The foreigner smiled, flashing his perfect teeth, as if he were reading the other man's thought – he was, in fact, doing exactly that, these last couple of minutes - and reached under his travel robe. When he pulled his hand back, two huge golden coins twinkled on his palm in the faint candlelight. The innkeeper started to salivate at the sight of the small fortune and was just about to reach for the coins, but the palm suddenly closed into a fist. “I want my chicken hot and crisp, the potato not too mushy, and the beer from the second cask, not the first one, my friend.”
The glance the innkeeper cast at him was far from friendly, the smile on the jaad's face, however, a perfect mask. “I will personally see to it, your lordship,” he bowed for a last time, and the traveller finally took pity on him, opening his fist into a palm again. Letting the coins glide through his fingers and settle on the roughly carved table, he indifferently turned away from the jaad indicating that bargaining was over. The jaad had enough self control to reach slowly for the money – a quick movement could be easily misunderstood for an attack on this part of Ynev and punished with a swift movement of a knife or sword bringing more or less painful death – and left the table, taking three steps backwards and only then turning his back to the esteemed guest.
The third beer, ice cold and foamy like the previous one, came from the hands of a young waitress clothed into a simple dress sweeping the floor around her ankles; the lack of the jaad shawl on her head clearly indicating her tender age, her purity still not spoiled by monthly female troubles. There was something off about her skin, even though deeply tanned by the relentless Southern sun of the Taba el-Ibara, and when she bowed over the table to place the cup before the guest, Geor dar Khordak finally understood what made his internal alarm bells rinkle. As the simple dress slid down on her shoulder – not the well-practiced, seductive movements of a courtisane, simply a small wardrobe malfunction – china white skin flashed in front of the man's eyes. To deepen his disbelief even further, two forget-me-not-colored eyes smiled at him from under her straw-coloured, somewhat unkempt, shoulder-length hair crowning her head.
A pureblood Pyarronian in this dog-hole! Stop talking nonsense, Sleuth, Pyarron has been burnt to ashes six hundred years ago and its people fed to wolves, condors and the unimaginable horrors coming from beyond the faraway Cranian hills!
Slightly confused, Geor chose the best tactics. Smiling back at the young girl, he reached out with his hand and gently arranged the dress on the girl's shoulder.
“What's your name?”
The young girl broadly smiled at the traveller. “Ascyra, mylord.” A Pyarronian name, again. Geor's senses gave off another, slightly louder warning signal.
“A beautiful name indeed,” he nodded, making a small gesture with his fingers as if he were playing a quick arpeggio on the strings of a harp. When he opened his hand again, a silver coin lay there, in the middle of his palm. “Thank you for the beer.” With a barely perceptible second gesture, the coin slid over the wood, right under the girl's palm she laid on the table.
Not giving a sign of what had happened, the girl lazily removed her hand from the table, her fingers repeating the same dance in the air. When they stopped, there rested not one, but two coins on her palm and Geor approvingly inclined his head, amusing himself at the expert display of the widely known trick. Given, the girl was very young and the trick involved some magic, but the instinctively performed movements only approved his theory. The Pyarronians used to be well-known – and widely feared – for their magical capabilities equalled only by the people of the Thirteen, and this innocent creature had magic in her genes.
“Thank you, mylord. Should you be in need of anything: more beer, some wine perhaps to forget, or some company for the night, just call me.” While speaking grammatically perfect jaad, the accent of the girl was strong; she hadn't lived here long enough yet to get rid of it. A recent import by one of the many slave caravans from the coasts of the Stormy Sea, something that made it worthwile to take the risk of crossing the very depths of the Taba el-Ibara. But then, it was expensive import and Geor silently asked himself the question how many gold pieces the jaad must have paid for this valuable ware and, more importantly, which practices enabled this seemingly unrich man to afford himself such an expensive slave.
Chapter One
Start from the beginning
