Huool chittered again. “Their loss, then, and not yours. But let us consider the data once more. What do you think this big fish of yours is seeking?”
“Hard to say. We’re dealing with proxies, agents, that sort of thing; whoever’s behind it isn’t acting directly at all. Something of value—”
“Of course, young one. Whatever is wanted has value.”
She gave an impatient snort. “I already know the basics, Huool. What I was going to say is, I don’t think our hungry fish is looking for the sort of thing that gets displayed out in the front gallery. Either here
or
at Provéc.”
“No,” Huool agreed. “And this is your lesson for today. I believe that what is being sought is not an object that can be held in the hands at all. Rather, someone seeks to hire a surprising service. Watch and learn.”
“Sombrelír at last,” Jens said. “And in the morning on a business day, at that. I say we take the advice of our acquaintance from the observation deck and go sightseeing.”
The two cousins stood in the Grand Concourse of the main spaceport complex. Faral was trying hard not to gawk at the crowds. The port building back home on Maraghai was almost the same size as the Ophelan Concourse, but much emptier. The civilized galaxy in general, he was close to deciding, had too many people in it. He should have stuck with Chaka—the Selvaur had stayed on board
Bright-Wind-Rising
to oversee the transfer of their luggage onto a ship for Eraasi.
“If you ask me,” Faral said, “there’s plenty of stuff to see right here in the Concourse. Look over there.” He nodded toward a full-size holodisplay in a nearby window. “‘Personal Comforts for the Weary Traveler’—you sure can’t find anything like
that
in Ernalghan.”
Jens glanced over at the window and gave a dismissive shrug.
It’s nothing compared to Khesat
, the gesture seemed to say—and for all Faral knew, he might be right. “Father says that sticking to the portside strip is a good way to lose your health and your money both. I’ve checked the maps. We can make it across town and back with plenty of time in the middle to look around.”
Faral gave up the argument. He followed his cousin out through a high archway marked GROUND TRANSPORT: SOMBRELÍR, NANÁLI, DUVIZE. Outside, hoverbuses and wheeled jitneys waited in ranks under the great portico. Jens had already picked out one of the jitneys. It was painted bright green, for some reason, with darker-green vines and purple flowers twining all over it.
“You’re joking, right?” Faral said.
Jens raised an eyebrow. “Of course not. We’re appreciating the local art forms, and this is one of them.”
Faral gave up. When his cousin started acting more Khesatan than the Khesatans, there was nothing to do but leave him alone until he got over it. Maybe he’d explain later what had put him on edge, and maybe not.
In the open-topped jitney, the ride from the spaceport through outer and central Sombrelír was breezy and pleasant. The warmth of the morning contrasted with the chilly atmosphere the cousins had grown used to on board the starliner, and the air was full of interesting smells.
At the edge of the Old Quarter, the driver stopped. “No further,” he said. “Foot and carriage only from here.”
Jens paid the fare—it came to more than Faral had expected, but not enough to cause distress—and the cousins got out of the jitney. One of the carriages the driver had referred to clattered by, drawn by two of some draft animal that Faral didn’t recognize. The creatures had stubby horns and hooves the size of dinner plates, and he was glad when Jens ignored the carriage and set out into the Old Quarter on foot.
They walked for some time through a maze of narrow streets and little square parks with bronze statues in them. The stone-and-plaster buildings of the Quarter were painted in bright pastel colors, and strange flowers grew in boxes along the sidewalks. The walks themselves were paved with black and white tiles in mosaic patterns. A wide watercourse ran through the heart of the area, and floating bridges connected the streets on either side.
There were few enough people about that Faral felt less uncomfortable than he had in a long time. The crowding on the ship and in the spaceport had gotten on his nerves—he wondered if that was what had affected Jens, as well.
They wandered at random for a while, looking at the shops, the inhabitants, and the other tourists, until Jens exclaimed, “Ah, there it is!”
Faral looked where his cousin was pointing. Up ahead, in a shopwindow, a hand-lettered placard rested on a driftwood easel: THALBAN’S.
“That looks like the place,” agreed Faral, and the two of them entered.
The lunchtime crush had ended at Bindweed & Blossom’s. In a corner near the front, two country ladies in town from Duvize lingered over tisanes before resuming their shopping. Other than that, the shop was empty. Bindweed was changing the linen on the last of the vacant tables when the two boys came through the front door.
Tourists
, she thought at once.
Up from the port. Old enough to be out loose on their own, but green as a pair of pressed-glass cuff links.
One of the lads was tall and fair, with long yellow hair tied back in a neat queue; the other, darker one was stocky and muscular. In the old days, she could have pinpointed their world of origin at first glance—but the modern habit of dressing for travel in an abstract version of the basic Galcenian mode blurred most of the possible cues. A long way from home, that was for sure; they’d been souvenir-shopping in the Quarter already. The fair one carried a shopping bag emblazoned with Thalban’s logo in flowing script.
Money, too
, she added to herself. Thalban dealt in high-quality goods, and they didn’t come cheap.
She picked up her datapad and went to take their order. It would be interesting to see what language they addressed her in.
Standard Galcenian,
she wagered with herself.
But not like a native.
The fair one spoke first. “Good day, Gentlelady,”
Bindweed smiled to herself—Galcenian, indeed, but with a faint, musical intonation that spoke of someplace else besides the Mother of Worlds. “Good day, Gentlesirs. What would you desire this fine noontide?”
“A bit of food and drink, before we get back to our ship.” His voice was light and pleasant, without the edges that came with time and hardship. “If you could recommend?”
