The Sable City (The Norothian Cycle) (36 page)

“
The Madame Nesha-tari is about this much taller than I. Her hair falls just to her shoulders. It is light brown. Her skin is darker, though a bit lighter than is typical for a Zantish person, I think. She does have blue eyes, though.”

Zeb and Phin’s breathing had returned to normal, but now neither had anything to say. They just kept staring at Amatesu.

“
Men see Nesha-tari as they would,” the shukenja explained. “Not as she is.”

“
Just men?” Phin asked, and Amatesu nodded.

“
I think it is so.”

Zeb looked across the fire to where Shikashe had settled on a camp stool, watching the others with his hands on his knees.

“
Does she look like a Far Western girl to him?” Zeb asked Amatesu but the samurai answered for himself, speaking a single word that sounded like a name. “
Matsuko
.”

Amatesu dropped her gaze to the ground and Zeb thought for a moment she looked pained. She spoke in a very quiet voice.

“
For his Lordship Uriako Shikashe-sama, the Madame Nesha-tari appears much like his wife, Uriako Matsuko-sana.”

Zeb looked back across the fire at Shikashe. “You are married?”

Amatesu had not looked up yet, and her voice became even quieter.

“
His Lordship’s wife was slain long ago in Korusbo, along with their children. Their loss pains him greatly, and it is why he has come to this place. Far from the memory of them.”

Zeb blinked and looked back at Shikashe, whose face was as always impassive though he now stared into the fire rather than looking at any of the others.

“
Condolences,” Zeb said. “I am sorry.”

“
Wait a minute,” Phin pushed himself to a seat on the grass and raised a hand. He spoke to Amatesu slowly in a manner Zeb had found condescending, though just at present he was unsure how much anything he thought or felt lately was a byproduct of Nesha-tari’s weird juju.

“
What, exactly, do you think that Nesha-tari is?”

The shukenja finally raised her eyes from between her feet.

“
I do not know. I am not yet familiar with the many creatures of this land.”

“
Creatures?” Zeb asked.

“
Yes.” Amatesu looked at him steadily. “Whatever she is, the Madame Nesha-tari is not human. Not altogether.”

“
And the reason,” Phin glanced at Zeb. “The reason we were at each other’s throats a minute ago…You think that is part of whatever magic Nesha-tari possesses as well?”

Amatesu nodded. “This is not the first time on our journey that men near to the Madame Nesha-tari have come to fight. Though this time Uriako-sama and myself saw it early enough to intervene.”

Zeb winced. “This time?” Amatesu nodded.

“
We needed your services as the translator who had begun with us in Ayzantu City was killed by a sailor aboard our first ship.”

Zeb and Phin exchanged another long look. There had been a moment there, Zeb thought, where if he had been able to get a fist on Phin he might not have stopped hitting him.

Amatesu allowed the two men a long silence before speaking.

“
It is our hope now that you two have an awareness, that the effect of Nesha-tari’s presence may not be so strong.” She frowned. “Though it does seem to be growing stronger, of lately.”

Phin looked off toward the inn, but Zeb looked between the two Far Westerners.

“
Why are the two of you even with that…woman? And why hasn’t Shikashe tried to kill me yet?”

“
Uriako-sama is a man of formidable will. As to your first question…” Amatesu gave a shrug, which Zeb thought may have been a gesture she picked up from him.

“
We two have found ourselves in many situations most strange since leaving Korusbo, and the West. This is not, for us, much more different.”

Zeb looked at the shukenja, and shook his head faintly.

“
I think
you
should start telling
me
stories while we are on the march.”

Amatesu gave no answer, other than to lower her gaze back to the ground.

*

Nesha-tari watched the conversation from across the road. She did not understand the words in Codian but could hear them all plainly as her Hunger had by this time intensified all her senses. She had awakened as a man approached her room from around the side of the inn, and recognized Phinneas Phoarty by his scent when he was beneath the window. She had stood in the darkness, and without making any conscious decision she had fully intended to kill him as soon as he stuck his head into her room.

