“This will do,” Conan said, filling the mugs all around. “And take something up to my room for the girl to eat.”
“Her food is extra,” Ferian reminded him.
Conan thought of the gold weighting his belt, and smiled. “You’ll be paid.” The tapster left, muttering to himself, and Conan turned his attention to the astrologer. “You, Sharak,” he said sharply.
Sharak spluttered into his wine. “Me? What? I said nothing.”
“You said too much,” the Cimmerian said. “Why did you tell Yasbet I was going to see Davinia? And what did you tell her, anyway?”
“Nothing,” the old man protested. “I was trying to quiet her yelling—you said not to gag her—and
I thought if she knew you were with another woman she wouldn’t be afraid you were going to ravish her. That’s what women are always afraid of. Erlik take it, Cimmerian, what was wrong with that?”
“Just that she’s jealous,” Conan replied. “I’ve talked to her but twice and never laid a hand on her, but she’s jealous.”
“Never laid a hand on her? You tied her like a sack of linen,” Akeba said.
“It must be his charm,” Sharak added, his face impossibly straight.
“’Tis funny enough for you two,” Conan said darkly, “but I was near brained with my own washbasin. She … .”
As rude laugh
ter drowned Conan’s next words, Ferian ran panting up to the table.
“She’s gone, Cimmerian!” the tavernkeeper gasped. “I swear by Mitra and Dagon I don’t believe she could squeeze through that window, but she did.”
Conan sprang to his feet. “She cannot have been gone long. Akeba, Sharak, will you help me look?”
Akeba nodded and rose, but Sharak grimaced. “An you don’t want her, Cimmerian, why not leave her for someone who does?”
Without bothering to reply Conan turned to go, Akeba with him. Sharak followed hastily, hobbling with his staff.
Once in the street, the three men separated, and for near a turn of the glass Conan found nothing but frustration. Hawkers of cheap perfumes and peddlers of brass hairpins, fruit vendors, potters, street urchins,—none had seen a girl, so tall, large-breasted and beautiful, wearing saffron robes and possibly running. All he found were blank looks and shaken heads. No few of the strumpets suggested that he could find what he was looking for with them, and some men cackled that they might keep the girl themselves, did they find her, but their laughter faded to nervous sweating under his icy blue gaze.
As he returned to the stone-fronted tavern, he met Akeba and Sharak. At the Turanian’s questioning glance he shook his head.
“Then she’s done with,” the astrologer said. “My throat needs cool wine to soothe it after all the people I’ve questioned. I’ll wager Ferian has given our Solvanian to someone else.”
The pitchers remained on the table where they had left them, but Conan did not join in the drinking. Yasbet was not done with, not to his mind. He found it strange that that should be so, but it was. Davinia was a woman to make a man’s blood boil; Yasbet had heated his no more than any other pretty wench he saw in passing. But he had saved her life, twice, for all her denials. In his belief that made him responsible for her. Then too, she needed him to protect her. He was not blind to the attractions she had for a man.
He became aware of a Hyrkanian approaching the table, stooped and bowed of leg, his rancid smell preceding him. His coarse woolen trousers and sheepskin coat were even filthier than was usual for the nomads, if such was possible. Two paces short of them he stopped, his long skinny nose twitching as if prehensile and his black eyes on the Cimmerian. “We have your woman,” he said gutturally, then straightened in alarm at the blaze of rage that lit Conan’s face.
Conan was on his feet with broadsword half-drawn before he himself realized that he had moved.
Akeba grasped his arm. Not the sword arm; he was too old a campaigner for that. “Hear him out before you kill him,” he urged.
“Talk!” Conan’s voice grated like steel on bone.
“Tamur wants to talk with you,” the Hyrkanian began slowly, but his words came faster as he went. “You fought with some of us, though, and Tamur does not think you will talk with us, so we take your woman until you talk. You will talk?”
“I’ll talk,” Conan growled. “And if she’s been harmed, I’ll kill, too. Now take me to her.”
“Tonight,” was the thick reply.
“Now!”
“One turn of the glass after the sun sets, someone will come for you.” The Hyrkanian eyed Akeba and Sharak. “For you alone.”