Free Rogue Dragon by Avram Davidson Page B

listened—amused, amazed, disapproving, entranced—while Henners recited (in couplets and quatrains) his exploits in removing the jewels and gold and silver plate of His Serene Supremacy the Chairman of the Board of Syndics of Drogue, while the latter sat at meat in his high chamber.
    With guests.
    He was mildly annoyed at the distraction of having a voice break in on the recitation… at first. But when the words sank in, he forgot Henners and all his works.
    “She’s a mean one, that baggage… isn’t she?”
    Jon-Joras, turning his head and seeing Trond, face reddened by the fire light, had somehow no doubt who was meant by “she.”
    “Who is she?” he asked, half-whispering. Trond jerked his head to the left, moved off, and Jon-Joras followed him. Henner’s voice was still audible when they stopped at last, but the words could no longer be made out. A fat and gibbous moon rode the cloud-flecked skies and afforded plenty of light to the park-like glade where the thieves’ jungle was set up.
    “Who is she?” Trond repeated the. question, sat himself on a moss-covered tree trunk lying where it had fallen in some long-ago storm. He did not answer the question, said, instead, “She claims you’re following her…”
    Speechless indignation followed by indignant speech. She claimed that he was following her? If the truth was anything at all like that, it was strictly the other way around. He told the older man of finding her in the mob scene in Peramis when the Doghunter had been convicted of killing the Gentleman, of his own attempt to help her and how it had been repulsed—almost rabidly.
    “That could have been an accident, our meeting the first time. She couldn’t have known I was going to be there, I certainly didn’t know she was going to be there. And as for the second time—” Abruptly, he stopped. Did Trond or any of his fellows know about the Kar-chee castle and what was being done there? And, assuming that he and they didn’t, did Jon-Joras want them to? Quick reflection decided him that he didn’t. He went on, a bit lamely, “—and the second time I was just lost in the woods, I’d gotten separated from the people I was with, and I was picked up by some Doghunters.
    “I had no notion she’d be wandering in the same woods. And this last time, I—”
    “You got lost,” said Trond, nodding, expressionlessly. “Again.”
    The night was warm, but the young man felt his face go warm. “It may sound like an unlikely coincidence,” he said, defensively, “but you have to remember that I’m an outworlder… a stranger… And besides—how could I have known that she—and you—would be riding along at just that time.”
    Trond grunted. He produced an oddly-shaped piece of wood, thrust it into a pouch and did something to it, blew on the end of a stick he’d brought with him from the fire, and, when it glowed red, thrust the device into his mouth and touched it with the ember end. Odd little noises, then a cloud of smoke… and another… the acrid odor made Jon-Joras cough a bit—and then he remembered. Tobacco! Its use had not followed mankind outward to the stars, and even here on its native world it was supposed to be all but extinct. Where had Trond gotten the ancient herb? For surely the Poets cultivated no crops! Most likely he had stolen it.
    “Well,” said Trond, on a prolonged note, with a puff, “I’m just telling you what she says. I could think of a lot of ways it might be true… if I was minded to… but I’m not. Why not? Because. Like I say. She’s a mean one, that baggage. As the triolet says—”
    But Jon-Joras did not at that moment want to know what the triolet said. He grasped Trond’s knee, and repeated, “Who is she? Who?‘
    Trond puffed at his pipe a moment more. “Her name,” he said, “is Lora.”
    Lora. “No… It doesn’t mean a thing to—”
    “Maybe her father’s name might mean a thing to you.”
    “Her father?”
    Trond nodded. His pipe