CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

TURGA SLEPT LATE AND TOOK HIS TIME with his food and his toilet. He was much restored, the gloom of the previous night dispelled by his usual alert confidence. By early afternoon, when he called for an audience with the peddlers, he was ready to relish both profitable trade and a beautiful woman.

Zhirak had not exaggerated about the woman. She was glorious, pacing into his chamber like a tawny panther.

The others paled by comparison, but still he observed them closely as they were introduced. The husband seemed rather on edge—one would be, he supposed, married to a woman who made men pant over her like dogs for a living. He didn’t envy the fellow his role. It was the musician who caught his eye—Zhirak’s description had not prepared him for the man’s unusual presence. Brightness, you could almost call it. Burning with an artist’s vision, no doubt, Turga thought with dry amusement. Well, he wasn’t here to admire pretty eyes, not on a man at least.

“I’m told you are a fine dancer,” he said. To his surprise, the woman who had introduced herself as Yolenka laughed scornfully.

“Your men said that?” Her golden eyes flashed at him from under dark eyelashes, teasing and intimate. Like he was an old friend, not a feared warlord. Her voice lowered.

“I gave them garbage—dance you can see in any cheap tavern. Just a sniff from the wine bottle, yes?”

She had come closer to him as she spoke, floated maybe for he hadn’t noticed her take a step. He could smell the scent on her hair, see the black paint that accentuated the line of her eyes. She flashed white teeth at him.

“The wine I saved for you. I wanted to offer you a personal performance—just you in the audience, or you and your invited guests. Both, if you like. Your choice, of course.”

As though just noticing her own forwardness, Yolenka offered an apologetic smile and returned to the others—giving him the opportunity to watch her shoulders and hips as she glided away. Mother of all, she was good. Her every breath was a performance. She spoke over her shoulder as she took her place with the others.

“It’s not home brew I offer. I was first dancer with Riko’s troupe. Perhaps you have heard of him?”

Turga had heard—he had seen the troupe perform. The dancers had been stunning, all of them.

He narrowed his eyes, suspicious of this new claim.

“Why did you leave?”

Yolenka shrugged, a languid ripple that was worlds away from any man’s version of the same gesture.

“I hurt my knee touring in the north of the Krylian lands. That’s where I met this lot. So I’ll admit right now—I can’t do a series of backflips and land on one leg. But,”—and again the eyes and teeth flashed at him—”everything else works just fine, I promise you.”

That business was soon concluded. Turga didn’t even haggle much over the price, or demand that she end her performance in his bed. Like all Tarzines, he held true artistry in high respect.

FÉOLAN FOUND IT HARD to follow Turga’s unfamiliar voice, but he was able to understand much of Yolenka’s end of the negotiation. He too saw the skill in her performance, but he also felt a twinge on Derkh’s behalf. He hoped he wouldn’t be asked to translate.

When they moved on to Derkh’s jewelry, however, Yolenka became all business. Turga noticed this with, Féolan thought, amused respect. Yolenka had kept the jewelry under wraps the night before, wanting to offer Turga the chance of an exclusive purchase. “Also, you don’t have so much,” she pointed out. “We save until we get inside.” Turga clearly liked the pieces, though Féolan gathered he was disappointed there weren’t more in gold. Rather heated negotiations followed, before Yolenka announced that Turga had commissioned gold ear pendants and bracelets like the ones Derkh was displaying in silver, as well as two neck-plates in the same style as hers, and that she had agreed on condition that he purchase their entire existing stock.

“Yolenka,” Derkh protested, “I can’t—” And was cut off with a hissed admonition: “You are trader. Traders always have time to fill rich orders.” Derkh gulped and nodded meekly.

More followed—talk of lodging, meals, free passage to offer trade outside the walls or shipside. Soon they were unloading their clothes from the caravan into a large communal room beside the scullery at the back of the fortress and setting Derkh and Gabrielle up for business in its treeless courtyard.

“Is too hot here,” Yolenka proclaimed. “Patients will burn in Derkh’s fire. I go ask for”—she waved vaguely above her head to indicate shade—”tent thing.”

THE AWNING HELPED, Derkh had to admit. So did the two proper workbenches—one for his jewelry work, the other to display swords and knives—that Yolenka managed to scare up. Gabrielle’s remedies were once again displayed on the little shelf, with the emptied caravan serving as clinic. If this were really their business, they’d be in pretty good shape.

Yolenka had more than done her part. Now it was up to them to find the children and get them away. Derkh had no idea where to start—and would have little chance to think about it between Turga’s order and the repairs that were already coming in. His role, it seemed, would be to act busy and provide a screen for the real players. Dominic and Féolan were slumped in the scant shade of the outer wall, deep in talk.

Not knowing what else to do, Derkh added fuel to his little forge and worked the bellows vigorously. A portable brazier took constant tending to reach a temperature high enough to turn an iron rod first red, then white-hot. He thrust one now into the fire’s incandescent heart and turned to his next task.

“SO—WHAT HAVE we learned?”

It was late, past midnight, before they were able to gather together in their room. Dominic, cross-legged on his mattress and intent, nodded at Derkh to start.

Precious little, it seemed. Derkh had learned that the Tarzine pirates would pay handsomely for Basin-style swords and knives. It was a good thing he had stowed away enough weapons to keep their own party well outfitted. Gabrielle learned which men wanted love charms and which had foot ulcers, but Yolenka’s bright chatter with the various customers had failed to turn up any rumor of the captive children.

Dominic had gone to check on their mule—an excuse for getting inside the stables. There were only about a dozen horses, he reported. “It doesn’t seem much for all the men here.”

“Turga’s ships are his horses,” Yolenka reminded them.

“Anyway, if we do manage to find the children, steal some horses and get away, there won’t be many left to chase us on,” Dominic concluded glumly. “Féolan, I assume if you had found them we’d know?”

Féolan nodded. He had managed to explore a fair bit of the fortress unobserved and had found more than one passageway kept off-limits by a guard, but had not been able to discover whether those halls led to Turga’s private chambers, the women’s quarters, a treasury—or a jail block.

“I did discover one odd thing,” he said. “There’s a man locked in one of the outbuildings. You know that jumble of sheds against the wall—they are pretty much all locked, but I was knocking on the walls, thinking if the children were inside they would answer. And when this fellow yelled back to me, Great Mother, I was sure I had found them. But it was only the one Tarzine man.”

And they had all learned that Yolenka was, indeed, a glorious dancer. She had performed that evening in the courtyard with the entire fortress in attendance, and it was lucky she had warned them to act “bored” with the show because they had all been transfixed. They had already seen how seductive she could be, but even Féolan had not been prepared for what she could do with room to move. The following evening was to be a private performance for Turga alone, and she had promised him “even better.”

None of which got them any closer to a rescue.