Triplet

Chapter 13

The weapons dealer snorted with contempt as he glanced at the small bow in Danae's hands and then looked back down at the knife he was honing. "What you have there is a toy for children, my lady," he told her. "I deal in goods for real hunters, not those playing games in the streets. Take your business to someone more appropriate and save us both our time."

"You are indeed remarkable, tradesman," Danae said calmly, "to have the courage to so quickly dismiss Andros's claim that he shot an arrow over five hundred varna with this same bow."

The dealer looked up abruptly. "This is the one Andros did that with?" he asked cautiously. "I'm—I mean, I'd heard of that, of course, but...."

He trailed off. Wordlessly, Danae held the bow out, and with a sour twitch of his lip the other took it and began to examine it. Slowly the last remnants of skepticism left his face, to be replaced by admiration and cautious interest. "I have never seen such a bow," he said at last, looking up. "What is the manner of its construction?"

"It's called a composite bow," Danae told him, tracing the sections with her fingers. "Five parts of wood are fastened together—here are the joints—with two pieces of bone extending from center to one of the ends and a layer of sinew backing the entire bow." It was the ancient bowmaking method of the Turks of Earth, and it had taken Danae a solid week to track down the technique back at the university. But the aggravation all those computer hours had cost her was rapidly being paid back.

Virtually all bows on Karyx were of the single-piece self bow type, and in the three days since she'd begun showing this new design around Besak the word was sweeping the village. The interest she'd hoped to generate was there in trumps; the only trick now would be to avoid getting herself talked into starting a composite bow factory to handle all the men who wanted to order one.

The dealer nodded slowly, looking closely at the points Danae had identified. "It must be an extremely strong glue, to be able to hold the pieces against the tension," he said. "Or is there a bound spirit within the bow for that purpose?"

"This one is indeed held together only by glue," she said, eyes and ears primed to pick up all the nuances of his reaction. "However, the same bow is available with a bound djinn for even greater strength."

The other nodded again, face thoughtful. A brief hint of displeasure when I mentioned the bound djinn? Danae wondered. Hard to tell. If the dealer had a preference one way or the other, it was a small one. "I see," he said. "With a corresponding difference in price, of course?"

"Of course."

"Um." He frowned, hands running over the bow, and she saw his eyes stray across her robe and the subtle Coven markings woven there. Ravagin continued to be less than pleased by her decision to wear the garment, but even he had had to admit that it had helped her get a hearing for her bow from Besak's business community.

A cloud seemed to pass across her eyes, darkening Karyx's already dim sunlight even further. Danae squeezed her eyes shut, and when she blinked them open her vision had cleared. That sort of thing had been happening more and more frequently to her lately, and she was starting to wonder if she was coming down with some kind of illness. She fervently hoped not; on Karyx the chief diagnostic method was to send a spirit into the patient's body to check things out, and the whole idea sent chills up her back.

"What are you asking for this bow, my lady?" the dealer asked, breaking in on her thoughts.

"This particular bow is not for sale," she told him, fighting to keep her annoyance at herself out of her voice. This tendency to woolgather at the wrong time was also becoming more and more of a habit. "I'm merely showing it to interested persons, to ascertain whether or not it would serve us to produce quantities of them."

The merchant's face registered surprise and some chagrin at the unusual procedure, quickly shifted to calculated slyness. "You wouldn't, I presume, be doing all the selling yourself," he said carefully.

"Perhaps you'd be interested in striking a bargain whereby I would market your bows for you?"

Danae cocked an eyebrow thoughtfully, as if the plan had never before occurred to her. At least two other merchants and hunters had already presented her with this "authorized dealer" idea—a concept, according to Ravagin, that wasn't common to the culture. It was a tribute to Besak's sophistication and business acumen, and a warning to pay attention lest she get herself into a bargaining pit she couldn't get out of. "That's an interesting offer, tradesman," she said carefully, "but I fear that the making of such deals is still in the future. Should those who sent me choose to produce these bows for general sale, though, I will surely remember your suggestion. And your name."

The other bowed respectfully. "Thank you, my lady. I will look forward to dealing further with you in the future."

Danae nodded back and moved away from the other's booth. Ravagin was supposed to be loitering off to the side somewhere around here—

"How did it go?" his voice came from directly over her shoulder.

She jumped, twisting around to glare up at him. "I wish you'd break that habit of sneaking up on people," she growled. "It went okay, I suppose. We've certainly got another market outlet if Melentha ever wants to start making Turkish bows, if that's what you mean."

"Don't laugh—she's just the sort who might go ahead and do it. Hold it a second," he added as she started to turn away.

"What is it?"

