“If it’s fake, I’ll bid low and grind the bone into powder. We’ll sell it as a cure for baldness, or you can make a cream. We’ll tout it to the crones trying to recapture their youth.” He chuckled at her disapproving glare. “Stop looking like a shriveled apple. You know as well as I that we’ve fed our group more than once on the backs of other people’s vanity.”
Halani hated it when he used practicality to justify some of his ethically questionable actions. “What if it is valuable? Bone from a truly rare creature?” The hum along her skin assured her that the bone was anything but ordinary.
Hamod’s eyes gleamed. “Then we count this our lucky day, and if someone else wants this pretty back, they can buy it or fight for it.” As free traders, their caravan was heavily armed, wary of strangers on the road, and its members unhesitating in defending themselves. But in this Hamod was wrong.
“We may not have the numbers to keep it from whoever is searching for it.”
Again, that maddening, unconcerned shrug. “Then we’ll deal with them if that day comes. I doubt it will, and I know more than a few people in Domora who’d be happy to part with a full purse to possess such an artifact to show off to their wealthy friends.” He held out a hand, crooking his fingers. “Now, hand it over so I can get to bargaining, and you can get back to the stall and help Gilene.”
As if uttering the woman’s name summoned it, a female voice bellowed above the noise of the crowd, bringing the market to a halt. “Azarion!” Halani turned toward the commotion, startled to see Gilene’s absent husband, Valdan, stride through the crowd toward the trader tables where Gilene manned their booth.
No longer the ragged, injured dye merchant Hamod’s caravan had come across on a dusty road at the edge of the forest, Valdan wore the trappings of a leader. Bearded and dressed in the garb of a Savatar horse nomad, he was still the handsome man Halani remembered. His piercing green gaze rested solely on Gilene, who stared back, eyes wide and bright with tears. Hamod used the distraction to snatch the bone fragment out of Halani’s hand and returned to the two skittish traders.
Torn between curiosity over the drama playing out between Gilene and her husband and wanting to harangue her uncle more, Halani paused amid the crowd. She pressed her palms together, striving to recapture a remnant of the magic hanging over the bone like an invisible mist.
A ghost of ancient earth swirled between her fingers, a memory of pain and regret, of desperation, and of hope. But most of all a silent but plaintive call to be found and united. With what? With whom?
The sudden, more physical tug on her elbow brought her out of her ruminations. Her mother stood next to her, weathered features creased by a wide grin. She pointed to Valdan as he approached the table Gilene stood behind. “Look, Hali! Valdan isn’t dead,” she said in her high, childish voice. “Come with me. I want to tell him hello!”
A cluster of Savatar lined up behind him like a human redoubt. They were an intimidating group of men and women dressed in light armor and carrying a myriad of weapons. None looked as if they’d welcome a gleeful Asil skipping through their ranks to offer greetings. Nevertheless, Halani rarely refused her mother’s wishes and followed her back toward their stall.
A flicker of movement close to the table caught her attention, and she spotted a pack of cutpurses as young as six, but no older than twelve, easing closer to the pile of goods stacked toward the back of the stall as well as the unguarded items on the table itself. “Bollocks!” she snapped. With Gilene and Valdan seeing only each other and the Savatar watching only them, the stall was easy pickings for small, fast thieves. They’d be cleaned out in moments.
Asil’s eyes widened. “What?
Halani pointed in the cutpurses’ direction as she raced toward them. Asil shot past her, far fleeter and more nimble than her aged appearance suggested. She reached the table just as one of the older, bigger juveniles snatched a tooled leather pouch from the table’s corner and bolted into the thick of the crowd.
He didn’t get far. One of the Savatar women abruptly straightened her arm from her side, clotheslining the runner. He struck the unexpected barrier so hard, he ricocheted off her vambraced forearm, feet flying out from under him before he landed on his back. The bag he held tumbled through the air and was snagged by Asil. The thief’s compatriots scattered in all directions. Halani suspected they’d managed to make off with a fan and one of the hideous hats Dennefel loved to make and Hamod insisted they try to sell. It could have been much worse. Winded but not incapacitated, the downed thief sprang to his feet and fled, kicking up his heels even higher when the Savatar woman lunged toward him as if to give chase.
Halani reached her mother’s side in time to overhear her praise the woman.
Asil’s cheeks were red, and her eyes danced, as if preventing an impromptu raid on their stall had been great fun. “You’re very strong,” she said, admiration in her voice.
The Savatar inclined her head and returned a similar compliment in heavily accented Common tongue. “And you’re very fast.”
Halani skirted around the Savatar barricade to straighten the table and move some of the items most in danger of being snatched to a more inaccessible spot.
“Oh, Halani, I’m sorry! I’m so sorry!” Gilene no longer stared into her husband’s face as if seeing a vision. She tried to help Halani move the trade items to a safer spot. Halani shooed her away.
“Stop fretting.” She nodded toward Valdan. “I think you have a good excuse for the distraction. Besides, I left you here to man the stall alone. Cutpurses always look for lone sellers in the markets.”
“I’m to blame,” Valdan said behind her. “I’ll pay for the loss of anything taken, Halani.”
She offered him a smile. “We’re very glad to see you alive and well. Gilene isn’t one to wear her feelings for all to see, but I know she pined for you and worried.”
Even at second glance, his appearance still startled her. He had introduced himself to their caravan more than a year ago as a dye merchant attacked by raiders who had nearly killed him, injured his wife Gilene, and stolen their supplies and horse. When Hamod told Valdan he had the look of a steppe-man about him, Valdan said he was the child of a Kraelian woman and an Empire soldier of Nunari blood. At the time, his stories and explanations seemed believable, and neither he nor Gilene had given Hamod reason to think otherwise during their stay with the caravan.
Looking at him now, thinner, haggard but still handsome, and garbed in the raiment of high rank among an entourage of Savatar who showed him obvious deference and Gilene surprising reverence, Halani was certain this man was no simple dye merchant.
Asil jumped between them before he could reply. “Valdan, you’re not dead!” she crowed, so obviously delighted by the fact that Valdan and the rest of his companions laughed.