Wolf Captured (14 page)

The back edge of the courtyard was flanked with two arched doorways. These proved to lead into large rooms with cool, tiled floors, furnished with heavy pieces worked from intricately carved wood: beds, clothes chests, and tables overhung with framed mirrors. The beds were covered with embroidered quilts that seemed too heavy for the warm air, and overhung with fine mesh nets.

Harjeedian turned to the three.

“Here is where you will stay,” he said. “Decide how you will divide up the sleeping rooms as best suits you.”

He turned to Firekeeper and looked at her very sternly.

“Your parole does not give you leave to roam outside of this courtyard and these rooms. Do you understand?”

Firekeeper nodded, amused and pleased by the care Harjeedian took to set her limits. It spoke of respect for her cleverness.

“Food will be brought to you,” Harjeedian went on more generally, “and drink, and a change of clothing.”

With that, he hurried away, and they were left to contemplate their new situation.

Blind Seer padded over to the pool and drank deeply. He raised his head and sneezed, backing away from the water, shaking as if he were wet all over.

“What’s with him?” Derian asked. “Get a fish up his nose?”

The pool was home to many small, brightly scaled carp, but these were not the source of the wolf’s distress. Blind Seer sneezed again, and Firekeeper crossed and knelt beside him.

“Beware the pool, sweet Firekeeper,”
the wolf said.
“The water is not as fresh as its sparkle seems to show—though I have drank worse without becoming ill. Snakes lair within its waters.”

Firekeeper leaned over the water to inspect the edges of the pool and saw several sleek greenish black forms coiled about the rocks and water plants. One had half consumed a small fish, and the carcass hung from its gaping mouth. She wrinkled her nose in disgust and looked at Derian and Barnet.

“Snakes in the pool,” she said. “Water is tainted.”

Derian gagged. “And to think I was considering taking a dip. I hope they bring us wash water along with the fresh clothing.”

As if in reply, a clanking sound announced the iron gate being opened. A young woman stepped through, holding the gate open while dropping a key back into the folds of her blouse. She was clad in a similar fashion to Harjeedian’s formal attire—though without demonstrating his obsession with snakes and lacking the conical hat. Her skin was the color of toasted bread, and the hair that fell past the middle of her back was the precise shade of wet ink. There was something of wet ink as well in her hair’s silkiness, and in the liquid way it fell from the loose clip that gathered it at the nape of her neck.

The young woman smiled shyly at them, and in that smile Firekeeper recognized something of Harjeedian, but a younger Harjeedian, gentler and more curious. The same high cheekbones that distorted his face and made his eyes seem slitted were as elegant as sculpture on her, and the same brown eyes were warm and inquisitive.

Firekeeper heard twin intakes of breath from Derian and Barnet and knew that what she guessed was indeed true. This was a young woman of surpassing beauty.

Clapping her hands twice in a signal that Firekeeper already knew from shipboard meant “come,” the young woman motioned to some who stood outside the gate. Three large men answered her command. They were all simply clad in loose breeches and smocks, and had the air of servants about them. One wheeled a cart on which was a metal container that radiated much heat. One carried a tray on which was an array of good-smelling food. The last carried a tightly woven basket.

The tray of food was set on the low table near the pool before the servant hurried away, his hard-soled sandals tapping on the bricks of the courtyard floor. The man with the cart wheeled his burden into the nearest of the sleeping rooms. He exited empty-handed, said something to the woman, and hurried away. The third man paused, indecisive, and asked a question of the woman.

Firekeeper caught a few words of what he said, and wasn’t at all surprised when Barnet turned to ask her, “Which room do you two want, or do you plan to sleep out here with the snakes?”

Normally, Firekeeper would have declined the offer of a sleeping chamber, but the snakes made her reconsider. She didn’t think these snakes were poisonous, but snakes were known to nestle near any source of warmth, and the idea of waking to find one of the pool dwellers wrapped around her in the same fashion that Harjeedian carried his pets was unpleasant.

She recalled that one of the rooms had held a single large bed, the other two smaller ones.

“I take room with one bed,” she said.

Barnet relayed this information, and the man with the basket went first into Firekeeper’s chosen room, then into the other. When he returned, he carried the basket as if it was much lighter and Firekeeper guessed that it had been his task to deliver fresh clothing.

