“I was shipwrecked here!”
“What vessel?”
“Er . . . Icedragon.”
“From?”
“Krasnegar.”
“Master?”
“Krauderbad.”
“Cargo?”
Gathmor laughed. “Nice try, halfman. You don’t know a bight from a bowsprit. Go back to the taro patch, boy. It’s safer.” He rose and stretched like a sunwarmed cat.
“Sir? Exchange me? Throw out an older man and take me? Then the count would still be all right!”
Gathmor’s smile faded into something blood-curdling. “And what do we say to his wife when we get home? You think she’d accept a mule in a man’s place? Or what do we do when you manage to escape? You hinting we keep slaves, too?”
“No, sir! Not at all, sir!”
Gathmor looked disbelieving and stepped closer as if he had decided to crack a few bones on principle. Then he seemed to–
He frowned. “You ever done any rowing?”
“Not much, sir.”
The sailor nodded. “It needs legs as well as arms. You’ll get beaten for that, you know, damaging your master’s property?” Chuckling, he strutted to the edge of the dock and raised his arms. Then he lowered them and looked back. ”I don’t say I don’t break laws, mongrel. I’m a jotunn and I’ve got standards to keep up. But I’m not such an idiot as to break them here. Not for a damaged half-breed.” He hurled himself into the air, rolled up in a ball, and dropped out of sight. Rap heard no splash, but in a moment he saw the white head in the water, and brown arms thrusting against the sea as the sailor returned to his ship.
So that was that. Rap took a deep breath and tried to relax. And yet . . . and yet that sailor had seemed oddly familiar. Just at the end there . . . the way he walked? Rap wished he’d asked the man if he’d ever been to Krasnegar.
No, that was pure fancy. He was imagining it. His brains were all jangled by the bang on his head. Gathmor was just a very typical jotunn. Rap couldn’t possibly have ever seen him before.
2
Zarkian etiquette frowned on women eating in the presence of men, so Inos sat facing the shrubbery, cross-legged on cushions on the grass. Free of her meal-sack burden, she wore a much cleaner and better quality chaddar, but she had defiantly left her hair uncovered and streaming loose. Honey cakes and sugared fruits, sweet coffee strong as horses, and pastries with heavenly centers . . . She was famished.
Behind her, Azak and the sheik sipped coffee and conversed in measured tones, loud enough for her to listen. Bees and hummingbirds flitted to and fro below a canopy of branches that the wind was moving purposefully around, making light and shadow dance. A fountain played in a corner below a tree laden with rose-pink blossom, and the scent of flowers was heady.
On one side the garden faded back to become a courtyard and then the interior of the house itself; the opposite side was bounded by a colonnade bearing flowered vines. Beyond that lay rooftops and a silver vista of the bay, shining in the sun. This haven of peace hidden amid the bustle of the city was one of the loveliest nooks Inos had ever seen. Even within the grandeur of the palace she had found nothing finer.
Azak had been recounting everything he knew about Krasnegar and Rasha’s interference in its affairs. Evidently he and the sheik had talked before, but not at such length. Once or twice the old man interposed a gentle question, but mostly he listened in silence.
Then the story came to an end, and so did Inos’s hunger. She gulped down a final glass of coffee and turned around to join the conversation, feeling equipped now to face the day.
“Have I left out anything?” Azak demanded, with a dark look that dared her to belittle his efforts.
“I don’t think so,” she said.
Both men sat cross-legged, as she did, on cushions. They were dressed for the desert. In place of royal finery, Azak wore a loose kibr of rather dirty, rough material, tied at the waist with a length of rope and large enough to giftwrap a camel. Inos noted with astonishment how far apart his knees were.