She was relieved that Amatesu’s arrival had kept her from doing so, not for any reasons of morality nor even because it would likely have complicated her continued travels with the Westerners and Zebulon Baj Nif. As Hungry as she now was, Nesha-tari could feel her power coursing within her. Her heightened senses were the least of it. Nesha-tari felt immensely strong and did not doubt that if she wished too, or would let herself, she could bound across the road and slaughter everything in the camp field, apart perhaps from the Westerners. They might put up a scrap. The energy Nesha-tari could feel from the pads of her feet to the tips of her hair was exhilarating, delightful, and would have been wholly intoxicating were it not accompanied by the agonizing knot of the Hunger in her stomach, like she had swallowed a burning brand.

If she Fed now the pain would be relieved, but with it would go the power. Nesha-tari was little more than two weeks from the Camp Town at Vod’Adia, and from the man she was sent there to kill. He was also an individual of great strength, and Nesha-tari did not doubt that it would take all of hers to best him.

The conversation broke up and the Westerners returned to their tents for there were still two hours left of darkness. Phoarty and Baj Nif remained talking by the fire and Nesha-tari heard them speak her name more than once. She realized she was creeping closer only when her bare foot touched the crushed stone of the road’s shoulder, and she made herself stop. She shuddered in her robe beneath her cloak even though the touch of the soft fabric was grating against her skin. She stalked back toward the inn.

A little more than two weeks, and her Hunger would be assuaged either by Feeding or by the final relief of her own death. Nesha-tari thought she could probably make it that long.

Probably.

Chapter Twenty-One

Tilda awoke well before dawn in her room in the Stars and Stones, and a good idea got her quickly out of bed.

Before going to sleep Tilda had taken some time to pare down her luggage to the few things she could easily carry on foot into the Vod Wilds. She had one backpack with some extra clothing and the blankets of her bedroll tied to the bottom, four wineskins now filled with water hanging on the sides. She had emptied Captain Block’s kitbag for it was still awkward to manage even with the makeshift strap, and took a page from Dugan’s book by repacking the maps, money, the silver flask with the embossed sailing ship, and a few small trinkets of her own into a pair of small saddle bags she could comfortably sling over a shoulder. Some of the items thus kept would probably not be of much utility but they were relatively light. Some, particularly the maps, had been expensive.

Beside her heaviest shirt, tunic, and trousers, Tilda would wear her vest with her seven throwing knives, one always at the small of her back, her stiff leather sleeves with the pair of heavy blades in the forearm sheathes, and her black Guild cloak with the emerald green lining now fastened within for additional warmth. Two more heavy knives would be in her walking boots, though after bitter consideration she decided not to bother carrying the riding boots any longer as she did not think there was any place within the Vod Wilds she was likely to come across a horse. Hobgoblins ate horses, as Tilda understood it. She had no sword now for she had left hers with Block though she did still have the light wooden scabbard, wrapped in eel skin. She decided to move her buksu club to her hip by fastening the leather cup to hold its head to the bottom of the empty scabbard, and binding the snapping strap to hold its neck against the top.

That left only the long
ackserpa
gun, for Block’s pistols were ruined. Tilda had plenty of iron and stone balls for the weapon but found she had hardly enough powder to fire ten of them. Block’s powder horn had been one of the things lost while fleeing from the bugbears. That seemed to make the long weapon hardly worth carrying, though Tilda thought she might be able to get more powder once she reached Camp Town. She suspected that anything sold there would be at a daunting price.

When she woke up early, Tilda had a better idea. She washed at a basin of cold water and dressed, then hurried down to the common room well before dawn. The place was dark and quiet and the front door was locked on the inside. Tilda went out, knelt to retrieve her thieves’ tools from the pocket stitched in the cuff of her right boot, and picked the lock shut behind her.

