"Oh darling, it's been so long-let's do take dinner there tonight!"
"A moment, Expimilia," Shafralain said, with mild impatience.
"I am from Firaqa to the northwest. Noble Sir, and hardly of your means. What are second- and third-best?"
Fulcris smiled.
"Could we do that, darling? I really don't relish opening the house just in time to have to eat there! Who knows what the servants have done with the place-and what shape the larder's in!"
Fulcris's smile broadened at Lady Expimilia's importun-ings.
Her husband continued to stare straight ahead, chin nobly high. Without turning so much as his head in replying to the man riding behind him where Shafralain doubtless thought he belonged, he named two other inns.
"A grateful foreigner's thanks," Strick said, with only the hint of stress on the third word.
"Are we going to sup at the Golden Oasis, Father?"
"For all we know," Shafralain said, this time with a slight turning of his head, "the Golden Oasis has been destroyed, or sadly damaged."
"I'd be glad to ride straight there and have a look," Esaria said. "I'd be perfectly safe, too; Strick would ride with me, wouldn't you, Strick?"
"That," her father said, "will not be possible."
They rode in silence, approaching the wall of Sanctuary. Abruptly the nobleman's noble wife turned partway around and spoke in a determinedly pleasant voice.
"Well, Strick of Firaqa, will you please escort me to the Golden Oasis? Yes, Esaria, you may come along. Aral," she said to her husband in a different voice, "we will be fine and will join you later at home."
The Noble Shafralain gave his wife a long, slow stare.
"My lady," Strick said softly, "I regret that I already have other plans."
"Oh-h!" Esaria said, in clear exasperation. Obviously Strick had chosen diplomacy and deference to her father over touching off family problems.
For the first time, Shafralain turned to give the foreigner a fleeting glance. It was not an unpleasant look.
"Firaqa," he said, turning back. "Firaqa... oh. That where the pearls come from?"
"Aye."
"Freshwater pearls," Expimilia exclaimed. "Of course! Firaqan Souls of the Oyster!" Abruptly she half-turned to look at the quiet man. "You didn't come here to sell any of those beauties, did you?"
Shafralain snorted. Strick made a chuckling noise. "Sorry, my lady."
They entered the city and within a few hundred feet were accosted by two young men. Each wore a cloth band of the same color around his upper arm and bore a crossbow in addition to sheathed sword.
"Welcome to Sanctuary! You will need a pass in this area, gentle travelers," one glibly told them. "We offer five armbands for two pieces of silver."
"A pass!" Shafralain snapped. "Likelier you'll be ridden down! Since when does the Noble Shafralain need to wear a dirty patch of cloth in order to move through his own city?"
The faces of their accosters underwent unpleasant changes. The one who had not spoken stepped back and showed that his crossbow was cocked. Passersby were carefully not-seeing the tense encounter. Most wore brassards matching those the two youths wore and offered for sale.
"Since quite awhile, Noble," the spokesman said. "Maybe you left town when things got nasty last year and're just coming back, hmm? See, citizen security is sort of divided up amidst serveral pertection groups, and we just can't gamtee yer safety here without but you're wearing onea these handsome armbands."
"Oh, I think they're quite pretty armbands really," Esaria said.
Her mother said, "If it's what people are wearing this season. .."
Shafralain, however, was Shafralain: "You threaten us, fellow?"
"Here is a piece of silver," a quiet voice said. "It should suffice. See that nothing happens to these people, whether they consent to wear your armbands or no. I will."
"So will I," the surprised Fulcris heard himself say, even as they heard the ring of silver off a thumbnail and saw the young man before him throw up a hand to catch Strick's coin.
He examined it. "Huh! Never seen onea these before. What's this on it, a fire? Whur's it from at?"
"Firaqa," Strick told him. "Way up northwest. Not part of Ranke's Empire. Mints its own coins, with the sign of the Flame. It will spend; it's silver."
Immediately after his last word came the sound of his clucking to his horse. Fulcris swallowed, but at once made the same sound in his cheek. That worked; the horses moved forward and the two accosters stepped back on either side. The speaker extended a number of armbands.
"Pleasure doing business with you," he told Strick, as the latter accepted the "passes."
"Fulcris," Strick said, and passed one to the caravaner. "Noble Shafralain?"
The nobleman would not turn or glance at the proffering hand. "I had far rather chop the arm off that arrogant snot than put one of his dirty rags on my arm!"
"Me too," Strick said, equably as ever. "But while we did that, the other would have flicked his trigger and sent a crossbow bolt into... one of us."
"Those boys?! Likelier he'd have missed!"
"Father-r..."
"Agreed," the quiet voice said from behind stiff-backed Shafralain, "and alone, Fulcris and I might have taken that chance. I'm very aware of being in the presence of a noble of this city-and of two women."
The only way out of that one was for Shafralain to take offense by pretending to have been accused of cowardice. Either he chose not to do or he didn't think of it. "Hmp," he muttered. "What has become of my city while I have been out of it?"
Coincidence or that goddess known as Lady Chance chose to let Strick and milady answer in chorus: "We had better find out," and she went on, "and be careful the while."
"Good advice, my Lord," a nervous Fulcris said. He was beginning to wonder how soon a caravan might be heading east and need a guard. Or north, or west either. Or even south, right into the sea.
Abruptly Shafralain's arms tightened. "Whoa," he said, and turned-with stiff dignity-in the saddle to look back at the big man beside his daughter. After studying him for a moment, the noble asked, "Can you use that sword, foreigner?"
"Name's Strick. From Firaqa."
The two men gazed at each other, each maintaining a practiced serene look from wide-open eyes that each had learned obtained this or that result. The moment stretched on, with four people watching the lean, thin-moustached face of Noble Shafralain with its high cheekbones and sculptured brows. Suddenly those features moved in a small smile.
"I was hoping you would answer my question. Can you use that sword, Strick of Firaqa?"
Stick shrugged and made a depreciatory gesture. "When I must."
"Until we know more about the situation in my city," Shafralain said, "we shall not be going to the Golden Oasis or anywhere else save our home. My family and I can not stoop to giving aught to scum who demand 'protection' money with crossbows. I would like to double what you gave that scum if you would ride with us, Strick ofFiraqa."
Strick nodded.
"Good, then. Let us-"
"Perhaps you could change a few of these Firaqi coins for me," Strick said, just as Shafralain started to turn back to face front. "Collector's items for you, and I attract less attention as a foreigner. If we exchanged ten for ten, I believe I'd owe you a difference; a few coppers."