A Time of Omens - Katharine Kerr [77]
“Nothing but a lot of trinkets, if you ask me.”
“Trinkets have made men rich before. Of course, a lot of men have died out here, too. The sea’s bounty demands its price.”
“If it’s that dangerous, maybe you should just take the troupe home now.”
“Not until I’ve put my scheme to the test, O Monarch of Might Mysterious. And tonight, here in the very market square of Myleton Noa, will the test come!”
The market square in question was a big sprawl of mud in the center of town. All round the edge stood such civic buildings as the town could muster: a customs house, an archon’s residence, a barracks for the town guard, and a money changer, who supported a small guard of his own, according to the wine seller.
“He’s a shrewd one, old Din-var-tano,” he remarked to Jill. “And as honest as the sea is deep, too. But a miser? Ye gods! He lives like a slave, and he won’t have a wife because of the expense of keeping one, you see. I’ll wager we won’t see him tonight at this here show. He’d feel obliged to part with one of his precious coppers! But it looks like everyone else in town is here, that’s for certain.”
Jill and the wine seller were standing on the wooden steps of the archon’s palace, a little above the crowd swarming round the muddy square. The old man had set up his little booth on the top step, and as they talked, he was busily chaining wine cups to the rail In the velvet twilight, the troupe was raising crossed pairs of standing torches round the stage while Salamander himself stood underneath the slack rope and pulled on it to make sure it was secure.
“We’ve never had a show through here before,” the wine seller went on. “I wager I’ll do good business after it’s over.”
“No doubt, I take it things are lonely in Anmurdio.”
“As lonely as the sea is deep, that’s for certain. Sometimes I’m sorry I came, I tell you, but then, a man can live his life as he likes out here without a lot of city clerks laying down the law and grabbing his coin for taxes.”
“Ah. I see. Tell me something. Do you ever hear of ships sailing south?”
“South? What for? Nothing out there but sea and wind.”
“You’re sure?” She paused to kill a particularly big mosquito that had landed on her wrist. “You’ve never heard of any islands lying far to the south?”
He sucked his stumps of teeth while he considered.
“Never,” he said at last. “But I can tell you who you want to ask about that. See over there, that great big fellow standing in the torchlight? The one with the red tunic—that’s right, him. Dekki’s his name, and he’s quite a sailing man, goes to all sorts of places, and not ail of them are on maps, if you take my meaning.”
Jill signed, because she did see. A pirate, most likely, and not her favorite sort of person in the world. Before she could ask the wine seller more, on the stage drums boomed out and flutes sang. In a pleasurable shudder of applause, the crowd surged closer. The show had begun.
From the very first moment, when the youngest and clumsiest acrobat cartwheeled across the stage, Jill could see that Salamander’s commercial instincts had delivered triumph. No matter whether a performer pulled off a difficult trick or fell in the middle of an easy one, the crowd clapped and cheered. At the end of each turn coins clinked and slithered on the stage. After all, these colonists were rich by the standards of the cities they’d left behind, but lacked luxuries to spend their wealth upon. When the heart of the show appeared, Keeta and her flaming torches, Marka dancing upon the slack rope, the crowd screamed and stamped their feet. Silver flashed like rain in the torchlight. When Jill turned to speak to the wine seller, she found him utterly entranced, smiling as he stared. Salamander himself performed the greatest trick of all, making the crowd fall silent again to catch his every word. It