The Prince of Shadow (59 page)

Gradually, however, he realized that the desk on the right served a line of buyers awaited the completion of their transactions. At the desk on the left, sellers received their payment, calculated their commissions and taxes, and departed. The shouters seemed to be trying to strike private bargains with buyers and sellers both. The line of sellers seemed to be mostly Harnish, and Llesho backed away, ducking behind General Shou as if the traders would recognize him and kill him as the raiders had murdered his parents and his sister.

No one noticed them at all, however, until the general raised his voice. “Where is my lady trader?” he insisted with a nasal twang so high and petulant that Llesho did not recognize him. “She promises me a set of fine, plump boys, and a healer to doctor them!”

A few of the traders looked up from their record books and their accounts to give the general's party a scornful examination before returning to their work, but no one seemed to care about the dandy prancing about with his mismatched boys.

Their trader of the day before, however, heard the demand for her attention, and scuttled over. “My lord!” she tucked her hands into her sleeves and bowed deeply before General Shou, a grin pasted on her painted lips. She narrowed her eyes when she caught sight of Bixei, and grabbed his jaw in her hand to count his teeth. “Hmmm,” she said, taking his measure with one cold glance.

“Pretty. He's a bit too tall, and shows some wear—” The latter she said with a well-chosen combination of sly admiration and motherly rebuke. “Some like sweeter flesh, but I can get you a good price. This one, too,” she pointed to Llesho and explained, “Thebin stock. He will look like an untried youth well past twenty summers.”

“I told you yesterday, old woman. I want to buy, not sell. If you don't have what I want, I will find it elsewhere.”

Llesho gave the general a sharp glance, but the woman assured him with much hand-waving that he would have what he wanted. “This way,” she said, stopping in her tracks to look at Bixei again. “I can sell you a close match,” she bargained. “Female, if you like that sort. The height and skin tones are close enough. Brown hair; a bit of bleach would make a perfect match, but perhaps you'd rather color the girl.”

Bixei sniffed indignantly at her, but Shou petted him and gave the trader a simpering smile. “Perhaps next time; I'm looking for Thebins today,”

The trader's shoulders sagged a bit as the prospect of a second sale to the rich but foolish customer faded. Llesho wondered if she would try again, but the trader opened a door at the very back of the countinghouse, and led them into a room empty but for two men standing at a small table. The taller, slimmer man with the tanned, chiseled features in the simply cut jacket and breeches of a gentleman farmer came forward to greet them. His shorter, darker companion in the robe of a healer remained out of the light, a little behind his master.

Llesho had schooled his expression to remain neutral when he saw his brother. He said nothing when the tall man approached General Shou and bowed formally, but Llesho noted the flare around the nostrils, the sudden whitening around his lips. Adar recognized him, and was keeping his own counsel as well.

“I understand you wish to purchase a Thebin healer,” Adar said, and Llesho stared at him in confusion.

“I am in need of such a one in my household, yes,” Shou answered, a proprietary hand on Llesho's shoulder.

The tall man's eyes narrowed, but he shrugged in a show of indifference. “I am not selling,” he said.

“You said you were interested in the offer,” the trader huffed, and Adar, masquerading as a farmer, quieted her with a gesture. “I am interested,” he said. “I have a mind to purchase the boy.”

“Then perhaps it is time to show our bids.” Shou pulled a coin purse from his belt and took out three gold coins, which he set on the table between the bidders.

Adar held out a hand to his attendant. When the second man moved out of his shadow to put a stack of coins on Adar's outstretched palm, Llesho gasped.

“Shokar,” he said, and the tears he had been holding back spilled down his face. “Shokar.”

Llesho pushed his way passed the general. Bixei reached to stop him, but he slipped by him, and lunged for the short, stocky stranger, burying his face in the man's shoulder.

“Llesho?” the man whispered, and the other, Adar, stepped in front of the two so that he could hide their embrace at almost the same moment that Llesho realized the danger they were in.

“Sell!” he whispered to his older brother, and released Shokar with a blush and an apology.

