without thinking. 'What is yours?'
'Delia,' she replied. 'But that is unimportant. Please examine what I have to offer.'
Jemidon looked down at the countertop and grabbed at the tangle of wire that was closest. 'Ah, you mean puzzles,' he said as he recognized the objects. 'I am afraid you will find that few of the pages and runners will care for such things. But with me, you are in luck. I have played with such baubles for years. Unlike my experience in the arts, I seem to have some knack with them. Watch how quickly this one can be undone.'
Jemidon closed his eyes for a second to recall the sequence of moves. He grunted in satisfaction that the memory was still there. Then he deftly whirled the wires through a blurring pattern and, with a dramatic flourish, dropped the puzzle onto the counter. The wires tingled dully but remained in a tangle.
'Let me see that again,' he said in disbelief. 'I must have made a wrong move. It has been some time since I worked this one in particular.'
Jemidon picked up the puzzle and closely scrutinized the bends and runs. 'Yes, there is a difference here. The outer loop on the larger wire whirls to the left rather than to the right. That means…'
His voice trailed off as he shut his eyes and ran through the sequences again. 'Very clever.' He opened them with a grin a moment later. 'It makes the ending the mirror image of what one would expect.'
With a rush only slightly slower than the first time, he completed the altered moves and tossed the decoupled pieces back onto the counter. 'Most unusual. Do you have any more like that? I thought I had tried all there was to be found in Arcadia.'
'Have him pay or make room for the next.' A deep voice sounded from behind the partition. 'Your job, girl, is to sell the merchandise, not bat eyelashes at the patrons. Melizar wants a filled purse in a fortnight. No less will do.'
The curtain swept aside and a short, dark-haired man entered to stand beside Delia. Bushy eyebrows and mustache framed eyes dark as coals. The lips pulled up in a wide grin, revealing yellow, stained teeth and whitish gums. He grasped her bare arm in a viselike grip: although the flesh paled from the pressure, she bit her lip and did not speak.
'This evening we must do better, Delia,' he said. 'On the other islands, they were poor and a token was hard to pry loose. But here we have the jangle of copper and silver from the mainland. Why, even this gentleman carries a coin of gold. Tonight there will be no excuse. Fill the purse as you have been directed, or else you will learn more of my pastimes in the room behind.'
Jemidon looked at Delia's suddenly frozen expression and impulsively he wrestled with his pouch to produce a coin. 'Here, let her go. She has served her purpose well. And know that it is because of her that I buy one of these trinkets. From you, there would have been no sale.'
'I am Drandor the trader,' the small man said, stretching his smile even further as he released his grip. 'And I see you are a gentleman of discerning taste. Perhaps some other item from far away would pique your interest as well.' He swept his arm in a large arc while making a bow. 'Here in the back are the better items that cannot be bartered for less than true gold or tokens of the islands.'
Jemidon looked at Delia rubbing her arm, her lips still set firm. 'You have no cause,' he said. 'It is not her fault that your tent is not abuzz with gawkers like the others. Raise up a flap or two. Add some light and sound.'
'My partner, Melizar, wants buyers, not ones who only look and then go their way,' Drandor said. 'And do not waste any thoughts on the girl. She is not a bondsman with rights and privileges, but fully indentured, no different from a lute, a painted vase, or any other item I have to sell. I can do with her what I will.'
Drandor followed Jemidon's eyes back to Delia and grunted. 'Unless, of course, the gentleman is sufficiently smitten to bargain for her as well. Although I warn you, the price will be dear. She cost no less than fifteen tokens in the exchanges at Pluton. And it would take much more to compensate for my lost pleasures, if she were to go.'
Delia reached out her hand and placed it on Jemidon's, which was resting on the counter, her eyes opening wide in sudden expectancy. He looked into their deepness and sucked in his breath. If he had a purse of gold, impulsively, he knew how he would spend it. Only with a determined effort was he able to will his faltering attention back to Drandor.
