dance. She was no match for Ayalla, but she wasn’t really all that
bad. The applause at the conclusion of her dance was thunderous.
Silently, without even looking at him, I nudged my owner’s ego
just a bit. ‘My Polanna can dance better than that,’ he asserted loudly.
‘That’s Callak for you,’ the dancer’s owner snorted. ‘He always
has to be better than everybody else.’
‘Offer him a wager,’ I whispered to Callak.
‘Do you really know how to dance?’ he whispered back just a
little apprehensively.
‘I’ll turn your bones to water,’ I assured him.
‘We’ll try it, I guess.’ He didn’t sound too sure. ‘All right, Rasak,’
he said to his competitor, ‘would you like to lay a wager on it?’ He
reached for his money-pouch. ‘I’ve got ten gold pieces that says that
Polanna’s a better dancer than your Eyana. We’ll let our friends
here decide which is best.’
‘Ten? You sound awfully sure of yourself, Callak.’
‘Sure enough to back it with money. Are we having some second
thoughts, Rasak?’
‘All right. Ten it is.’
The crowd cheered and stamped their feet. Then they began that
rhythmic beat.
I took a deep breath, rose to my feet and removed my outer dress.
mY dancing costume was closely modeled on the one A’yalla had
worn in the tavern back in the forest. I briefly noticed that Rasak’s
expression was just a little sick when he saw me in that flimsy blue
costume.
All right, let’s not make an issue of it. I’d long since outgrown
knobby knees and adolescent gangliness. Moreover, the fact that I’d
been dancing for hours every day for six months or more had put
me in fighting trim – figuratively speaking, of course.
Sorry about the pun. It was inadvertent.
And so I danced for them. I’d been a little nervous about dancing
in public – I think it’s called ‘stage-fright’ by professional performers
but once I began to dance, the nervousness translated itself into
a heightened excitement, and I danced far better than I had during
those long hours of practice. There’s nothing like an audience to
encourage one to do one’s best. I may not have turned their bones
to water, but I’m sure I softened a few.
There was a stunned silence when I concluded my performance
with that outrageous strut. I owned this crowd! The applause and
cheering were absolutely deafening, and Rasak didn’t even bother
to put the question to a vote. He paid up without so much as a
whimper.
I danced frequently after that. Gallak, who always kept his eye
on the main chance, saw a way to use my gifts during his business
dealings. ‘Why don’t we have Polanna dance for us while you mull
over my offer?’began cropping up rather frequently during assorted
negotiations.
It was probably inevitable, given the fact that most of my
performances took place in taverns, that sooner or later I’d have to
demonstrate my willingness to actually use my knives to remind some
spectator that he was supposed to keep his hands to himself. Gallak
had been negotiating with a wall-eyed fellow named Kreblar, and
their haggling had reached an impasse. That’s when Callak drew
his weapon of choice – me. He’d grown very skilled at inserting me
into his business negotiations by then, so his suggestion that I dance
for them and the other patrons of the tavern where they’d been
negotiating was smoothly slipped into the conversation. Kreblar had
drunk a few too many tankards of the fruity Nadrak ale by then,
and he seemed to assume that I was dancing for him alone.
It was at the conclusion of my dance when I was strutting back
to the table where the three of us were seated that he stepped across
the line. His off-center eye was gleaming in the general direction Of
the far wall, and he roughly seized my arm. ‘There’s a good girl!’
he half-bellowed. ‘Come on now, give us a kiss!’ and he began to
paw at me.
My training as a surgeon was very helpful at that point. I brought
my knee up sharply and caught him on the point of the chin with
it even as I drew my knife out of my boot-top. His head snapped
back, but I ignored his exposed throat and neatly sliced him across
the chest instead, reasoning that his ribs would keep my knife edge
from going too deep.
His squeal was piercing, and he gaped down in horror at the
blood gushing through the neat gash I’d just sliced through his shirt.
