The Dragon of Despair (57 page)

“So does Firekeeper,” Wendee replied with a laugh. “She was asking me about human courting customs this morning and was appalled when I assured her that the matter wasn’t going to be resolved as simply as she imagined.

“Mind,” Wendee continued, squeezing close to Derian to avoid a parade of women in elaborate floral robes who strolled down the middle of the street as if no one else were about, “I think Firekeeper isn’t as ignorant as that. I think she was hoping that I’d find her a loophole. She’s frustrated by something—and I think it’s more than our current situation. What’s going on with her?”

Derian hesitated. Matters west of the Iron Mountains, especially the remarkable news that the Royal Beasts were prepared to defend their lands, might just be a state secret. On the other hand, Firekeeper had been edgy lately, and telling Wendee something of what was troubling the wolf-woman might prevent disaster later.

“She’s worried about her family—wolf family,” he began. “When we went west earlier this spring we discovered some people had taken over the site of Prince Barden’s old settlement. They weren’t particularly sympathetic to the claims of those who were already living there.”

“By which you mean wolves,” Wendee said, obviously trying to wrap her mind around the concept. She nodded crisply, clearly having succeeded. “No wonder Firekeeper’s in a snit. Why isn’t she back with her pack?”

“King Tedric told her he wanted her out of there,” Derian replied honestly, “that if she started trouble it wouldn’t do any good for the wolves or for her or for the Kestrels. He promised to send representatives to evict the settlers if she’d come along on this trip. Firekeeper agreed, but it’s eating her alive, not knowing how her family is doing.”

Wendee nodded.

“It would me, too,” she said sympathetically. “We need to find things for her to do to keep her busy. Right now while we’re feeling our way into the local situation she’s too much idle.”

“Any ideas?” Derian asked.

“Let me think,” Wendee replied. “In any case, we shouldn’t be discussing such things in the middle of the market.”

The last turn of the street had brought them into Aswatano, the Fountain Court, their local market square. Like similar open spaces in Eagle’s Nest, Aswatano had at its heart a fountain supplying fresh water to the local residents.

Unlike the ones in Eagle’s Nest, however, which were attractive but fairly utilitarian structures, this New Kelvinese fountain was an ornate sculpture depicting a group of robed figures apparently trying to rope a storm cloud. The water falling from the cloud gave the impression that the scene was alive and moving.

“I’m glad Hasamemorri’s house has its own well,” Wendee said, glancing at the sculpture. “That gives me the creeps. Jalarios told me that it depicts a scene from one of their legends of the Founders, something to do with subduing some monster.”

Derian took a second look at the sculpture and saw hints of claws and fangs in the cloud, and maybe a long, serpentine tail.

Wendee defiantly turned her back on the fountain and began inspecting fat, round yellow squash in such a fashion that Derian knew further discussion of that matter would be unwelcome.

To distract himself, Derian went a few stalls away and began fingering some long, thin peppers that burned his mouth just to look at them. The vegetable seller gave Derian a rather nasty look for which translation was unnecessary, and Derian managed an apology in his halting New Kelvinese that only slightly mollified the…man? Woman?

Derian couldn’t really tell and a wave of disorientation came over him, strong enough to wash away his previous smug sense of being acclimated to this foreign land.

Shopping took longer than it would have in Eagle’s Nest. Wendee wasn’t about to be taken just because she was a foreigner, but her awkward version of the language with its persistent threads of archaic expressions didn’t help matters much.

A butcher, his face and upper body stained in wild patterns as if to compensate for the clothing his trade made impractical, started hooting in laughter when Wendee called him something that Derian understood translated as “Thou callow fool!” Such expressions might sear the malefactor to the bone in a play three hundred years old, but clearly they didn’t have the same impact on a modern listener.

When he could stop hooting with laughter, the butcher said to Wendee:

“You Hawkus?”

