Latilla sighed. “I’m sorry.” Something brightly iridescent buzzed by and Latilla slapped it down. “Got to do something about these things. Get enough of them to grind down for dye and we might make a few padpols,” she said absently.
“Mother, why are you standing there swatting flies when we’ve been invaded?”
“Because I can,” Latilla said simply. “Because though they may be magical, they’re real, and when you hit them, they fall down. I’ve tried to use the magic your father taught me against this haunting, but Darios, bless him, was always more interested in perfecting his own spirit than in controlling others. He knew spells for protection, and I’ve used them, or we might have worse manifestations to deal with. But that’s all I can think of to do.” She sat down with a sigh. “And whacking these—” her eye followed a spark of crimson and purple that was circling above the fallen peas, “is practically a family duty. Your grandfather invented them, after all.” She turned, frowning, as someone knocked on the front door.
“It might be a lodger—” said Sula when her mother didn’t move. Latilla’s scowl deepened.
“Maybe … maybe not. Go to the window and see.”
Sula peered through the curtain, grimacing as she recognized the fleshy shoulders and the heavy haunches encased in a pair of striped trousers.
“It’s Rol … I assume we’re not at home?”
What was that pig’s ass doing here? They had met the man shortly after Taran left, when Latilla was looking for bargains to refurbish the house. Even then, Sula had thought him a slimy-character.
Latilla sighed. “No—I’ll have to face him sometime. Stay here and finish the peas.”
Sula heard the front door open and then a murmur of voices. Her mother did not sound happy. With a sigh of her own she pushed back her chair and moved softly down the hall.
“Yes, of course I will pay you!” she heard Latilla say as she eased open the door from the passage to the entryway. “All I am asking is a short extension.”
From the front Rol was no more prepossessing than he had been from behind, his muscular frame run now to fat, and his dark hair stringy above unshaven jowls. He dabbled in a number of things, serving as a go-between for those who still aspired to respectability and Sanctuary’s underworld.
“Now there’s no need to look so fierce at me, darlin’, though yer a fine sight when angry, for sure. Haven’t I been a good friend to ye, after all?”
Sula stilled. She hadn’t realized that her mother still owed him.
“Even among friends, financial dealings should be kept on a business footing,” Latilla said more quietly. “I would not be any more beholden to you.”
Well thank goodness for that! thought Sula. She started to close the door. There had been times when she feared that her mother might be taken in by Rol’s florid compliments. Sometimes older women could be … vulnerable.
“Ye know that I would be more than a friend, Tilla me dear, but what am I to do?” Rol took a step closer. “If it’s business only that’s between us, I must have somethin’—I have creditors of my own, you see!”
That, thought Sula glumly, would not surprise me at all. Rol had the reputation of being involved in a variety of shady dealings, and a sore on his tongue that looked like a krrf ulcer to her. For all she knew, the man was dealing in that drug, or even in opah. If so, it was suppliers, not creditors, that he was worried about paying. Not very forgiving people, from what she had heard. Taran, with all his contacts among the street gangs, would have known. She stifled a spurt of very familiar anger at him for leaving them with no man in the house but her uncle Alfi, whose own encounter with the Dyareelans had left him crippled both in body and in mind.
“You can take back that cabinet you sold me,” Latilla said unhappily. Sula, remembering her mother’s delight in its intricate carvings, could understand why. She was the limner’s daughter, after all, and the cabinet, like all the wonders that had come off that strange ship, had a beauty of a kind no one in Sanctuary had ever seen.
“Ah … no,” responded Rol. He took a step closer. “The silver clink of soldats, that’s what me creditors want to hear … .”
“Then you’ll have to seek it elsewhere. The rest of what you gave me went for nails and lumber. I can hardly tear the house apart to give them back to you!”
“Nay—the house is worth more in one piece, both to you and to me,” Rol said softly. “There’s moneylenders who’d give a goodly sum with the Phoenix for security.”
“No!” Her mother’s exclamation brought Sula, fists clenched, into the room.
“But if ye were to wed me, it might not be needful … . They’d know I could pay them, once business gets a bit better here …” Rol laid a beefy hand on her shoulder. “Ye know I love ye, Tilla darlin’. Won’t ye turn to me?”
“You take your hands off her!” Sula’s voice squeaked, but she continued to advance.
“Just like yer mother, ain’t ye?” Rol let go of Latilla and looked Sula up and down with a leer that would have made her blush if she had not already been flushed with rage. “But I like a girl with spirit!”
Sula felt her skin crawl and wondered what he liked such girls for . . . She shut her lips against the retort that trembled there as Latilla gripped her arm.
“I’ll have to think—” Latilla said, her voice shaking with what Rol might take as fear. “It’s a big decision. I can’t answer sensibly right now!”
“Well now, that’s just what I’m askin’ for. I’ll give ye a night, Latilla, to choose the sensible thing!” The ulcer on his tongue winked red as he grinned.
“Faugh!” exclaimed Sula as the door slammed behind him. “That man makes me want to fumigate the room and scrub the floor!”
“Are you volunteering?” Latilla asked with a tired smile. Just now she looked every year her age.
Sula shook her head. “Come back to the kitchen. I’ll make you a pot of tea.”
The pot was just coming to a boil when they heard the front door bang open and the thump of footsteps.
“Has that shite come back again?” Latilla reached for the heavy frying pan, but Sula rose to her feet, a wordless recognition, one that brought hope thrilling through her veins.
“No—” she whispered as it distilled to knowledge and a new voice echoed from the hall.
“Mother, where are you? I’ve brought you a customer. Do you have any room?”
“It’s Taran! He’s come home!”
Taran shook his head, torn between consternation and laughter. Of all the Sanctuary sights G’han might have asked to see once his bags had been stowed in the firstfloor front room, he wouldn’t have expected that pit of pits, the Vulgar Unicorn.
“But, friend Taran, it is you yourself who has inspired me …” G’han had chided when Taran had tried to argue. “You have been telling me stories about this place for lo these many months. cannot withhold my curiosity …”
Thus, before rest and bed they’d made their way through the Maze to this place. The minstrel who was singing some endless ballad about a man from Shemhaza was new, but Stick the barkeep looked as if he had not been off-duty since before Taran left town, and the clientele were the same unsavory sweepings he remembered, eyeing him with a familiar predatory gleam. He tried to tell himself that he had survived for nearly half a year on the roads surely he could make it through his first night back in town. But his gut did not believe it.