Meanwhile the young woman motioned them toward the tray of food.

“Eat,” she said in her own language. “It is very good.”

Firekeeper was hungry, but what she’d tasted of local cooking on the ship hadn’t pleased her. The Liglimom had a liking for heavily flavored sauces that seemed to serve mostly to hide when the food underneath was near spoiling.

To her pleasure, she saw that among the sauced dishes there was also a selection of clean grilled meats and lightly cooked vegetables quite suited to her tastes. For Blind Seer, the tray carrier returned a moment later with a haunch of some type of deer, raw and butchered no later than that morning.

“I am Rahniseeta,” the woman said, still in her own language, but speaking very carefully. “I am Harjeedian’s sister, and will assist him in making you welcome.”

Derian was looking very stiff and awkward and couldn’t seem to find his voice. Barnet was not so discommoded, but smiled warmly, awakening an answering smile from Rahniseeta.

“Thank you,” Barnet said in Liglimosh. “We are grateful.”

Rahniseeta sank gracefully onto one of the low chairs placed near the table and picked up a metal pitcher that was sweating from the coolness of whatever was inside.

“This is a fruit drink,” she said. “Very good. This,” she lifted another pitcher, “is fresh water.”

Firekeeper reached for the water. No bowl had been put on the tray for Blind Seer, so she supplied one by pouring apricots out onto the food tray. Then she set the bowl on the brick floor of the courtyard and filled it with water.

Rahniseeta watched without either comment or complaint. When Firekeeper set the water pitcher back on the tray, she said, “We remembered food for your companion, but thought he would drink from the pool.”

Firekeeper struggled to answer in Liglimosh.

“It taste like snake shit,” she managed. She knew when she saw Derian color that she was using cruder language than was proper, but the sailors’ terms she had heard dozens of times a day came more readily to mind.

Rahniseeta nodded.

“How do you know this?”

Firekeeper answered guardedly, not certain whether or not she was being insulted.

“He not like.”

Rahniseeta’s grin was unguarded and friendly.

“I would not care to drink tainted water either. You will be pleased to know that your bathwater is not taken from this pool or any like it. Hot water has been brought. Cool is being brought, along with a tub.”

Derian found his voice for two words.

“Thank you.”

Rahniseeta robbed him of his voice with another of her smiles before continuing.

“There are baths here in the compound with running water, both hot and cold, but we thought you would like privacy.”

Firekeeper said to Blind Seer,
“And to let us go there and bathe would make it difficult to keep us in hiding.”

Blind Seer laughed, beating his tail on the floor. His powerful jaws cracked the deer bone at its thickest point and he grunted in satisfaction as he licked out the marrow. Firekeeper noticed with some satisfaction that Rahniseeta was impressed.

But not afraid. Like Harjeedian, she did not fear Blind Seer. Did these people think them tamed? Controlled? She swallowed a growl, not liking the thought at all, and resolving that as soon as possible she would make sure these Liglimom knew that captive and tame were not at all the same thing.

ONCE THE COOL WATER HAD BEEN DELIVERED, and Rahniseeta had made certain they knew how to operate the tank for adding hot, Harjeedian’s sister left. Derian found it very difficult not to stare after her as she walked out through the iron gate. Her hips swayed ever so slightly as she walked, a gait with music in every step, very different from what he had observed elsewhere—and Derian was an enthusiastic observer of feminine charms.

He wondered if the loose trouser costume she wore accounted for it, the gentle fall of folded fabric accentuating her movements, or whether it had more to do with Rahniseeta’s own perfect grace. He was willing to place money on the credit being Rahniseeta’s own, for certainly neither Harjeedian nor their escort—both of whom had worn variations on the same costume—had so captured his eye.

Suddenly, Derian became aware that Barnet had asked him a question. Judging by the mild amusement in his tone, Barnet was repeating himself.

“Excuse me. I wasn’t listening,” Derian said honestly.

“I asked if you were going to finish that stew,” Barnet said. “I acquired something of a taste for it during my last stay.”

“Oh, no, please, go ahead. It’s nice, but I’m quite full.”

