The Brazen Gambit (25 page)

The market was not her grove; the confidence she'd felt when Telhami upbraided her about the dangers a
city-man like Pavek posed to any solitary woman evaporated like morning dew. Her grip on the cart trace progressed
from feather-light to a panicky clench.

One of the fanners shouted that his knife had been stolen. He plunged toward a twisted alley, determined to
catch the culprit. Yohan intervened quickly, hauling the farmer back to the cart and staring down the hard-faced
denizens who swarmed out of nowhere, ready to support the thief, not them.

"Nothing happened," Yohan assured me grumbling mob.

"But my-" the poor farmer wailed, until Yohan pinched bis wrist to quiet him.

"Everybody, move on." Yohan used a commanding tone she'd never heard from him before.

"We ought not have come here," she whispered.

He replied with a grunt that could have meant anything at all, then pivoted the cart sharply on its left wheel.
They went down a rubbish-strewn alley to the lion-and-pestle signboard he'd somehow spotted during the fracas.

"Wait here," he told the farmers. "Sing out if anything happens."

His hand on her arm guided her into a dusty shop. The proprietor, a human woman of indeterminate age, pushed
away from a table covered with fortune-telling cards. The long red gown she wore might once have belonged to a
wealthy woman, but the silk embroidery threads had been plucked out and now the lush floral patterns were mere dots
and holes across the cloth.

"What's your pleasure?" she asked with a voice coarsened by too much wine and too little fresh air.

"You need to ask?" Yohan gestured toward the fortune-telling cards.

Akashia recognized the ritualized rudeness that passed for civility in the city. She used the style herself with the
yellow-robes. It didn't bother her, or it hadn't until Just-Plain Pavek became a man in her mind, not a templar. And it
bothered her even more with this woman who, on second glance, was only a few years older than she was herself. But
the shop was filled with magic-laced things she could not name and the air itself was thick with Unseen inquiries; she
held her peace, staying close by Yohan.

"Ral's Breath." Yohan's arm dropped quickly from hers; the old dwarf was embarrassed.

"You've come to the wrong place, then. Never sold the baby powders; never will." And staring bluntly at
Akashia's belly, the woman let out a snorting, bitter and private chuckle. "Good luck. You'll need it."

"Why?" Akashia asked, disregarding Yohan's admonition that she be quiet while they were in the shops.

"You won't find any, that's why. It's gone. Old Breath, new Breath, good and bad: it's all gone. Sold or
confiscated by the yellow-robes."

"Confiscated?"

"Where've you been, girl? S'been weeks since the orators harangued that the stuff'd been tampered with." She
swore and wiped a weepy nose against a dirty sleeve. "Never worked much anyway, 'cept with babies and old men.
But it's gone now."

"Would you like some?" she asked gently.

Yohan's fist clamped over her elbow like a vise.

"S'all been confiscated. Ain't none left in the city. You got some, you keep it far and away from me. Don't carry
no stuff from the rotted-yellow customhouse. Don't want no rotted yellow-robes bustin' in here, roustin' me outta
house and home."

The woman took a deep breath, staring at the single roof-beam of her establishment. Aware of her own
foolishness- treating a vendor of the elven market as if she were a woman of Quraite-Akashia tightened her
mind-bending defenses. But the woman was no master of the Unseen Way; her vacant expression was the product of
a Tyr-storm of wildly suspicious thoughts whipping through her mind.

"You bringin' me trouble?" she shouted. Her eyes were sharp-focused now, and filled with rage and madness.
"You settin' the yellow-robes on me? You wantin' my place, my trade?" She swore and stalked forward, head down and
shoulders raised. "I'll give you trouble. I'll give you more trouble than you dreamed-"

The hysterical woman came toward Akashia, Yohan sidestepped between them before harm was done.

"No trouble," he insisted, retreating with cautious, well-balanced strides, pushing her back toward the curtain
door.

"I'm sorry," she apologized as soon as they were both in the alley.

The red-dressed woman's shouts quieted to inarticulate muttering, but they could still hear her moving through
her shop. Fingers with ragged nails appeared at the edges of the curtain, pulling it taut, lashing it to the flimsy frame.

