by Tara Janzen
Out of fairness, she had to admit that he wasn’t clothed any more indecently than the Ilmarryn, who were prone to all manner of dishabille, but he was a man, and there was far more to him than there was to any Ilmarryn sprite—more breadth, more muscle, more length, more everything. She hadn’t forgotten what his legs had felt like pressed on either side of hers, the strength of his arms holding them both to the wall. No other man would have dared to be so bold with Palinor’s daughter, not even to save her life—not if he valued his.
All kinds of men came to the desert, adventurers and mercenaries, soldiers and the Warmonger’s spies, but she’d never seen anyone quite like Morgan ab Kynan, except once: an Orion slave boy whose caravan had gotten lost in the Northern Waste. She’d been allowed only a glimpse, but a glimpse had been enough to stun her into silent adoration. He’d been beautiful, but refined, not like the thief. Yet there was a noticeable similarity, and she wondered if, even worse than a tech-trash thief, Morgan ab Kynan had once been one of the highest-paid whores in the galaxy.
She should be thanking the gods he wasn’t the prince—but she wasn’t, and as the night had worn on she’d wondered if she had been too hasty in dismissing him.
She turned her attention back to the market, and her already low spirits sank another notch. Every horror story she’d ever heard about the Old Dominion had its origins in Pan-shei, the market of chaos and decay. Slaves were sold there, along with souls and all manner of vice. A rousing trade in religious artifacts had left few of the world’s temples untouched. Nothing was sacred in Pan-shei, and everything was for sale.
The thief couldn’t have chosen a more corrupt destination, which only further discredited him and made her position that much more untenable.
“Rotting Prince of Time,” she grumbled under her breath. If he was the Prince of Time, she was the Princess of Fools. They were supposed to have been the match of ten millennia, bound by fate for a glorious destiny, not two rats running through a maze.
The scents from the market reached her as they descended from the East-West Ninety, heavy with spice and dust and the smells of a thousand years of human and not-so-human habitation. Surprisingly, it wasn’t a bad smell, just far more complex than the desert. She was glad to note that at least on its southern border Pan-shei didn’t have the reek of Racht.
The first stalls they passed were sturdy, made of sun-dried bricks with sun-bleached canopies, but as they continued north, each successive layer of the marketplace looked shabbier than the last. Morning fires were being lit and goods carted out as the shopkeepers and grain-sellers readied themselves for the day. There were very few fruits or vegetables to be seen, and when an old man set out a box of apples, the thief surprised her by stopping and buying the whole thing. He tossed her two.
“Better hide the extra one in your pouch, if you don’t want it pinched,” he advised, then took a big bite out of one of his own.
“Hey, Morgan!” a chipper voice rang out. “Whatcha got there?”
Avallyn turned toward the voice and saw a girl of no more than twelve standing with her hands on her hips at the entrance to an alley strung with laundry. Her face was winsome and dirty, her hair a wild tangle of black curls. Half a dozen other children were clustered around her, the smaller ones peeking out from behind her, the bigger boys standing by her side. All of them were dressed in a hodgepodge of rags and eyeing Morgan’s box of apples.
“Hey, Klary,” Morgan replied. Hefting the box to his shoulder, he took another bite of apple and resumed walking with a nonchalant air. Avallyn fell in beside him. The sound of pounding feet followed, and soon they were surrounded by a gaggle of street urchins.
“Whatcha got there, Morgan?” Klary asked again. Her red paisley pants were two sizes too big and cinched around her waist with a green scarf. Her once white shirt sported eight different shades of ground-in dirt.
“Yeah, Morgan. Whatcha got there?” a bigger boy with straight brown hair and freckles chimed in. Avallyn could count every one of his ribs through the opening in his blue plaid vest.
“Where you been, Morgan? We been hungry,” a little round-faced girl with freckles and frizzy red hair said.
Klary shushed her with a hand on her shoulder and a meaningful glare. “Ain’t nobody been hungry, Baba.”
“Jus’ me,” Baba disagreed with a pouty lower lip.