His Pellish was worse than Wendee’s New Kelvinese, but clearly he thought he’d done something clever by showing he knew a smattering of their language.

Wendee replied with icy precision in his own language:

“Yes. I am from Hawk Haven.”

The man replied with a long, deliberately slow statement from which Derian caught only the most simple words. That it was insulting, he had no doubt, given the rise of color to Wendee’s fair cheek. Seeing her blush, the butcher laughed again, pointing and adding some comment that the bystanders seemed to find even funnier than his previous effort.

Derian hated putting himself to the fore, but he couldn’t leave Wendee to face this alone.

“What did the butcher say?” he hissed at her under the cover of the crowd’s laughter and a few shouts that only raised the level of hilarity.

“It was very rude,” Wendee said stiffly, “a comparison of unpainted faces and nakedness. I’d rather not repeat it, but it implied that I was a prostitute. When I blushed, he said that it was too late to cover myself with such thin paint.”

Derian felt his own color rising, but with anger rather than embarrassment. His right fist balled of its own accord. He might not be a soldier, but years of handling horses had given him impressive upper-body strength. He glowered at the butcher, wishing he had the words to tell the man what he thought of him.

He might have tried, but at that moment an angry shout from the back of the crowd cut through the laughter. It was a statement of some sort, and whatever the speaker said brought silence where there had been crude humor a moment before. The only sound was the splash of the fountain.

Then Wendee squared her shoulders.

“That’s cut it,” she said.

“What?” Derian asked.

Wendee didn’t reply directly, but instead began inspecting bags of pungent dried herbs and spices at the stall directly next to the butcher’s.

Derian found himself thinking inanely that the placement probably wasn’t completely fortuitous, since spices could be used to preserve meat. He was aware that every eye in the immediate vicinity remained fastened on them.

“What did that last person shout?” he persisted in Pellish, keeping his voice so low and level that they might—though he doubted anyone was fooled—have been discussing whether to buy sea salt or rock salt.

Wendee responded in kind, hefting a small cloth pouch of something that made Derian want to sneeze, apparently checking to see how well it was filled.

“He said, ‘Go home and take your whoring-spy-bride’—that’s the best translation I can come up with, but it implies a great deal more, all of the ugliest type of behavior—‘with you.’”

She put the pouch in their market basket and looked inquiringly at the stall tender. The spice vendor was a young woman—at least, Derian was fairly sure was a woman; it could have been a rather effeminate boy under all the cosmetics—who looked decidedly uncomfortable at being the center of so much attention.

Wendee picked up another pouch of the same spice, studied it consideringly, and placed it in the basket. Again she looked at the spice vendor.

This time the young woman—Derian felt pretty sure it was a woman once he heard her voice—stammered out a price.

With a coolness Derian was pretty sure she did not feel, Wendee countered with a lower offer. The crowd, which to that moment had remained almost completely silent, stirred. There were a few murmurs, which Derian was certain were admiring.

Taking his cue from Wendee, Derian sniffed a bunch of dried flowers as if trying to decide whether they were worth purchasing.

Wendee grinned at him.

“Those are marigolds,” she said, “used for making a nice golden-yellow dye. I doubt you’d like if we cooked with them. Too strong a flavor.”

Derian almost forgot the crowd, which was, in fact, beginning to forget them—or if not to forget, to ignore.

“And these?” he asked, pointing to some purple flowers.

“Asters,” Wendee said, “though you’ll never guess what color you get from them.”

“Not purple?” Derian asked. “Or blue?”

“Shades of green, gold, or brown,” Wendee said, putting the asters back, “depending on what you mix them with.”

“Mix,” Derian said, glad to play student to Wendee’s impromptu lesson if it would give the crowd a chance to decide not to bother them. “With what?”

“Oddly enough,” Wendee said, pointing to some medium-sized wooden boxes set near to where the stall tender could lay hand on them, “often powdered metals. They help the dyes to set and affect the colors.”

