Clarence intervened. "If you want a partnership, girl, spit on your hand and shake. It's worth more than any piece of paper, on the other side of the mountains."
Cautiously she spat, sealed the sticky handclasp, and then wiped her hand rather gingerly on her dress.
"Now let's talk money. Let me try your new partner, Master Skyann," said the gem buyer, rubbing his hands.
It was a decision he regretted. She knew nothing of the value of turquoise, but Shael had been trained to read the smallest nuances of speech and gesture. She got far closer to the precise values than Keilin would have. Her hands sweated furiously through the first two transactions, but her brief glance at Keilin brought a nod of reassurance. Suddenly she knew she had the edge and, relaxing, she had the time of her life. At the end Clarence shook his head and stood up. "Phew! You've got yourself a damn fine partner there, young man. Next time I'll dicker with you, I think. Now, I owe you, let me see . . ." He totted up the figures, and then got up to go and fetch the money.
"Cay, what does this mean?" she held out the hand she'd spat on.
"It means you get half of the money," he said with a grin. "You could live for a couple of years on it, cautiously."
"But . . . why, Cay? I mean, it's yours. The old man left it to you, not me."
"There's plenty. And I noticed you don't have any spending money. You rely on the stuff Cap buys for you, and Leyla's castoffs. It's cold up here. You'll need some warm things. Also, it's kind of what Marou did for me. Besides, I'm going after the Morkth. I probably won't get a chance to spend too much. I'm going to give S'kith some, too."
She felt the hot prickle of tears behind her eyelids, her throat tighten. What right had he to know how it galled her to be always beholden? How had he known? Why was he doing this? Was he trying to buy her? Logic struggled with this idea. Hell. On the voyage from Port Lockry he had done everything to avoid her physical snares. It had been different since . . . since that cellar. She was scared of physical contact now. In a sudden flash of insight she realized that he did know just how she felt. He was an empathic psi. He probably didn't even know that he responded to other people's feelings . . . but that was what made him the person he was. And that was why he'd been so glad to be in the desert. She shrank within herself. No wonder he'd avoided her snares.
Then Clarence bustled in with a small sack of silver.
"By the way," he said, "there's a description out of Amphir circulating to all jewel buyers. If I didn't know you better, youngster, I'd say it was yours. They're offering a fair reward for news of this feller that looks rather like you."
He smiled at the alarm on Keilin's face. "I never saw anyone coming up from Amphir. Only an old friend coming over the mountains. And it'll be spring before Mari gets a chance to tell her big-mouthed sister. You'll be long gone by then. An' I wish them luck followin' you into the desert."
Keilin would have headed straight for bed, but Shael now touched his hand and gestured with a nod toward the fire. They walked back to the dying embers and waited until their understanding host had drained his glass and taken himself off to bed.
"Cay. How did you know you could trust him?" she asked finally, when the only sounds were those of the wind and the occasional crackle of the fire.
Keilin looked confused. "I don't know. But you can trust him . . . about big things I mean. Not bargaining. That's like a game to him."
"You feel other people's emotions. Especially," she swallowed, "if you're physically attracted to them."
"Not all the time. That . . . would be dreadful. Just sometimes . . . when the feelings are . . . too big. Really happy. Desperately sad. Anger too," he said quietly.
"You knew I was being raped in that cellar. That was why you came running."
He nodded, looking at the fire.
"It was the other one. Not the man I killed. The one I killed . . . just steadied the pentacle. That's when I managed to claw him. When he fell down, the man who . . . was busy with me nearly didn't even notice. I had to stop screaming so he would hear his disgusting master dying."
"He's dead, you know." There was no emotion in his voice.
"I know. You don't recover from tetrodotoxins. I just wish I had managed to scratch the other one, the Guard Commander, too."
"Not the Patrician . . . the man you scratched. The Guard Commander is dead. His name was Kemp." He saw recognition dart across her face.
"The one who followed us . . . followed you off into the desert," she said.
"Yes. He . . . assaulted me, too, long ago. When I was small and . . . pretty. He wasn't fussy about taking boys or girls . . . as long as there was pain," he said evenly. "He would have killed me, but I was lucky. I escaped to the desert. He's haunted my nightmares ever since. But he won't any more. I went back the next night to make absolutely sure. I found him, or what was left of him. He had located one of the few aquifers in the desert. He could hear water dripping. Only, it was inside the rock. He ripped all the flesh off his own fingers trying to get to it. Then the vultures came down and tore his liver out. By the blood trails, he was still alive while they did it. He was less than ten feet from a cistern full of cold, clear water when he died."