forbidding wise that the fellow recoiled against a fat woman and made her drop a
brass tray full of flowers. She screamed and started beating him over the head
with it.
Cappen didn’t stay to watch.
On the eastern edge of the market-place he found what he wanted. Once more
Illyra was in the bad graces of her colleagues and had moved her trade to a
stall available elsewhere. Black curtains framed it, against a mud-brick wall.
Reek from a nearby tannery well-nigh drowned the incense she burned in a curious
holder, and would surely overwhelm any of her herbs. She herself also lacked
awesomeness, such as most seeresses, mages, conjurers, scryers, and the like
affected. She was too young; she would have looked almost wistful in her
flowing, gaudy S’danzo garments, had she not been so beautiful.
Cappen gave her a bow in the manner of Caronne. ‘Good-day, Illyra the lovely,’
he said.
She smiled from the cushion whereon she sat. ‘Good-day to you, Cappen Varra.’
They had had a number of talks, usually in jest, and he had sung for her
entertainment.. He had hankered to do more than that, but she seemed to keep all
men at a certain distance, and a hulk of a blacksmith who evidently adored her
saw to it that they respected her wish.
‘Nobody in these parts has met you for a fair while,’ she remarked. ‘What
fortune was great enough to make you forget old friends?’
‘My fortune was mingled, inasmuch as it left me without time to come down here
and behold you, my sweet,’ he answered out of habit.
Lightness departed from Illyra. In the olive countenance, under the chestnut