameful poverty of the villages she had seen that day, and contrasting it with the luxury of the palacelike the luxury of silk sheets and soft bed she was enjoying at the moment.
Krasnegar was a humble place. In bad years there could be real hunger in Krasnegar, but then the king’s household ate sparingly, also. She suspected that a famine in Arakkaran would fill the ditches with peasant corpses before it ever curtailed the princes’ diet. As a native of the subarctic she had always believed that life would be easier in a warm climate. Obviously that was not the case, not for those so-forlorn children.
The fire died, the moon rose higher, the singing faded. Discourse became quieter and more intimate.
She had just drifted off to sleep when she jerked awake again, hearing a baby crying. A baby? Why would there be a baby? She had seen no children earlier, yet there could be absolutely no doubt that Azak himself had planned and approved every detail of this expedition. Why would he have ordered a baby? She had failed to think of even one logical reason before she was asleep again.
2
Although the sun had departed from Zark, it still beat down upon the sugarcane fields of Faerie, where Rap and his companions had been striding brazenly along a red-dirt track for what felt like a long and unmemorable lifetime. Now and then they passed scattered bands of peddlers, herders, and farmhands.
The view was restricted on both sides by high walls of greenery, but Rap could see that it contained nothing more dangerous than rats. He scanned the faces of the people, also, seeking some sign that the goblin had attracted attention, or that his own absurd tattoos had been noticed, but he detected nothing more than mild curiosity, soon to be forgotten in the press of the day’s business. Once the three castaways took refuge on the verge with everyone else as a troop of cavalry went cantering by, and the legionaries paid them no more heed than they did the genuine peasants.
Most of the natives seemed to be imps, but Rap identified a few trolls and troll half-breeds, and once a troop of dwarves—short men, thick and broad, with rough, grayish skin. They carried picks and rolled as they walked. Rap had never seen dwarves before, but one brief glance was enough to convince him that they probably deserved their reputation for meanness.
Now it was almost noon; Milflor had been much farther away than Rap had expected. Swaggering along the dusty track, Thinal chattered disparagingly about the town, drawing on memories of Sagorn’s visit long ago. Even though it was the largest settlement on Faerie, he said, it was tiny by mainland standards—a quaint, rambling little place sprawled aimlessly around a fine natural harbor. The beach was one of the finest in all Pandemia, so the shore was lined by great mansions belonging to rich aristocrats, most of them retired Imperial officials enjoying the fruits of a lifetime’s corruption.
The harbor was famous for its beauty, he said, a bay sheltered by a high and rocky headland. The water there was deep even close to shore, making for good mooring. The proconsul’s palace stood on the crest of the ridge. Then he chuckled.
“Now, just a minute!” Rap said. “What has the proconsul’s palace got to do with us?”
Thinal shrugged. “You don’t think we’d be welcome? Sagorn might be. And Andor certainly would. He’d be dancing with His Nibs’ daughter before sundown. Sleeping with her by dawn, if she was worth it.”
Rap caught a frowning glance from Little Chicken, walking on Tbinal’s far side. Obviously the goblin felt the same uneasiness. For a moment all three fell silent, being cautious as they overtook a shambling knot of elderly farm workers. A family of very small people went by in the opposite direction, hauling a cart: a man, two women, and about eight assorted children, all of them sour-faced and grubby. Thinal wrinkled his nose and said “Filthy gnomes!” with disgust, and quite loudly. The gnomes paid no attention, and soon the squeaking of their cart died away behind.
“I thought we were partners,” Rap said. “Won’t you tell us what exactly you’re planning when we get to town?”
“Just a little comfort, Rap. Lift a purse or two. Get us decent clothes and a place to stay. That’s all.”
“I don’t want to stay. I want a ship out of here.”
Thinal smiled rather shiftily. “Not that easy, friend. You don’t have a patron, either of you.”
“Patron?”
“Protector. In Krasnegar you belonged to the king—”
“I served the king.”
“You belonged to him, even if you didn’t know it. Anyone’d tried to put fetters on you, Holindarn would have wanted to know why. Here—who cares?”
“So?”
“So you and the Chicken are a couple of likely-looking types, healthy and husky. Who’s to complain if you finish up in a chain-gang somewhere, planting rice or felling trees? That’ll be the end of all your adventures.”
“Then let’s get out as soon as we can get a ship.”
Walking eyes down, hands behind him, Thinal just smiled at the ruts.
“You’re not planning to leave?” Rap demanded.
“I’ll see—see what Sagorn decides. We might want to investigate Faerie a little. There could be valuable pickings here.” The imp turned a bland gaze on Rap then, and Rap was at a loss. He glanced again at the goblin and saw dark wariness. Little Chicken would not discuss the island’s secrets, either, ever since the fairy child had died in his arms, that topic had been off limits for all of them.
“Will you help me get back to the mainland, then?” Rap said, hating his need to beg. “Either buy a passage for me, or help me find a job as crewman. I don’t mind working.”
Thinal did. He scowled at the thought. “It’s not quite that simple. The winds are shifty around here. And then there are the Nogids.”
Rap wondered why he hadn’t heard all this before, although he remembered Thinal had dropped some hints. “What’s a nogid?”
“Islands. The Nogid Archipelago, between Faerie and the mainland. Sailing ships get becalmed in the Nogds.”
“And?”
“And anthropophagi. Canoes. Fricassee of sailor. Cabin boy au gratin with a coconut in his mouth.”
“They really do eat people? Why . . . I mean, what has that to do with me? You think I might get sold to a feed lot by way of trade?”
Thinal shook his head. “I mean most ships in these waters are galleys. Whether I lay gold for your passage or you work it, you end up chained to an oar. Even a free rower is chained to his oar.”