“Interesting,” Derian replied, “but we won’t be dying cloth, will we?”

“No,” Wendee said, glancing surreptitiously around. “However, I don’t think it’s quite safe to venture in to the thick of the market yet. Cooking spices are always useful…

“For many reasons,” she added rather mysteriously.

Derian was distinctly puzzled, right up until they had finished their purchases and Wendee slipped him a packet of the strong-scented spice she had first selected.

“Put it in a pocket where you can easily lay hands on it,” she instructed. “If there’s trouble, a pinch or two in the face will stop someone as well as a fist in the jaw.”

Derian accepted Wendee’s gift, giving the older woman an admiring glance.

“Cool head and hot eyes,” he said, trying to make a proverb of it.

“Something like that,” Wendee agreed. “Just be certain you loosen the tie so you can get to the powder if needed.”

“Needed?” Derian asked. “Surely you’re not staying out here!”

Wendee squared her jaw.

“We certainly are,” she said. “We’ve already learned something about local feelings for Melina that we didn’t know before. Let’s see what else we can learn.”

XXII

THE AMBASSADOR
welcomed Elise and Edlin with a courtesy that could not completely hide that she was a very worried woman.

Ambassador Violet Redbriar was the younger sibling of the current Duchess Goshawk, an able woman in her own right who had transformed a formidable talent for languages into a diplomatic career.

In her mid-sixties, with iron grey hair and skin like fine leather, Violet Redbriar had taken, Elise noted with some surprise, to wearing New Kelvinese cosmetics. She didn’t wear them in any great quantities, true, but the blush on her lips and cheeks, the foundation covering the worst of the sun damage to her skin, were as startling on a woman of Violet Redbriar’s birth as a tattoo would have been.

Perhaps this is what happens when you live among foreigners for too long,
Elise thought.
You begin to see the world through their eyes.

It was an uncomfortable thought, especially about a person Elise had been counting on for—if not help, at least understanding.

After the usual greetings and offering of refreshments, Ambassador Redbriar withdrew with them into a book-lined room that was clearly an office, not a parlor or drawing room.

Elise found this choice rather ominous and her sense of foreboding was not lightened by the ambassador’s first words.

“Things have changed in New Kelvin,” Violet Redbriar said, “and not at all for the good.”

“I say,” Edlin replied, leaning rather stiffly back in his chair as if his buttoned waistcoat was too tight, “that’s what I’ve thought, what?”

Elise frowned him to silence, then turned her attention to the ambassador.

“Lord Kestrel may have noticed, Ambassador Redbriar, but I fear I have not. Of course,” Elise gave a small, self-deprecating shrug, “I have not been much away from our house since we arrived.”

“Has the mood in the street been so bad that you have feared to go out?” Ambassador Redbriar asked.

Elise was puzzled.

“Not at all,” she explained. “Far from it, really. We’ve had numerous patients calling for Doc’s—that is, Sir Jared Surcliffe’s—services. Their mood has seemed fine, enthusiastic even.”

Edlin tried to interject something, but Ambassador Redbriar spoke right through him.

“You haven’t sensed any odd moods,” she persisted. “Urgency, perhaps? Guardedness?”

Elise frowned.

“Anyone who seeks out a doctor seems rather urgent,” she replied, made hesitant by the ambassador’s own intentness, “and all but the patients we see regularly are a bit aloof. We
are
foreigners, after all, even if the locals do believe Doc has magic.”

“I had heard something of Sir Jared’s reputation,” Ambassador Redbriar admitted. “Healing talent, is it?”

Elise nodded reassuringly. “That’s all. He’s a good doctor without it, but it does give him an edge.”

“Well, I find it hopeful that your patients have returned,” Ambassador Redbriar said. “They must have come fairly soon upon your return.”

“Even before we were settled,” Elise said. “We were a bit surprised by how soon they heard of our arrival, actually.”