The Dragon Revenant (20 page)

“That’s exactly right!” Her breathy voice held a note of childlike excitement. “Some are so blatant about it, good sir, why, you’d hardly believe their lack of tact!”

“Alas, I fear me that I’d believe it all too well, knowing as I do the hearts of men.” He frowned at the tiles for a long, dramatic moment. “I see a young man from another island here, a handsome man, but arrogant.”

“Why, yes!”

“His youth tempted you, and his virility, because a great sorrow in your life is that you’ve never had children.”

“Yes.” Her voice wavered with real pain. “That’s true, too. But he had other flaws.”

“I can see them quite clearly. Fear not—you made the right decision. But now, alas, you wait, your mind running first one way, then another, while you wonder if your life will simply peter out, like a stream spent in the desert that buries itself in the sand. Yet few would pity you, because of your wealth.”

“I find it hard to pity myself, good sorcerer. I’ve been very poor in my life, and I know just how lucky I am now.”

“And yet, something gnaws you, an emptiness. Hum, I see that it makes you desperate at times. Now what’s this? I see a great threat of scandal, but I can’t seem to divine its cause.”

At that exact moment Rhodry came in with a tray of glass goblets and a glass pitcher of orangeade. He glanced at Jill, then at Alaena in a kind of tormented desperation, and blushed scarlet.

“Terrible, terrible scandal,” Salamander was saying. “Do you see the Queen of Wands? You must be like her, so full of righteousness that none can impugn you, so strong that you can dismiss enemies with the flick of a single finger.”

Rhodry put the tray down, backed noiselessly away, and fled the room. Although Alaena never acknowledged his presence, Jill was certain that only an iron self-control kept her from blushing in turn. She looked up and waved a vague hand at the pitcher.

“Jillanna, would you pour? I simply can’t stop listening to Krysello’s reading.”

“Of course, my lady.” Jill would rather have slit her throat, but she smiled, and smiled again as she passed the goblets round.

“Now, after the trouble passes—and it will pass, I promise you this, oh vision of feminine perfection—I see happy times ahead. There are those who would love you for yourself alone. One man I see, shy, filled with humility, whose feeling of unworthiness is all that keeps him from speaking. Wait! I see two such—one barely known to you; another who is an old friend. The friend travels for the winter, far away it seems, although the dies cannot tell me where. The new acquaintance hovers closer at hand than you would ever think.”

“By the Stars themselves! I wonder who …” Alaena bit her lower lip and thought hard. “Do go on, good sorcerer.”

Salamander managed to stretch out the reading for a good five minutes by the judicious selection of platitudes and vagaries. After Alaena had asked a few questions, she turned the talk to his travels throughout the country. As usual Salamander reveled in the chance to tell a long and involved tale, most of it embroidery, some of it lies, especially since she listened with a flattering intensity.

“But don’t you have some home of your own,” she said at last. “Back in the barbarian kingdom?”

“No, oh pinnacle of charm and graciousness. All roads are my home, and the swelling sea. I have my Jillanna here to cheer my lonely hours and share my labors.”

“I see.” Alaena gave her a perfectly friendly smile. “Do you find it a hard life?”

“Oh no. I love to wander.”

“It’s a good thing.” The mistress turned her attention back to the wizard. “But it must be sad in a way, always packing up and moving on.”

“What it is, is a lot of hard labor, actually. I’ve been thinking about buying a slave now that my career is progressing so well, a strong young man to load up the horses and so on. Of course, what I really need is a fellow barbarian.”

“You can’t have mine!” Her voice was a child’s snarl; then she looked absolutely stricken. “Oh, forgive me! I’m so sorry I was rude! It’s just that everyone’s always trying to buy my footman from me, and I simply won’t sell.” She managed a smile. “It just gets so tedious, having everyone always ask.”

“It must be, and truly, I would rather have your harsh words than some other woman’s blandishments. Anyway, what I was wondering is where you bought him. That trader might have others from time to time.”

“Rhodry was a gift from that arrogant young man you saw in my tiles, so I don’t know where he came from. One doesn’t ask, with gifts.” She picked up the pitcher with a perfectly calm hand. “More orangeade?”