“I’ll toss you for those apples, Morgan,” Klary suggested, lengthening her strides to keep up with him. Two of the bigger boys were skipping along backward ahead of the pack, neatly trapping them inside the circle of diminutive thieves.
Morgan must feel right at home, Avallyn thought.
“Nay, Klary,” Morgan answered, shaking his head. “The last time we tossed, I lost four marks and my kit.”
A whisper of sighed memories ran through the pack of children.
“They was cheese in the kit. Remember, Klary?”
“And raspberry candies.”
“And corned kudge in a can. Oooh, I like corned kudge.”
“They was peaches.”
“And milk, real milk.”
“And chocolate drops.” Klary added her own reminiscence. “Betcha forgot about them chocolate drops, Morgan.”
Morgan stopped and looked down at the girl, one eyebrow lifted to a skeptical degree. “Aye,” he said slowly. “I had forgotten about those chocolate drops.”
“Well, they could still be yours, Morgan. We been eating on the kit for a full week, but we ain’t ate all them chocolate drops.” The gleam in the girl’s eye was pure larceny. “I’ll toss you double, chocolate drops for apples.”
Morgan’s mouth curved into a smile that made Avallyn distinctly uneasy. He was going to steal the child’s candy.
“Double?” he repeated.
“Aye.” Klary nodded and pulled a pair of dice out of a voluminous pocket in her pants. She tossed them lightly into the air and caught them as they fell.
“No.” Avallyn stepped forward. This was Pan-shei at its worst, and she’d be damned if she stood by while he robbed children. She pulled a handful of marks out of her pouch. “I’ll buy the—”
The hand on her wrist stopped her in mid-speech. Morgan wasn’t holding her hard enough to hurt, but he was definitely holding her hard enough to make her think twice.
She blinked up at him.
“Don’t worry, love,” he said in an easy lilt that reminded her once more of Kings Wood elves. “I can win you a bit of chocolate. My luck’s been runnin’ like a river in spate today.” There was definite sarcasm in his last words, thick enough to make his point.
He gestured subtly and Avallyn followed his gaze to Klary’s hand, where the girl was still tossing the dice and catching them. Every time they landed in her open palm, a pair of winning diamonds showed faceup.
They were loaded.
Avallyn shoved the marks back into her pouch, still not certain what game he was playing, only certain she was best left out of it—a fact he proved as one by one the apples were lost and eagerly snatched away by little hands.
At one point, he did win some chocolate drops, but for the most part he lost, and he kept losing until all the fruit was gone and he was down another four marks.
“Enough,” he growled, rising from his knees where they’d played in the dirt. A grimace flickered across his face, and she nearly reached for him, but he made it to his feet in one piece without her help.
He paid up amidst the children’s hoots of laughter, and as soon as the money changed hands, they were off and running down the street, shouting, “Klar—ee! Klar—ee!”
“You let her win,” Avallyn said.
“Not really,” he answered, brushing the dust off his pants.
“Then how come the dice only came up diamonds once for you? They were weighted to come up diamonds.”
“Only the pair she was using.” He handed her the chocolate drops. “The pair she kept slipping to me were loaded to lose.”
“But how?” Avallyn had watch
ed every roll and every time the dice had been picked up—or rather she’d watched nearly every roll and pick-up. Sometimes she’d been distracted by one of the other children.
Oh, she thought.
“They’re all in on the scam,” he said, “but Klary’s the oldest with the fastest sleight of hand.”
“Then how did you win the chocolate?”
He grinned. “I may not be as fast as you, or a wild boy, or a Pan-shei street snipper, but I manage to get by. Come on, now. We’ve dallied long enough.” He started walking again.
“You could have just given them the apples,” she said, catching up with a couple of quick strides.
“No, it’s better that Klary wins them off me. It makes the other ones feel safer if they know they’re living off their wits and Klary’s speed and not off charity. Charity can be damned inconsistent.”
Avallyn glanced up at him and hazarded a guess. “I’d say you’ve been fairly consistent, and good for four marks a week plus oddments.”
