"And do you know what the worst of it is?" commented Leyla viciously. "The bloody women maintain the system. Mothers teach their daughters that only a harlot would look a man in the eyes, that a woman's place is in the home to nurture and support her man, and her sons; and this is the way women are meant to be in the eyes of God. If they even suspect that a woman is unfaithful, the other women kill her."
"It sounds awful. How did you get out?" Shael asked, finding herself drawn in and curious.
The question seemed to startle Leyla. It was almost as if she'd been unaware of the fact that she'd had an audience. "I don't want to talk about it. Anyway, you're a fine one to talk. You jumped and hopped at your father's bidding, didn't you?"
Shael was both startled and angry. She drew herself up. "I'm a Royal Princess. I . . . I had to do . . . I mean, he was my father. It was the law!"
"Of course that makes it all right," Leyla said dryly. "Now slump down. You could get stoned here, just for walking like that."
Before Shael could react both Keilin and S'kith froze, looking for a moment like a pair of bird dogs. A waft of cinnamon incense carried above the city bouquet of unusual spices, jewellers' solvents, garbage, and inefficient sewage systems. Looking up, the double onion dome stared out at them . . . actually two domes, neatly in line. A little ahead yawned the mouth of Zaran's Opal Emporium, full of cinnamon halitosis.
Without haste or overwhelming signs of interest they ventured in. Underfoot lay soft carpets full of complex patterns and rich hues. In endless display cabinets were opals in various settings. Blue-greens, yellows . . . milky-whites, the rarer reds, and at the back, in a carefully sealed glass case, the blacks. Keilin caught his breath. For a moment it had seemed as if an entire tray of core sections lay before him. Except they felt . . . flat. A terrible compulsion pulled at him from behind a nondescript curtain on the left. And S'kith moved dreamily towards it, too.
Keilin saw how Leyla pulled Kim across to the curtained-off doorway. He nodded to himself. Clever. Women were probably the only thing that would effectively stop S'kith once he'd set himself a target. Still, the urge to go through that curtain pulled at him, too. It was nearly pushing him beyond the realms of logical behavior. He risked a glance at Kim, and found his foot following the direction of his eyes. She seemed unaffected. He couldn't take this . . . while Cap, disguised in merchant clothes and broad hat, enquired boredly about prices. He had to go . . . S'kith edged forward, too, trying to flank the girls.
Wait . . . Cap had said that he, Keilin, was . . . psionic. He could use his mind to make the stones work. He tried to focus his thoughts on the core section behind the curtain.
The trumpet blast response blared across the room. Keilin looked around, alarmed. S'kith's normally near-expressionless face had a brief flighting of terror across it. Kim's hands were clapped to her ears . . . but the business of the shop continued as usual. And the compulsion to go through that curtain at all costs had disappeared.
". . . my apprentice. I doubt if he'll ever be any good, but one must try. Boy, come and assess these stones. You know what we are seeking." Cap sounded bored and world-weary.
As Keilin peered into the tray of black opals, Cap continued to talk. "He's the son of an old friend who died in a bandit ambush. I took him on for old Kotar's sake, but he'll never have his father's eye for a good stone. Too much of his mother's blood there. Woman thought too much of herself."
"A pity that there's no possibility of getting sons without corrupting them that way. Your friend Kotar probably had the usual travelling-merchant's problem. When you're away from home too often, the women get to making decisions they shouldn't," sympathized the shopman. "Tried it myself a few years ago. Came back and found the woman giving orders. I tell you, my strap and I had a fine job to sort her out again."
Keilin noticed that now it was Kim who was holding Leyla's arm. "I don't think any of these will do, master," he said servilely.
For which he received a sharp clip around the earhole. "Dolt of a boy! There are some stones of the first water here. Still . . . do you have any others? We have a commission from the Shah of Ebrek to buy suitable black opals for his new throne. It's his sixth, you know. And each more ornate than the last. He'll ruin that principality of his with his taste, or rather lack of taste, for expensive jewellery."
A few more stones as yet unset were produced from a back room. Keilin managed, now that his head had stopped spinning from the casual blow, to surreptitiously indicate they were not core sections. They bought two stones, and left.
The council of war that evening was heated. "Burn the city down. We can loot it at will then," was Leyla's flame-eyed suggestion.