“Wait till the others get here, I don’t want to go through this more than once.”
“Others? What others?”
“Two.”
She got to her feet, began pacing about the room; there was too much fury in her to let her rest a moment.
“Simms Nadaw.” The second thief had a spiky thatch of coppery hair and the translucent too-pallid skin some redheads were cursed with; the pink/purple flush of his face clashed awkwardly with that orange/red hair. His tunic and tights were a mix of reds and pinkish oranges in assorted plaids and stripes, his glove and boots were a bright brown of surpassing awfulness. He was such a disaster, so wrong, you looked away from him in embarrassment, remembering the ensemble while you forgot his face.
Amber eyes sleepy under fat eyelids, he produced an amiable grin, nodded without grace in answer to Danny’s greeting and ambled over to sit in the single armchair.
Felsrawg stopped in front of him. “You, huh?”
Simms blinked at her. “Me, yeh.”
She examined his outfit, shuddered. “I’ve seen you in bad, but that’s the worst.”
He grinned again, his eyes almost disappearing into the crease between upper and lower lids; he seemed barely intelligent enough to know which end of a shovel to dig with. try. Arfon?”
She shuddered again. “Yeh. You?”
“You think the ‘staffel got me?” He had a light tenor voice that made sleepy laughter of the words.
“No.”
“Sh’d hope not.”
She swung round to face Danny Blue who was watching this, bland-faced but amused, planted her fists on her hips. “Well?”
“There’s one to come yet.”
“Who?”
“I don’t know. She’s supposed to be a courtesan of some kind. Knows silk. Poo the Boob said one of you knows silk. Which?”
She jerked a thumb at Simms. “You wouldn’t think it to look at him, would you.”
Danny folded his arms, leaned against the wall. “Oh, I think so; he’s a very clever man, isn’t he.”
“So are you, if you see that.” She stood stone-still for a moment, her eyes narrowed, her head thrusting forward; she looked like a poison lizard poised to strike. Then she relaxed and perched on the edge of the backless chair where she’d been sitting before. “Maybe we’ll get out of this alive.”
14
“Trithil Esmoon.” She came through the door with a sussurous of whisper silks. Despite the play she made at concealment, a narrow serpent mask across her eyes, she was immediately and astonishingly beautiful. Despite that mask, she was not Arsuider. No Arsuider had eyes of that deep smoky blue or hair fine and white as spidersilk; it was combed back and to one side, flowing in long shimmering waves to her waist. Her skin was cream velvet, delicately pink about the cheekbones. Her wrists were pencil thin, her hands small and tapering. She wore a simple robe that slanted from her shoulders to a fullness about her feet; it was made of layer on layer of transparent blue silks that shifted across each other with every movement, every breath she took; her body was a hint of darker blue beneath them, slender with round full breasts and a tiny waist; the sleeves were tubes, the upper edge open and falling away in swags from silver tacks, gathered at the wrists into silver bracelets. She wore silver and sapphire earrings as long and heavy as a Panday shipmaster’s ear dangle and on her unloved hand had silver and sapphire rings on every finger plus her thumb; most of the sapphires were faceted and glittered bluely when she moved her hand, but the thumb ring was cabuchon cut, a mounded oval, a star in its heart. Her slippers and glove were silver, her perfume subtle as the shift of blues in her robe. She smiled at Danny Blue, held out her gloved hand, the glove being a guarantee the hand was safe to take.
Since she seemed to expect it, Danny took the hand, bowed over it. She was a piece all right, artificial as a wax flower, advertising her pliancy to his needs with every move, every twitch of an eyelash. He thought he disliked her pretentions and was put off by her profession. Half-sire Daniel disapproved of prostitution; besides, he’d never needed to buy women. They liked him. He drifted in and out of their lives as easily as he drifted in and out of his jobs. Half-sire Ahzurdan was ambivalent about women at the best of times, which these most decidedly weren’t; his sex life was mostly imaginary, taking place in the heroic fantasies he experienced during his dust orgies.
Then Trithil’s perfume hit Danny and he wasn’t so sure what he thought of her.
He straightened, led her to the bed and lent his arm as she sank gracefully onto the quilts and sat there with her little hands laced together, half-hidden in the folds of her draperies. When he turned, Felsrawg was looking as if she’d been carved out of hot ice into a personification of indignation and disgust. Simms screwed up his face and panted like a dog, tongue lolling, then relapsed to idiot.
Danny Blue went back to leaning against the wall; he crossed his arms and scowled at two-thirds of his strike force. “You’re a pair, you are. Insolent, impudent and smarter than any three like me, right?” He spoke with weary impatience and a deep-down anger he wasn’t about to surface, not now anyway. “Insubordinate because you earned it, right? Individualists who aren’t about to take orders from me or anyone else, right?” He yawned. “I know you, see? I’ve been you. Nothing you can show me I haven’t done already and done better. I don’t give a handful of hot shit for any of your games. It comes down to this, my friends, we’ve got four months to do a job. We bring it off or we die. I’m not going to waste time tickling your vanities. Either you help or you hinder. If you hinder, you’re out. Now or later.” He moved his eyes from Felsrawg to Simms to Trithil, then fixed on Simms. “What I say now, you better believe. I don’t need any of you. You’re in this because the ones working this scam figure you can be useful. And you’re here because they don’t trust me farther than they can spit, they figure poison isn’t enough of a hold on me. Well, I intend to survive. I’m good at surviving. Just remember that.”
Felsrawg simmered; Simms looks stupider; Trithil smiled slowly and fixed her blue blue eyes on him as if she couldn’t bear to look away.
“Right, I can see how impressed you are. Did they tell you what we’re going after?”
Simms rubbed a long spatulate thumb over his wrist, a gesture Danny recognized; he’d been doing the same thing since Pawbool injected the poison into him. “They say come here.” He sounded as if he were speaking through a yawn, letting the words fall out of his mouth. “They say back up him I found here any way I c’d. They say when he gets sa thing, steal it an’ bring it back. Nobody bother sayin’ what IT is.”
Felsrawg stirred. She glanced at Simms, very unhappy at his singsong discourse. Which told Danny more than words would about the man and his talents. “Same with me,” she said finally. “I told you that, remember? And you said something about a talisman.”
Danny turned to Trithil, raised his brows. She didn’t have anything to contribute but the graceful lift and fall of her breasts. He looked hastily away, ignored Felsrawg’s muttered insults. “We’re going to Hennkensikee,” he said. “We’re going to steal Klukeshama.”
“Broont! We’re dead.” A flicker of Felsrawg’s hands and she was holding twin stilettos, the blades needle-fine, hardly longer than her middle finger and coated with a dark gummy substance. “I swear, before I’m dead, they are.”