“Targovi, you rascal, how wonderful!” she warbled. “What’re you doin’ here?” Anxiety smote. She stepped back, her hands still on his shoulders, and stared at him through the vitryl that snugged around her head. Aside from it and its pump, she was briefly clad. No matter the broad orbit, Imhotep’s atmosphere has a greenhouse effect felt even at sea. “Is somethin’ wrong?”
“Yea and nay,” Targovi replied in his language, which she understood and the Wodenite presumably did not. “I would fain speak with you alone, little friend.” He purred. “Fear not. I, the trader, have in mind to give you, in swap for this adventure of yours, a bigger and wilder one.”
“Oh, but I’ve promised Axor—”
“He will be included. I count on you to persuade him. But let me be about my devoirs.”
Saluting Latazhanda, he explained that he carried an urgent message. She and her crew were a rough lot, but had the manners not to inquire what it was. “I daresay you know whither we’re bound,” she remarked. “The Starboard and Larboard Islands, where this mad pair want to look at what may be ruins left by fay-folk of old.” She rumbled a chuckle. “They’re paying aplenty for the charter.”
“Need is that I must take them from you. But I’ll make your loss good, my lady. A fourth of the fare.” Targovi winced as he spoke. The price would come out of his purse, and it was uncertain whether the Corps would ever honor that expense account.
“A fourth!” yowled Latazhanda. “Are you madder than they? I declined a lucrative cargo to make this trip. Three-fourths at least.”
“Ah, but so enticing a puss as you cannot fail to attract the offers of ardent agents.” Much consignment, brokerage, and other shore-side business was in male hands. “How I envy them. Your charms cause me to reward you with a third of the passage money you’re forgoing.”
Latazhanda gave him a long look. “I’ve heard of you, the chapman who goes beyond the sky. If you’ve time to take hospitality, your stories should be worth my accepting a mere two-thirds.”
They haggled amicably and flirtatiously until they reached an agreement which included his spending the night in her cabin. She enjoyed variety, and he did not mind that part of the bargain at all.
What with additional introductions, and leisured preliminaries of acquaintanceship with F. X. Axor, the hour was near sunset when Targovi and Diana could be by themselves. That was in the crow’s nest on the mainmast. He balanced against the surging and swaying as easily as any of his race, and it delighted her so much that she took a while to calm down and pay heed.
Wind swirled in shrouds, bore iodine odors. The ship creaked and whooshed. A low sun threw a bridge over the waters. Forsaking this quest for another would not be quite easy.
“My mother Dragoika told me about you and your comrade, of course,” Targovi began. “You had called on her and she helped you arrange this transportation. My thanks to the gods, for you two must be their very sending.”
“What do you want of us?” she asked.
“How would you like to go to Daedalus and roam about?”
“Oh, marvelous! I’ve only seen Aurea and its neighborhood—” Diana checked herself. “But I did promise Axor I’d be his guide, interpreter, assistant.”
“Axor will come along. In fact, that is the whole idea.”
“But don’t you understand? He isn’t travelin’ for pleasure, nor for science, really. To him, this is a … a pilgrimage. We can’t go ’til he’s looked over the stones on those islands.”
“They’ve lasted thousands of years—millions, if he is right. They can wait a bit longer. Tell him, what’s true, this is a chance he had better seize. Soon none but Navy ships may be going between Patrician planets.”
“What? Why?”
“And Javak the Fireplayer alone knows when the spacelanes will be open again. If Axor must be stranded, better on Daedalus than Imhotep. That air helmet of his seems to pain him.”
“Yes, I think it does, though he never complains. It had to be made special for him. He’s comfortable in Olga’s Landin’.”