(eng) Patty Jansen - Return of the Aghyrians 02 by Trader's Honour (retail)

Author:Trader's Honour (retail) [Honour, Trader's]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 21

It was still mid-afternoon, but the light had turned ominous, reflected off a huge bank of clouds that gathered over the escarpment. Enveloped in greys and darker greys, cloud castles reached for the zenith of the sky. Filaments of white took turns to block one or both suns, casting ghostly half-shadows when only one sun vanished.

Mikandra went back to the guesthouse where Jocassa was no longer at the table in the courtyard. A few Mirani men she vaguely remembered from the party last night sat on the fountain's edge. They fell quiet when she came into the courtyard. One of them lifted his hand in tentative greeting. Oh no, they didn't trust her.

"Do you know where I can find the bathroom?"

One of them pointed. "Dunno that you call it a room."

Another man guffawed.

Mikandra went to the other side of the courtyard where he pointed. Behind the planter box and the fountain, she found an arch which led to yet another, smaller, courtyard. A couple of huge trees spread their branches over the entire space so that it was quite dark on the ground. In the middle of the courtyard was a steaming pool. A couple of people sat on a shelf that surrounded the pool perimeter under water. All of them were Coldi with thick fleshy arms and slicked-back metallic-looking hair. Their bodies looked white and distorted in the dark water.

"Uhm. Do you mind if I join you?"

None of them replied. Clearly they did mind. Or maybe they didn't understand Mirani. Well at least they wouldn't know the difference between a Mirani Endri and a Nikala and would care even less.

She turned away from the pool and stepped out of her hunting trousers and pulled her shirt over her head. The sweaty smell lingered in the air.

Under the eyes of the Coldi spectators, she slipped into the water.

She let the warmth seep into her while she lay back against the side of the pool which, admittedly, was hard and rough and not very comfortable.

The Coldi continued their conversation. Mikandra listened. Their dialect—somewhere from Asto but not Athyl—was hard to understand for someone who had only heard the archaic Trader dialect of Coldi.

Even with their clothes off but seated in the water, it was hard to figure each person's gender. There was very little difference in voice between men and women, and Coldi women didn't grow breasts until their first pregnancy.

She figured out that the group was talking about people in the guesthouse, not in a nice way. One person in the room smelled bad, apparently, and another made too much mess. Of course those stupid Mirani were at fault.

They clearly had no idea that she understood Coldi. She hesitated a few times, preparing Coldi words that she had never spoken aloud. But she said nothing, because she wasn't sure if she had the syntax right or whether the way she had learned Coldi grammar was specific to the Trader dialect, because it was definitely not the same as they spoke.

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