Guild Wars_ Edge of Destiny - J. Robert King [39]
The asura sighed. “You wore it over your body, like a yoke. It washed the clothes while you walked in them—sprayed them, sudsed them, wrenched them, rinsed them.” He pantomimed the machine squirting and snatching at his clothes. “People didn’t like it. Got them wet.”
“You should’ve called it a shower washer. People like getting wet in the shower.”
The asura’s hands stopped on the device. His face went pale, and he glanced regretfully at the buckets all around him.
Rytlock butted in. “Where’s the nearest asura gate?”
“It was a problem with marketing, not design,” the asura said despondently. “A shower washer!”
“Excuse me—the nearest gate?”
The asura scowled. “Did Master Drup put you up to this? Is he taunting me again?”
“Come on,” Logan said to Caithe, taking her arm and leading her away.
The three companions strolled onward through the wonderland of strange goods—silken scarves, pewter chalices, clockwork toys, rundlets and hogsheads of ale, sheaves of spice, parchment, linens, fish, nails. Every needful thing and needless thing piled on tabletops beneath the luffing blue canvas. Here was a cart selling sausages and there a booth filled with blades. A stall selling ice cream stood beside a stall selling torture implements. And these varied wares were hawked by a varied group of merchants—humans and sylvari, charr and norn, asura and ogre.
“Why aren’t they killing each other?” Rytlock wondered sourly.
“That’s Lion’s Arch for you. Live and let live,” replied Logan. “Just don’t mention the E-word.”
“What E-word?”
“The place I was leading a caravan to. The place you wish didn’t exist.”
Rytlock hawked and spit. “That E-word.”
“I don’t feel well,” Caithe murmured, leaning against Logan.
He caught her. “You look white.”
“That’s her color.”
“All except your neck. There are little black lines—”
“I’m fine,” Caithe interrupted, straightening. “Just a little out of breath.”
Logan guided her to a half-wall out of the traffic of the main road and helped her sit. “Here. Just take a moment.”
Caithe nodded, staring emptily ahead.
“What is it?” Rytlock rumbled.
Caithe shook her head weakly. “All these lives—all intersecting.”
“Just ignore them,” Logan advised. “You can be alone in a big city. Loneliest place in the world.”
“That young man there.” Caithe pointed to a teenage boy leaning sullenly beside a set of wooden stairs.
“Yeah? What about him?” Rytlock asked.
“He’s trying to get up the courage to go upstairs and knock on the door and see if the girl is home.”
The man and the charr looked at the nondescript kid, long hair veiling his eyes. Rytlock said, “How could you possibly know that?”
Caithe stared at them, amazed. “Don’t you see the rose behind him?”
As she pointed it out, the flower seemed obvious.
“Good luck to him,” Logan said.
“He needs more than luck. Look in the window.” Caithe pointed to the head of the stairs, where a curtain waved in the breeze.
Rytlock stared. “So what? A curtain.”
“See the hand on the sill beneath the curtain? The young man’s hand?”
“What about it?”
“Why would a curtain be drawn at this time of day? And why would a young man be sitting beside it, watching another young man in the street?”
Rytlock’s jaw dropped. “Seriously? Is this what you do? You watch, put things together, figure them out?”
“That man in the marketplace,” Caithe said, nodding toward a swaggering fellow in a red greatcoat and black boots, “he’s pretending to be a pirate for fear that he will be robbed, and the man beside him in the sackcloth shirt is pretending not to be a pirate so that he can pick his pocket.”
“How could you possibly—,” Rytlock began, but broke off as the man in sackcloth slid his hand, branded with the pirate’s P, into the other man’s waistcoat. “Impressive.”
“This could be good,” Logan said. “This could be very good.”
“This could be bad,” Caithe echoed. “Very bad.”
“What?” her comrades chorused, but Caithe was gone.
“Where did she—?” Rytlock began.
Logan pointed. “Up there!” She was about a block ahead of them, her lithe figure slipping easily through the jostling throng. Logan