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 amp; 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.
“I am more interested in trade.”
*
Lolanhi could have bartered much harder for her shop was doing very well buying up excess weapons and armor from adventurers needing to raise hard cash for the Shugak. But Tilda got the sense the older woman felt a bit bad for her for some reason. In the end Tilda gave up the long gun, Block’s broken pistols, and her riding boots. She got back two capped quivers each holding thirty yellow-fletched arrows, and a short Kantan horse bow along with a pair of archers gloves, the left with a stiff pad to the inner bend of her elbow and the shorter right glove with a draw-hook sewn into a finger. The re-curved bow was of the same sort of composite design that the Miilarkians had stolen and been manufacturing in the Islands for decades, though this one was authentic. Plain but sturdy. The string hummed like an instrument when Tilda plucked it.
Lolanhi threw in a heavily-padded but battered leather jerkin, which Tilda judged would fit Dugan. The trade done, Lolanhi heated some tea on a brazier of coals, and the two women talked a bit while they sipped. Lolanhi asked gentle questions and when it became obvious Tilda had heard no word from the Islands in months, she broke the bad news to her. Tilda paled and the tea cup almost slipped from her hand.
She was sitting out on the cold stone of the curb a half hour later when light began to touch the eastern sky. Dugan came strolling along from the direction of the Stars and Stones, saw Tilda and crossed the street to her. Tilda gave no sign she noticed him, even as he stood right in front of her. He poked the folded leather jerkin on the curb next to her with the flat toe of his marching sandal, strapped on over heavy wool socks.
“That looks too big for you,” he said.
“It is yours.”
Dugan knelt and picked the armor up, holding it out at arms’ length. The thick hide of the old jerkin was scored and hacked all over, so much so that it seemed likely to have been stripped off a dead man at some point. Possibly more than once.
“Thank you,” Dugan managed, but not by much. He set down his saddlebags and pulled the armor on, drawing up the laces that ran from the hem below his groin up to his throat. It fit well enough across his back and shoulders.
“You got this in there?” Dugan nodded his chin at Lolanhi’s door, which the woman had opened a few minutes ago while sending a long, sad look Tilda’s way. Pagette had opened up across the street about the same time, but the man gave no sign that he recognized nor even noticed Tilda.
“Yes.”
“They have any helmets?”
“Yes.”
Dugan waited a moment.
“Are you angry at me about something?”
“No.”
Dugan waited, then shrugged. He went into the store.
Tilda kept staring off at nothing, cold to the bone but hardly feeling it. She had no idea what she should do now and was suddenly too tired to even think about it.
After a time two more people appeared at the end of the block and it took Tilda a moment to recognize them as the Duchess Claudja Perforce and the Knight Sir Towsan. The knight was now clean-shaven, making his face look more emaciated than simply gaunt beneath a heavy leather skullcap. He wore a long coat of chain mail with steel greaves over knee-high boots and sleeves of the same kind, articulated at his elbows. All his armor was dirty, though not rusted nor scratched. His sword was on his hip and he carried a shield strapped to his left arm, round wood with an iron boss and a hoop around the rim. The shield was unmarked by any device or heraldry.