A Time of Omens (17 page)

“Good morning, all,” he announced with a grin. “My name’s Salamander, and I was wondering if I could have a word with the head of your troupe. I might have a business proposition to lay before him.”

“Um, well, he’s still in his tent,” Keeta said. “Should be up anytime now.”

Salamander glanced at the sky as if to check the position of the sun. Vinto and Keeta exchanged significant looks and went on surreptitiously judging the cost of his beautiful clothes and horse gear.

“Well, I’m his daughter,” Marka said. “Maybe you could tell me what you want.”

“Perhaps you can help me, indeed. I was wondering where you were all heading to next, since it would seem that this town no longer provides a fresh and profitable field for your talents to cultivate.”

Again Keeta and Vinto glanced at each other, this time with a hint of agony.

“Er, we haven’t exactly decided. Going back to Main Island, maybe, but I’m not sure.”

“I see. Well, my companion and I are less than sure of our next destination, too, you see, and I thought that…” He let his words trail away.

Hamil was crawling out of his tent, and when he stood up, he lurched and swayed so badly that Marka at first thought he was ill. She bolted and ran to steady him, shocked at the inert force of his weight upon her shoulder as he leaned sideways. Dimly she was aware of the camp breaking out into a buzz of talk.

“Papa, what’s wrong?”

For an answer he merely smiled, a slow, secretive smile, and his eyes turned her way slowly, too, all heavy lids and droop. Around him hung a smoky scent, like incense, Marka grunted as the ice-knowledge chilled her to the spine. For a moment she felt the earth turn beneath her.

“It’s the white smoke again. Well, isn’t it! Oh, Papa, you promised!” With a howl she thrust him away.

“Hey.” He staggered and sat down heavily. “Little beast.”

“Not again! Why … it was her, wasn’t it? She’s been getting, it for you! Curse her guts!”

By then the rest of the troupe was hurrying over. Marka dodged away and ducked into her father’s tent. Naked, on her hands and knees, Rimi was desperately scraping earth over a hole in the dirt floor. The stem of a pipe stuck up through it. Marka grabbed her by the hair, pulled her up, and slapped her across the face. She squealed like a pig and slapped back, ail feeble and limp-wristed.

“Filth! You piece of gutter filth!” Marka hit her again. “You’ve been giving my father opium. I should turn you over to the archon. I should kill you.”

Squealing and swearing, Rimi tried to writhe away. Marka went for her throat just as Keeta grabbed her from behind. There was no use struggling in those massive hands.

“Delya, get the little whore dressed and out here!” Keeta dragged Marka back. “You, young lady, are coming with me.”

Outside, the acrobats were mobbing round Hamil, clamoring questions. Keeta marched Marka over to the fire
pit, where Salamander was standing and studying the dead coals as if they interested him very much indeed. One or two at a time, the acrobats gave Hamil up as a bad job and drifted over. Marka began to sob convulsively, whether in rage or grief she didn’t quite know. Keeta’s icy voice cut through her hysteria.

“He’s done this before, has he?”

“Not for years, He promised. Why do you think my mother left him?”

“She left you with him?” Vinto broke in.

“He wouldn’t let me go. And he promised to stop. He promised.”

She forced back tears and looked up. Keeta had turned away appalled, shaking her head over and over. Vinto ran both hands through his hair and stared at the ground for a long moment.

“Well,” he said at last. “I’m sorry, little Marka, but me and the boys are pulling out. We can earn enough on our own to get back to Main Island, anyway, and we’ll think of something to do then.” He glanced at Keeta. “You and Delya are welcome to come with us.”

Keeta sighed sharply, hesitated, then looked at Marka.

“Only if you come, too, little one. I can’t just leave you here.”

Marka felt as if her tongue had swelled to block her throat. She could only stare numbly at her friend’s face.

“You little bitch, you viper!” Rimi marched over, dressed now and wrapped in dignity as well. “You’d better go with them! Do you think I’m going to put up with you after this?”

Marka could find nothing to say to her.

“Shut up,” Keeta snapped. “Her father’s got something to say about this.”

“Father will listen to her.” Marka heard her own voice whispering like a stranger’s. “If they do the smoke together, he’ll listen to her. He lost my mother over it, didn’t he?”

