For a moment there was a stunned silence aboard the riverboat, broken finally by the low droning of the Skandar’s prayer of thanks for having escaped destruction, and then by an angry shout from Prestimion. “Bythois and Sigei!” he cried, in fury and shock. “He threw money to me! He threw me a purse of money! Me! Who does he think I am?”
“He plainly must not have any idea, my lord,” said Septach Melayn. “And as for who he thinks he is, well—”
“Remmer take his soul!” Prestimion cried.
“Ah, my lord, you should not invoke those great demons,” said Gialaurys worriedly. “Not even in jest, my lord.”
Prestimion nodded indulgently. “Yes, Gialaurys, yes, I know.” Those awesome names were just noises to him, mere empty imprecations. But not so to Gialaurys.
His sudden burst of anger began to ease. This was too baroque to be seriously threatening; but he had to know what it all signified.
Looking toward Septach Melayn, he said, “Is it real money, at least?”
Septach Melayn extended a hand brimming with coins. “Looks adequately real to me,” he said. “Ten-crown pieces, they are. Two or three royals’ worth, I’d say. Would you like to see?”
“Give them to the boatman,” Prestimion said. “And tell him to take us to shore. The right bank. That’s where Simbilon Khayf would live, isn’t it? Have him put us down at whichever quay is closest to the home of Simbilon Khayf.”
“Simbilon Khayf? You intend to visit Sim—”
“He’s the most important man of commerce in Stee, or so I’ve been told. Anyone who possesses money on a scale that allows him to hurl bags of ten-crown pieces at strangers in riverboats would be known to Simbilon Khayf. He’d certainly be able to tell us who this proud yachtsman is.”
“But—Presthnion, the Coronal can’t possibly impose himself on a private citizen without warning! Not even one as wealthy as Simbilon Khayf. Any sort of official visit needs great preparation. You don’t really think that you can drop in just like that, do you? ‘Hello, Simbilon Khayf, I happened to be in town, and I wanted to ask you a few questions about—’ ”
“Oh, no, no,” Prestimion said. ‘We won’t tell him who we are. What if there’s a conspiracy of some kind, and he’s part of it? This false Prestimion here may be his cousin, for all we know, and it’ll be the last the world sees of us if we present ourselves in our true guises. No, Septach Melayn, we are so beautifully disguised today: we’ll come as modest merchants asking a loan. And tell him what has just befallen us, and see what he says.”
“My father will be down shortly,” said the lovely young dark-haired woman who greeted them in the downstairs parlor of Simbilon Khayf’s great mansion. “Will you have some wine, gentlemen? We favor the wine of Muldemar, here. From Lord Prestimion’s own family’s cellars, so my father says.”
Her name was Varaile. Prestimion, studying her covertly from his seat at the side of the imposing room, could not fathom how someone as coarse-featured and disagreeable-looking as Simbilon Khayf, a man who was scarcely more handsome than a Hjort, could ever have spawned a daughter so beautiful.
And beautiful she was. Not in the mysterious, delicate way of Thismet; for Thismet had been small, almost tiny, with slender limbs and a startlingly narrow waist above the dramatic flare of her hips. Her superb features were perfectly chiseled, with dark and fiery eyes that sparkled with a lustrous mischievous gleam out of a face as pale as that of the Great Moon, and her skin was of a surpassing whiteness. This woman was much taller, as tall as Prestimion himself, and did not have that look of seeming fragility masking sinewy strength that had made Thismet’s beauty so extraordinary. There had been a radiance about Thismet that Simbilon Khayf’s daughter could not equal, nor did she move with Thismet’s coolly confident majesty.
But these comparisons, he knew, were unfair. Thismet, after all, had been a Coronal’s daughter, reared amidst the trappings of great power. Her life at court had enfolded her in a glow of royal dignity that could only have enhanced the innate shapeliness of her striking form. And beyond all dispute this Varaile was a woman of extraordinary beauty in her own way, sleek and elegant and finely made. She seemed calm and poised within, too, a woman—a girl, re-ally—of unusual self-assurance and grace.
Prestimion found it surprising that he was so fascinated by her.
He was still in mourning for his lost love. He had been granted only those few weeks of surpassing passion with Thismet on the eve of the deciding battle of the civil war—Thismet who had been his most potent enemy, until her abandonment of her foolish feckless brother and her journey to Prestimion’s side—and then she had been taken from him just as their life together was beginning to unfold. One did not recover quickly from such a loss. Prestimion thought, at times, that he never would. Since Thismet’s death he had scarcely looked at another woman, had put completely out of his mind any thought of involving himself with one, even in the most superficial way.
Yet here he was taking wine from this Varaile’s hand—the good rich wine of his own family’s vineyards, yes, though she had no way of knowing that—and looking upward at her, and meeting her eyes with his; and what was that if not a little shiver of response traveling down his back, and a minute tremor of speculation, even of desire—?
“Do you plan to be in Stee for very long?” she asked. Her voice was deep for a woman’s, rich, resonant, musical.
“A day or two, no more. We have business in Hoikmar also to pursue, and after that, I think, in Minimool, or perhaps it’s Minimool first and Hoikmar afterward. And then we return to our homes in Gimkandale.”
“Ah, you three are men of Gimkandale, then?”
“I am, yes. And Simrok Morlin here. Our partner Ghev-eldin"—Prestimion looked toward Gialaurys—"is from Piliplok, originally.” There was no concealing Gialaurys’s broad accent, which marked him at once as a man of eastern Zimroel; best not to pretend otherwise where pretense was needless, Prestimion thought.
“Piliplok!” Varaile cried. A glint of yearning came into her eyes. “I’ve heard so much of that place, where all the streets run so straight! Piliplok, and of course Ni-moya, and Pidruid and Narabal—like names out of some legend, they are to me. Will I ever visit them, I wonder? Zimroel’s so very far away.”
“Yes, the world is large, lady,” said Septach Melayn piously, giving her the solemn stare of one who utters profundities. “But travel is a wonderful thing. I myself have been as far as Alaisor in the west, and Bandar Delem in the north; and one day I too will set sail for Zimroel.” And then, with a salacious little smirk: “Have you been to Gimkandale, Lady? It would be my great pleasure to show you my city, should you ever care to visit it.”
“How splendid that would be, Simrok Morlin!” she said.
Before he could halt himself Prestimion shot Septach Melayn an astounded glance. What did the man think he was up to? Offering her a tour of Gimkandale, was he? And with such a flirtatious leer? It was a risky tactic. They were in this house as supplicants, not as suitors. Since when was Septach Melayn so flirtatious with women, besides, even one as handsome as this?—And, Prestimion wondered in some astonishment, could that be a trace of jealousy that I feel?
Simbilon Khayf’s daughter poured more wine for them. She dispensed the costly stuff with a very free hand, Prestimion observed. But of course this was a house of great wealth. From the moment of their entrance into it they had seen trappings and furnishings that were worthy of the Castle itself: doors of dark thuzna-wood inlaid with filigree of gold, and a hall of royal opulence where a jetting plume of perfumed water spumed ceiling-high from a twelve-sided fountain of crimson tiles edged with turquoise, and this parlor here, furnished with costly carpets of tight-knit Makroprosopos weave and thickly brocaded cushions. And this was only the first floor of four or five. It looked as though it had all been put together in the last three years; but whoever had done the job for Simbilon Khayf, he had done it very, very well.