'You mentioned items from faraway lands,' he said quickly. 'Perhaps there will be something more to my liking.'
Drandor grunted and pulled aside the curtain. Jemidon rounded the counter and stepped into the rear portion of the tent. Bolts of cloth, stacked precariously, towered on one side of the entrance. Cases of spices, their aromas competing for attention, framed the other. Huge bottles filled with dense green swamp gas lined the far wall in front of another tentflap that must lead to a final compartment beyond. A small furnace with coals still smoldering stood beneath a large wooden frame, from which hung a collection of shackles, spikes, and chains. Pokers and tongs, their tips thrust into the cooling sand, still glowed a dull cherry red. Scattered about were sketches of terrified women straining against their bonds to avoid the touch of searing iron. One was draped carelessly over the body of a small rodent, its limbs bound to a small wooden frame by tightly turned loops of thin wire and its crushed skull lying in a pool of blood. Near the center of the tent, stringed instruments and long, hollow reeds lay in a jumble on top of a pile of small drums, their heads pulled tight by tiny weights spaced around their rims.
From a cage in a far corner, cloaked in shadow, Jemidon heard a canine growl, followed by another deeper than the first. Instinctively, he froze and held his breath. He had encountered large mastiffs before, but somehow these guttural rolls touched a primitive nerve. It had been a warning, and he knew he would not be given another.
'Not now, my pretties,' Drandor said. 'This is for business.'
A single paw thudded against the framework in defiant protest, and then there was silence. Jemidon slowly let out his breath. He peered into the pen, trying to see what could shake a crate so large and stoutly built; but except for four burning eyes, there was only blackness. He smoothed the short hairs on the back of his neck and glanced over the other stacks and containers.
'And what is that?' he asked with forced casualness, pointing at a lattice of wires and beads that stood waist- high to his left. 'Another puzzle that I have not seen before?'
Part of the structure resembled a model scaffolding, with struts at right angles methodically outlining an array of touching cubes. But other lines of differing colors radiated from the vertices at odd angles, creating amorphous bulges and isolated tendrils that snaked into the air. Some of the nodes where many lines came together were encased in intricately carved and brightly colored beads. Even from a distance, Jemidon saw that with the proper twist a bead could be decoupled and slid along one of the wires to the next vertex down the line.
He reached to touch the curious structure, but a high-pitched voice cut him short. 'Property of my master, property of Melizer,' it said. 'I am a guardian, and you must not touch.'
Jemidon looked upward and saw that the light from one of the lamps was not produced by a flame, but by the incandescence of a tiny imp, flittering brightly in a glass prison. Its large head was in grotesque proportion to the delicate limbs and gossamer wings. One eye seemed swollen shut from a wart that covered most of one jowl and sprouted three coarse black hairs as thick as nails.
'An imp in a bottle,' Jemidon wondered aloud. 'Why, after the archmage battled the demon prince years ago, I thought all wizards abandoned such indiscretions. You deal in marvels indeed.'
'Like the lattice, there are a few items not for sale,' Drandor said quickly. He glanced at the flap leading to the third compartment and then spoke as if he were on a stage, enunciating each word so that everyone listening could hear. 'The imp and the drums are the private property of my partner. He merely stores them here while- while he rests. The pets are a gift from him to me.'
Drandor paused, watching the tentflap, apparently awaiting a reaction. The canvas rippled slightly and a wave of cold air sluggishly rolled underneath the gap above the floor rugs, but nothing else happened. Drandor let out his breath and turned his attention back to Jemidon.
'But no matter. What else, what else?' he suggested. 'State your pleasure. I can satisfy a prince with what I have in stock today.'
Jemidon watched the flap a moment more as the cold coiled about his ankles. But the canvas hung straight. Except for the gentle breathing of the mastiffs, he heard nothing. With a shrug, he turned back to what had originally attracted his interest.
'I have only copper,' he said absently as he studied first the imp and then the lattice underneath. 'The gold around my neck I will not part with for any of this.'