“It has been so long since I have seen someone new from my own lands,” he explained, bowing as deeply as he could to the general. “I did not mean to distress your lordship.”

“The exuberance of youth!” The general waved a hand. “Show such enthusiasm when we return home, and it will not go ill for you.” Shou placed the gold coins in the hand of the trader with a smile. “For your trouble,” he told her. “We will continue this negotiation over wine, I think.”

Adar said nothing for a moment, and Llesho urged him silently to agree. Finally, the healer nodded.

“I have rooms nearby.” The general bowed as he offered his hospitality. “And the wine is excellent. If we can come to no permanent agreement, perhaps you will do me the favor of having your man look at my boy.”

Adar who wore the clothing of the master rather than the slave, seemed little inclined to trust the offer. Taking advantage of the cover Adar gave him, Llesho reached out and pressed his fingers against his brother's hand, signaling reassurance, he hoped. Adar finally bowed his agreement.

The trader narrowed her eyes, but General Shou, in his disguise as a merchant, returned her suspicion with a guileless smile. He took another coin out of the purse and handed it over. “For your efforts on my behalf, and so that you will remember me if you see something to my taste cross your block,” he said.

Llesho was amazed at how stupid the general looked at that moment, but it seemed to disarm the trader, who bit into the coin with her cracked teeth and pronounced herself happy to be of service to his lordship. With much bowing, they made their way back through the press of commerce at the front of the countinghouse, and found themselves once again in the market square.

“The boys must be hungry,” Shou announced, still in the guise of the foolish merchant. He made his way across the square toward Darit's booth, and waved four fingers in the air to order four of her wonderful breads. When they drew close enough to reach their food, she gave General Shou a crinkling smile. “You've collected another one, I see.” She handed Bixei and Llesho two each of the delicacies, and then held out a fifth, wrapped in paper, to Shou himself. “I have a new filling I thought you might like to try.”

She gave a loud laugh which did not startle her customers at all, who were used to her manner, but her eyes were serious. Llesho thought he read a warning in their depths. General Shou's smile likewise did not move beyond the mechanical flexing of his mouth, which caused Llesho to wonder what Darit was to the general, besides a source of delicious food.

Shou did not say anything, however, but tucked the packet into his coat. “Do you still want to see the dancing bear?” he asked. Shokar tensed, and Adar placed a comforting hand on Llesho's shoulder. Both men were surprised when Llesho answered around a mouthful of food: “Yes! I hope we are able to see the monkey as well!”

“Your master seems very kind,” Adar ventured in low tones as their party skirted the shops of the cloth merchants, which were again blocked by the laughing crowds.

“He's an unusual man,” Llesho agreed. He had picked up on the general's guarded study of the crowds in the marketplace, and it had heightened his own alertness. He wondered what the general saw that he did not know enough to recognize.

Shou led them around the crowd, and up the steps of the impoverished Temple of The Seven Gods on the far side of the crowd.

Adar gave him a strange look, but held his tongue when Llesho frowned, darting quick glances over the heads of the crowds.

“Soldiers,” Llesho muttered, and Shokar communicated his surprise and his question with a raised eyebrow. Llesho shrugged, trying to put “later” in the gesture. The troops were not wearing the uniforms of guard or militia, but soldiers going into battle carried themselves as no one else in Llesho's experience. And if that were true, there were too many of them in the market square. And far too many wore the garb of Harnish traders.

At the center of the laughing crowd, a monkey in the uniform of an Imperial Guard did backflips on the shoulders of a brown bear. Kaydu carried a basket which she stuck under the noses of the audience, many of whom had a coarse word or joke about the uniform the monkey wore. A slim young woman in a long, flowing gown sat on the steps, smiling at the antics of the bear, but watching the crowd with careful, attentive eyes. She looked like Mara, except that she was too young, too straight and slim to be the old healer woman. But she had Mara's face and Mara's eyes. She caught Llesho's glance and rose from her perch, skipping down the steps with light dance moves.

