The Dragon Revenant - Katharine Kerr [47]
“I want to buy a present for Disna. Do you think she’d like the one with the large turquoise?”
“I have no idea, mistress. I don’t know anything about jewelry.”
“You should learn. It helps you judge people when you first meet them—their taste in things, I mean, not just what they can afford to spend. But I don’t think these will do.” She walked on, motioning him to walk at her side. “I have heaps of things Pommaeo gave me at home, of course, and some of them are quite fine, but …” All at once she flashed one of her wicked smiles. “No, I have a different use for them. Come along. There’s another jeweler over here.”
This particular jeweler was a fat man who reminded Rhodry of Brindemo. On each hand was an amazing collection of garish rings, and he wore a dozen different pendants around his neck, too. Among his collection of merchandise was one pin so different from the others that it seemed to call to Rhodry, a tiny rose, worked in fine silver, no more than an inch long but so lifelike that the leaves seemed to stir in the breeze. Alaena picked it up.
“What an odd thing,” she said to the merchant. “What kind of alloy is this? It’s much too hard to be pure silver.”
“I don’t know, oh exalted and beautiful exemplar of womanhood. I won it in a dice game actually, from a man who said it came from the barbarian kingdom.”
“Indeed? How much do you want for it?”
“Two zotars only, for one as lovely as you.”
“Bandit! I’ll give you ten silvers.”
The haggling was on in earnest. At the end, Alaena had the pin for twenty silvers, about a sixth of the asking price. Rather than having the man wrap it, she turned and pinned it onto Rhodry’s tunic, near the collar.
“A barbarian trinket for a barbarian,” she said, smiling. “I rather like the effect.”
“Thank you, mistress.” Rhodry had learned that gifts like this were his to keep, even if he chose to turn them into cash some day. “I’m flattered you’d think so well of me.”
“Do you know what kind of metal that is?”
“Well, yes. I had a knife made out of it once. In the Deverry mountains are little people called dwarves, who live in tunnels and make precious things out of strange metals like this kind of silver. Some of their trinkets have magic spells on them. Maybe this one does, too, but we won’t find out unless it chooses to show us.”
“How charming you are when you want to be.” She laughed and reached up to pat his cheek. “What a darling story! Now let’s find something for Disna.”
Eventually she found a pair of long gold earrings, shaped like tiny oars, that she pronounced suitable. Rhodry took the parcel and started to follow her out of the marketplace, but again she had him walk beside her.
“That was fun, but now everything wearies me again.” She sighed gently. “Do you think I should marry Pommaeo?”
The question took him too much by surprise for him to think of a properly phrased answer. He gawked at her while she laughed.
“Well, I think he’d be mean to you—and far too interested in Disna,” she said at last. “So perhaps I won’t. Besides, he can be the most wearisome thing of all when he wants to.”
At that she moved ahead and let him walk behind until they reached the fitter.
When they returned to the house, Alaena closeted herself in her bedchamber with Disna while Rhodry went on to the kitchen to haul in firewood for the evening meal. In some half an hour Disna rushed in, the earrings glittering as they framed her face in a most appealing way.
“Guess what? The mistress won’t marry that awful Pommaeo after all. She’s going to ask Mistress Malina to find her other possible suitors instead.”
The staff raised a small, dignified cheer.
“My thanks to holy Zaeos, to all the Goddesses of the Many-Starred Sky, and to the Wave-father,” Vinsima said. “Any member of Mistress Malina’s family is bound to be a fair-minded and generous man.”
“I think,” Porto said, “that we may have some extra wine with the evening meal. To toast the gods for smiling upon us if nothing else. Girl, does the mistress require