backward from the gliding course of a viper.
So she looked up again, still in retreat, an object lost from her hand and
rolling somewhere across the carpet, as a set of skirts swayed into her view,
covering the serpent: skirts and small bare feet and (Moria’s shocked vision
traveled up to wasp waist and bare breasts) a plethora of jewelry and blonde
curls and a face painted to a fare-thee-well: (Migods, it’s a doll!)
The doll acquired a more stately companion, taller, with straight blonde hair
and a shawl of flounces; blonde hair, unblinking eyes and a very sober face of
some few more years.
The doll chittered and chattered in the Beysib tongue. “Oh,” lisped the tall
one. “A messenger? From whom?”
Never you mind, bitch. That was what Moria meant to say; but it came out: “Of no
moment to you or me.” Pure and Rankene. Her voice rushed, breathless. “Your gold
has bought you trouble, your friends have bought you enemies, your enemies
multiply daily. I have connections. I came to offer them.”
“Connections?” The tall Beysib stared with her strange eyes and fingered a small
knife at the edge of her shawl of flounces. One of her necklaces moved, a thing
that had seemed cloisonne, and was not. “Connections? To whom?”
“Say that this someone can save you when the walls fall.”
“What walls?”
“Say that you serve the Beysa. Say that I serve someone else. And tell the Beysa
that the wind is changing. Gold will not buy walls.”
“Who are you?”
“Tell the Beysa. Tell the Beysa mine is the house with the red door, downhill