A Time of Omens - Katharine Kerr [78]
Finally, when the performers were exhausted beyond the power of cheers and coins to revive them, the show wound down. By then the moon was low on the horizon, and the wheel of stars turning toward dawn. In a cooler wind from the sea the crowd lingered, watching the troupe strike its stage or drifting over the various booths and peddlers selling food and drink. When Dekki came strolling up, the crowd round the wine booth parted like the sea beneath a prow to let him through, and the wine seller handed him a cup without waiting to be asked. The pirate paid twice its worth for it, though; Jill supposed that his high standing in the town depended on his generosity just as a Deverry lord’s respect among his folk depended on his. The wine seller made him a bob of a bow.
“This lady here would like to speak with you, Dekki.” He jerked a thumb in Jill’s direction. “She’s a scholar and a mapmaker.”
“Indeed?” His voice was a rumble like distant thunder. “My honor, then. What do you want to know?”
They moved away from the press of thirsty customers and stood by a pair of torches. Jill pulled her map out of her shirt and held it unrolled in the flaring light.
“I got this over in Inderat Noa,” she said. “Do you see those islands far to the south? You wouldn’t happen to know if they really exist, would you?”
“Well, I wouldn’t be surprised if you told me they did. Let’s put it this way. There’s something out there.” He took the map and frowned at the dim markings. “Once me and my men, we were blown off course by a storm, and a bad one it was, too. We rode south before it for many a day, and we just barely pulled through, and we found wrack from a ship that wasn’t so lucky. We spotted what looked like a figurehead and hauled it on board. We were thinking, see, that it was an Anmurdio ship, and so we’d take it home for the owners’ reward. Huh. Never seen anything like it in my life.” He handed back the map. “It was a woman, and she was smiling and had all this long hair, a nice job of carving it was, you would have sworn you could have run your fingers through it. But she had wings, or, I should say, what we found had stumps of wings. They must have folded back along the bow, like. But anyway, there were these letters carved round the belt she was wearing. Never seen anything like them. I call them letters, but they were magic marks for all I know.”
“And what-happened to this thing?”
“Oh, we tossed it back. Wasn’t one of our ships.”
“I see. So, then, it must have come from somewhere to the south?”
“Most likely. And then there’s the bubbles, too. Down on the southern beaches, sometimes you find these glass bubbles after a storm/” He cupped Ms massive hands, “About so big. Bad Suck to break one. The priests say there must be evil spirits trapped inside. But someone must have blown the glass and trapped the spirits.”
“I don’t suppose you’d be interested in sailing south someday, just to find out what lies that way.”
“Not on your life!”
“Not even if someone paid you well?”
“Not even then. You can’t spend coin down Hades way, can you? That storm took us about as far as a man can sail and still get himself home again, and we all came cursed near to starving to death before we made port.”
The way he shook his head, and the edge of fear wedging into his voice, made it plain that not all the persuasion in the world was going to change his mind. Jill stood him to another cup of wine in thanks for the information, then bid him farewell and strolled over to join the troupe. They were laughing, tossing jests back and forth and all round the circle, dancing through their work, so happy—so relieved, really—that she couldn’t bear to spoil their celebration. She would wait to talk with Salamander on the morrow, she decided.
“Ebañy?” she called out. “I’m going back to the inn. This trip’s wrung me out.”
He tossed a length of rope into a wagon and hurried over, peering at her in the