She began to cry again, a helpless flutter that she hated for its weakness. Through her tears she saw Rimi leering and gloating, her face swimming like some dark moon. Marka raised her hands and stepped forward; then someone
caught her firmly and pulled her back: the barbarian juggler.

“Satisfying though it would be, my turtledove, to rake your nails down her beauty, it would be both unprofitable and a waste of time. The opium itself will claw her for you.”

Rimi swore like a sailor, then turned on her heel and marched off. Marka wriggled free of his lax grasp and wiped her face on her sleeve. When she looked round, there was no sign of Hamil, but from the purposeful way that Rimi was marching toward the palm grove at the edge of the caravanserai, Marka could assume that he’d taken refuge there. Vinto, Ms acrobats, Keeta and Delya, Salamander as well—Marka was suddenly aware of the way they all were looking at her, as if she were an invalid who just might die.

“You can’t stay with them,” Keeta said at last. “You just can’t. I don’t know what would happen to you, but—”

“I can guess,” Vinto snarled, “She’s not a child anymore, Keeta! She can hear the truth. How long will it be before her pig-dog of a father has her and Rimi selling themselves to keep him in smoke?”

Marka felt the earth lurch again, but she knew what she had to do. Salamander laid a gentle hand on her shoulder to steady her. She shook it off.

“We’d better pack our stuff up,” Marka snapped. “Vinto, at least one horse and wagon should be yours, anyway, for the wages we owe you.” Her voice threatened to break, but she forced it steady. “Maybe if we all pool our coin, we can get a ship back to Main Island today,”

Keeta let out her breath in an explosive puff and muttered a thanks to the Star Goddesses.

“If you wouldn’t mind me joining you with my act,” Salamander said. “We could all travel together, indeed. Shall we repair to the inn where I’ve been staying and have some wine? There shall we foment plans.”

“Glad to,” Vinto said. “We can discuss shares later. First let’s get out of this stinking camp.”

During the slow walk to town, Marka suddenly remembered the fortune-teller. Good luck mixed with disaster, was it? Well, she could see the disaster, all right, but where was the good luck?

At Salamander’s inn the portly landlord moaned and wrung his hands over the very thought of having traveling acrobats in his common room, but the juggler talked him into serving wine and little cakes, such good wine that Marka was impressed. As they sat on cushions round a low table and made awkward conversation, she noticed that Vinto was already beginning to defer to him, only in little ways, but she had the feeling that sooner or later, this stranger was going to end up managing the entire troupe. Since they were sitting off to one side, she could whisper to Delya.

“Do you mind everything changing like this?”

“Mind? Oh, if Keeta thinks it’s a good idea, I’ll go along with it. What do you think of this juggler?”

“I don’t know. He’s awfully good-looking.”

“I suppose so. He’s certainly used to taking charge. He said he had a companion, didn’t he? I wonder what she’s like?”

Marka felt so bitterly disappointed that she nearly wept. She’d forgotten that a man like this would have women following him round wherever he went, that he would most certainly never be interested in a gawky girl like her.

Jill first heard of Salamander’s newly acquired troupe of acrobats from the innkeep, who came rushing upstairs to tell her as soon as he had the wine served. All quivering jowls and flapping hands, he bowed repeatedly while he blurted.

“There must be ten of them! They’re probably all thieves! I don’t have room! I don’t know what your—uh—friend was thinking of!”

“Thinking? He probably wasn’t, knowing him. All right, I’ll go down.”

By then several pitchers of wine had gone round, and everyone was giggling and talking a little too loudly as they lounged on cushions round the low table. Jill stood in the doorway for a moment and watched Salamander, beaming at his own generosity, playing host like a Deverry lord. Opposite him sat a pretty young woman who studied him in such a fervent mix of desire and misery that she might well have loved him in her last life.

“Oh, Jill, there you are!” Salamander called out. “Come
join us! My friends, this is Gilyan of Brin Toraedic, a wandering scholar, who has honored my humble self by traveling with me as she searches out rare manuscripts. She’s on a special commission from the scholar-priests of Wmmglaedd, a mysterious and magical isle in the far-off kingdom.”

The troupe greeted this cascade of blather with honest awe, the men rising to bow to her, the women bobbing their heads her way, except for Marka, who merely stared. The gray-haired fellow sitting next to Salamander started to get up and cede her his seat, but Jill waved him back.

