Hamod was a wily trader and taught everything he knew to his niece. Charming, sly, and armed with a repertoire of half-truths, he could sell a beggar his own rags back to him given enough time, and spot a costly trinket in a midden heap at a hundred paces. Never an easy mark, he still deferred to Halani on some things, like determining the authenticity of an artifact. Hamod graced her with a jovial smile that didn’t reach his eyes or hide the avaricious gleam sparkling in his pupils—a telltale sign that whatever these men had told or shown him, it had caught his interest in the worst way. The Goban merchant seemed more a curious onlooker, while the two mercenaries—and she grew more certain of their profession the closer she got to them—appeared ready to bolt at the first sneeze, their gazes never settling for long on one person or one spot, shifting constantly to scan the busy market’s bustling crowd as if searching for someone.
Hamod didn’t introduce her. As free traders, they came in contact with all sorts of people, honest and unsavory alike. None of the men had looked at Halani with anything resembling lust, but Hamod chose not to reveal anything about his niece.
He gestured to the silk cloth the one man held. “Take a look,” he said, “and tell me what you think.”
The mercenary-trader passed the ivory to Halani with a willingness that surprised her, dropping it into her open palm as if he found the thing repulsive to the touch. A rush of vibration shuddered up her arm, and she swallowed a gasp at the sensation. Cold, prickly, pulsing.
The bone’s weight surprised her as well. Its shape hinted that she held the end bit of a claw. She ran her thumb over its interior curve, careful not to slice her flesh on its outer edge or prick her finger on its pointed tip. Good gods! If merely a fragment, then whatever this once belonged to, the creature had been gigantic. Several more passes of her thumb revealed a new discovery. A shape not naturally made by bone growth was engraved into the claw’s flat plane at the spot where the arc was widest. Here, too, the sharpest sensations punctured her fingers like needles dipped in ice water. She held the claw bit up to the sun, seeing nothing. Wait. She peered a little closer. Was that a glow around the perimeter of the engraved shape? Halani blinked, and it was gone, though the needle pinpricks remained as strong.
“Our friends here say it’s from a draga.” That greedy light in Hamod’s gaze grew from a sparkle to a blaze the longer she held the bone fragment in her hand.
Despite the odd vibration still coursing through her hand and her arm, Halani only raised a doubtful eyebrow. “Is that so?”
How many times had she heard such a fanciful boast told by a trader working easy marks in a crowd eager to part with their coins? Real draga bones, even the fragments, were hard to come by, mostly sold to rich collectors.
Plenty of gossip ran the breadth and length of the Krael Empire that Empress Dalvila once had the complete skeleton of the fabled Golnar suspended from her bedchamber’s ceiling. Halani had never seen it for herself or known of anyone who had, but such notions made for good storytelling fodder. Now those rumors would remain only hearsay. Golnar’s bones had burned with the rest of the palace, even the legendary strength of draga-kind unable to withstand the destroying power of god-fire.
“It’s true,” the second mercenary-trader said in response to her skeptical look. “Draga through and through. If you can find some way to grind it into powder and sell it in small quantities, you’ll be rich. Draga bone is magic.”
“If that’s so, then why would you want to sell it to us, knowing you’ll get far less from a fellow trader than you would from a regular buyer?”
Hamod’s scrutiny switched from her to the two men, and he eyed them with the same skepticism. “Good question.”
She and Hamod had done this before, teamed up to work over a difficult seller: one playing the role of eager, unwary buyer, the other the reluctant miser unwilling to buy a dram of wine unless he could get the entire barrel it came from thrown in for the price. This time was different. Halani wondered why these two would want to give up something with significant value by selling it to a free trader, that notorious group of merchants who refused to serve the Guild and obtained their goods to sell by questionable means.
The two men shared a glance before the second one spoke. “We know others want it, but trade isn’t our calling. We’re hired swords who bought the draga bone for a good price from a man eager to get rid of it himself. Now we know why. Those who covet it will do anything to have it. It’s not worth it to us to keep it, and it’s getting in our way of hiring on for other work.”
In other words, they or the previous owner stole it, and someone with clout wanted it back. Halani estimated that half of what the man just spouted was truth and half was so much horseshit. At the moment she couldn’t quite tell which of the two was the greater. Once more she ran the pad of her thumb over the claw’s flat curve, distracted by the magic suffusing her body. She was surprised no one yet had commented on her hair standing on end. Every strand felt as if it were vibrating, and her eyelids twitched involuntarily.
