Xiala flushed even hotter. “She was,” she said defiantly.
“The things we do for beautiful women,” he said with a knowing sigh.
She held her retort. She didn’t believe for a moment this man next to her had done anything foolish for a beautiful woman, or a beautiful man for that matter. Lord Balam looked much too controlled to be swayed by something as simple as pleasures of the flesh.
“Perhaps you did not know such love is forbidden here?” he asked smoothly.
Xiala spat. “For a city this size, you would think there wouldn’t be quite so many uptight prigs.”
“Ah, but we aren’t in the city.” He sighed, as if burdened. “But even in the city proper…” He left the thought unfinished, but Xiala knew the answer. “Is it different where you come from?” he asked, voice innocent. “Among the Teek?”
“Where are your people?” she asked, changing the subject. Where she came from and who she loved were none of his business.
He tilted his head. “People?”
“Servants. A palanquin. I thought lords like you didn’t have feet.”
He laughed. “I prefer to walk, and Kuharan is not so far for a morning walk.”
It was a lie. She guessed that he had come alone because he didn’t want anyone to know he was here. But why? She still didn’t know why he had come for her, or how he had even found her.
“You still haven’t told me who you are.”
“My name is Balam. Lord Balam of the House of Seven, Merchant Lord of Cuecola, Patron of the Crescent Sea, White Jaguar by Birthright.”
They all had titles like that, and his meant as little as the ones she’d heard before. “Am I supposed to care?”
“Well, I was hoping it would impress you,” he said dryly. “It would save us some time.” He smiled that smile again, or maybe he had never stopped smiling. “I know who you are, after all.” He paused to make eye contact so his meaning couldn’t be missed. “What you are.”
Of course he did. He’d come all the way to this place he hated to bail her out of jail. He had to know what she was.
“What is it you want, Lord of… Cats, was it?” she asked. “Rich men don’t talk to me unless they want something. And they certainly don’t bribe tupiles to get it.”
“We could start with a bit of respect,” he said mildly, “but that seems unlikely.”
“Highly.” She decided to get the basics out of the way. “Just so you know, I’m not selling my bones.”
Balam startled. “Your bones?”
She tried to gauge whether he was faking his surprise. He had said he knew what she was, which meant he knew she was Teek. Some men collected Teek bones as good-luck charms. A finger bone might bring you auspicious weather or a strong wind. Catch a Teek and carve her throat bone out, and it would guarantee a good catch in deep waters, they said. She thumbed the missing top joint of the little finger on her left hand. It was her own fault she’d lost the pinkie. She’d had too much to drink and trusted the wrong man, a pretty one with eyes like wet earth after a spring rain and hands that had slipped between her legs and made her… well, never mind that. Now she kept a dagger on her belt that seemed enough to ward off treasure seekers. The dagger she’d lost at some point last night, either left behind by accident or confiscated by the jail. Well, perhaps that was for the better. She wasn’t much for daggers. Hers was mostly for show, since if it ever came down to losing a body part again, she’d Sing her way out of trouble. Assuming she was sober enough to conjure her voice. People got discouraged by a dagger, but they got downright murderous if they thought you were trying to magic them with your Song.
“Eyes, then?” she asked, challenge in her voice. “I saw you staring.”
Some Teek had eyes the crystal blue of the brightest waters, some the storm gray of gales, but the rarest of Teek had eyes like hers: a kaleidoscope of jewel colors, shifting like sunlight in shallow water. A man in a port she couldn’t remember now once told her the nobles of Tova collected Teek eyes like hers to wear around their fingers like jewels. She had Sung that bastard down to sleep without hesitation. No harm done beyond not waking up in time to make muster on the dock the next day. Which no doubt led to missed work, missed wages. A small harm, then. But deserved.
“No bones, no eyes,” Balam said with a theatrical shudder. “I have a job for you, Captain. I hear you might be in need of one.”
“Lord Pech. That’s how you found me?”
He nodded.
Of course all the lords talked. Which meant her job prospects were shrinking by the second. Not only would she be a dangerous Teek, she’d be a Teek with a temper.
“What kind of cargo?”
“The human kind.”
“Slaves?” She shook her head. She was desperate but not that desperate. “I don’t move people.”
“Not slaves.” He made a face like the idea was distasteful, but she wasn’t convinced. The lords of Cuecola were not above the slave trade.
“Then who?”
He wagged a finger. “The question should be to where.”
He was avoiding an answer, but she let it pass for the moment. “To where, then?” she asked.
“Tova.”
She had never been there, but she knew of it. Everyone did. It was called the Jewel of the Continent and the Holy City and the City of the Sky Made. It was a cliff city high in the clouds, the legendary birthplace of the Sky Made clans and the home of the Sun Priest and the Watchers whose duty it was to keep the calendar and wrestle order from chaos. Tova was the religious heart of the Meridian continent, just as Cuecola was its commercial capital and Hokaia its military center.
She visualized the map of the Meridian in her head. It was a land mass whose populations centered around a crescent-shaped swoop of coastline with Cuecola at the bottom tail of the C, the mouth of the river Tovasheh, the gateway to Tova, at the top left corner of that C, and Hokaia at the far top edge of the C in a parallel line north-south from Cuecola. There were other cities and settlements on the continent, but none as large or as powerful as the three great cities that bordered the Crescent.
“It’s a long way,” she said, “and a dangerous route for this late in the year. The Crescent Sea is known for its late-autumn storms. Shipkillers, they call them. Waves three times as tall as a tall man. Winds to howl down the heavens. And rain. Flood rains.”
Tova could be reached by land, but the fastest way was around the Crescent by ship and then upriver by barge or foot. Most ships had already put into dock for the off-season or were running short voyages that kept them glued to the coast. Her disastrous outing with Lord Pech was supposed to be her last for the year.
“You must be there in twenty days.”
“Twenty days? No. That’s impossible this time of year. More likely thirty to account for bad luck and bad weather, assuming you could even find a captain stupid enough to take you up on it.”
“But it can be done?”
“I just said it was impossible.”
“But if the seas were calm and weather favored you, and my stupid captain was brave enough to take to the open water rather than hugging the coast?”