“I just need a word with Salamander,” she said. “Not that it’s possible to have but a single word.”

At the jab he winced, but he scrambled up and followed her out to the courtyard where they could talk privately. Jill perched on the edge of a tiled fountain and glared at him.

“I wanted to travel quietly.”

“Um, well, yes. I do remember you mentioning something of the sort. But we’ll be safer with a large group.”

“I wasn’t aware we were in any danger.”

Salamander sighed and sat down next to her.

“Let’s have the truth.” Jill changed into Deverrian to doubly insure privacy. “You’re doing this to have a chance at the lass, aren’t you?”

“Bit more to it than that!”

She raised one eyebrow.

“Jill, they needed my aid! The leader of their band had spent all their coin on the white smoke, and there they were, stranded far from home in a town where they’d never earn another copper.”

“Your heart’s big enough to embrace the world and your tongue to cover it, too. I still say it’s the lass who inspired this outburst of compassion.”

“Imph, well.” He held up his hand and flicked drops from his fingertips. “Well. Imph.” Then he looked up with one of his sunny grins. “But since you want to talk with that bookseller in Inderat Noa again, we’ve got to go back to Main Island anyway, and travel across its less-than-glorious reaches, so they might as well travel with us.”

“Oh, I suppose so! And the lass will doubtless be better off with you to look after her than she would be on her own.”

Salamander grabbed her hand and kissed it.

“My humble thanks, O Princess of Powers Perilous!”

Jill snatched her hand away and stood up, shaking her head more at herself for indulging him than him for wanting to be indulged. Later, though, when she heard Marka’s story of traveling with her addicted father and his jealous young wife, she decided that she’d done the right thing. The child was better off with them. Certainly the members of the troupe agreed. Late that evening, after the muttering innkeep had found them all rooms and served a grudged dinner, Jill was walking out in the cooler air of the courtyard when Keeta joined her, carrying a pierced tin candle-lantern.

“I just wanted to thank you for allowing Salamander to take us on like this. If he weren’t advancing us the passage home, I don’t know what we’d do.”

“Well, it was his decision, but you’re all welcome enough.”

“Oh, please!” Keeta laughed, a pleasant if rather deep chuckle. “It’s obvious that you do the deciding around here, no matter how much he talks, and by the Star Goddesses themselves, he does a lot of talking, doesn’t he? But I’m glad that we’ll be taking Marka away from her father before she gets cold feet and runs back to him.”

“Kin ties are hard to break, and she’s very young.”

“Um.” Keeta sat down on the edge of the tiled fountain. Even sitting while Jill stood, she looked Jill straight in the face. “She’s a wise child, old beyond her years—well, in most things, that is. When it comes to others…”

Jill waited, not quite sure of her drift. Keeta frowned at the dappled lantern light on the water.

“I’ve seen it happen before,” Keeta said at last. “A young girl in the same troupe with some good-looking man. Sometimes there’s trouble over it—trouble for her, anyway. I intend to talk some sense into her head. You don’t need to worry about her making a fool of herself over your man.”

“What?” Jill burst out laughing. “Let me assure you that Salamander’s nothing of the sort! He’s more like a brother to me than anything.”

“Oh! Well, that takes care of half the problem, then.”

“And the other half is?”

“I’d hate to see little Marka pregnant and deserted.”

“He wouldn’t do that. Oddly enough. He looks like the sort of man who’d leave with never a backward glance, but he’s not. I’ll give him a fair bit of credit—he’s got more honor around women than most men do.”

“Wouldn’t be hard, huh?” Keeta considered for a long moment before she smiled. “Well, that eases my mind, I must say. I didn’t want to see the child get free of one mess only to land in another.”

Although Keeta took the lantern and went back inside, Jill lingered in the cooler air. By then the moon, just past her full, had sailed over her zenith and was beginning to sink off to the west. The silver light fell dappled through the sparse trees and danced on the moving surface of the fountain. As Jill watched, the light seemed to thicken and take shape like the drift of smoke over a dying campfire. At first she assumed that it was merely some of the Wildfolk, in a semimaterialized form, playing in the water; then she realized that the waft of palpable light was swirling, growing, stretching upward as it spiraled round to make a silver pillar some ten feet high and four across. Inside the pillar, glowing all silver, stood a vaguely elven shape, not as solid as water, yet more so than a beam of light.