"And that's what frustrates everyone? The fact that you can't watch the magic technology being repaired?"
"And can't seem to disassemble any of it without ruining it; and can't find any equipment outside the Dark Towers to analyze it with anyway; and therefore can't bring a single scrap of this technology out to the Twenty Worlds. And for most people, the more they see of Shamsheer, the more the fact that this stuff's beyond their reach gnaws the hell out of them."
She snorted gently. "Pure, unadulterated greed."
Ravagin flicked an irritated glance at her. "Greed, yes. Unadulterated, no."
"Perhaps."
They sat in silence for a few more minutes. From the other end of the street a second party added counterpoint to the sounds of the first, and pedestrian traffic in front of the way house picked up as people began traveling back and forth between the two foci of entertainment. One of the fascinations this culture held for sociologists, Ravagin knew, was that of a still largely medieval setting where even the peasant class had real quantities of leisure time.
"Would you really have let that jerkface hit me?"
Ravagin brought his mind back. "Yes," he told her honestly. "If he'd chosen to exercise that right it would have been the simplest and safest way out of that mess. And don't think it wasn't a mess—we could have gotten into serious trouble out there."
Danae's face twisted into an irritated grimace as she stared straight out over the rail. "And since I'd gotten us into it in the first place I needed the lesson anyway?" she growled. "Maybe; but I'm not sorry I did it. Maybe you could sit by and watch that woman get hurt, but I couldn't."
"Which proves all by itself you didn't really understand what was going on," Ravagin countered, fighting against his own irritation. "If they'd gone so far as to actually hurt her, they would have been the ones in trouble. And they knew it. Shamsheer law is strongly set up along the eye-for-an-eye philosophy, applied evenly to all people. Especially in the Tween cities, which are generally at least a little more democratic than the protectorates."
Danae pondered that for a moment in silence. "Well... maybe I did go off a little prematurely," she admitted.
"Prematurely, hell," he told her bluntly. "You could have gotten us both killed out there. And it is not going to happen again, or I'll abort this trip and take you straight back to Threshold. Understood?"
She glared at him. "You don't have to beat it to death," she said icily. "I was wrong, I admit it, and I promise to stay fully on track from now on. Happy?"
"Ecstatically." He hadn't really intended to bring this up quite so soon, but after that thickheaded play this afternoon the more caution he could plant in her the better. "I'd be even happier if you'd explain why you've got a professional bodyguard trailing along behind you."
She jerked, actually spinning to look over her shoulder. "What—? Damn him. It's Hart, right? Where is he?" she growled, facing Ravagin again.
"If my instructions have been listened to, he's still back on Threshold. But some of my colleagues may have more trouble than I did turning down the cash dripping off his fingers."
"Damn. But he can't find us here... can he?"
"Not as far as I know. Are you saying he's a danger to you?"
"Not a danger, no. But definitely an annoyance." She sighed and seemed to slump in her chair. "He's been dogging my every move ever since I left home, watching out for nonexistent danger and smoothing my road for me whenever he could."
"So why don't you send him away?"
"Because I'm not the one paying his salary. That comes from my father—and Daddy Dear sees monsters underneath every bush."
"Maybe he knows something you don't," Ravagin grunted.
"Like...?"
"Like maybe something new has come up. Some reason he suddenly didn't want you here alone."
Danae snorted. "Daddy Dear's a chronic worrier, and paranoid on top of it. And if you listen to him
—" She broke off suddenly. "Anyway, just because Hart's here doesn't mean there's anything in particular to worry about. Especially while we're on this side of the Tunnel."
Ravagin pondered for a moment. She was right, of course—whether her father was afraid of kidnappers or assassins or God knew what else, there was little chance such dangers could reach into the Hidden Worlds. And yet... "You're probably right," he admitted after a moment. "But I think we should take some extra precautions anyway, just in case. Hart's veiled warnings may have been just talk, but he may have known something he didn't want to tell me."
"The bottom line being...?"
"The bottom line being that we're going to cut short this part of the trip. Instead of the two-day tour of Missia City and the Feymar Protectorate I'd planned, we're instead going to head directly to Darcane Forest and the Tunnel to Karyx."
Danae shrugged. "Fine with me—like I said, I've had all of Shamsheer that I want."
"I hope you can keep that attitude," Ravagin warned. "In a lot of ways the laws and customs of Karyx are harder and more violent than those of Shamsheer."
"Perhaps—but at least there I won't have the problem of being unarmed in an armed society." She glanced pointedly at the scorpion glove dangling from his belt and got to her feet. "Well, if that's all you wanted to talk about, I'm going to go get something to eat."
Ravagin felt his lip twitch as he looked up at her. "Help yourself," he nodded. "I'm going to stay here a bit longer, I think. Remember that we'll be heading out early in the morning, so don't get to bed too late."
"Not likely," she said dryly; and with a brief nod she was gone.
Ravagin sighed as he settled back into his chair. So she wouldn't be unarmed in an armed society, would she? He'd lost track of all the people he'd escorted to Karyx who'd started with that same confident—hell, arrogant—attitude. Who'd truly believed that their brief training had properly prepared them to command the spirits of that world.
She'd learn. Eventually, they all did.
Closing his eyes, he listened to the sounds of Kelaine City at play... and wondered how music and laughter could be so depressing.
Chapter 8
They left just after dawn the next morning, under the dour eye of one of the city's justice officials, and headed eastward into the sun and a day that was promising to be as clear as the previous one had been. Again, Danae experienced a mild case of acrophobia as their sky-plane flew in and out of wispy clouds and the occasional flock of birds; but within a short time the fear left her, and she was even able to lean her forehead against the invisible edge barrier and gaze at the landscape below.
It was, for the most part, fairly unremarkable. With Kelaine City behind them and the borders of Ordarl Protectorate still ahead, the area they were passing over was sparsely inhabited. There were occasional villages—most, Danae noted, equipped with stone or sharpened tree trunk walls to discourage robber gangs—each one surrounded by areas of cultivated land. But most of what she could see was the same type of undeveloped landscape that had been around the Tunnel exit. "Hard to believe they've been living here for four thousand years or more," she commented.
"Hm?" Ravagin glanced over where she was looking. "Who?—oh; Shamsheer's people? Well, I'd take that number with a cautionary footnote, if I were you."
"Why? You think they haven't been here that long?"
"I have no idea how long they've been here," he shrugged. "Neither does anyone else, no matter how confidently they throw figures back and forth in the journals. Certainly there's never been any physical evidence found, and if the people themselves have legends about their arrival, I've never heard them."