“Come back later!” she called to the crowd as she took the bear's paw in her hand and danced him once around the little open circle. Kaydu finished her collection with a flourishing bow, and gathered Little Brother to her as the bear and its leader danced their way around the corner of the temple.

General Shou waited only until the market performers were out of sight before ducking into the temple. Bixei followed, and Llesho came after with Adar and Shokar.

“That didn't go quite as I'd planned it,” Shou remarked. “What exactly were you doing, Llesho?”

The two newcomers stepped between Llesho and the man they took to be a merchant, but Llesho responded to the familiar commanding tone with a quick snap to attention.

“May I present my brothers,” he said, stepping between them and bowing to the general. “Adar, the healer of whom I have often spoken—” he smiled and gestured at the taller man, “—and Shokar, whom I had thought lost to us.”

Shou made a bow to the brothers, and would have spoken, except that a priest of the temple approached, a frown creasing his forehead. “As always, you come to us with trouble close behind,” the priest said.

“Master Markko's people?” Shou skinned out of his merchant's robe. Under it he wore his uniform and had a sword strapped to his side.

“He does seem to be in the thick of it.” The priest took the merchant's robe and handed Shou his helmet. “And he seems to command not just the remnant of the force he brought from Farshore Province, but Harnish raiders as well, scattered among the honest tradesmen in the marketplace.”

“A man would have to be mad to trust the Harn as allies,” Adar swore heatedly.

“Mad he may be,” Llesho agreed, “but no less dangerous for it.”

His brothers stared at him, surprised at the force and confidence of his words. Their surprise turned to astonishment when Kaydu skidded into the temple. She had shed her fool's costume, and wore the uniform of Thousand Lakes Province. Little Brother sat on her shoulder, his paws clinging around her neck, and the bear from the marketplace scampered at her heels. The bear's companion from the marketplace followed at a more sedate pace.

“Mara?” Llesho asked Kaydu.

The stranger answered, with a smile. “I'm Carina, Mara's daughter. But my companion is an old friend of yours.”

“Lleck?” Llesho whispered. The cub nuzzled his hand and moaned, “Lleeee-shooooo!”

“Lleck?” Shokar choked on the name. “You have named a dancing bear after our father's chief adviser?”

Llesho shrugged with a rueful smile. “Not exactly.”

“Shoooooo-karrrrrr?” the bear sniffed at his hand. “Shoookarrrrr!”

Shokar gasped. “That bear said my name!”

“It
is
Lleck,” Llesho explained, “our father's adviser. He has taken the form of a bear as protector until Thebin is regained.”

Adar looked shaken and seemed about to speak, but General Shou was addressing Kaydu, and Llesho turned to listen.

“Are the emperor's troops holding?” Shou asked her.

“They are outnumbered,” she gasped. “My father is bringing his reinforcements from outside the city.”

“We need time,” the general muttered. “We have to hold Markko to the square.”

A second priest joined them, and Llesho grinned when he saw the bundles he carried. “Is that my sword?” he asked. The bundle was wrapped in his Thebin coat and he unbound the pack and put on his coat first. His sword belt and sheath followed; Llesho drew the sword and loosened his wrist by twirling the weapon in small circles pointed at the floor.

Shokar was still confused, but one thing seemed clear. “I take it you are not the pampered pleasure slave of a stupid Shannish merchant, then?” he asked dryly.

“No, brother.” Llesho flashed a predatory grin that was new to him since the battle with Master Markko on the border of Shan Province. He drew his Thebin knife and tossed it in the air, catching it again by the hilt and casting about with it to measure the balance of it in his hand. Bixei was testing the heft of his spear, and Kaydu had drawn her sword and taken up a trident with it.

“Are you certain of what you are doing?” Shokar asked his brother. “You're just a boy. This temple would surely protect you if there is to be fighting.”

“I'm a soldier,” Llesho answered with a shrug. “And it is
my
battle as much as Shan Province's. Master Markko followed
me
here. If he now conspires with the Harn, all of Shan may soon fall under the same yoke as Thebin.”