It was one step closer to Arak. He knew he wouldn't like going there. Just saying that word made Azakar shudder. The Mahuut had been a slave there, first working in the mines, then fighting in the gladitorial arena, a place where men killed each other to entertain the crowd. Tarrin thought it was barbaric, and that was only the good things he'd heard about the place. Arakites had nasty reputations outside their empire, well known to be egocentric, effete snobs who thought everyone else wasn't even human because they weren't Arakite. A vast empire where slavery and barbarity were cultural requirements, where a man was only as good as the money he was worth. A brutal society full of ruthless people, his father has told him a long time ago. He knew that his father had been right on the mark. Tarrin knew the Arakite language, and it was as harsh as the people who spoke it were reputed to be. Full of hard sounds and gutteral pronunciations. The Arakites and their language supported the idea that a language was a good indication of the cultural disposition of the people who spoke it.
And getting there was just a part of their problem. They had to look through the largest city in the world to find a single book. It was an impossible task, and it was made harder by the fact that there were sure to be others doing the same thing. If one of them found it first and got it out of the city without Tarrin knowing it, he could be there for the rest of his life undertaking a futile search. That didn't sit well with him. There had to be an easier way.
If there was one, it wasn't presenting itself to him.
He looked out towards the land again. The sea was a brilliant blue, the wind was steady and cool, and the sun was warm. The sky had only a few small clouds, puffy and well away from the sun, which were being pushed along by the steady westerly wind. It was certainly pretty from so far away. He glanced to his side, where a Wikuni acrobat was practicing handstands. He wondered idly if they had any idea that Keritanima, their Crown Princess, was sharing the ship with them. Nobody called her by her full name. She was Kerri to the people on board, and they probably didn't identify her as who she really was. They probably thought the Princess was some silk-clad figure escorted by armies wherever she went. They probably had no inkling that the foul-tempered dancer was the woman that had once been destined to rule them. Imagining their reaction if they found out never failed to make him chuckle.
It was too bad they couldn't see her in less stressful circumstances. Keritanima wasn't usually so vicious, but Renoit's games with her had worn her patience to the bone. Keritanima had discovered, much to her shock, that Renoit was just as underhanded and subtle as she was. The man never let up on her, not only making her dance, but making her suffer for her adamant refusal to do so with cunning set-ups and situations that humiliated her into compliance. Keritanima was a very proud girl, a product of her upbringing, and those little humiliations made her utterly furious. What probably made her more furious was the ease with which Renoit manipulated her into doing what he wanted her to do. She had become waspish with the performers, and even a bit short-tempered with her friends, but they all understood why she was being that way.
Allia seemed to have taken to her role a bit better. She was no longer a performing acrobat. Renoit wouldn't be able to display her in Arak, because they despised the Selani. She was a teacher now, teaching the acrobats ways to make themselves even more flexible and limber, teaching them how to do more complicated and more difficult acrobatic feats. The other reason for the change was her promise to Renoit that she was going to kill Henri if he disrespected her one more time. After that blunt warning, Henri was removed as the leading acrobat. He was taken completely out of the acrobats, sent to the jugglers to perform in that capacity as long as Allia was in the troupe.
It was good that the others had managed to blend in so well. Azakar and Dar were well liked by the performers. Dar had quite a covey of the youngest women after him, though he was too young or naive to notice it. Then again, he didn't have Tarrin's sense of smell. He could smell it when women were after a man, because the texture of their scents changed. Just the way he could smell fear. Azakar wasn't pined over by the girls, but he had made solid friends among the circus people. Dolanna was too mysterious to be approached by most, and none of them would try to make friends with Binter or Sisska. The Vendari devotion to duty precluded such socializing.
He didn't see them practice often. He was still restricted off the deck during the daylight hours. The performers were very afraid of him, and he had to admit that they had very good reason to be. Of all of them, only Phandebrass would speak to him, and sometimes Tarrin felt that that was because the absent-minded mage didn't have the sense to be afraid. Not even Renoit would approach him or talk to him without Dolanna. That suited him just fine. He had his friends and his sisters. They were all strangers, and he didn't trust any of them. So long as they stayed out of his way, he was perfectly content to let them hover about on the edges. Their fear of him didn't sting as much as it used to, as it had when he was in the Tower. He had grown used to it over time.
Faalken approached him, and he looked like he was the father of Marcus Lightblade. Pride exploded all over his face, and his scent couldn't contain the elation that he was obviously feeling. "Dolanna said you were going to give me that sword," he blurted out, his dark, curly locks bobbing up and down as the Knight literally bounced in place. "Was she toying with me?"
"No," he said quietly. "I don't like swords, and it's too small for Azakar to use. You can have it."
Faalken gave out a whooping sound, then grabbed Tarrin in a fierce hug and picked him up, then spun him a few times. The move startled Tarrin, but the fact that it was Faalken doing it was the only reason he managed to keep his gizzard inside his belly. "Have I told you today how much I like you, my boy?" he said with a laugh, then he literally ran towards the stairs leading below decks. He left Tarrin standing there with a surprised look on his face, and all twenty of his claws extended. He had to breathe deeply a few times to get over his shock, calming down to the point where he could sheathe his wicked claws and chuckle ruefully. Faalken was an eternal child. He would never grow up.
Shaking his head, Tarrin changed form, the deck blurring until he gained a much lower perspective of it. He padded over to a coil of rope and settled himself down inside it, laying his chin on the edge of it and closing his eyes. There had been a time, which seemed a lifetime ago, when he would have done something like that.
Sometimes it wasn't the days, rides, months, and years, it was what happened within them that changed someone.
Tarrin drifted off to sleep, musing at how he had lived two lifetimes in only eighteen years.
It was apparent to anyone looking that the two collections of buildings on either side of the wide river Ar were not the same.
The buildings on the left were stone with tiled roofs, and the streets were narrow and very crooked. It was an ancient city, with old buildings and a rambling layout that had probably been much neater some five hundred years ago. The buildings on the right were timber and stone, with tiled roofs, but what made them so distinctive was that they were larger and more spread out than the buildings on the opposite bank. Wide, straight avenues separated the buildings, apparent even from the ship, and the layout of the place was one of straight streets, gardens, and space making the place seem less cloying and restrictive.