"Are you sure you don't want company?"
"Go home to your wife, Alric. Tell bedtime stories of me to your little girls."
He grinned, reached out an arm. We clasped briefly. "Bring Del to Rusali when you have a chance. Lena and the girls would like to see her."
The gelding was saddled and packed. I mounted, settled my aching body. Whatever Meteiera may have done to me, it hadn't made life painless. "I will."
Alric's expression was serious. "Tiger—I mean it."
I nodded. "I know. I will."
His smile was of brief duration, as if something nagged at him. "May the sun shine on your head."
"And yours," I returned, then headed the gelding south, away from crying babies.
SIXTEEN
I WENT THROUGH the cantina doorway bellowing for Fouad. It was late afternoon, and only a couple of men had yet wandered in for drinks. By sundown the place would begin to fill up. As I strode across the hard-packed floor to the plank bar, shouting for their host, they watched in mild curiosity. In Julah, in cantinas, pretty much anything was commonplace.
Fouad appeared from the hindmost regions of the cantina smoothing the front of his yellow burnous, as I dumped saddle-pouches on the bar. His eyebrows ran up into graying hair. "You're back."
"Where's Del?"
He blinked. "Isn't she with you?"
"Isn't she with you ?"
"No."
I felt a stab of disquiet. "That kid came here, he said."
"Who, Nayyib?" Fouad nodded. "He did. He wanted the name of a good healer. He planned to take the healer to where you and the bascha were." His dark eyes widened. "Didn't he do it?"
Oh, hoolies. "He showed up," I said, "but there was no healer with him. Only three buffoons hired by Umir the Ruthless." I tapped impatiently on the plank, understanding now that Rafiq and his friends had never allowed Nayyib to find the healer, just made him lead them to me. "I figured he'd bring her here afterwards."
Fouad shook his head. "I haven't seen the bascha since she left with you, and I haven't seen the kid since he left with the sword-dancers."
I was thinking furiously. "Maybe he took her to the healer you recommended. How do I find him?"
"No, Oshet stopped by earlier today for ale. He said he has no new patients." He eyed me, clearly reluctant. "Forgive me, but if she was that badly injured, it's possible—"
I cut him off. "She's not dead." Then I swore feelingly, wondering if Nayyib had brought her back to Julah but avoided Fouad's, since his last visit had ended badly. Or maybe Del was sick enough that he'd felt it best to remain at the lean-to and not risk moving her. But it made no sense that he wouldn't take her to the healer Fouad recommended. I had a hunt ahead of me.
"She might be elsewhere in town," he suggested, following my thought. "Maybe with another healer. Do you want me to ask around?"
"If Nayyib's avoiding you, you won't find him."
Fouad scoffed. "This is my town."
"He doesn't strike me as stupid."
"It's difficult to hide with a sick Northern woman."
Very true; unless she was dead, and he was on his own.
I dismissed the thought instantly, annoyed I'd succumbed to it. "Ask around," I said. "The sooner there's an answer the happier I'll be. I'll spend the night at the inn just up the street. If I don't hear anything by morning, I'll head out."
"Stay here," Fouad offered.
"In a cantina?"
He laughed. "You used to stay here all the time."
"Not in an empty bed." I hadn't stayed in a cantina since hooking up with Del. Before then, such places had been frequent lodgings.
"That could be remedied," Fouad asserted. But his humor died away. "One of my girls left to marry, and there is an extra room.
It's small, but it claims a bed, a tiny table. You do own one-third of the place, now."
"Fine. Can you have one of your boys take my horse to the livery? I've got all my belongings off him."
Fouad looked dubious. "No one likes handling the stud."
"I don't have the stud. It's the white gelding tied outdoors." I sighed, running a hand impatiently through hair that was just beginning to regain some of its wave. "Food and drink would be welcome. And a burnous."
"I'll bring a meal out myself."
"No. To the room. I'm going to lay low."
Fouad gestured. "Back through the curtain, down the hallway, last door on the left."
As I picked up the saddlepouches I didn't remind him that I knew the layout from earlier days. I just nodded and went.
The room was indeed small. Smaller, in fact, than I remembered. But it did have the bed to recommend it, plus the tiny table next to it just inside the curtained doorway. I dumped the pouches next to the bed, then unsheathed the sword and leaned it against the bedframe. I shed the harness next. Sure enough, after two days with no burnous, I had paler stripes standing out against the copper-brown of my skin. I looked as though I were wearing the harness even when I wasn't. Leather had rubbed against the slice along my rib, but the annoyance was minimal when weighed against the rest of my body.
My smile was twisted. Nihkolara had said new scars would replace the old ones lifted from me by the mages. It looked as though I was on my way to starting a second collection.
The whisper of a step sounded beyond the privacy curtain. I caught up the sword and leveled it just as the fabric was pulled aside. Silk, Fouad's wine-girl, bearing a tray and carrying a burnous draped over one arm, stopped dead.
I gestured her in, smiling ruefully. "We're beginning to make this a habit."
This time she wasn't swathed in cloth or trying to hide her face as she bore me a warning. She wore filmy gold-dyed gauze and a sash-belt of crimson tassels riding low on her hips that accentuated her Southron coloring and lush body. She accepted my invitation, set the tray on the table, then put the burnous on the bed. Fouad is a man who likes color; the gauze was a deep bluish-purple. Bright red in Skandi, now purple here. Whatever happened to subtlety?
Silk was gazing at me, black wings of hair hanging loosely beside her face.
"Thank you," I said feelingly, and set down the sword again. Fouad had, of course, included aqivi along with food. For just a moment, though, I thought longingly of Umir's excellent meals.
"You are alone?" Silk asked.
I nodded, realizing Fouad probably had said nothing of the circumstances. I sat down on the edge of the bed and dove into mutton stew in a bowl carved of hard brown bread.
"Will you be wanting company tonight?"
It stopped me cold. I looked at her over the spoonful of stew halfway through my mouth.
"Ah," she said, and the single word contained a multitude of emotions.
"Wait," I said as she turned to go. "Silk . . ." But I wasn't sure what I'd meant to say.
Her smile was sad. "It's the Northern bascha."
I nodded.
Her mouth twisted faintly. "All those years … we used to say you would never settle on one woman. But inwardly we all dreamed it might be one of us." She gestured with one square hand. "Oh, I know—it wouldn't be with a wine-girl. But even women like us have dreams, Tiger."
I felt vastly uncomfortable. "I don't know what to say."
"Then say nothing. Know only that you were—and always will be—special to me."
I groped for comforting words. I'd never been very good at them. "There will be someone for you, Silk. Didn't Fouad say one of the girls just left to get married?"
She nodded solemnly. "But she was much younger than I, and not so coarse."
The best answer was suddenly a simple matter of speaking the truth. "If you were coarse," I told her, "I would never have shared your bed."