“Bah!” Benter stomped off. Radnal caught Toglo zev Pamdal’s eye. She raised one eyebrow slightly, shook her head. He shifted his shoulders in a tiny shrug. They both smiled. In every group, someone turned out to be a pain in the backside. Radnal let his smile expand, glad Toglo wasn’t holding his sport with Lofosa and Evillia against him.
“Speaking of outbuildings, freeman vez Krobir,” Peggol said, “there’s just the stables, am I right?”
“That and the privy, yes,” Radnal said.
“Oh, yes, the privy.” The Eye and Ear wrinkled his nose. It was even more prominent than Radnal’s. Most Strongbrows had big noses, as if to counterbalance their long skulls. Lissonese, whose noses were usually flattish, sometimes called Tarteshans Snouts on account of that. The name would start a brawl in any port on the Western Ocean.
Fer vez Canthal accompanied one of Peggol’s men to the stables; the Eye and Ear obviously needed support against the ferocious, blood-crazed donkeys inside — that was what his body language said, anyhow. When Peggol ordered him out, he’d flinched as if told to invade Morgaf and bring back the king’s ears.
“You Eyes and Ears don’t often deal with matters outside the big cities, do you?” Radnal asked.
“You noticed that?” Peggol vez Menk raised a wry eyebrow. “You’re right; we’re urbanites to the core. Threats to the realm usually come among crowds of masking people. Most that don’t are a matter for the army, not us.”
Moblay Sopsirk’s son went over to the shelf where the war board was stored. “If we can’t go out today, Radnal, care for the game we didn’t have last night?”
“Maybe another time, freeman vez Sopsirk,” the tour guide said, turning Moblay’s name into its nearest Tarteshan equivalent. Maybe the brown man would take the hint and speak a bit more formally to him. But Moblay didn’t seem good at catching hints, as witness his advances toward Evillia and this even more poorly timed suggestion of a game. The Eye and Ear returned from the stable without the solution to Dokhnor’s death. By his low-voiced comments to his friends, he was glad he’d escaped the den of vicious beasts with his life. The Trench Park staffers tried to hide their sniggers. Even a few of the tourists, only two days better acquainted with donkeys than the Eye and Ear, chuckled at his alarm.
Something on the roof said hig-hig-hig! in a loud, strident voice. The Eye and Ear who’d braved the stables started nervously. Peggol vez Menk raised his eyebrow again. “What’s that, freeman vez Krobir?”
“A koprit bird,” Radnal said. “They hardly impale people on thornbushes.”
“No, eh? That’s good to hear.” Peggol’s dry cough served him for a laugh.
The midday meal was ration packs. Radnal sent Liem vez Steries a worried look: the extra mouths at the lodge would make supplies run out faster than he’d planned for. Understanding the look, Liem said, “We’ll fly in more from the militia outpost if we have to.”
“Good.”
Between them, Peggol vez Menk and Liem vez Steries spent most of the afternoon on the radiophone. Radnal worried about power, but not as much. Even if the generator ran out of fuel, solar cells would take up most of the slack. Trench Park had plenty of sunshine.
After supper, the militiamen and Eyes and Ears scattered sleepsacks on the common room floor. Peggol set up a watch schedule that gave each of his and Liem’s men about half a daytenth each. Radnal volunteered to stand a watch himself.
“No,” Peggol answered. “While I do not doubt your innocence, freeman vez Krobir, you and your colleagues formally remain under suspicion here. The Morgaffo plenipo could protest were you given a post which might let you somehow take advantage of us.”
Though that made some sense, it miffed Radnal. He retired to his sleeping cubicle in medium dudgeon, lay down, and discovered he could not sleep. The last two nights, he’d been on the edge of dropping off when Evillia and Lofosa called. Now he was awake, and they stayed away.
He wondered why. They’d already shown they didn’t care who watched them when they made love. Maybe they thought he was too shy to do anything with militiamen and Eyes and Ears outside the entrance. A few days before, they would have been right. Now he wondered. They took fornication so much for granted that they made any other view of it seem foolish.
Whatever their reasons, they stayed away. Radnal tossed and turned on his sleepsack. He thought about going out to chat with the fellow on watch, but decided not to: Peggol vez Menk would suspect he was up to something nefarious if he tried. That annoyed him all over again, and drove sleep further away than ever. So did the Martoisi’s furious row over how one of them — Eltsac said Nocso, Nocso said Eltsac — had managed to lose their only currycomb.
The tour guide eventually dozed off, for he woke with a start when the men in the common room turned up the lights just before sunrise. For a heartbeat or two, he wondered why they were there. Then he remembered.
Yawning, he grabbed his cap, tied the belt on his robe, and headed out of the cubicle. Zosel vez Glesir and a couple of tourists were already in the common room, talking with the militiamen and the Eyes and Ears. Conversation flagged when Lofosa emerged from her sleeping cubicle without dressing first.
“A tough job, this tour guide business must be,” Peggol vez Menk said, sounding like everyone else who thought a guide did nothing but roll on the sleepsack with his tourists.
Radnal grunted. This tour, he hadn’t done much with Lofosa or Evillia but roll on the sleepsack. It’s not usually like that, he wanted to say. He didn’t think Peggol would believe him, so he kept his mouth shut. If an Eye and Ear didn’t believe something, he’d start digging. If he started to dig, he’d keep digging till he found what he was looking for, regardless of whether it was really there.
The tour guide and Zosel dug out breakfast packs. By the time they came back, everyone was up, and Evillia had succeeded in distracting some of the males from Lofosa. “Here you are, freelady,” Radnal said to Toglo zev Pamdal when he got to her.
No one paid her any particular attention; she was just a Tarteshan woman in a concealing Tarteshan robe, not a foreign doxy wearing nothing much. Radnal wondered if that irked her. Women, in his experience, did not like being ignored.
If she was irked, she didn’t show it. “I trust you slept well, freeman vez Krobir?” she said. She did not even glance toward Evillia and Lofosa. If she meant anything more by her greeting than its words, she also gave no sign of that — which suited Radnal perfectly.
“Yes. I trust you did likewise,” he answered.
“Well enough,” she said, “though not as well as I did before the Morgaffo was killed. A pity he’ll not be able to make his sketches — he had talent. May his Goddess grant him wind and land and water in the world to come: that’s what the islanders pray for, not so?”
“I believe so, yes,” Radnal said, though he knew little of Morgaffo religious forms.
“I’m glad you’ve arranged for the tour to continue despite the misfortune that befell him, Radnal vez,” she said.
“It can do him no harm, and the Bottomlands are fascinating.”
“So they are, fr-” Radnal began. Then he stopped, stared, and blinked. Toglo hadn’t used formal address, but the middle grade of Tarteshan politesse, which implied she felt she knew him somewhat and didn’t disapprove of him. Considering what she’d witnessed at the first night’s campsite, that was a minor miracle. He grinned and took a like privilege: “So do I, Toglo zev.”
About a tenth of a daytenth later, as he and Fer carried empty ration packs to the disposal bin, the other Trench Park staffer elbowed him in the ribs and said, “You have all the women after you, eh, Radnal vez?”
Radnal elbowed back, harder. “Go jump in the Bitter Lake, Fer vez. This group’s nothing but trouble. Besides, Nocso zev Martois thinks I’m part of the furniture.”