For a moment he didn't answer. Holding her head firmly between his hands, he gazed intently into her face... and as she returned his stare she noticed for the first time that the blue of his eyes was tinged with gray. It was a rather unusual combination, one she found oddly attractive... Pursing his lips, he released his grip on her head. "Nothing, I guess," he said. "I thought something looked funny about your pupils. But I guess I was wrong."

She licked her lips, thinking about her moments of faded vision. "There wasn't anything in the packet about unusual diseases here," she said.

"This isn't a real disease," he shook his head. "It's more of a—well, a syndrome, I guess—that I've noticed affecting some of the clients I've brought in. Come on, you wanted to talk to one more dealer today before we headed back, right?"

They started down the crowded pathway between dealers' stalls. "Only visitors?" Danae probed gently. "Not the way house keepers or other Couriers?"

He shot her a sidelong look. "I haven't had as much opportunity to observe either group," he said. "Is the next question why I haven't reported this?"

She felt her mouth tighten before she could stop it. "All right, why haven't you?"

"Because all the symptoms disappear before we get back to Threshold, of course. Even here it's more of an annoyance than anything else—certainly nothing life-threatening or even debilitating. Besides which, half the time the victim wasn't even aware anything was wrong with them."

"And so naturally resisted any suggestion that they let you get them out of Karyx immediately?"

He shrugged. "You can hardly blame them, considering what it costs to get in here in the first place.

Eventually, I learned not to mention it unless they did."

"You broke the rule with me."

He smiled bitterly. "What're you going to do, get me fired? I was on my way to a leave of absence anyway when you and your moneycard father hijacked me."

"When we—what?" She frowned up at him. "What do you mean?"

"Never mind. The dealer we'll be talking to next is named—"

"Don't change the subject," she cut in. "If you think you can drop a line like that and expect me to ignore it, you've got the wrong lady. What do you mean, we hijacked you?"

Ravagin's jaw tightened momentarily, and he gave a slight shrug. "I don't suppose it really matters.

You asked for the most experienced Courier on Triplet, which happened to be me. I wanted to turn it down, but the people above me decided they wouldn't take no for an answer. End of story."

Danae felt her stomach tighten. No wonder he was so antagonistic toward her. "Oh, hell. Ravagin—

look, I'm sorry. I had no idea—I didn't think anyone would pull something that shabby."

"Of course you didn't," he grunted. "You've never shown any tendency to think out consequences in advance. And you know why?—because you've always had Hart or someone like him trailing along behind you to clean up any messes you make before you can see them."

"Oh?" she snapped back, loudly enough to attract brief attention from some of the passersby. "And you, of course, are one of those who have to clean up our messes, huh? Is that why you don't like me?"

"Keep your voice down," he growled, starting to walk again. "Unless you want to announce you're from somewhere no one here's ever heard of. And take any consequences."

Danae gritted her teeth, taking a few quick steps to catch up with him. Primitive culture, she reminded herself... and primitive cultures were not known for being open-armed toward strangers.

"All right, all right," she muttered, pacing him again and forcing herself to cool down. "Where's this other dealer you had in mind for me to see?"

"This way." Ravagin gestured off toward their right. Danae nodded and followed as he turned off on a sidestreet. The cloud was trying to obscure her vision again....

"Hey!"

She came to with a jerk to find Ravagin standing in front of her, gripping her upper arms hard enough to hurt. "What do you think you're doing?" she asked, wondering how he'd gotten in front of her without her noticing the move.

His face was tight. "You started off in the wrong direction and ignored me when I called after you," he said. "Didn't you hear me?"

She licked her lips, something cold closing around her heart. "No. I don't—we had just finished our discussion and had... made a right turn toward the weapons dealer..." She stopped as his expression tightened a bit more. "All right, let's hear the bad news. How much did I miss?"

"About two minutes, I think," he told her grimly. "How do you feel?"

She paused, trying to take internal stock through the panic starting to simmer inside her. "Fine.

Really. Except for being scared as hell."

"You sure you don't remember anything?" he asked. "You do have a tendency to get lost in your thoughts."

She thought to glance around before answering. No crowd had gathered; none of the passersby seemed to be paying them any attention. "I've had a full high-retention mnemonic treatment, remember? There ought to be something there—and there isn't. It's as if I'd been sound asleep."

Ravagin nodded. "Yeah. All right, let's get back to the horses and get the hell back to the way house." His eyes fell on the bow she still carried; without comment he reached down and plucked it from her grasp. "Probably nothing, but we'd better get it checked out, fast."

"Sure." Danae took a deep breath. "Ravagin... please hold me."

For an instant she was afraid he'd misinterpret; but he didn't. "Don't worry," he assured her, turning her gently and putting a firm arm around her shoulders as they started back to where they'd tied their horses. "I've never yet had a client wander away from me. I'm not going to start now."