As she turned to head across the street toward the Shugak dock Tilda jerked to a halt in the moonlight when her breath puffed white in the air before her face. In twenty three years in tropical Miilark, Tilda had never once seen her breath. Winter was coming, and not an Island Winter. Tilda stood in the street for a minute just watching the white puffs of her own exhalations with wide, wondering eyes. She reckoned it would be the last childlike moment she was able to indulge in for a while.

Tilda had worked in her father’s perfumery on Chysanthemum Quay for many a year and she knew all-too-well that even in a shop that closed long after dark, some poor employee would have to be there well before daybreak. The shop across from Pagette’s jewelry concern was closed tight behind shuttered windows, but there was light shining out of the peephole in the front door. Tilda rapped the door soundly with a gloved hand and stepped far enough back to be visible in the silvery night. She drew back her hood, put on her most coquettish smile, and cocked out a hip.

The light was blocked by someone looking through the peephole and after a moment the door was pulled open even faster than Tilda hoped, though not by a man. A Miilarkian woman of middle years, a full-blooded Islander by the look of her, stood in the doorway in a long dress and heavy sweater, iron-gray in the long black braid hanging to her waist. She and Tilda stared at each other a moment before both said “
Bol aloha!
” simultaneously, and laughed.

“
Please come in out of the cold, sister of the Islands,” the woman said, and Tilda quickly obliged. The door was closed and locked behind her.

The shop floor was full of weapon racks and suits of armor hung from the walls, but Tilda did no more than glance around at them before she turned to face her host. Her countrywoman introduced herself as Lolanhi Kauhine, and Tilda gave her own name.

There was a certain polite protocol between Miilarkians meeting abroad which was generally made much easier when both parties were merchants, and openly displaying their House colors. Guilders made no such display of course, and Lolanhi was wearing only a plain cloth dress and a woolen sweater of a cable knit. Tilda did the polite thing and made the first move, shaking out her Guild cloak and resettling it on her shoulders as though she had come in out of a rain. The movement exposed a flash of he inner lining for just a moment, and Lolanhi smiled faintly.

“
You must have an acquaintance in the House of Deskata,” Lolanhi said, as any implication that the numerous Miilarkian Guilds were actually constituent parts of the great, noble Houses would have been rude.

“
I know some people of that House,” Tilda acknowledged.

Lolanhi moved behind a counter where she had been working by candlelight in an open ledger. She took a shawl off a peg and tossed it around her shoulders. The garment was of a style common among Island women of her generation; Tilda’s mother had several. Lolanhi’s was of green cloth but of a dark, olive shade. Like a peridot stone.

“
When I was last at home,” Tilda said, “I knew of no ill will between the Deskatas and the fine House of Beyasha.”

Lolanhi smiled. “Nor did I. How may I be of service, Matilda Lanai?”

The Duchess Claudja had not been far wrong, for many of the women of Miilark were swiftly to business, without much small talk. There was always time for that later, after a deal was done.

Tilda slung the long ackserpa gun off her shoulder and held it out lengthwise in both hands. Lolanhi raised an eyebrow, noting the quality of the weapon. Tilda set the gun down on the counter and Lolanhi leaned over it, making a clucking sound of approval.

“
This is quite lovely,” she said. “Pepeekeo & Fenster, and one of their better models. Does it shoot true?”

“
It does,” Tilda said, for the one time she had fired the gun in anger she had hit exactly what she was aiming at. In the mouth. “Sadly, I am nearly out of powder.“

Lolanhi looked up and gave a small, apologetic smile.

“
Sad am I as well, for we can get but little of that this far Down Channel, west of Larbonne. The Ayzants buy up everything for their siege. What we do have is very, very dear.”

“
I feared it might be at that,” Tilda said, and she finally took a look around the shop. Her eyes settled on a wall of short bows, both strung and unstrung.