Derian paused long enough that he hoped his interest wouldn’t seem too obvious, then asked: “Did you meet Harjeedian’s sister when you were here before?”

Barnet shook his head, but his full mouth couldn’t quite hide his amusement.

“No. Of those you have met, only Harjeedian and, later, the captain of
Fayonejunjal.
There were many others who came by to learn a bit of Pellish or gape at us, but I don’t think Rahniseeta was among them. I would have remembered her if she had been.”

Derian felt irrationally jealous.

“She is pretty, isn’t she?” he commented, deciding honest admission was better than evasion.

“Pretty doesn’t say it,” the minstrel concurred. “She’s lovely. Graceful as a swaying tree limb or perhaps a single flower in a field of wheat.”

Derian despaired. He hadn’t been able to do more than gulp out a few words. Barnet was already composing poetry—and the minstrel had the jump on him as far as speaking the local language went, too.

Oh, well
, he thought,
at least I have another incentive to improve my Liglimosh.

Firekeeper had slipped away at some point, and now she returned. She was freshly washed and still damp, hands busy adjusting the clean clothing that had been set out for her. As the style—a version of the ubiquitous loose trousers and blouse—was not overly different from what they had been given aboard ship, she had done fairly well. However, she was having trouble with the trousers.

The trousers they had been given shipboard had been tapered, cut to slightly below the knee, then laced to whatever snugness the wearer preferred. Since Firekeeper preferred freedom of motion, she had kept hers laced very loosely, sometimes not bothering to tie the laces at all. The trousers in her new outfit, however, were cut to ankle length, and the excess fabric in the legs was sufficient that if she didn’t tighten the lacing, the legs bunched and dragged on the ground.

“Is there knife on that eating plate?” she asked. “I think these need cutting off.”

Derian glanced at the tray, noticing for the first time that the only utensils were spoons. The meal had been so cleverly arranged that he had not noticed the lack. Even Firekeeper’s rarer meat had been cut into neat chunks in advance.

“No knife,” he said, “but I think there’s something we can do about those trouser legs. Come over here.”

Firekeeper did so, hauling up at the waistband of her trousers so as to not tread on the hem. Derian investigated, admiring the tight weave of the dark green fabric as he did so. Whatever else about their situation, they were not being dressed as prisoners.

“Look here,” he said. “There’s a drawstring at the bottom, different from lacing, but not too much so. You work the fabric around the lace until it’s as snug as you’d like. Then the fabric stays above your ankle, rather than tangling your foot.”

“Untangle one foot,” Firekeeper suggested. “I watch, do other.”

Derian complied.

“How does that feel?” he asked.

“Not so bad,” Firekeeper replied, propping her foot on one of the vacant chairs and tying the other leg to match. “Though my legs feel odd with so much cloth around. Shirt in or out?”

Derian inspected the blouse, which was woven of a similar fabric, dyed a slightly lighter shade of green, and trimmed with a darker green ribbon that could be used to adjust the fit of the neckline. Firekeeper had left her blouse unlaced and untucked. Comparing the wolf-woman’s appearance to his all too vivid memory of Rahniseeta, Derian passed judgment.

“Tuck it in, I think,” he said, “but not too snug, leave a little extra untucked and the shirt will flow. That’s right. Now, lace the neck just a bit. Hanging open like that looks slatternly.”

Firekeeper obeyed, and when she had finished, she looked so cool and clean that Derian couldn’t wait for his own turn at the bath.

“Flip a coin for the bath?” he asked Barnet.

“Don’t have a coin,” Barnet replied laconically, pouring the last of the fruit juice into his glass and swirling it to examine the color. “You go on ahead.”

Derian’s initial gratitude was moderated slightly when he realized that this meant his would be the awkward task of rolling the tub into the room he would share with Barnet, then bringing the hot-water cart after. Firekeeper helped him, and they managed without too much sloshing.

The clothing that had been left for him—it was obvious which was his by the length of the trousers—was in shades of rusty brown. As with Firekeeper’s outfit, the trousers were darker than the shirt. His shirt, however, lacked the lacing at the neck, but was cut instead in a keyhole pattern that left a narrow line open midway down his chest. His full-length trousers were not as full either, and he supposed the differences were meant to accommodate male and female anatomical variations.