Fire Dragon - Katharine Kerr [187]
“They're all so pale! They must be barbarians.”
“Not truly, but my kinsmen, nonetheless, though only in a way.”
His voice was so soft and hesitant that she spun round to look at him. He was staring at the ship and its crew with greedy eyes.
“So, my people have come for me,” he whispered. “Marka, my love, my heart, my soul and the very center of my world, how much do you love me?”
“With all my heart, but what do you mean, come for you? Why? I … oh!”
One of the sailors was walking toward them. She could see his moonbeam-pale hair and steely-grey eyes, slit vertically like a cat's, and his long ears, curling up to a delicate point. He was well over six feet tall but slender, with long hands, heavily callused but still oddly delicate. When Ebañy spoke to him, it was in a strange and musical language that Marka had never heard before. The sailor laughed and spoke in the same tongue, then turned to call out to a man hurrying down the pier.
Not another sailor, Marka realized—this fellow was too stooped and narrow-shouldered for that. He had the same pale hair but violet eyes, and his hands looked soft, strangers to ropes and oars. He bowed to Marka, then to Ebañy, and began to speak. Ebañy listened, his eyes filling with tears. All at once she was terrified, listening to them, seeing them clasp hands like brothers, remembering all the many little odd things about Ebañy, and all the many riddling remarks he'd made over the years about his kin and his homeland, far over the seas.
At last he turned to her, and he seemed more stranger than husband.
“Do you remember the Guardian?” Ebañy said.
“No.” Marka felt her voice tremble. “Or wait! Do you mean Evandar?”
“That's the fellow, yes. He sent this ship for me.” Ebañy waved at it. “And this is Meranaldar. He's come, he says, to help us cure”—he hesitated, then visibly forced himself to push out the words—” my madness.”
“Ah! Thanks be to all the gods, then!”
Yet later she would regret her too-ready prayer. Although most of the sailors stayed with their ship, Meranaldar and the ship's captain, Taronalariel, came back to the camp with them. The troupe clustered round, asking questions all at once while Ebañy laughed and tried to answer them without ever mentioning that these strangers had come to heal him. Marka hurried over to Keeta and led her a bit away.
“Ebañy told me they've come to heal his madness, but—I don't know why—but I'm so frightened. I never even knew that there were people like this in the world, and they turn up here in their ship—it's such a peculiar ship, too—and my husband can talk with them, but I can't understand a word.”
“All good reasons to be frightened, I'd say.”
“And then he said, ‘my people have come for me.’ It sounds like they're going to take him away.”
Keeta turned and watched the troupe, clustering around the strangers. When marka looked, she saw the children huddled together, staring at their father in fear.
“I'd better go to the children,” Marka said.
“Yes, I agree. They're very good at picking up feelings and portents, children.”
The troupe entertained their guests with a meal that bordered on a feast. The two Long Ears, as Marka was mentally calling them, had beautiful manners when they ate. They also learned the Bardekian word for “thank you” and muttered “gratyas” at everyone who came close. When night fell, some of the other sailors came to the camp; they'd seen the town market opening, Ebañy told her, and wanted their captain to go buy provisions.
“You'd best go and help them,” Marka said. “But do they have any Bardek coin?”
“Not a one, which is exactly why you're right. We'll have to argue with the merchants, no doubt, to the point of apoplexy.”
When the troupe turned in for the night, Marka rolled