The Ring of Winter - James Lowder [62]
"We no kill you now," Balt said, disappointment clear in every broken word.
Kaverin bowed and gestured to his silver guardian. "My thanks for your consideration. This is Skuld. He is my manservant, just arrived from parts unknown."
With practiced disinterest, M'bobo eyed the servant. His double set of arms was no more strange to her than the light-skinned humans who had begun to appear in her jungle. "Maybe he do," she murmured. "You meat or metal?"
Skuld remained silent, but Kaverin quickly filled the awkward lapse. "Do for what?" he asked.
"You owe price for warriors. Pay family something good and heavy," Balt replied. Expecting resistance, he raised his chin defiantly and planted the butt of his spear on the wooden floor.
Phyrra stood and dusted herself off. "What about more beads and trinkets?" she asked Kaverin in a Cormyrian dialect meant to baffle the goblins.
He shook his head. It was clear in the goblins' faces that the time for petty bribery was over. "Name your price," Kaverin told the queen.
Slowly she leveled a scaly finger at the winged monkey. The creature shrieked and hopped to its master's shoulder. "Feg is very valuable to me, and I treasure him greatly," Kaverin said, though his eyes remained as cold and lifeless as his hands.
Balt pointed his spear at the creature. "We go easy. Take monkey and all baggage. That be heavy enough."
"What?" Phyrra exclaimed. "How are we supposed to survive here without any supplies?"
Kaverin sat down, rested his elbows on the chair, and knit his jet fingers together before his face. "You need to be paid something valuable, but also of equal weight to those warriors I killed, is that it?" At M'bobo's curt nod, he sighed. "Skuld, you do not eat. Am I correct in assuming that?"
"I have not consumed a bite of food or swallowed a gulp of wine in a thousand years," he reported proudly, though his filed teeth would have made any casual observer think otherwise.
"And you do not speak unless I ask you to? I find idle chatter very annoying in a traveling companion."
"That is so, master."
Kaverin nodded. "You know sorcery, of course…"
Phyrra al-Quim was a quick-witted woman, and it was only a moment before the direction of this conversation became startlingly clear to her. She pulled a small sphere of pitch from her pocket and raised her hands. The spell she intended never came to pass, though. Skuld grabbed her hands and lifted her from the ground. With his other set of hands, he clamped her mouth shut. Her glasses clattered to the floor. "It is fitting for you to be punished, witch. You caused me great discomfort."
Kaverin gestured casually to Phyrra. "She should be enough to cover most of the debt," he said. Then he turned to the sorceress. "Sorry, my dear, but you were correct about the supplies. I cannot sacrifice them and hope to uncover my prize." A frown crept across his thin lips. "It's too bad you aren't heavier, though. I would have preferred not to have lost Feg, too. It gets rather hot without him fanning me."
Gently he nudged Feg off his shoulder, and the winged monkey sailed across the room to M'bobo. "I must insist on the right to use him to spy on my enemies, if the need arises," Kaverin noted.
M'bobo nodded absently, caught up as she was in pampering and cooing over the bat-winged ape. For its part, Feg seemed thoroughly disgusted by the whole situation." The monkey cast a longing look back as M'bobo left the room.
Balt called in a contingent of warriors, and they took the struggling mage from Skuld. Phyrra thrashed about, her eyes wide with terror. As she was carried from the room, her gaze fell upon the skulls lining the walls. She screamed, knowing she would become part of that grisly collection-just as soon as the Batiri had their dinner.
"Do be careful to keep her mouth closed and her hands bound," Kaverin called after them.
When the commotion had at last died down, the stone-handed man turned to his new servant. "As I was saying before that costly interruption, we have one more task to complete before we can set off