Dragonquest - Donita K. Paul [2]
A toothy grin on the small doneel’s face charmed Kale just as easily as any Dar had ever used. She found herself smiling back.
“Thief! Pickpocket!” A shrill voice pierced the babble of the marketplace. The hand in Kale’s squeezed convulsively and then let go. Kale looked up at the commotion. In that moment, the girl disappeared.
Three mariones, in city guard uniforms, appeared among the crowd. The men’s powerful muscles strained against the fabric of their gray jackets. Bright yellow epaulets and corded trim did nothing to make them look more congenial. Kale had only met a few mariones who had any cheer in them. These guards wore typically sour expressions and marched unhurriedly to do their duty.
A red-faced tumanhofer merchant followed, shaking a pointed stick in the air. “She’s a pest, a nuisance, a blight on the market.” The short, round man rushed ahead of a guard and thrust his wooden stick between two crates belonging to a vegetable vendor. “She’s quick, sneaky, and looks as innocent as mumfers in a flowerpot.”
The tumanhofer’s head swiveled on a thick neck as he vigorously searched among the market stalls. He banged his crude weapon on an upturned barrel and then stood on tiptoe to peek inside. Whirling about, he scowled at those watching. His look accused them all of hiding the vagrant child. He shook his fist at several men who grinned at his anger, then still bristling, he stomped over to confront the lead guard. He waved his stick in the man’s face.
“You catch that child and put ’er in an orphanage. Better yet, send ’er into the country. Find a small village as many miles from ’ere as you can.”
Grunting, he went back to poking his stick into any little hole he saw. “It’ll do ’er good to be a village slave. Train ’er up in service and righteousness instead of letting ’er run wild.”
The man’s words caught at Kale’s heart. She’d been raised in an obscure marione settlement as a village slave. In fact, she would still be there if she hadn’t found a dragon egg and been sent to Vendela. Kale looked around quickly, wondering where the urchin had gone.
A whiff of hot air and dust swirled around Kale’s legs. The moonbeam cape relaxed. Kale furrowed her brow, trying to figure out the odd occurrence. Why had the cape tightened around her? Why had it then loosened its hold? She suspected she still didn’t know all the mysterious properties of the wondrous garment.
Granny Noon, an emerlindian wise woman, had given Kale the cape. The cloth repelled water, didn’t tear, and sloughed off dirt. She could deposit any number of things in its special hollows without creating bulges or any additional weight. Granny Noon had sewn pockets for the eight dragon eggs Kale had carried. Two had hatched.
She counted the cape as her own personal treasure, even though it was cream-colored and rather plain. The gift had been from someone who treated her kindly, and she had not received many gifts in her life. This gift was wondrous in other ways as well. If she stood very still in a dimly lit area, the cape acted as camouflage.
She watched the guards as they moved among the gaily dressed shoppers, searching several booths. Turning her eyes away, she admitted to herself she didn’t want to see them capture the little doneel. She moved in the direction she had been going before.
Dar? Dar? No answer. That’s odd. He must be preoccupied.
She jumped when his voice entered her thoughts.
“Kale, I found the inn.”
The Goose and The Gander?
“None other.”
Kale smiled. A kind old farmer had once told her about the inn and a woman named Maye. She wanted to meet the