Angel of Storms (Millennium's Rule, #2)(82)
So unless I want to abandon them all to be slaughtered, I must return to them. Tyen drew in a deep breath and let it out slowly. He nodded.
“Then I had better make sure nobody goes back there.”
The Raen nodded once. “I will give orders to the allies that they are not to kill the rebel leader. However, they may interpret that as a wish to have you captured instead,” he warned.
Then he disappeared.
PART THREE
RIELLE
CHAPTER 11
A great deal could be communicated with non-verbal sounds, Rielle had discovered since Baluka’s mind was no longer open to her. Appreciative ahs, questioning hums, weary sighs, and even grumbling stomachs could substitute for words. It was more complex information that forced her to fumble with and puzzle out the Traveller language.
It didn’t help that the vocabulary mixed a multitude of languages from many, many worlds, often with several meanings for a word. But the grammar was, perhaps by necessity, straightforward. The Travellers adopted words, but used them in sentences of uncomplicated structure.
The more Rielle learned, the more she was able to recognise the language when non-Travellers spoke it, and marvel at how widespread its use was. It had been adopted as a common tongue not just by those who traded with Travellers, but by people who traded with other nations and worlds. Sorcerers who travelled between worlds also learned it, and therefore those who most often dealt with them. The elites of many societies considered fluency in the Traveller tongue to be a sign of a superior class, refinement and education.
They’d be dismayed if they had heard the conversation Rielle was observing now, she mused. In all other aspects, the hide dyers Lejikh was bargaining with were rough and uncouth, some openly leering at Rielle and the Traveller women with her. That they were in a trade similar to what her family had dealt in only made her doubly uncomfortable. We dyers might have been associated with revolting smells and source materials, but that didn’t mean our behaviour had to be as unpleasant.
Yet the skins were the best she’d ever seen: soft, pliable and richly coloured, with few flaws. Her parents had dealt mainly in fabrics, but they knew how to recognise good leather, as it was often used for awning straps and ties, or they were commissioned to match fabric colours to shoes and other items. She could see why the Travellers thought it worth putting up with the tanners’ rudeness to purchase their goods.
“They’re done,” Jikari, eldest daughter of one of the Traveller families, murmured as one of the dyers made a chopping motion and Lejikh responded in kind.
“Price agreed.” Hari, the youngest of the married women, smiled at Rielle and spoke slowly. “Have you seen enough? Would you like to see the market now?”
Rielle nodded. “Yes.” She followed them out from under the canopy of hides. “When Lejikh said ‘dyers’ I thought he meant…” She plucked at the sleeve of her tunic. “… they dyed this. Like my family.”
The two women smiled and patted Rielle’s arms to show they’d understood, and didn’t mind enduring the tanners’ behaviour so their guest could satisfy her curiosity. The pair included Rielle in both daily chores and exploration of the places the family visited. She was now glad Lord Felomar had decided she could not stay in his world for fear of attracting the Raen’s anger, because it meant she’d made two new friends. Though it also meant she would be extra sad to leave the Travellers.
The Travellers’ wagons were visible further down the wide street, arranged in a tight double circle fencing in the lom at the centre. The women led her in another direction, guiding her down a narrower gap between two stalls. In front of one, a pair of acrobats performed before a circular tent to attract customers inside to see the main acts; from another came smoke and the sound of hammer strikes on metal. The latter looked like it had been there for some time.
“Do people live here?” she asked.
Jikari nodded. “If they can pay the rent. But they are not permitted to build houses.”
They stopped before a double-sized stall in which several kinds of animals had been penned. An auction was taking place beside three long-necked beasts with curved spikes under their chins. The animals were hobbled, and had poles strapped to their neck to keep them straight and no doubt prevent any thrust of the spikes. Are they predatory? she wondered. Or is that for defence? One moved up to a pole on which bushels of some kind of dried plant had been tied, and began to graze.
“What are they?” Rielle asked.
“Ruke,” Jikari replied. “They are good guard animals to put with more vulnerable ones.” She began to point at each pen, naming and explaining the uses for each type of domestic beast within. “I don’t know what they are,” she admitted, pointing to several stumpy-legged, long-snouted animals with scaly, bright red hides. “Father might. At a guess I’d say they were bred for their skins. Would you like me to ask the sellers?”
Rielle shook her head. “They are all busy with the auction.”
“Hmm,” Hari agreed. “And I’m thirsty. Let’s get something to drink.”
It took them a while to find a stall selling liquids meant for refreshment. A long queue had formed which kept shifting as the stallholders on either side objected to it blocking customers. Standing in line, Rielle reflected that this was the first time in a long while that she had stood still. Twenty-two days had passed since she’d been rescued by the Travellers–or rather, twenty-two sleeps. Measuring time was near impossible when she was moving through worlds with shorter and longer days and sometimes no discernible night at all to divide them, and they had often arrived and left at different times of day. This world was the tenth she had visited and the first one in which the Travellers didn’t have a buyer or seller expecting them.