The Spirit Stone - Katharine Kerr [225]
Pir was watching her, his face carefully expressionless, his scent utterly noncommittal. Everyone else watched him. He fell silent again, thinking things through in his patient way. Finally he sighed and nodded to no one in particular.
‘Here then be my price,’ Pir said. ‘If you do help us find Laz, then will I help you with the horses.’
Sidro gasped aloud, then clasped a hand over her mouth to hide her sudden flare of hope. The prince and the banadar both turned to the Wise One.
‘At the moment I’m with child,’ Dallandra said. ‘Once the child is born, then I’ll be able to help. In the meantime, others of our people have dweomer, Ebañy—Evan, that is—among them. There’s also a dweomerwoman named Valandario who very much wants the black pyramid found and destroyed. She knows gem dweomer like no other has ever known it. If anyone can track the pyramid down, it will be Val. And we can hope that finding the pyramid means finding Laz. I can’t promise, but I can hope.’
‘And I’ll still give you the horses,’ the prince put in. ‘They’ll give you standing among us. You have the men in your band, and we can give them sheep. Sheep and horses—they’re our gold, out here in the grass.’
Pir considered, looking away, looking down, nodding now and then. At last he got up and bowed to the prince.
‘Done, then,’ Pir said. ‘I do take your bargain. For truly, I do think I be able to teach your warhorses what you wish them to learn. There be a need, though, to have a dragon give me his aid.’
Solemn-eyed, Daralanteriel rose and held up his right hand, palm out. Pir laid his palm against it. ‘You have my word upon it,’ the prince said. ‘The gods of my people have witnessed it.’
‘So have mine.’ Pir seemed unsure of what to say, but the prince nodded in satisfaction. ‘So be it.’
‘In the morning come with me,’ Dar continued, ‘and you shall pick out the geldings for your new herd. Once we rejoin the rest of my people and my herds, I give you my word of honour that I’ll provide the stud and the brood mares.’
‘Well, truly, your highness, never did I think you’d bring breeding stock along to a war.’
Pir smiled, everyone else smiled, but only Sidro could smell the bitter tang of sorrow in his scent. She supposed that he felt like a traitor, even as she did, despite their knowing that their own people had turned against them long before they chose exile. And what of me? she wondered. He must know that in my heart I’m Laz’s slave. She found herself remembering the night of Vek’s coming of age ritual. Most Gel da’ Thae women would have taken Pir to their bed right then and there, but she had stayed chaste—like a good slave.
The men celebrated the bargain with a fair amount of mead, but once they were alone again in their tent, Sidro asked Pir outright why he’d chosen that reward.
‘Do you want Laz to come back?’ she said.
‘I feel torn in half,’ Pir said. ‘I want him to be safe and well. He’s my friend, after all. He hid me when the mob came after me. He took me with him when he went into exile.’
‘I’d forgotten about that.’
‘But then there’s you,’ Pir said. ‘I’d rather have you all to myself. Once he comes back, well then, I’ll be settling for the oats at the bottom of his manger.’
‘Then why—’
‘If you never see him again, you’ll be unhappy, won’t you? And then, sooner or later, you’ll leave me anyway. You’ll want something I can’t give you, and you’ll never find it without finding Laz, but you’ll try.’
It took Sidro a moment to muster words. She could see herself, suddenly, going from man to man, whether Gel da’ Thae or Westfolk, in a desperation that would grow worse as she aged.
‘You know women as well as you know horses,’ she said.
‘No, but I do know you. I’d rather be your Second Man than not have you at all. It’s a beggar’s bargain, but that’s what I am. A beggar, I mean, living on Prince Dar’s charity.’
Once again she smelled the bitter tang in his scent.
‘You should have been a great man among our people,’ she said. ‘You would have been, too, if it weren’t for Alshandra’s savages.