“And who left it? said Donovan. “I see the quid, but where’s the quo?” The sand beneath him seemed suddenly of the quicker sort and a sound that would have been laughter rippled through his mind. Inner Child started and the Brute clenched Donovan’s fists.
Méarana touched his arm lightly. “Come, old man. We can’t read the dibby here on the beach.”
A moment longer the scarred man lingered. He turned his back on the shadows and stared out across the sluggish waters of the Encircled Sea. The curls hissed as they broke and rolled across the sands. An ochre moon hovered over the far horizon. Larger than Jehovah’s Ashterath, larger than Old ‘Saken’s Jubilee Moon, far larger than “the moonlet fleet” of Peacock Junction; but smaller than the Moon he had never seen, the Moon toward which his blood was drawn like the ocean’s tides. He sighed. He didn’t know whether Hugh had turned against him. And the sorrow of it was not the turning, but that he didn’t know.
The scarred man offered his arm to the harper. “787.09,” he said, “161.26 228.15!”
Re-crossing the highway, Méarana noticed a knot of people congregated at the three-way intersection between them and the hotel. They numbered perhaps twenty and she recognized in their garb and goatees the demeanor of Young’ Loons. She pointed them out to Donovan and mentioned again her encounter at Côndefer Park. “The Young’ Loons,” she said, “don’t believe in the accommodationist tactics of their elders.”
The scarred man looked on them with distaste. “I haven’t found their elders all that accommodating.”
“They want change.”
“Changing things is never a problem. Changing them for the better is.”
They had reached the stairs leading back down to street level. Méarana hesitated on the third step and turned around. “Do you think they’ll bother us? I mean, we’re just touristas, not movers or…”
“Or moosers? I’m afraid, missy, that I am.”
“But you don’t…” She hesitated again.
“I don’t look like a Terran? I don’t think it matters in the end. They detest all coffers and gulls, not just movers, not just Terrans. They even hate the remnants of the old Cuddle-Dong aristocracy, and how long have they lived here?”
“But, I’m a harper!”
“Perhaps they will pause and ask about that before they rough us up.”
Méarana took a breath, let it out. “They may be only a gang of idle young men hanging out on the street corner.”
“As harmless as that sounds… We could be judging them unfairly. But idle young men on a street corner in the small hours of the night do not inspire cozy feelings.” He nudged her in the small of the back. “At the bottom of the stairs, turn right, then go down the next street to the left. The streets here are a tangle, but I’ve got good bearings and we can circle around them. Go. Before they notice us.”
The harper and the scarred man hurried down the rest of the staircase and turned toward the next street, away from the phundaugh. Just before they reached it—Tchilbebber Lane, the sign announced—there was a shriek from the direction of the three-points, followed by the patter of rapid feet, followed by the drumming of many feet. Donovan looked back. There was a man in a billowing dust-coat sprinting up Beachfront Highway toward them. The Young’ Loons were pelting after him. He touched Méarana. “They’re not after us,” he said.
But they ducked around the corner anyway. Mobs, even small mobs, had a way of expanding their horizons on encountering targets of opportunity. «RUN!!!» cried Inner Child. “Brisk, now,” the scarred man told the harper. “But no need to run.”
“That poor man!” said Méarana.
“He’ll go up Beachfront. We’ll wait a little ways up this lane until they pass by, then we’ll make our way to the hotel.”
“Shouldn’t we try to help him?”
“Two of us against twenty? Three if that poor fool turns and stands. More likely, he’d keep running while we divert the crowd. That’s what I would do.”
“No, call the policers!”
“Méarana, this is Harpaloon. The policers come out in the morning and count the bodies… Quiet, here they come… Well, damn the gods!”
The deities he cursed had neglected their duties—for the fleeing man turned and came pelting up Tchilbebber Lane with the’ Loonie mob on his heels.
“Let’s get out of here,” Donovan started to say, but the man reached him and threw himself upon him.
“Pliz, pliz, you-fella. You help poor Terry-man! Budmash fella-they chase him no reason! Aiee!” And he ducked and crouched trembling behind Donovan.
His pursuers staggered to a halt when they saw the harper and the scarred man and their quarry hiding behind them.
“Just like a mooser,” one of them said. “Hide behind a shawner and a clean’s skirts.”
“Out of our way, coffers,” said another. “Shoran, we maun teach this Terry trash his manners.”
“You hear that, ye walad?” said a third. And he was chorused by the laughter of his companions.
Donovan spoke up. “This lady is a harper—an ollamh. Air hwuig shé? You will not touch her.”
The first speaker, whom Donovan took for the leader, said, “Shoran, we don’t care about coffer bints, shawnfir. Just you be stepping aside so we can teach this dog to step aside for us like a good little mooser.”
Donovan turned to Méarana. “You had better take yourself to the hotel.”
“Donovan…?” She spoke with uncertainty, but in her heart there was none. She knew what he meant to do. “I’m sorry.” She shrugged her shoulder and felt the knife drop into her hand, keeping it concealed from the mob. She emptied her mind of all but her mother’s training. It seemed she would learn how well the instruction had taken. But, twenty?
“Step aside!”
“No, no, pliz,” cried the Terran behind them. “Big dhik! You-man save me!”
Donovan turned and took him by the collar of his tunic, raising him to his feet. “I’ll not save a man on his knees,” he growled.
The leader of the gang grinned and stepped forward. “Hazza moontaz! We’ll take it from here.”
Donovan turned to him and bowed lightly over his folded hands. “Ah, no sahb. This-man no let dacoit takee. Hutt, hutt, you changars! You chumars!”
The gang leader’s face froze in surprise. Then it broke into an even broader grin than before as he did the arithmetic. “Hey, boyos, shoran we have us a twofer! And you, shawnfir, you’re two brassers short of a whorehouse.”
“I do not normally use a pick to play,” said the harper, bending slightly forward and balancing on the balls of her feet. She held her knife underfisted, ready to slash or stab. “But I can pluck at your heart strings either way.”
The scarred man’s lips had been moving. Then Donovan sighed and pulled a teaser from his pocket. “Fudir, are we agreed?” “No other choice.” “Take over, Brute.”
Debate was not the Brute’s forte. He struck without warning, teasing the leader so that he dropped twitching to the paving stones. Simultaneously, he drove the bunched fingers of his left hand into the brisket of the man’s companion, doubling him over. Méarana, in a catlike crouch, swiped her knife at the man before her, causing him to leap backward for the sake of his intestines. The other Terran wimpered.
Two down, thought the Brute, only eighteen to go. Méarana might be able to knife two of them if she would not hold herself back. But they would not prevail, even if the other Terran, quaking beside him, helped. He saw bats hefted in the crowd and caught the glint of at least one pellet gun. Well, it was fun for a while. He teased a second youth, but the field only numbed the yngling’s left side.