Toads and Diamonds (27 page)

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you that I rode out this morning to see the well. It's finished, and work has begun on two more."

"Oh. Thank you." Pleasure warmed Diribani's cheeks before she remembered Ruqayya's warning. Encouraging the prince's attention put him at risk, she had said. But no one would know about this conversation. Except Mahan. Which might be good. The guard's presence would keep Diribani from saying anything she shouldn't. Unless Mahan was a spy, and Diribani should send Zahid away at once.
Merchant girl.
That was safest. She spread her empty hands over the wilted flowers. "Alas, nothing here merits a prince's consideration."

As if Naghali-ji mocked her, tiny diamonds sparkled in the lamplight as they pattered onto the table.

Zahid's face sobered. "I disagree. You are the one person who can help me."

She rearranged a garland. "How?" she asked, then squeaked with surprise to find her hands captured between the prince's.

"Trader-talk," he said. "I fear my understanding is incomplete, and the merchants at the mine are taking stunning advantage of my ignorance."

"Um." Diribani heard what he said, but how could she pay attention when her entire being was focused at the end of her wrists?

Prince Zahid had nice hands. Callused palms and smooth dark skin, except for a nasty cut, half-healed, that sliced the side of his hand and disappeared under his sleeve. With the narrow table separating them, she stood close enough to observe other signs of the campaign: His collar didn't quite hide a purple bruise; scratches striped his neck. She frowned in concern.

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"You don't want me to bankrupt the empire's treasury, do you?" Zahid sounded as earnest as little Indu. "Paying fifty thousand gold pieces for a diamond worth five thousand?"

"You didn't!" Poppies flipped their orange-red skirts over a chunk of amethyst.

He laughed at her scandalized air. "How do I know? We do the bargaining with our hands under the table, or one of those embroidered cloths, and I can't remember which finger is ten and which is a hundred."

Diribani bit her lip to keep from laughing at this nonsense. "Very well. No peeking." She freed one hand to flick off her head covering.
Her
religion didn't prohibit Zahid from seeing her face. She snapped the shawl over their still-linked hands, where they rested on the table. "First lesson. It's not which finger, it's
where
on the finger the other person squeezes that gives you the value."

"Ah," he said.

Diribani counted, touching his finger to illustrate each stage. "Fingertip is one, first joint ten, second joint one hundred, palm line one thousand, half-palm ten thousand, wrist one hundred thousand. Denomination, then quantity. Thumb for one, whole hand for five, both hands for ten." Roses and gems punctuated the lecture, but Zahid kept his eyes on her face. Under the cloth, she touched his hands in a quick sequence. "How much did I just offer?"

"Two hundred three," he guessed.

Correctly. In fact, he missed only one of Diribani's tests. "You do so know this," she accused.

The prince kept hold of her hands. "I've heard you can use it for more than numbers."

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"There are other terms," Diribani admitted. As a child, she had exchanged trader-talk for hours with Tana, Hima, even Kalyan. All the traders' children practiced with one another to gain the necessary fluency. But in the garden's warm, flower-scented darkness, in Zahid's company, the ordinary activity seemed charged with danger. Ruqayya would most certainly not approve. And yet Diribani couldn't pull away. "If you're not going to trade directly for coin, you also heed the names of the stones: diamond, sapphire, ruby, emerald." She traced the signs on the back of his hand.

"Like this?" Zahid repeated them. Under the flower-weighted cloth, his fingers danced over her skin. His eyes met hers.

Diribani's lips went dry. She wanted to snatch the scarf and pull it over her head. She wanted to lean closer, wanted the table between them to melt like mist. "More study required," she said and signed, helpless to end the delicious stolen moment. "Exchange in kind, delayed payment, agreed, best offer."

Her fingers brushed the healing cut on the side of his hand. Abruptly, she remembered the danger. He had too many enemies for her to add his elder brother to the list. At any moment, the noble ladies would be leaving the audience hall. They mustn't see Zahid alone--almost alone--with her. "Transaction completed," she finished.

"But we haven't agreed on your payment."

Diribani slipped her hands out from under the scarf. She brought the corners together and spilled the collected gems and flowers onto the table, then draped the fabric over her hair. "You already knew most of them. No charge for practicing."

"But this is the Mina Bazaar." Zahid left his hands in plain view on the table. "You're supposed to haggle."

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"Fine." She could hear voices in the distance. She touched his first finger joint, tugged lightly on his thumb.
Ten.
"Standard copper weights," she said aloud.

"For that most excellent lesson?" He clicked his tongue in disapproval and squeezed her knuckle.
One hundred.
"Gold."

"Definitely not," she said, amused against her will by their backward bargaining. "I'll settle for-silver, though the outrageous price grieves me."

Zahid's head turned. He, too, heard the others coming. "Ah, but I haven't thanked you for the beautiful flower panel in my room."
Diamonds,
he tapped out, then stroked a quick line across the base of her palm.

A thousand diamonds went beyond teasing. Diribani stiffened. "Birthday gifts are excluded from the transaction." She folded his hand into a fist and squeezed it, then rested her hands on her side of the table.

The prince drew himself up, staring down his hawk nose at her. "Offer unsatisfactory?" he said aloud.

She hadn't taught him that one. More than ever, Diribani was convinced that this whole exchange had been a pretext for a private conversation with her. And yet he looked so insulted that she wavered. His next words made her even more confused.

"Of course mere riches wouldn't sway you, diamond girl," he said, too softly for Mahan to hear. "Be advised. Our business is not concluded." His fingers caressed her right hand before he bowed and left her.

With a shaking finger, Diribani traced in the flowers the sign he'd written on her skin.
More study required.