They chatted for some time longer before Salamander announced that they had to take their leave, because after the noon meal and the afternoon nap they had appointments at other houses round town, as more than one fine lady had wanted her fortune told. When they left, a good bit richer thanks to Alaena’s generosity, Jill was wondering how she was going to be able to stay awake, sitting in perfumed rooms and listening to his blather. She said as much to him once they were back in the privacy of their suite in the Inn of the Seven Lamps.

“Blather, indeed!” Salamander looked sincerely wounded. “I thought I put on one of my best performances ever this morning.”

“Well, she certainly was impressed. Did you pick up most of that stuff at the party?”

“I did, truly. Odd, isn’t it? People who pay to have their fortunes told never seem to realize how easy it is to learn all about them beforehand. That scandal, however? That came straight from the dies, practically off the little scroll of meanings you get when you buy a box. I figured that any woman as beautiful as she is would be bound to have at least one scandal in the offing.”

“No doubt, the frothing bitch!”

“Jill!”

“Well, ye gods, are you blind? Of course she’s up to her neck in scandal! Or does polite society in the islands honor women who bed their slaves?”

Salamander’s face went through a spasm of puzzlement, modulating to outright shock and finally a sly sort of glee.

“She’s been rumpling her blankets with my dear brother? How perfectly splendid!”

Jill grabbed a wine pitcher and heaved it straight at his head. With a squawk he ducked barely in time, and the silver pitcher cracked a tile on the wall and fell dented to the floor.

“A thousand apologies, oh fierce eagle of the mountains. I seem to have forgotten how the thing would look to you, of course.” His voice was a bit shaky. “Uh, you do accept my apology? No more flying tableware?”

“Oh of course, but I’m sorry I missed, you heartless dolt!”

“It’s not a question of being heartless but of scenting victory. Don’t you see? This is the exact lever we need to pry Rhodry out of her household. Well, well, well—scandal indeed, and also a great relief to my ethical sensibilities. By winkling her exotic barbarian out of her household, I’m but doing her a favor—getting him out of town before said town can talk of naught else but the lovely widow and the footman!”

“True spoken, but how are you going to convince her of that?”

“A good question, my little turtledove. A very good question indeed. While I ponder, brood, and meditate upon it, how about fetching us the noon meal? I can never think properly on an empty stomach.”

Some hours before sunset they presented themselves at the door of Malina’s compound. Since the afternoon was warm and still, the mistress of the house and her two daughters received them out in the garden, at a table under a bower of pale pink bouganvillea. While Salamander predicted that the daughters would make splendid marriages and hinted of possible suitors, Jill half-drowsed over a cup of wine. Once their fortunes were told, Malina sent the girls away so the wizard could read her tiles in private. After a few platitudes, Salamander struck.

“Now, I don’t like the look of this, my dear lady, the Four of Swords so near to the Two of Flowers. I greatly fear that some friend of yours—no, closer than an ordinary friend—some dear and treasured companion will be touched by painful scandal.”

Jill was suddenly wide-awake and all attention. Malina had gone a bit white about the mouth.

“The tiles also tell me that you’ve been worried about something distressing. May I guess that the two things are related?”

“It would be a clever guess, yes. Um, I don’t suppose you’d tell anyone what you saw in someone else’s tiles?”

“Normally, no, but I felt very sorry for Alaena.”

Malina winced.

“She’s so vulnerable, isn’t she?” the lady went on. “And the city’s full of envious snips who love to say terrible things about her. Her life would have been so different if only she’d had children. Her husband was much older than she, you see. Oh by the Fire-mountain herself! If you could only have seen her when Nineldar brought her home! Just fourteen years old, a child who should have been playing with dolls, and as thin as a stick. It made me weep to see the beautiful face on that skinny little stick of a body, like a flower on a stalk. Nineldar wasn’t a bad man, only so lonely, and he honestly pitied her when he found her for sale. He brought the child to me and begged me to teach her how to be a wife.”

“Doubtless the marriage was far from … shall we say, satisfying?”

Malina slapped her hands palm-downward on the table.

“Just what are you implying, my fine showman?”

