It was too bad they couldn't see her in less stressful circumstances. Keritanima wasn't usually so vicious, but Renoit's games with her had worn her patience to the bone. Keritanima had discovered, much to her shock, that Renoit was just as underhanded and subtle as she was. The man never let up on her, not only making her dance, but making her suffer for her adamant refusal to do so with cunning set-ups and situations that humiliated her into compliance. Keritanima was a very proud girl, a product of her upbringing, and those little humiliations made her utterly furious. What probably made her more furious was the ease with which Renoit manipulated her into doing what he wanted her to do. She had become waspish with the performers, and even a bit short-tempered with her friends, but they all understood why she was being that way.
Allia seemed to have taken to her role a bit better. She was no longer a performing acrobat. Renoit wouldn't be able to display her in Arak, because they despised the Selani. She was a teacher now, teaching the acrobats ways to make themselves even more flexible and limber, teaching them how to do more complicated and more difficult acrobatic feats. The other reason for the change was her promise to Renoit that she was going to kill Henri if he disrespected her one more time. After that blunt warning, Henri was removed as the leading acrobat. He was taken completely out of the acrobats, sent to the jugglers to perform in that capacity as long as Allia was in the troupe.
It was good that the others had managed to blend in so well. Azakar and Dar were well liked by the performers. Dar had quite a covey of the youngest women after him, though he was too young or naive to notice it. Then again, he didn't have Tarrin's sense of smell. He could smell it when women were after a man, because the texture of their scents changed. Just the way he could smell fear. Azakar wasn't pined over by the girls, but he had made solid friends among the circus people. Dolanna was too mysterious to be approached by most, and none of them would try to make friends with Binter or Sisska. The Vendari devotion to duty precluded such socializing.
He didn't see them practice often. He was still restricted off the deck during the daylight hours. The performers were very afraid of him, and he had to admit that they had very good reason to be. Of all of them, only Phandebrass would speak to him, and sometimes Tarrin felt that that was because the absent-minded mage didn't have the sense to be afraid. Not even Renoit would approach him or talk to him without Dolanna. That suited him just fine. He had his friends and his sisters. They were all strangers, and he didn't trust any of them. So long as they stayed out of his way, he was perfectly content to let them hover about on the edges. Their fear of him didn't sting as much as it used to, as it had when he was in the Tower. He had grown used to it over time.
Faalken approached him, and he looked like he was the father of Marcus Lightblade. Pride exploded all over his face, and his scent couldn't contain the elation that he was obviously feeling. "Dolanna said you were going to give me that sword," he blurted out, his dark, curly locks bobbing up and down as the Knight literally bounced in place. "Was she toying with me?"
"No," he said quietly. "I don't like swords, and it's too small for Azakar to use. You can have it."
Faalken gave out a whooping sound, then grabbed Tarrin in a fierce hug and picked him up, then spun him a few times. The move startled Tarrin, but the fact that it was Faalken doing it was the only reason he managed to keep his gizzard inside his belly. "Have I told you today how much I like you, my boy?" he said with a laugh, then he literally ran towards the stairs leading below decks. He left Tarrin standing there with a surprised look on his face, and all twenty of his claws extended. He had to breathe deeply a few times to get over his shock, calming down to the point where he could sheathe his wicked claws and chuckle ruefully. Faalken was an eternal child. He would never grow up.
Shaking his head, Tarrin changed form, the deck blurring until he gained a much lower perspective of it. He padded over to a coil of rope and settled himself down inside it, laying his chin on the edge of it and closing his eyes. There had been a time, which seemed a lifetime ago, when he would have done something like that.
Sometimes it wasn't the days, rides, months, and years, it was what happened within them that changed someone.
Tarrin drifted off to sleep, musing at how he had lived two lifetimes in only eighteen years.
It was apparent to anyone looking that the two collections of buildings on either side of the wide river Ar were not the same.
The buildings on the left were stone with tiled roofs, and the streets were narrow and very crooked. It was an ancient city, with old buildings and a rambling layout that had probably been much neater some five hundred years ago. The buildings on the right were timber and stone, with tiled roofs, but what made them so distinctive was that they were larger and more spread out than the buildings on the opposite bank. Wide, straight avenues separated the buildings, apparent even from the ship, and the layout of the place was one of straight streets, gardens, and space making the place seem less cloying and restrictive.
Var Denom to the left, Shoran's Fork to the right. Two cities within sight of one another, yet visibly and obviously as different as night and day.
The two cities were separated by the wide, slow-moving waters of the River Ar, fresh water that poured into a shallow yet very wide bay. That bay was filled with many ships, alot like Tor had been, but what Tarrin noticed was the unusual concentration of Wikuni warships that were anchored off from the wharfs and quays of both cities. There were even a trio of frigates parked squarely in the middle of the river's mouth. There were alot more Wikuni ships here than there had been in Tor, and for some reason, that worried him.
Tarrin stood at the rail with Dar, watching as a longboat rowed out to meet them as they carefully wound their way among the ships in the bay. The man inside shouted out in Arakite, telling Renoit's ship to follow it to a wharf. Dar looked a little wistful. Arkis was his home kingdom, though Shoran's Fork wasn't his home city. Dar was from Arkisia, the capital, a very large city on the coast closer to the Sandshield Mountains, which separated Arkis from the Desert of Swirling Sands.
"Homesick?" Tarrin asked, flexing his human hand absently, getting used to the nagging pain, shunting it to the back of his mind so he could do his job without it distracting him.
"A little, I guess," he sighed. "My parents probably think I'm still in school at the Tower. They'd have a fit if they knew what I was really doing."
"At least mine know what I'm doing."
"I'm surprised they're not right here with you."
"You know, if it wasn't for Jenna, they probably would be," he said after a moment of thought.
"It's strange hearing Arakite without an accent."
"My accent isn't that bad," he protested.
"Not bad at all, but you still lack the dialect of a native speaker," Dar teased with a smile. "Look at all the Wikuni. You'd think this was one of their naval bases."
"I noticed. I don't like it."
"It makes me a little nervous too, but I doubt they'll find us. Kerri doesn't look anything like what they think she'd look like, Binter and Sisska will be hiding behind illusions, and you and Allia won't be out there to give us away. As long as we don't attract attention to ourselves, we should be alright."
"I hope so, Dar. I really hope so."
The longboat directed them to the wharf at the very end of the city's docks. It was a small quay, barely long enough to support the garishly painted galleon. The wharf beside theirs was occupied by a Wikuni clipper, and he could see the Wikuni on board rush about, as if preparing to cast off. There was an open area between the wharf, the city wall to the right, and the large warehouses to the left. The place was empty, but that wasn't all that unusual for a part of the city that didn't have much traffic. The wharf was in the corner of the city, and the wharf which probably supplied the warehouses across from them was empty. It was probably a good place to have Renoit dock, where his troupe wouldn't interfere with the cargo loading and unloading where the docks were busier.