The music pounded and wailed its way toward a climax. The onlookers augmented the thumping of the drum with vigorous, rhythmic clapping. “I’d like to listen to the band just a little longer, until he calls me,” I said.
“It might be better if—”
“You think your father has lost interest in buying, now he knows the statue is incomplete?” asked Duarte.
I scrambled to answer the unexpected question. “I would expect that,” I said, even as it struck me that Duarte himself was showing no inclination to leave in a hurry. “It would be different if we had some information about where the other part is. If we found that in good condition and could repair the piece, it would still be worth buying. The value would be much lower, of course, even if the mending was expertly done. But Barsam didn’t seem to know about the other half. It would be quite a mission to track it down.”
“Agreed.”
There was something arresting in Duarte’s expression; I tried to interpret it. Was it possible he still planned to bid? How far would he lower his own offer, knowing only part of the artifact was on sale?
His lips twitched; his dark eyes twinkled. “You wish to read my mind?” he queried.
“I’m not so desperate for entertainment,” I snapped, annoyed to be caught staring.
Irene came to my rescue. “Of all those present,” she observed, “you, Senhor Aguiar, seemed the least surprised by Paula’s revelation. And I note that you remain here in conversation with ladies when all others are gone.”
“Ah.” He gave an enigmatic smile, directed more at me than at my companion. It was as if he wanted to share a secret and, despite my better judgment, I felt a thrill inside me akin to that produced by the wild music of the tulum. “I am not here solely as a purchaser, Mistress Irene. I came also to renew my acquaintance with the charming Paula. As unrelated men and women do not mingle in public places here in Istanbul, I must seize what opportunities come my way to speak with her.” He glanced at me. “You’re blushing again,” he murmured. “How sweet. When you look like that, it becomes obvious why you need a chaperone.”
“This conversation is finished!” snapped Irene, moving forward to take my arm. “Senhor Aguiar, you are old enough to know better.”
“Senhor Duarte has yet to prove that,” I put in. “Thus far I remain unconvinced.”
“Of my age or of my wisdom, Paula?”
“I don’t know how old you are, nor am I especially interested,” I said. “But I do have a question for you. What did you mean before, when you said you’d take Cybele’s Gift back to the place of its origins if you bought it? What place? I thought all that was known was the general region it came from, not an actual location.”
The tulum played on; the fountain added a soft accompaniment. It seemed to me that both Duarte and Irene had become suddenly very still, as if my speech had possessed some meaning far beyond what I had intended. I had strayed into deep waters and had no idea how to get out.
“Your father uses you well,” Duarte said eventually, his tone level. “A man allows himself to be diverted by your wit. He starts to enjoy the lash of your sharp tongue and quite forgets you are a merchant’s daughter. Since the piece is broken, your question is no longer relevant, Mistress Paula.”
I was so offended I found myself without a reply. Maybe I had offered to obtain information from Duarte and others by exercising my limited charms on them, but the question I had just asked had been framed out of genuine curiosity, nothing more devious. And did I really have a sharp tongue? I heard Irene draw a deep, indignant breath, ready to speak.
“Kyria.” A deep voice from behind me: Stoyan’s. I breathed a sigh of relief. “Your father is ready to go.”
“Then I will bid you good night, Mistress Paula.” Duarte was all smooth courtesy, but he was looking over my head, and his eyes were full of challenge.
“Good night, Senhor Duarte,” I said. “It’s been…interesting…talking to you.”
“Good night, Mistress Irene.”
Irene gave the Portuguese a frosty nod, then Stoyan steered us away like an efficient sheepdog gathering up strays from a flock. I could think of no reason why we would ever see Duarte da Costa Aguiar again. I should have been relieved. He had flattered me and insulted me, made me feel warm with pleasure, intrigued, confused, and angered me all in the space of an evening. Talking to him was like treading a path across stepping-stones set a little too far apart. But what I felt most strongly was disappointment.
I was in the storeroom of Irene’s library, poring over another leaf from the Persian manuscript. It was quiet. I was alone, standing by a high desk on which the piece had been laid out with care, its corners weighted down by squat creatures with bulbous toes. The light was fitful, and I could not see the tiny illustration clearly. Inside the lamp, fireflies swarmed, their bodies glowing behind the glass shade. I winced as they blundered against it. I had never been fond of insects.
The miniature. I must concentrate. I must study it, for time was running out. I narrowed my eyes, trying to focus. Was that a figure standing on another’s shoulders? A girl? She was wearing trousers—most indecorous—and was reaching up to grasp something above her head. Picking apples? The man supporting her was balancing on something himself. It all looked quite precarious. And there was something else there…. I must carry this out into better light. But carefully. Nobody must see.
The hanging was down over the door to the main chamber, and when I brushed against the cloth, a swarm of little flies arose from within its fibers to hover around my head. I held my breath and squeezed my eyes shut, ducking around into the library proper.
I opened my eyes. There was a scholar at every table: a hooded soothsayer, a wizard in a hat with stars on it, a tiny gnome hunched over a map, an old man dipping a peacock-feather quill into an inkwell of faceted crystal. Light poured down from above, an otherworldly light as pale as dawn and pure as springwater, but not from the holes pierced in the plasterwork or from a torch or a lamp. A sphere floated there, two arms’ lengths above the scholars, held by nothing but sheer magic. I walked forward, but nobody so much as gave me a cursory glance. I opened my mouth to greet them, for they were all dear and familiar, my friends from the Other Kingdom with whom I had argued and debated on every night of full moon through the years of my childhood. A moment later, everything shifted and changed, and I was no longer in the library but in Dancing Glade, scene of the fairy revels I knew so well. Ileana, queen of the forest, sat on her willow wood throne, and before her knelt my sister Tati, clad in a white gown with her dark hair flowing down her back and her big violet-blue eyes desperate with feeling. Around them were gathered the same folk I had just seen in the library. Many others, from dwarf to giant, from salamander