“This is no time for fencing, is it? I heard distressing rumors, and I dismissed them as that, too—just rumors. But when I saw a horrible scandal in her tiles, well, I wondered if they sprang from more than envy and wagging tongues.”

“Rumors about what?”

“That handsome barbarian boy.”

Malina wept, a thin scatter of tears that she controlled almost at once.

“Nineldar spoiled her, trying to make things up to her. She’s gotten used to having anything she wants, even if it’s something forbidden.”

Salamander looked her full in the face with an expression so sincere that Jill nearly believed him herself.

“I tried to buy the boy from her for my show. She wouldn’t sell him. That’s what made me wonder if the rumors were true.”

Malina looked away, her mouth a little slack as she thought things through.

“I’ll go speak to her,” she said at last. “And I’ll talk long and hard. There are several other things that we haven’t even touched upon yet, have we, my dear sorcerer?”

“I’m afraid I don’t understand.”

“Now,
that
I simply don’t believe. But have it your way; I don’t blame you for wanting to keep your own scandal buried in decent silence. I’ll send one of my slaves to your inn with a message, one way or another. You may leave me now. Hie sooner I speak to her the better.”

All morning, after the wizard left, Alaena paced round the garden. Every now and then she would call for Rhodry; when he came, she would look at him so intently that he wondered if she were trying to memorize his face, then either give him a kiss or a slap and send him away again. Finally, when the household retired for the afternoon nap, she insisted he spend his with her.

“Mistress, it’s really not safe, here in the middle of the day.”

“Who do you think you are, to be arguing with me?”

“I’m only trying to spare you grief. That wizard saw a scandal, didn’t he?”

This time she slapped him hard enough to make his face sting.

“You and your rotten wizard!”

Then she burst into tears. Since he couldn’t think of anything else to do, Rhodry picked her up and carried her, kicking and protesting, into her bedchamber. After he made love to her, she fell asleep in his arms, so soundly that he could slip away and go up to his own bed in the slaves’ quarters. Although Porto made a great show of snoring, Rhodry was sure that the old man had been waiting to see if he would come in. By then Rhodry was so exhausted from all his anxieties that he fell asleep straightaway himself.

He was awakened much later by Disna, shaking him and saying over and over again that the mistress wanted him. With a sound halfway between a yawn and a groan he sat up and rubbed his face.

“She wants you to come pour wine in the reception chamber. Rhodry, something’s wrong, Malina’s here.”

“Malina comes here practically every day.”

“Oh I know, but something’s really wrong. I’m worried, for your sake.”

All at once he was wide-awake, on his feet without even really thinking. Disna was looking at him with tears in her eyes.

“I just hope they don’t beat you.”

“I thought you couldn’t stand me.”

“Men! Island men, barbarian men—you’re all blind!”

Then she fled the room; he could hear her clattering down the stairs.

In a cold panic he followed her down and rushed to the kitchen to fetch the tray of cups and the wine. When he came into the reception chamber, he found Alaena and Malina sitting at the low table, facing each other, both of them a little pale. He set the tray down and started to back away, but Malina pointed at a cushion with an imperious hand.

“Sit down, boy. This concerns you.”

When Rhodry glanced at his mistress, she ignored him, and he took the cushion.

“Very well,” Malina went on, speaking to Alaena. “Do you see what I mean, dear? It’s all getting out of hand, if some traveling showman can hear everything there is to hear right down in the common marketplace.”

“How do you know he heard it? He could be lying.”

“And why would he lie?”

Alaena hesitated, slewing half-around to look at Rhodry, then back to face Malina, whose eyes snapped like a cadvridoc’s when he gives hard orders.

“You see it, too, don’t you? Well, are you going to do the decent thing and sell him back to his family or not? His brother’s certainly come a long way to look for him.”

“I don’t care! He’s mine, and no one can make me sell him.”

“I was talking about decency, not legality.”

Rhodry was frozen by surprise. His brother? At that point he dimly remembered that he’d had several brothers, back in that other life of his. Krysello must have been one of them, if the women said so; he couldn’t remember enough to argue either way. Malina turned to him.

“Well, boy, isn’t he your brother?”

“Yes, mistress.”