“Aye,” he admitted, “but what if I’m not here next week, or the week after that? Then what does Klary do to feed her brood?”
Avallyn felt a moment’s guilt. He wasn’t going to be there next week, nor the week after, and if he turned out to be the true Prince of Time, he would never return to Pan-shei.
She was still mulling that over when he turned the corner on an alley and abruptly stopped.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
“Nothing,” he said, wrapping his arm around his rib cage and leaning back against a crumbling brick wall.
“Then why do you look like that?” His face was suddenly pale, the lines around his mouth tight.
“Like what?”
“Like I’m going to have to carry you the rest of the way to the tea shop,” she said curtly, trying to conceal her concern. If he did drop in Pan-shei, she didn’t dare stop. There was no safety for them until they reached the desert.
“Don’t worry. You won’t.” He took a breath, then shook his head and pushed off the wall. “Come on. It’s not far now. I promise.”
She followed closely behind, not sure who he was trying to convince, her or himself, but she wished more than ever that she had the rover and its fully equipped sick bay.
“Do you have another tech-jaw?” she asked. “If I can contact my captain, we can get some help.”
The look he gave her told her she was going for a long shot in that quarter. He’d already made it clear that he didn’t want anything to do with her Night Watchers, and they were the only people she trusted in the whole of the Old Dominion.
Biting back a smart retort, she let him lead her through one alley after another, each more litter-strewn and disreputable than the last, until they reached a dead end. She had kept her eye out for a public comcell to try calling Dray, knowing her captain capable of outwitting a dozen skraelpacks, but Pan-shei was devoid of any amenities. Survival of the fittest seemed to rule the market streets, with more than just Klary’s band of little thieves running through the alleys.
No trade was taking place in the stalls lining the dead-end street. In fact, it was eerily deserted given the shabby but abundant life scurrying around elsewhere in the market. A few ratty streamers flew over a squat open shop at the end with a yellow neon sign proclaiming “Ferrar’s.
He’d said they would be safe in Pan-shei, safe at the tea shop, and she’d doubted every word, not ever having heard of a particularly well-fortified tea shop. The looks of Ferrar’s did nothing to change her mind. Crammed between a windowless high-rise and a dilapidated metal Quonset, it was little more than a few planks of wood hammered together and bolstered up with cinder blocks. She wouldn’t feel safe until she was well out into the desert.
An old man and an even older woman sat on the ground in the shade of the shop’s ragged canopy, playing choppes, a game of sticks and tiles. A small brazier flanked by low stools stood unattended off to the side. Morgan sat down on one of the stools. Avallyn gratefully lowered herself onto another and looked around to see if there was a comcell booth in the vicinity.
There wasn’t.
She stretched her hands out over the glowing coals and felt warmth seep into her fingertips. The morning was chill, and she was still wet from the rains, her hair still damp.
“I don’t see any wallah,” she said, referring to the person who would make the tea in a tea shop. She didn’t see any tea either, or a cup or a pot.
“The important thing is that she sees us,” the thief said, his gaze lifting to a shadowy corner beneath the canopy.
Avallyn glanced up and saw the flicker of a scanning camera. They were being observed.
A quiet rumbling drew her attention to the Quonset, where a door slowly swung open, its wheels churning up plumes of dust, its hinges creaking. The metal panel looked to be solid steel beneath its rusted tin casing.
“Morgan, love,” a woman said, stepping out into the cool sunshine. “Welcome home.” She was short, with a mop of graying tawny hair, her soft curves swathed in a pair of loose ivory-colored pants and a matching overtunic, but it was her eyes that captured Avallyn’s attention. Sea green and ageless, they were warm and lively with genuine delight at seeing the thief.
“Ferrar.” He stood and crossed to the woman in two long, limping strides.
Avallyn witnessed their lengthy embrace with a growing sense of pique. Not only was the woman’s delight genuine, but so was her affection, genuine and generous, right down to the kiss she offered with a tilt of her head, a kiss he readily accepted by lowering his mouth to hers.