‘You mustn’t do that, you know,’ I chided him, not even bothering
to raise my voice. I wiped my knife clean on his shirt collar, slipped
it back into its sheath, and then I looked around at the other tavern
patrons. ‘Does anybody here happen to have a needle and thread?’
I asked them. ‘We’ll all be wading in blood if I don’t sew poor
Kreblar here back together.’
A cobbler provided what I needed, and I had Callak and three
or four others stretch Kreblar back over the table and hold him
down. Then, humming softly to myself, I neatly stitched up the gash
that ran from armpit to armpit across Kreblar’s chest, ignoring his
squeals.
I’m not sure exactly why, but I think the sewing chilled the blood
of the onlookers far more than the gashing had. People are funny
sometimes.
In time, my fame spread in Yar Nadrak, and as I’d more or less
anticipated, Gallak finally received an invitation to ‘stop by the
palace, and bring Polanna with you’. My hours of practice and those
public performances had finally paid off.
King Drosta’s palace was in the center of Yar Nadrak, and as
closely as I was able to determine, it was the only stone building in
the entire city. Nadraks, however, aren’t very good at working with
stone, so the palace was as lopsided as were all the other buildings
in town. When Gallak and I entered the throne-room, I saw there
the only Grolim I encountered during my entire stay. I warily sent
an inquiring thought toward his mind and discovered that he didn’t
really have one. He was a Grolim, right enough, but he was only
marginally talented, and as nearly as I could determine, he hadn’t
drawn a sober breath in the past ten years. Torak’s hold on the
Nadraks was tenuous, to say the very least.
King Drosta was rather young to be occupying a throne, and he
appeared to feel that his major responsibility was to enjoy himself.
He was thin to the point of emaciation, and his face was splotched
with angry purple eruptions and deeply indented scars. His hair
was coarse, black, and rather sparse, and his obviously expensive
yellow clothing was none too clean.
Since being presented at court is a formal occasion, I was wearing
my chain, and Callak led me around by it in the socially approved
manner. I wore my dancing costume, which was more or less
concealed beneath a blue outer dress. Gallak led me up to the foot of
the throne, and when we got there, he bowed to his king. ‘My
name’s Gallak, your Majesty,’ he said. ‘You sent for me?’
‘Ah, there you are, Callak,’ Drosta replied in a shrill, almost
hysterical voice. ‘We’ve been waiting for you.’ Then he eyed me up
and down, and his look was insultingly obvious. ‘So this is the
famous Polanna,’ he said. ‘She’s a looker, isn’t she?’ He giggled
nervously. ‘Would you like to sell her, Gallak?’ .
‘Ah – no, your Majesty,’Gallak replied. ‘I don’t think so.’ I thought
that was a wise decision, since Gallak was only a chain’s length
away from my daggers.
‘Maybe you might want to rent her to me then.’ Drosta seemed
to think that was funny because he laughed uproariously.
‘That would be my decision, Drosta,’ I told him coldly, ‘and I
doubt that you’ve got enough money.’
‘Proud of yourself, aren’t you?’ he said.
‘I know how much I’m worth,’ I said, shrugging.
‘They tell me you’re a dancer.’
‘They weren’t wrong.’
‘Are you a good dancer?’
‘The best you’ll ever see.’ Modesty’s not a Nadrak virtue, but that
remark probably even exceeded ordinary Nadrak boastfulness.
‘You’ll have to prove that to me, Polanna.’
‘Whenever you wish, Drosta. Before we start, though, maybe you
should look at these.’ I reached inside my dress, drew out my
daggers, and showed them to him.
‘Are you threatening me?’ he demanded, his eyes bulging out
even further.
‘It wasn’t intended as a threat, Drosta – just a statement of fact.
This is what’ll happen to you if your appreciation gets the better of
you.’
‘I don’t think I’ve ever seen a knife with a hook on its point before.
What’s the purpose of that?’
‘The hooks pull things out – things that most people prefer to
keep inside.’ I looked at the implements admiringly. ‘Aren’t they