Toglo said only, “I trust you slept well, freelady?” From her casual tone, she might have been talking to a neighbor she didn’t know well but with whom she was on good terms.
“Yes, thank you.” Lofosa dropped her eyes when she concluded she couldn’t use her abundantly displayed charms to bait Toglo.
“I’m glad to hear it,” Toglo said, still sweetly. “I wouldn’t want you to catch cold on holiday.”
Lofosa took half a step, then jerked as if poked by a pin. Toglo had already turned to greet the others in the common room. For a heartbeat, maybe two, Lofosa’s teeth showed in a snarl like a cave cat’s. Then she went back into her cubicle to finish getting ready for the day.
“I hope I didn’t offend her — too much,” Toglo said to Radnal.
“I think you handled yourself like a diplomat,” he answered.
“Hmm,” she said. “Given the state of the world, I wonder whether that’s a compliment.” Radnal didn’t answer. Given what he’d heard the night before, the state of the world might be worse than Toglo imagined.
His own diplomatic skills got a workout after breakfast, when he explained to the group that they’d be going east rather than west. Golobol said, “I find the change from the itinerary most distressing, yes.” His round brown face bore a doleful expression.
Benter vez Maprab found any change distressing. “This is an outrage,” he blustered. “The herbaceous cover approaching the Barrier Mountains is far richer than that to the east.”
“I’m sorry,” Radnal said, an interesting mixture of truth and lie: he didn’t mind annoying Benter, but would sooner not have had such a compelling reason.
“I don’t mind going east rather than west today,” Toglo zev Pamdal said. “As far as I’m concerned, there are plenty of interesting things to see either way. But I would like to know why the schedule has been changed.”
“So would I,” Moblay Sopsirk’s son said. “Toglo is right — what are you trying to hide, anyhow?”
All the tourists started talking — the Martoisi started shouting — at once. Radnal’s own reaction to the Lissonese man was a wish that a trench in Trench Park went down a lot deeper, say, to the red-hot center of the earth. He would have shoved Moblay into it. Not only was he a boor, to use a woman’s name without the polite particle (using it uninvited even with the particle would have been an undue liberty), he was a snoop and a rabble-rouser.
Peggol vez Menk slammed his open hand down on the table beside which Dokhnor of Kellef had died. The boom cut through the chatter. Into sudden silence, Peggol said, “Freeman vez Krobir changed your itinerary at my suggestion. Aspects of the murder case suggest that course would in the best interests of Tartesh.”
“This tells us nothing, not a thing.” Now Golobol sounded really angry, not just upset at breaking routine. “You say these fine — sounding words, but where is the meaning behind them?”
“If I told you everything you wished to know, freeman, I would also be telling those who should not hear,” Peggol said.
“Pfui!” Golobol stuck out his tongue.
Eltsac vez Martois said, “I think you Eyes and Ears think you’re little tin demigods.”
But Peggol’s pronouncement quieted most of the tourists. Ever since starbombs came along, nations had grown more anxious about keeping secrets from one another. That struck Radnal as worrying about the cave cat after he’d carried off the goat, but who could tell? There might be worse things than starbombs.
He said, “As soon as I can, I promise I will tell all of you everything I can about what’s going on.” Peggol vez Menk gave him a hard look; Peggol wouldn’t have told anyone his own name if he could help it.
“What is going on?” Toglo echoed.
Since Radnal was none too certain himself, he met that comment with dignified silence. He did say, “The longer we quarrel here, the less we’ll have the chance to see, no matter which direction we end up choosing.”
“That makes sense, freeman vez Krobir,” Evillia said. Neither she nor Lofosa had argued about going east as opposed to west.
Radnal looked around the group, saw more resignation than outrage. He said, “Come now, freemen, freeladies, let’s head for the stables. There are many fascinating things to see east of the lodge — and to hear, also. There’s the Night Demons’ Retreat, for instance.”
“Oh, good!” Toglo clapped her hands. “As I’ve said, it rained the last time I was here. The guide was too worried about flash floods to take us out there. I’ve wanted to see that ever since I read Hicag zev Ginfer’s frightener codex.”
“You mean Stones of Doom?” Radnal’s opinion of Toglo’s taste fell. Trying to stay polite, he said, “It wasn’t as accurate as it might have been.”
“I thought it was trash,” Toglo said. “But I went to school with Hicag zev and we’ve been friends ever since, so I had to read it. And she certainly makes the Night Demons’ Retreat sound exotic, whether there’s a breeze of truth in what she writes or not.”
“Maybe a breeze — a mild breeze,” Radnal said.
“I read it, too. I thought it was very exciting,” Nocso zev Martois said.
“The tour guide thinks it’s garbage,” her husband told her.
“I didn’t say that,” Radnal said. Neither Martois listened to him; they enjoyed yelling at each other more.
“Enough of your own breeze. If we must do this, let’s do it, at least,” Benter vez Maprab said.
“As you say, freeman.” Radnal wished the Night Demons’ Retreat really held night demons. With any luck, they’d drag Benter into the stones and no one in the tour group would ever see — or have to listen to — him again. But such convenient things happened only in codices.
The tourists were getting better with the donkeys. Even Peggol seemed less obviously out of place on donkeyback than he had yesterday. As the group rode away from the lodge, Radnal looked back and saw park militiamen and Eyes and Ears advancing on the stables to go over them again.
He made himself forget the murder investigation and remember he was a tour guide. “Because we’re off earlier this morning, we’re more likely to see small reptiles and mammals that shelter against the worst heat,” he said.
“Many of them-”
A sudden little flip of sandy dirt a few cubits ahead made him stop. “By the gods, there’s one now.” He dismounted. “I think that’s a shoveler skink.”
“A what?” By now, Radnal was used to the chorus that followed whenever he pointed out one of the more unusual denizens of the Bottomlands.
“A shoveler skink,” he repeated. He crouched down. Yes, sure enough, there was the lure. He knew he had an even-money chance. If he grabbed the tail end, the lizard would shed the appendage and flee. But if he got it by the neck-
He did. The skink twisted like a piece of demented rubber, trying to wriggle free. It also voided. Lofosa made a disgusted noise. Radnal took such things in stride.
After thirty or forty heartbeats, the skink gave up and lay still. Radnal had been waiting for that. He carried the palm-sized lizard into the midst of the tourists. “Skinks are common all over the world, but the shoveler is the most curious variety. It’s a terrestrial equivalent of the anglerfish. Look-”
He tapped the orange fleshy lump that grew on the end of a spine about two digits long. “The skink buries itself under sand, with just this lure and the tip of its nose sticking out. See how its ribs extend to either side, so it looks more like a gliding animal than one that lives underground? It has specialized musculature, to make those long rib ends bend what we’d think of as the wrong way. When an insect comes along, the lizard tosses dirt on it, then twists around and snaps it up. It’s a beautiful creature.”