The old man was Sheik Elkarath ak’something ak’someone. He was short for a djinn but comfortably bulky in a robe of many colors, like clotted rainbows. His round, ruddy face was half hidden by a voluminous snowy beard and even bushier white mustache; he had the thickest, whitest eyebrows she had ever seen. Despite the presence of his sultan fleeing from a dangerous sorceress, Sheik Elkarath remained remarkably unperturbed. He was obviously a man of wealth and untroubled success, with fine gems glinting on his plump fingers and the hilt of a curved dagger turked in his sash. His home was furnished with taste and riches, and Inos had been aware of many people busily employed there—she had been attended by two laughing granddaughters of remarkable beauty, and there had been efficient-looking young guards aplenty.
The old man acknowledged Inos with a faint indirect smile and then returned to studying his hands, fingering his rings. The morning sun was behind him, and his face was further shaded by a kaffiyeh so embroidered with gold and silver thread that it shone; the agal holding it in place bore four huge rubies. Azak’s headdress, in contrast, resembled an old sack tied around by a strip of rag.
“The aunt is a complication,” Elkarath remarked gently. “A necessary one,” Azak replied, with a reproachful glance at Inos.
Pause—the sheik was a slow-spoken man. “Of course. But she provides another possible trail, and we did not have time to plan her escape as thoroughly.” He moved a soft hand in a gesture of resignation.
“And the delay is dangerous,” Azak agreed. “If the harlot has noticed our absence already, then she may follow. But the addition was unavoidable, as I said.”
The old man nodded without looking up. “We may yet turn events to our advantage, I think.”
Inos knew she ought to be suspicious of this unexpected—and so far unexplained—ally, but there was something very grandfatherly about him. His solid calmness was reassuring, and obviously Azak trusted him—Azak, who trusted nobody!
“On your side,” the old man asked his hands, “those who helped are safely departed?”
“There is only one who could tell anything of substance,” Azak said. “She has relatives in Thrugg. Since her mother’s death she has continued to send support. She will be made welcome.”
Elkarath nodded gently again.
So Zana was only a half-sister, as Inos should have guessed from the great difference in age.
“What about Kar?” she asked. “Does he know?”
A frown flashed across Azak’s face and was gone. “He knows nothing. I told him I was following Atharaz.”
Inos waited to let the sheik ask, but he merely smiled understandingly. ”Is that difficult?” she inquired.
“It may be dangerous for Kar,” Azak said, “but it is our main hope. My brothers will likely believe, and mayhap even the slut herself will. Sultan Atharaz was a mighty ruler of yesteryear, conqueror of half of Zark, great even among my predecessors. Early in his reign he vanished, inexplicably.”
After a moment’s thought and irritation, Inos said, “He returned equally unexpectedly just after a successor had come forward and gained support?”
Azak’s smile was as deadly as Kar’s, even when it registered amusement. ”Exactly. Since then the ploy has been used several times, frequently with success. Obviously it can turn against its user, but the ambitious will hesitate some time before volunteering to replace me.”
Silence fell. The two men stared at the grass, apparently lost in thought, neither seeming ready to inform Inos of all the things she wanted to know—where was Kade, why was this place safe, and whither the fugitives were bound.
“I trust,” she said, “that my aunt’s journey will be less strenuous than my own?”
“She will not be brought here,” Azak said calmly. “Do not worry.”
If he thought snubs would stop Inosolan asking questions, he had much to learn.
The sheik himself seemed as patient as a rock cultivating barnacles, but even Azak seemed unusually relaxed. She wondered which Azak was present now—the madcap horseman who rode over the roughest terrain at full suicidal gallop, or the cautious ruler who palmed a single fig rather than trust his subjects not to poison him. She wondered, also, if he ever visited his city without disguise, and she could not help but compare his style of kingship with her father’s. Had anyone suggested to Holindarn that he needed guards—or even a sword—when he wandered about his realm, he would have hurled a bolt of royal scorn. She knew she did not understand Azak and might have involved herself in something worse than what she expected. Whatever that was, exactly.
“You had this expedition all planned before we had our talk last night?” she asked.