Their lips no sooner touched than Avallyn’s pique took a turn for the worse. By the time the kiss ended a moment later, her mood had gone beyond pique to immeasurably foul.
Chapter 7
The inside of the Quonset was no more a tea shop than the boards on the fence in the alley were, yet there was tea, hundreds of kilos of it. Bales and crates of all sizes, marked with the symbols of foreign lands and off-world colonies, were stacked next to the walls and in untidy rows down the center of the long room. At the end of the rows, a stone courtyard cluttered with chairs and plants lay bathed in amber light beneath a partially glassed-in ceiling.
A rectangular brazier running through the middle of a low table held a half-dozen odd-sized pots on its grate, all of them steaming. Dishes and cups were stacked nearby.
“The morning meal is ready, if you want food brought to your quarters,” Ferrar said, her voice soothing, her arm draped around Morgan’s waist. “Do you have any guests?” he asked.
“One or two, a rumrunner on his circuit,” the woman replied with a slight shrug. “Overnights only. No one new in the private quarters.”
Avallyn peered into the pots, doing her best to ignore the affectionate embrace and the surge of jealousy she’d felt when they kissed. Schooling her features, she cast a questioning glance over her shoulder at the thief. Everything in the cooking pots looked good and smelled wonderful—rice, noodles, spiced legumes, hot fruit soup.
“Eat in peace, princess. Ferrar only serves the best,” he told her, then lowered his head to the woman’s and whispered something in her ear.
Avallyn’s jaw tightened. Damn him. If he turned out to be the prince, the woman would have to go. There wasn’t supposed to have been another woman, anyhow. How could a prophecy be such a mess and last for ten thousand years?
Only one way that she could think of: He really wasn’t the Prince of Time. But the thought didn’t bring her nearly the relief it should have.
“Of course, Morgan,” the tea trader replied, her expression growing concerned. “Let me get my kit and I’ll be right over. Your friend can eat here while I see what you’ve done to yourself.”
In answer, the thief lifted his wrist, showing the woman his bracelet. A knowing expression passed over her face and she glanced at Avallyn. Ferrar’s gaze was assessing, but not lacking in warmth.
“Then your friend will have to join us. Jons,” Ferrar called as she
walked into the courtyard.
A faint sound coming from the far end of the tea stacks drew Avallyn’s head around. A man stood up from where he’d been working on an electronic slate. He was a giant, as tall as a Lyran, his bald head shinning in the amber light, his boldly carved features reminding Avallyn of some ancient warrior from Earth’s past. A scar ran the length of his face, creasing the corner of one eye in a perpetual squint. Powerful muscles bulged and rolled down his arms. His legs were like tree trunks.
He looked like a Prince of Time, and she couldn’t stop staring—until her tracking bracelet lit up and nearly pulled her off her feet.
She threw the thief a scowl, which he was returning in full measure. He beckoned for her to come, and her lips thinned. It was past time for her to explain to him who she was, for her to recite her lineage and watch him squirm, for her to tell him the fate for which the prince had been born. No man in the Old Dominion did not fear the Priestesses of the Bones and their prophecies.
Ferrar met Jons next to the brazier, and as the two of them conferred, Avallyn stalked across the courtyard to the thief.
“You’d best not let Ferrar catch you mooning over Jons,” he said before she could speak, “or we’ll both end up back on the street.”
“Mooning? Me?” She halted, taken aback by the sheer audacity of the man. She had to clench her hands by her sides to keep from poking him in the chest. “You’re the one kissing everyone in sight.”
She was overreacting. She knew it as surely as she was standing there wondering why. Hunger and exhaustion had never done this to her before, and neither had a man.
“Not quite everyone,” he assured her tersely, his eyes glittering.
She went very still, though her pulse was racing. Was he daring to offer her a kiss? This low-down, low-life, tech-trash thief who would probably be chained in the hold of one of the Warmonger’s desert ships by now if she hadn’t saved him?