Nevertheless, they were members of the same tribe and, as such, would always stand together against any outsider. If, in this instance, that meant letting Huyar grope her in order to sell some worthless stones to a pair of young culls, she would do it.
As Huyar pulled Rhayn close, the tip of her new dagger pricked her in the lower abdomen. She did not cry out, but Huyar looked down with a raised brow. “What’s that I feel?” he whispered.
“Nothing to concern you,” Rhayn answered, pretending to kiss his ear.
“But perhaps it would be of interest to our father?”
Rhayn had to resist the impulse to bite off the lobe of her long-brother’s ear. She had hoped to sneak the dagger into her bed-satchel without anyone noticing. If Faenaeyon learned that she had returned with a prize, he would demand it as a gift. Despite what it might mean to her inheritance, Rhayn had no intention of giving it to him.
“I must get out of sight,” Rhayn whispered, disengaging herself from Huyar’s arms.
She gave the two boys a lingering smile, then stepped away from the counter. Immediately, the younger one asked, “What do you want for the stones?”
Huyar, never very artful, was quick to move in for the kill. “How many coins are there in your purse?”
At the back of the shop, Rhayn slipped through the curtain of snake scales that separated the bartering floor from the storage area. Her father sat in his usual place, upon an undersized leather chair with his feet propped on a keg of fermented kank nectar. Even for an elf, Faenaeyon was a big man, with heavily muscled limbs and a huge barrel of a chest. He wore his silver hair drawn back in an unruly tail that left his sharp-tipped, dirt-crusted ears exposed to full view.
At one time, he had probably been strikingly handsome, for his long, thin features were well-defined and of even proportion. Now, he appeared every bit as cruel and dangerous as he was. He kept his slender jaw tightly clenched at all times, and his narrow lips were forever twisted into a mistrustful sneer. His nostrils flared constantly, as if testing the air for the scent of enemies, and the flesh of his cheeks was pallid and dead-looking. Even his inert gray eyes, framed above by daggerlike brows and below by black circles of exhaustion, burned with a demented light that never failed to give Rhayn an uneasy feeling.
“How did you fare?” Faenaeyon asked, not bothering to focus his vacant gaze on his daughter.
Rhayn went to her father’s side and kissed his cheek. He smelled of stale belches and sour broy. “Not as well as I would have liked,” she answered, slipping a silver coin into his hand. “But here.”
For the first time since Rhayn had entered the dark room, her father’s eyes moved, focusing on the glittering coin. He tossed it into the air to test its weight, then complained, “A daughter of mine should be able to do better than this.”
“Next time, Tada,” she answered, using the elven term for any male whose blood ran in one’s veins.
The dagger blade beneath Rhayn’s smock seemed to grow warmer, and she felt a trickle of blood running down her abdomen. Huyar’s embrace had cut her with the tip of the weapon.
Faenaeyon studied his daughter for a moment, then grunted and slipped the coin into the one of the purses hanging from his belt. Rhayn breathed a silent sigh of relief and moved toward the bone ladder at the back of the room. In a moment, she would be safely away from her father, in the large common room where the tribe was camped.
As Rhayn stepped onto the first rung, Huyar cried out from the other side of the curtain. “What do you want here, templars?”
Instantly, Faenaeyon was on his feet, in one hand clenching a bone sword and in the other an obsidian dagger.
“In the name of Tithian the First, stand aside,” ordered a man.
“Wait here,” countered Huyar. “You can discuss your business with our chief.”
“I said stand aside!” repeated the templar.
There was the sound of a scuffle, and Faenaeyon stepped toward the bartering floor. Rhayn motioned for her father to stay where he was, then dropped off the ladder.
“What is it?” demanded the chief.
“They want me,” Rhayn said.
He shoved her toward the bartering floor. “Don’t let them come back here!” he said, motioning at the mounds of stolen goods filling the storeroom. “If they see this, it’ll cost a fortune to bribe them off!”
“Don’t worry,” Rhayn said.
Her voice was tinged with shock and anger, but not at her father. After fleeing the alley, she had left the fat merchant and the templars so far behind that they could not have seen her enter the shop with their own eyes. Instead, one of the pedestrians outside had to have told them where she had gone. In any other city, such a thing would never have happened. The throngs would have feigned ignorance, as determined not to help a templar as they were anxious to keep their presence in the Elven Market secret. But, as Rhayn was still learning, Tyr was not like any other city. King Tithian was a popular ruler, and unfortunately the people here were eager to aid his officials.
As Rhayn stepped from behind the curtain, the templars shoved Huyar with the shafts of their partizans and sent him reeling toward the storeroom.
“Is there a problem?” Rhayn asked, catching her long-brother. As she steadied him, she saw that a small crowd had gathered in the street outside. The men and women were watching the confrontation with amusement, occasionally voicing encouragement to the wine merchant and his escorts.
The fat man glared at Rhayn. “I want my dagger back!”
“It’s my dagger now,” Rhyan said. Her voice was even, but she was furious inside. Her father had, no doubt, heard the merchant’s demand. Now she would have to defy the chief in order to keep the weapon.
Rhayn turned toward the templars and slowly lifted her tunic, revealing the steel blade and, not by accident, a long expanse of tightly muscled stomach. Giving the king’s officers an inviting smile, she pulled the dagger from its hiding place and held it aloft. Whatever happened next, she wanted to make sure the half-elf and his partner had no excuse to search the rest of the shop.
The wine merchant snatched at the weapon. Huyar grabbed his wrist in mid-flight and whipped the arm back against the elbow, at the same time kicking the man’s feet out from beneath him. The fat vendor landed flat on his back, wheezing for breath and holding his sore arm.
The templars leveled their partizans at Huyar. When the elven warrior made no further move to injure the vendor, they did not strike.
“Rhayn said it’s her dagger,” said Huyar, his eyes fixed on the fat vendor’s face.
“Stealing don’t make it so,” gasped the merchant.
“I didn’t steal it. You promised it to me,” said Rhayn, finally letting her tunic fall back over her stomach. Her voice grew suggestive. “Or have you forgotten?”
The crowd outside chuckled and the merchant’s face reddened, but he would not be embarrassed out of the weapon. “She didn’t deliver!” he complained, looking at the two templars.
“Deliver what?” demanded Rhayn’s father, slipping from the back room. He kept one hand hidden on the other side of the curtain. “Are you calling my daughter a harlot?”
The half-elf templar shifted his partizan toward the chief. Rhyan and Huyar glanced at each other with exaggerated agitation, supporting their father’s bluff.
The merchant’s eyes darted to the hidden hand, but his double chin remained set in determination. “We had an arrangement,” he said, glancing at the templars for support.
“Our arrangement was that you’d give me your dagger, and now I have it,” said Rhayn.