A Time of Omens - Katharine Kerr [59]
“Do you mind everything changing like this?”
“Mind? Oh, if Keeta thinks it’s a good idea, I’ll go along with it. What do you think of this juggler?”
“I don’t know. He’s awfully good-looking.”
“I suppose so. He’s certainly used to taking charge. He said he had a companion, didn’t he? I wonder what she’s like?”
Marka felt so bitterly disappointed that she nearly wept. She’d forgotten that a man like this would have women following him round wherever he went, that he would most certainly never be interested in a gawky girl like her.
Jill first heard of Salamander’s newly acquired troupe of acrobats from the innkeep, who came rushing upstairs to tell her as soon as he had the wine served. All quivering jowls and flapping hands, he bowed repeatedly while he blurted.
“There must be ten of them! They’re probably all thieves! I don’t have room! I don’t know what your—uh—friend was thinking of!”
“Thinking? He probably wasn’t, knowing him. All right, I’ll go down.”
By then several pitchers of wine had gone round, and everyone was giggling and talking a little too loudly as they lounged on cushions round the low table. Jill stood in the doorway for a moment and watched Salamander, beaming at his own generosity, playing host like a Deverry lord. Opposite him sat a pretty young woman who studied him in such a fervent mix of desire and misery that she might well have loved him in her last life.
“Oh, Jill, there you are!” Salamander called out. “Come join us! My friends, this is Gilyan of Brin Toraedic, a wandering scholar, who has honored my humble self by traveling with me as she searches out rare manuscripts. She’s on a special commission from the scholar-priests of Wmmglaedd, a mysterious and magical isle in the far-off kingdom.”
The troupe greeted this cascade of blather with honest awe, the men rising to bow to her, the women bobbing their heads her way, except for Marka, who merely stared. The gray-haired fellow sitting next to Salamander started to get up and cede her his seat, but Jill waved him back.
“I just need a word with Salamander,” she said. “Not that it’s possible to have but a single word.”
At the jab he winced, but he scrambled up and followed her out to the courtyard where they could talk privately. Jill perched on the edge of a tiled fountain and glared at him.
“I wanted to travel quietly.”
“Um, well, yes. I do remember you mentioning something of the sort. But we’ll be safer with a large group.”
“I wasn’t aware we were in any danger.”
Salamander sighed and sat down next to her.
“Let’s have the truth.” Jill changed into Deverrian to doubly insure privacy. “You’re doing this to have a chance at the lass, aren’t you?”
“Bit more to it than that!”
She raised one eyebrow.
“Jill, they needed my aid! The leader of their band had spent all their coin on the white smoke, and there they were, stranded far from home in a town where they’d never earn another copper.”
“Your heart’s big enough to embrace the world and your tongue to cover it, too. I still say it’s the lass who inspired this outburst of compassion.”
“Imph, well.” He held up his hand and flicked drops from his fingertips. “Well. Imph.” Then he looked up with one of his sunny grins. “But since you want to talk with that bookseller in Inderat Noa again, we’ve got to go back to Main Island anyway, and travel across its less-than-glorious reaches, so they might as well travel with us.”
“Oh, I suppose so! And the lass will doubtless be better off with you to look after her than she would be on her own.”
Salamander grabbed her hand and kissed it.
“My humble thanks, O Princess of Powers Perilous!”
Jill snatched her hand away and stood up, shaking her head more at herself for indulging him than him for wanting to be indulged.