The Yellow Silk - Don Bassingthwaite [55]
He tapped his thumb and second finger together. To the left of his chair and standing beside Mother, Great-Aunt Ya made a more vigorous gesture and from behind a screen of bamboo stepped Cousin Mei, dressed all in red. Li caught his breath. She looked beautiful, more than a suitable match for the next patriarch of the Kuang. Yu Mao, however, seemed more interested in the red-stained case that she carried. Mei knelt before him and opened it. Resting on silk within was the most beautiful pair of butterfly swords Li had ever seen-easily as beautiful as Cousin Mei. They were adult weapons, heavier and much keener than a child's training blades. Yu Mao removed them carefully, inspected them, and bowed twice-once to his future wife and once, more deeply, to his father. "I will make the ancestors of Kuang proud," he promised. He bowed again and sunlight flashed on the butterfly swords…
… just as lantern light flashed on the cheap brass mesh that restrained the considerable bosom of the woman who walked boldly up to Li. "Olore, elf-man," she said with naked interest, "have you had a long voyage?" She leaned over so the shiny mesh shifted and exposed more of the shadowed chasm of her cleavage. "Maybe you're feeling a little lonely."
Li was saved from having to respond by the sudden appearance of an older woman, rouge and powder thick on her face. The bawd seized the other woman's arm and hauled her roughly back toward one of the curtains at the rear of the Eel. Li didn't quite catch the words she muttered, but their tone implied that an interest in making love to an elf was barely a step above perversion. He didn't bother trying to correct their misperceptions regarding his race. Clearly there were times when it was good to be thought of as an elf. Not many, though, not around the dark cave of the Eel. The woman in brass was the only denizen of the tavern who seemed interested in more than beating the lights out of the "elf-blood" who had wandered into their midst. It made the skin on his neck crawl, but he turned around and put his back to the noisy room, standing shoulder to shoulder with Tycho.
"If he's not here," the short bard was asking a big, bald bartender, "where is he? This is important."
The bartender just shrugged. "Always is when Black Scratch might be waiting for you, isn't it?"
Tycho flushed. "When will Brin be back?"
"Do I look like a bloody appointment book?" the bartender growled. "Brin doesn't tell me his comings and goings. He tells me how much to charge for ale and when to water it down." He plunked two mugs on the counter. "Buy yourself a couple and wait for him."
Tycho sighed. "Why not? Nothing better to do." Li winced and nudged him.
"We can leave and come back again," he said in Shou. "Why don't we go to the Wench's Ease and wait there?"
"You haven't had enough of tramping around in the cold?" Tycho replied.
"I'm afraid that if we stay here, I'll catch some kind of disease." Li's first sight of the Eel had convinced him that he had made the right choice at the docks. Filthy, dark and stinking, foul with thick smokes and loud with the shouts of customers already deep in their cups, Brin's establishment had the feel of a place teetering on the brink of desperation. The moment he and Tycho had walked through the door in search of Brin, Li had wanted to turn around and walk out again. The Wench's Ease was smelly, smoky, and loud as well, but at least there had been a lightness of spirit about it, a sense that its patrons were there to enjoy rather than lose themselves. "Can we go?"
Tycho crinkled his nose. "I want to get this over with. Let Brin go after Jacerryl and the Hooded if he wants his beljurils back. If you still want to talk to Brin about your brother, you should do that now, too. If Brin and the
Hooded start a war, there's no telling when or if you'll get another chance."
The muscle along Li's jaw tightened. "I suppose not," he said, "but nothing will happen until we talk to him." He shuddered as angry shouts erupted from behind the other curtain at the tavern's rear, the one Tycho had