“The alteration is an improvement, I think. Which do you prefer being—imp or djinn?”
He grinned, and slid his arm around her. “With you, an imp.” Again they had to make way for passing baggage, and this time he contrived to crush Inos into a corner. “Djinns can’t peek down a girl’s cleavage very often,” he added, doing so and licking his lips.
Inos placed a heel threateningly on his instep. Her borrowed dress was admittedly tight across the bosom, the neckline strained. She recalled that not so very long ago she had worried about putting padding in her clothes.
And then—but only then—she remembered the pixies. Her heart leaped into her throat. Sudden tremor. Man, too close. Hands. Eyes.
“Something wrong?” Skarash said.
“No!” Mouth dry, skin damp. She struggled to control her breathing. Flirt was not rape! She must not give in to this now or it would haunt her all her days. Could she remember how to flutter an eyelash? “Not at all. I expect I am merely overcome by the sight of a shapely male calf, after being deprived so long.”
He gulped, and was djinn enough to need a moment on that one. Inos raced ahead, sternly not thinking of pixies. “I could almost believe that the change in you was due to sorcery.”
“Sorcery? I know nothing about sorcery,” Skarash said solemnly. But the rosy eyes seemed to change color slightly, and what they said was, Nobody else knows anything about that, and if the mage chose me to be your guide it was to make sure that there is no loose talk about sorcery.
Elkarath had mentioned that Skarash was the one entrusted with laying out the first magic carpet. He had been standing guard outside the door when the second arrived with its passengers. He was very likely the Chosen One, the heir who would receive the words of power when the sheik died.
“Just a joke,” Inos said.
He nodded as if satisfied, and they continued along the bustling corridor, then down yet another winding staircase, the sixth or seventh Inos had met already. The noises that infected the whole house were growing louder. “We have to go through here anyway, and Grandsire wants that word with you.” Skarash opened a door and ushered Inos into the largest open space she had yet seen in Ullacarn.
Obviously it was the business area of the House of Elkarath, and with the annual caravan having arrived only the previous day, disorder and tumult were rampant. Light poured in through three open doorways, each large enough to admit a six-horse wagon, but the air was so thick with dust that Inos began to sneeze at once, and her eyes to water—so Skarash considerately put his arm around her again, guiding her between the highpiled clutter of barrels and bales and boxes. The odor of cloves and cinnamon and caraway was intoxicating, but the whiff of camel and horse was undeniable also. Porters and wagoneers and customers milled to and fro, arguing and shouting over the din, loading and unloading, taking and bringing.
The legionaries standing by the doors were a surprise. Outside in the fiery sunshine the busy street was thronged with people, all of them apparently imps: ladies in bright gowns, with unveiled faces; many men, and even woman, with their heads uncovered—although persons of quality wore fancy hats, of course. Sudden nostalgia snatched Inos’s breath away.
With eyes streaming and nose tingling, she found herself arriving at a short flight of steps, leading up to a platform. There, in a large chair behind a long table, sat Elkarath, writing with one hand, fingering his beard with the other, an oasis of calm amid the hubbub, quietness within the racket. No sheik now, within the Impire, he was merely Master Elkarath the merchant, yet imposing enough in a bulky scarlet robe and a gold skullcap. Great ledgers stood stacked beside him; clerks rushed in and out through other doors, or merely hovered, waiting for his attention. Here the master could oversee the loading and unloading, the trading and tabulating.
Grateful that she need not raise skirts, for her hem was well above her ankles, Inos climbed the worn wooden treads, assisted of course by the willing hand of Skarash.
“You may have to wait a moment, Mistress,” he muttered in her ear. ”That one looks important.”
Elkarath was rising stiffly to greet a visitor, a legionary. The white horsehair crest on his helmet denoted a centurion. “Why soldiers?” Inos murmured, stepping back to where she would not impede the swarming clerks. ”What has the army to do with merchants?” There were at least a dozen helmets in sight, all with black or brown crests.
“Guards,” Skarash said, moving close. “This stuff is worth a fortune.”
“And who would steal it?”
“The army might.” He chuckled at her glance of surprise. ”Watch Grandsire closely. There!”
A leather bag passed unobtrusively from merchant to centurion.
“Graft?”
“Of course.”
Hands were being shaken across the table now, and the centurion saluted.
Inos let her attention wander over the bustling throng on the lower level. ”Red hair? Obviously most of these men are djinns?”
“At least half of them are relatives.”
“Then why dress like imps?”
Skarash showed his teeth in a snarl. “Believe me, having red hair is bad enough. Dressing like a barbarian is asking for trouble.”
“Is Ullacarn part of the Impire, then? I thought it was an independent city-state.”
“Only on paper. An Imperial protectorate, allied by treaty. But there are legionaries here. Lots of them.”
Oh! Like that, was it? There were legionaries in Krasnegar now, or there had been the last time Inos had heard.
Skarash said, “You’ve been noticed.”
Elkarath had resumed his seat and was beckoning. Inos picked her way across the platform, between the dodging, hovering flunkies. The centurion was still standing there, but as she approached he removed his helmet to show that his visit was now social. He was inspecting her with brazen approval, but she had been away from imps long enough to notice the swarthy, pocky complexion, the thick waist and narrow shoulders. Short by djinn standards . . . but handsome enough in his shiny bronze. More muscle than fat, dark wavy hair. Not bad.
“Mistress Hathark!” Elkarath boomed. His voice and manner had changed dramatically also, although not as much as his grandson’s. “You slept well, lady?”
Had he been spying on her insomnia? Inos donned one of Kade’s witless social smiles. “Never better, thank you, sir! I was weary from the journey.” She wondered if a curtsy was appropriate, and compromised with a dainty bob. The centurion’s eyes were still peeling her, and she wished her dress were just a little more Zarkian, or not quite so stretched in places.
Elkarath nodded to her bob, without rising. “Skarash will see you have everything you need, Mistress. May I present Centurion Imopopi?”
She bobbed agan, the imp saluted.
“Your first visit to beautiful Ullacarn, ma’am?”
Inos felt an odd twinge of indecision. She was not sure what she was supposed to say. Elkarath would hardly have explained that she was a refugee queen from a kingdom at the other end of the world. On the other hand, his deceits were his own problem, and she needed information as a fish needs water.
“Yes, it is. Indeed I am a newcomer to this part of the world.” That should have led the conversation toward Krasnegar, but Elkarath moved to block it. “Mistress Hathark and her party will not be staying long. They are merely passing through, on their way back to Hub.”
They were? Why would Rasha . . . had Inos then been sold already? Was she to be delivered to Olybino in Hub? What use trying to escape if she was bound for Hub anyway, or was this a trick?
Before she could question, Centurion Imopopi laughed harshly, and Inos felt her skin prickle as if in premonition of something wrong, but she had no time to analyze, for he was speaking to her.
“I shall not venture to praise Ullacarn if you are familiar with the city of the Gods, ma’am. You had best not linger long, though. The season is late. The passes will be closing soon.”
“Passes?” Inos fished frantically for geography that had momentarily slid down behind the back of her mind.
“The Qoble Range, of course.” Why did his voice bother her? ”You are not from Hub originally, though?”
He himself was, or from somewhere close to it. Perhaps it was merely his accent jangling her alarms, and yet she had heard tones like that often enough at Kinvale.
“Not by a long way.”
“You have traveled far, then?” A small frown showed that the soldier’s carnal inspection had become tinged with more intellectual interest. He was wondering what she was, as she did not quite fit any of the standard races. Golden hair meant either elf or jotunn in the family tree—plus what? What she was would be defined by her homeland.