“Of course,” she said. “We have fresh-made parchants today, and sugared berry-root. Perhaps those, and a pot of immer-leaf tea?”
He inclined his head in a gesture of gracious acquiescence that almost succeeded in looking unstudied. “That would be delightful.”
Khesatan,
she decided, as she headed back into the kitchen with the order.
Maybe second-generation expatriate. He’s got some of the body language for it, and about half the accent. Not his buddy, though—I don’t know where that one’s from. If he’d said something, maybe then I could have placed him …
Blossom caught her eye as soon as she came through the door. “Something’s up,” her partner said, and beckoned her over to the readout screen. “Take a look at this.”
“Look at that,” Miza said.
She leaned forward and used her light wand to circle a glyph on the work surface. The pattern she’d been following crystallized briefly, then cycled color from warm amber to deep purple. Eraasian-style display technology had taken her some getting used to when she first came to study with Huool—Artha used the standard Republic interfaces—but now that she’d learned its peculiarities, she found it handy and expressive.
“Whatever our big fish was looking for,” she said, “he just found himself a seller. In my opinion, of course.”
Huool came to look over her shoulder, and clicked his beak in approbation. “Very perceptive, young one. And what is being sought, I think we will soon learn.”
“I didn’t spot that.”
“See here,” said the Roti. He tapped another of the changing glyphs with a taloned forefinger. “The magnitude of the ripples makes discovery nearly certain.”
Miza looked at the glyph more closely. “Now I’ve got it. We’re talking extreme volatility—what should I do?”
“Continue to watch,” Huool said. “And if the ripples from this affair threaten to touch our establishment, pray inform me at once.”
He left to take his place in the front gallery for the afternoon shopping trade.
Miza stayed at her desk and watched the fluid information-shapes come and go on its work surface. Drawing her finger across the desktop’s input area, she engaged its “record” mode. She still had her final exams to worry about when she returned to Artha, and it made sense to preserve the transactions of the next few hours for study and review.
Then she checked the timeline again. Huool had been right: the crossing would be soon.
Faral wasn’t sure why his cousin had picked an Old Quarter tea shop as the best place to have lunch before returning to
Bright-Wind-Rising.
True, Thalban’s Handcrafted Arts and Musicks occupied quarters across the square, and Jens had been looking for that establishment since first hearing of it on board ship—and if he thought that a carved bone fipple-flute and a set of bluestone counting-beads would make perfect souvenirs for his aunt and uncle back on Maraghai, then Faral wasn’t going to argue with him—but just the same …
“Parchants and berry-root—are you serious?” he asked Jens under his breath. “The plate probably comes with a doily under it, too.”
“I certainly hope so,” said Jens. “The experience wouldn’t be complete otherwise.”
Faral sighed. “Is there some reason you’re being difficult, foster-brother, or is this only a ploy to keep from getting bored? Because I remember what happened the
last
time you decided you didn’t want to get bored.”
His cousin abandoned his Khesatan manner for a few seconds and grinned at him. “It worked, didn’t it? We weren’t bored.”
“Yes, but—”
“Ssh. Here’s the food now.”
And, indeed, a second woman—this one in a cook’s apron over a neat white shirt and plain black trousers—was coming out of the kitchen with a loaded tray as Jens spoke. The tray held a steaming crystal pot of ruddy liquid, a cut-glass dish full of greenish cubes dusted with coarse sugar, and a porcelain platter with a pile of small round things under a white napkin. Faral couldn’t tell if there was a doily under the platter or not.
He wondered if the cook was Bindweed or Blossom. The other woman, the one who’d taken their order, was up at the other occupied table with her datapad—settling a bill, it looked like. The cook drew closer, smiling.
Then, without warning, her posture shifted and she heaved the tray full of hot tea and pastries straight at their table. Faral threw himself sideways off his chair as the heavy crystal pot flew toward him. He thought he saw Jens ducking in the other direction, but he didn’t have a chance to look. Immer-leaf tea splashed in all directions as the pot flew past where his head had been, and parchant buns pattered down like hailstones.
The cook was still moving, bringing up one foot in a kick that knocked the table over completely. He recognized the move—it was a common one in the hand-to hand he’d learned growing up back home—but where did a sweet little old gentlelady pastry cook learn something like that? Porcelain crashed and broke into splinters, silverware crashed and slid and clattered, and somewhere close behind him a man shouted in surprise and pain.
Faral took a chance on glancing up from the floor, and saw a man in tea-soaked blue and white livery clawing at his scalded face. In the next moment, a heavy blaster fired close by, its distinctive zing echoing through the shop. Then another blaster fired near at hand—once, twice, three times—the crimson energy bolts taking the scalded man in the chest and head as he fell.
“Get on your feet, boys,” said the cook, who had somehow acquired a blaster in the few seconds that had passed since she’d stopped needing to hold on to the tray. “We have to get the two of you out of here.”
She snapped off a quick shot through the milk-glass of the right-hand front shop window, where a shadow had moved. The glass curled away, leaving a neat round hole, and the shadow dropped suddenly down. Then she shifted her grip on the blaster and drew back her arm to throw it.
“Bindweed!” she shouted. “Catch!”
Well, that settles the question of which one is which,
Faral thought, as the cook tossed the blaster across the room to her partner. The other woman plucked it from midair as it whirled past her, fired a quick bolt at an unseen target outside the door, then dropped and rolled. She came up kneeling on the other side of the doorway, half-covered by the frame, with the blaster gripped two-handed before her.
“Got you covered!” she called back to Blossom. “Go!”
Faral scrambled to his feet—Jens was already up off the floor, he saw with relief—and let Blossom steer them both toward the back of the shop.