"Go away! Go away, you hear! Take your trouble somewhere else!"

The Quraiters were eager to obey. Yohan grabbed the cart traces and, without saying a word, started for the
street. Once they were milling through the crowds, Akashia insisted softly, "It was my fault,"

Yohan pursed his lips together and adjusted his grip on the traces. He was as angry as she'd ever seen him, and
angry at her as well-which, she knew, was an anger he., found difficult to express.

"I'm ashamed of myself." She said the things she thought he'd want to say, that she needed to hear. "I was
wrong. I made a terrible mistake, thinking because she was my age, she was like me-"

"Don't talk, that's all," Yohan grumbled. "Let me do the talking. All the talking."

"I won't forget again," she assured him. "We learned something, though. The Lion-King's confiscated the
remaining Ral's Breath. He must know it's been tampered with. Pavek's-"

"There's no 'must' with Urik or the lion. We don't know anything, yet."

They went along in stony silence awhile, until she spotted the distinctive signboard slung out over a cross street

"Do we try there?" she asked. "I'll be quiet, I swear it."

"See to it," Yohan replied with the same sternness he'd used in the earlier street confrontation.

Then, after rolling the cart from the street to a less-trafficked alley and leaving the two farmers to stand guard
beside it, he led her into the apothecary's shop.

This second proprietor was an elf, lean and shifty as any lifelong desert nomad, and clear-headed, as the
red-dressed woman had not been. His establishment was better stocked, with neat shelves full of bowls and boxes,
each labeled with a picture of its contents and the symptoms those contents were purported to relieve. One smallish
box bore one picture of a yawning moon and another of a crying baby with an oversized tooth. She nudged Yohan
gently and made arrowlike movements with her eyes to direct his attention to the proper place. He acknowledged with
a deliberate blink.

Yohan and the elven proprietor observed all the rude forms of Urikite conversation. They traded smooth insults
and sly insinuations, but the result was the same: the apothecary had no Ral's Breath in stock-the box she'd noticed
was, in his words 'as empty as our Lord Hamanu's tomb.' And the elf was adamantly uninterested in purchasing
anything they might have to offer.

"Too much trouble," he insisted. "If you're in pain, go to a sawbones healer, or buy yourself something that
works-" He gestured toward a shelf of amber bottles, each labeled with a sleeping or smiling face.

"And that doesn't attract too much attention?" Yohan inquired.

"That's always wise, isn't it? Who but a fool wants to attract attention?"

Yohan pointed at the empty Ral's Breath box. "A fool with a baby that's cutting a tooth? There'll always be
mothers with babies, and always the fathers who provide them. How does a licensed apothecary meet the demand
when yellow-robe scum take away his goods?"

It seemed for a heartbeat that the elf was going to give them a useful answer, then shouts erupted outside.
Akashia instantly recognized the distressed voices of the Quraite fanners and feared the worst. The elf didn't know
about the farmers or the loaded cart they guarded, but he came to the same conclusion.

She felt the mind-bending assault too: a burning agony that lanced her eyes and roared in her ears. It threatened
to engulf every mote of knowledge and identity in her mind, but it was not the worst she'd encountered: when
Grandmother taught the Unseen Way she hadn't pulled her punches. After an eyeblink of monsters from the
mind-bender's nightmares, Akashia successfully wrapped herself in a fortress of peace. The attack beat harmlessly
against her defenses, which, in the nature of the Unseen Way, formed an invisible sphere around her body that
extended to Yohan and the apothecary, both of whom had fallen to the floor in screaming terror.

The power of an Unseen attack was such that the invading images summoned up the victim's direst memories
that continued to wreak their havoc after the mind-bender had withdrawn. Akashia had thrown up her fortress before
the invasion took root; she cast out the mind-bender's repulsive images one by one.

Yohan's lesser defenses had been overwhelmed. His mind radiated gore-a gathering of dwarves cut down and
mutilated by mounted soldiers-until she pinched the bridge of his nose. His thoughts righted themselves quickly and
he caught her hand before she could administer a similar mercy to the writhing elf.

"No time! Which way? Where's it coming from?"