The sensation was both strange and familiar. Familiar in that it carried the hum of earth magic, a tune all its own that shared some similarities with the music she sensed in everything born of soil, rock, and tree. Music that hummed to a lesser degree in the herbs she harvested for healing salves and in the grave dirt she dug when raiding a barrow. Those vibrations were gentle tones of varying pitch. This . . . this was a roar.
Hamod’s thin veneer of casual boredom began to fracture as Halani stood there, weighing the man’s words and stroking the ivory. The calculating gleam in his eye warned her that no matter what argument she used to convince him not to make the sale, it would fall on deaf ears.
I think we should return whatever this bone is to those who took it, walk away, and not look back.
They were the words she wanted to say but didn’t. Her uncle reveled in the embrace of the mistress that ruled him best—greed. Instead of sound argument, Halani employed a weapon she rarely used on the wily Hamod. She lied.
“It’s an interesting piece,” she said, adopting a regretful sigh. “But it looks like any old bone one might pick off a large animal carcass.”
The dismay on the men’s faces might have been comical were Halani not so focused on fooling her uncle. She held out the bone to the man who’d given it to her. He took a step back as if she offered him a live viper.
Hamod reached for the artifact, only to have Halani hold it away from him. She surprised herself, but something instinctive told her that to surrender it to him meant he wouldn’t give it up, no matter her false assurances that the bone was nothing special.
His eyes narrowed before he gave the two men a thin smile. “Give me a moment. Sometimes we differ on those items we think will interest our buyers.” That was no more true than her assertion about the bone fragment, but she didn’t argue when Hamod pulled her to the side out of earshot of the traders and gave them his back so they couldn’t see his scowl.
“Don’t lie to me, girl,” he said. “To them, fine. We can bargain for a better price if we insist it’s fit only for the midden heap.”
She’d never been able to fool Hamod. He was, and always would be, a master of mendacity.
“I’m sorry, Uncle.” She glanced down at the bone on its bed of silk. “Whatever creature this belonged to, no good can come from owning it. It has the feel of a lodestone about it. Its purpose is to lure someone or something to it.”
Hamod’s scowl melted away. “You learned all that just from holding it?” At her nod, a triumphant smile danced across his lips. “Then it’s definitely magical and should fetch a decent price.”
“Maybe,” she hedged. Her gaze settled on the two mercenaries waiting nearby. “But look at those men. You heard what they said. It’s coveted. Even if I didn’t sense anything from this piece, I’d wager it isn’t just coveted, it’s hunted, and they no longer want any part of that chase. Theirs is a desperate honesty. They’ve tried to sell it before and had no takers. Something about it is warning people away.” Hamod’s gleeful expression clouded with doubt, then cleared, and he shrugged.
“If it’s fake, I’ll bid low and grind the bone into powder. We’ll sell it as a cure for baldness, or you can make a cream. We’ll tout it to the crones trying to recapture their youth.” He chuckled at her disapproving glare. “Stop looking like a shriveled apple. You know as well as I that we’ve fed our group more than once on the backs of other people’s vanity.”
Halani hated it when he used practicality to justify some of his ethically questionable actions. “What if it is valuable? Bone from a truly rare creature?” The hum along her skin assured her that the bone was anything but ordinary.
Hamod’s eyes gleamed. “Then we count this our lucky day, and if someone else wants this pretty back, they can buy it or fight for it.” As free traders, their caravan was heavily armed, wary of strangers on the road, and its members unhesitating in defending themselves. But in this Hamod was wrong.
“We may not have the numbers to keep it from whoever is searching for it.”
Again, that maddening, unconcerned shrug. “Then we’ll deal with them if that day comes. I doubt it will, and I know more than a few people in Domora who’d be happy to part with a full purse to possess such an artifact to show off to their wealthy friends.” He held out a hand, crooking his fingers. “Now, hand it over so I can get to bargaining, and you can get back to the stall and help Gilene.”
As if uttering the woman’s name summoned it, a female voice bellowed above the noise of the crowd, bringing the market to a halt. “Azarion!” Halani turned toward the commotion, startled to see Gilene’s absent husband, Valdan, stride through the crowd toward the trader tables where Gilene manned their booth.
No longer the ragged, injured dye merchant Hamod’s caravan had come across on a dusty road at the edge of the forest, Valdan wore the trappings of a leader. Bearded and dressed in the garb of a Savatar horse nomad, he was still the handsome man Halani remembered. His piercing green gaze rested solely on Gilene, who stared back, eyes wide and bright with tears. Hamod used the distraction to snatch the bone fragment out of Halani’s hand and returned to the two skittish traders.