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***

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX Tana

SHE
had found a well pavilion. As Tana stumbled through the dusty trees toward the serpent-crowned doorway, she imagined that she could smell the water the great stone naga promised. Her skin burned. The birds' raucous nighttime noises made it hard for her to think.

Too-ill, too-ill, too-ill,
the cuckoo complained.

What? What?
owlets demanded.

Tana's cracked lips couldn't shape an answer. Clouds covered the moon, and a fitful breeze tossed the leaves. Her teeth chattered; her legs trembled. Her vision was fading at the edges, and she feared she would topple through a dark hole in the earth.

Then she passed under the carved snake and did fall, tripping over the foot-washing basin just inside the doorway. Stone pavement bruised her knees. A trickle of water touched her bloody, thorn-pricked feet. Dry sobs racked Tana's body. She'd come so far, and knocked over the precious water. She scrabbled around

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the empty basin. The puddle she'd made was already drying on stone that still held the day's heat. Tana sucked her damp fingers. Too exhausted and feverish to stand, she struggled forward on hands and knees.

The lamplight didn't reach far from the door niches. Loud in the dark, the birds' chatter filled her head. Tana crawled on blindly. After she bashed her shoulder against a wall, she kept one hand extended in front of her.

A long ramp ended in stairs. Ahead, or below, she heard a frog peeping. She followed the hopeful sound. One battered knee gave way; she tumbled down several steps and cracked the back of her head so hard against the stone that colored lights shivered across her vision. She would have lain there until morning brightened the world, but thirst drove her harder than an overseer's whip. Wearily, Tana dragged herself into a sitting position. She extended her legs and half slid, half fell to the next step.
Bump
.

Down, and down, and down. The stairs had no end. She would finish in the white-coats' hell, with the demons and the flames. Her head pounded. Her skin burned. The injured shoulder and knee shrieked with every movement. Perhaps she was there already? The thought made her cry out. The only noise her parched throat produced was a harsh rasp.

It was enough to frighten her guide frog. The peeping sound stopped. Before Tana could despair completely, a soft splash renewed her will. The water was down there. Somewhere. Stretch. Slide. Bump. Her spine ached with the force of each landing. The stone steps scraped her skin. She kept on. Stretch. Slide. Bump.

Water lapped her feet. Tana straightened in shock and slid into the blessed, blessed coolness. Weeping, she sat waist-deep in the

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well to splash her face and arms and chest. She sucked up the water in great gulps and soaked the rags of her clothing, welcoming the clammy feel of wet cloth. She couldn't get enough of it. When her arms were too tired to splash, she wiggled her toes, just to feel the water moving over thirsty skin.

But the fever inside her, briefly quieted by her bath, came back. This time it burned cold, chattering her teeth and waking goose-flesh along her exposed skin. Tana heaved her legs out of the water and curled into a ball on the step.

With nightmare clarity, visions assaulted her: chained villagers driven from their smoking houses, fly-covered corpses rotting where they lay. Worse, she knew they weren't nightmares, but memories. Rats chewed and chewed and chewed. Obscene pieces of snake were strewn among shattered clay pots. Then the scene shifted. Wreathed in dead flowers, Diribani kept asking Tana what her soul desired. Every answer was the wrong one. Slime coated Tana's lips; diamonds cracked her teeth and turned her words into splinters. She tasted blood. She shivered. She burned. The voices shrieked in her ears, owlets and cuckoos trying to outscreech one another.

What?

Too-ill, too-ill.

"Sh, now. Sh, now."

Which bird was that? Hugging her knees, Tana swallowed pain like a handful of hot sand. A soggy, lumpish toad of a girl, she croaked in alarm at the hands that wanted to pull her apart.

"Sh, you're safe with us, Mina. Let go now, eh, so we can move you out of this damp spot?" Callused hands, but a sweet voice.

Light filtered through tree leaves far overhead. Day had come.

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Tana relaxed so suddenly that her head thumped the stone. The bolt of pain made her groan. Her eyes squeezed shut. Her limbs flailed, and were steadied.

"She's burning," the sweet voice said.

"Wet clothes weigh more'n she does," a man's deeper voice answered.

"Up we go. Let's get a look at you."

Tana didn't recognize either of the speakers' voices. She squinted through crusty lashes and saw dark forms spattered with drops of sunlight. One held her ankles, the other her wrists. Between them, the man and woman hoisted her up the steps she had slid down. She swung from side to side like a net of coconuts strung under the rafters. Her stomach sloshed. Could a person be seasick from the waves crashing inside her?

Tana waged a fierce struggle not to retch. She understood they'd reached the top because her guts stopped trying to turn themselves inside out. She focused on breathing without sobbing.

"Not so young as I once was," the man said. "Hoo! Well's down another flight since yesterday, you reckon?"

"Mm," the sweet voice murmured. A woman's work-worn hands moved over Tana with gentle authority. When they found the knot on the back of Tana's head, they woke a pain so intense that Tana fainted.

Afterward, she didn't remember much about her illness. Light and dark, heat and coolness alternated unpredictably. She did remember people trying to carry her out of the well to the village. She resisted so strongly at passing under the snake portal, actually rolling off a

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litter and crawling back to the well, that they decided Naghali-ji wanted her there. So the villagers screened off an area for her in the entry room and took turns sitting with her.

Hands bathed her hot face with water and spooned broth or sharp-tasting herbal tea into her mouth. They wrapped her with shawls when she shivered, and bathed her again when she kicked off the coverings. Through it all, the frogs in the well inside, and the birds in the grove outside, kept up a noisy commentary. During the day, orioles whistled, parakeets chattered, and quail clucked wordlessly. At night the owlets inquired about her progress:
What? What?