Free Forgotten Suns by Judith Tarr Page B

her basket with no regret at all and went to
investigate. What she found was about what she had expected.
    Rama had been cleaning stalls: the cart and the fork were in
the aisle. He had the invader by the throat. There wasn’t much to see of that
one but black robes and veils and a pair of amber-yellow eyes glaring out of
them.
    Aisha was careful not to laugh. “Rama,” she said. “It’s all
right. This is Malia. She’s a friend.”
    Rama’s glare was as baleful as Malia’s. He moved so fast
that Aisha could barely follow, and stripped out every knife, sword, throwing
star, mace, knout, rope, cord, and chain that Malia carried. He even found the
coil of copper wire that could be either a garrote or a set of shackles,
depending.
    “ Now she is a
friend,” he said.
    Malia spoke perfectly decent PanTerran, but she was so mad
at him, she spat words in her own language.
    He spat back without missing a beat. He had all the tones exactly
right, and an intonation that said he was so far superior to her, she didn’t
even deserve to slit her own throat in front of him. It was too fast for Aisha
to catch more than a handful of words, but it reduced Malia to wide-eyed
silence.
    Then, sweetly and in Panterran, he said, “That’s better.
Next time you try an ambush, make sure the quarry hasn’t heard you coming since
you came over the wall.”
    “I was practicing,” Malia said.
    “Clearly,” he said. “You’re by no means perfect.”
    Aisha moved in before they went to war all over again. “Malia,
this is Rama. He’s usually much more polite. Rama, please give her back her
weapons. I promise she won’t use them against anyone here.”
    “Won’t she?” Rama said, but he stood back and let Malia put
everything back where it belonged. She never took her eyes off him, even when
she had to bend down and slip the smaller armaments into their various pockets.
    He never took his eyes off her, either. When she was all put
back together he said, “The truly great warrior walks in through the front
gate, and no one thinks to question him.”
    “I’m a long way from greatness,” she said. “I have to learn
how to get there.”
    He burst out laughing. Not at her—even Malia could tell
that, by the way she stood. He saluted her with a flourish. “Oh, well played!
And well met. Someday you’ll be a credit to your upbringing.”
    “I don’t think I can say the same about you,” Malia said
darkly.
    “That’s what everyone always said.” He picked up his fork
and went back to his cart.
    They were dismissed. He was good at it. Malia kept shooting
glances back at him, but when Aisha had her out of there and in the house,
helping with the laundry, she wouldn’t talk about him at all.
    Aisha didn’t try to push her. When she was ready, she would
talk. Meanwhile there was a whole season’s worth of news to catch up on, how
Vayel was married and Jana had had her baby and Malia had earned her second
sword. Which Aisha had seen. Rama had taken it off her with everything else.
    Most of Aisha’s news had Rama in it, which was a problem,
but Malia had more than enough to keep them going through the day. Then they
had the new crew to talk about, and the tourists, who were about as awful as
they usually were. Aisha did not mention the fact that this might be the last
season. It wasn’t time for that, yet.
    She got permission to eat her dinner with Malia instead of
with everybody else. They took it up to the roof, which was empty tonight.
There were clouds coming in, promising rain by morning, but the sky to the west
was clear.
    Malia took off her veils and let the wind blow through her
hair. It was cropped into curls, and it was the same color as her eyes. Her
face was a much lighter shade of gold.
    Before she put on the veils, the sun used to dye her all one
color, except for the spray of freckles across her nose. Now she was her
natural ivory, with a thin white line of a scar running straight down her
cheek: her first