She swung her mind's attention from the visible world to the Unseen one where an evil drone echoed
everywhere. No matter what she did, she couldn't localize the attack, which was continuing. "I-I don't know. It's
everywhere-" Then another, more horrible thought rose from her own imagination. "We're surrounded."

"We've got to try-" Yohan towed her toward the door. "Maybe they're not looking for us."

But she knew, as soon as he said the words, that the attack had been directed at them-even though it caught the
apothecary and a dozen street-side passersby in its net. And the Quraite farmers, as well. They'd both collapsed
beside the cart. Blood seeped from the nose, mouth, and ears of the man who'd lost his knife. Akashia touched him
lightly and withdrew. His life essence had been driven out; there was nothing she could do for him.

The other farmer was still alive, but his mind remained empty after she banished the ravening beasts of his
nightmares. His sense of self might come back of its own, given enough time--but there wasn't any time at all. Luckless
city-dwellers lay on the ground, a few of them bleeding like the first fanner, the others wailing in their misery as the
attack continued.

A ragged, half-grown boy crouched warily a short step away from one of the fallen passersby. He reached for the
coin purse looped over the man's belt and suffered no ill-effects until, in trying to tug it free, his head and shoulders
leaned forward. Then he collapsed with a shriek. She thought he might roll free, but in an instant the mind-bending
attack had paralyzed him and he was as helpless as the others. Still she knew how to defeat the assault.

"We can get away." She grappled with the living, but mindless farmer, trying to lift him into the zarneeka cart.
"The attack's a sphere that's held right here. If we can get outside it-"

Yohan pulled her away from the farmer and the cart. "No time," he snarled. "Is he still attacking?''

"He?" She listened with her mind's ears and heard the strident drone still battering futilely against her defenses.

"He. She. What difference does it make? Is it continuing?"

"Yes. The same as before. I can't tell where it's coming from. It still seems to be coming from everywhere at once."
"Then it doesn't matter where we go." Yohan kept a firm left-side grip on-her wrist, to keep them together and remain
within the protective sphere of the mind-bending defenses she maintained. He scanned the streets and shadows
beyond the apothecary. They were empty now, except for those Urikites unfortunate enough to get caught in the
attack. She guessed that even the scroungers had fled once they saw the boy collapse. She thought their chances for
escape were good and tried to pull back to the cart.

"Forget them. Stay close. You're what's important," he snarled. "He's out there," the dwarf said more softly,
making a slow study of the nearest rooftops. "I can feel him."

She believed him; sometimes an individual with a wild mind-bending talent could do things, discern enemies, that
a trained mind could not. They moved carefully among the stricken Urikites until they crossed an unseen boundary
and the drone, but not Yohan's wariness, diminished.

"Hide us," he commanded as they sneaked around one corner, then another.

But hiding in Urik was not like hiding in Quraite. There was no guardian to invoke or familiar lands in which to
lose themselves. She could use the Unseen Way to trick another mind into not seeing what was right before his or her
eyes. But mind-bending was all illusion and completely dependent on her ability to find the one or many who were
attacking them. She tried again to trace the attack to its source, now that they were beyond its range-and encountered
a defensive barrier as strong as Telhami's and darker than she'd imagined that anything could be.

Nothing she knew would pierce the mind-bender's defense or insert an illusion behind it. She wasn't even certain
how far away the mind-bender was. Though if he-now that Yohan had planted the notion in her head, it seemed to
Akashia that the attack had had a distinctly masculine aura-was not physically nearby, then he was that much more
skilled, that much stronger.

And the mind-bender's presence didn't lessen as they walked through the market, trying not to attract attention.

"We're being followed." She said, with real fear in her heart and voice. "Watched."

They were deep in the elven market now, alongside the towering yellow walls in an area where nomadic elves
hoisted their tents for the days or weeks they spent inside Urik. When the Moonracers-the only nomad tribe Akashia
knew by name or sight-visited Quraite, they were courteous guests, welcomed with feasting, singing, and dancing.
Here in the market, though the clothes and colors were familiar, the faces were unfriendly, even cruel.

"The door?" Yohan asked while making intricate movements with his hands.