Liavek 4: The Players of Luck by Bull Emma & Hobb Robin & Frost Gregory & Brust Steven & Ford John M

Author:Bull, Emma & Hobb, Robin & Frost, Gregory & Brust, Steven & Ford, John M. [Bull, Emma]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Published: 2016-04-28T16:00:00+00:00

"The Well-Made Plan" by Emma Bull

THE YEAR WAS waning graciously, as years will in Liavek. Out of a jewel-box of seasons, late autumn brought a rich cascade of topaz mornings, carnelian afternoons, and opulent sapphire-blue evenings. On just such an evening early in the month of Fog, Lir Matean Koseth ola Presec, Margrave of Trieth, was strolling south on Park Boulevard, bound for the Tiger's Eye.

He was full of contrary, contradictory urges, and they fascinated him. His pace, for example: He had no appointments and the twilight was pleasant, almost narcotic. Yet he had to shorten his step constantly, or he would have been striding down the wide street, his embroidered black coat swirling around him in a self-made breeze.

The whitewashed walls of the Tiger's Eye were aglow with the last reflected light of the sky, its two front windows and open door golden with lamplight. The sight conjured its own set of contrary impulses, and these, too, he examined. Here was his destination, and it called to him as his own townhouse never did. Yet he also wanted to turn and saunter away, to come back tomorrow, perhaps. Now, why? Simple contrariness, perhaps, the desire to prove his independence to himself. But if that was all, why was there a school of darting minnows in his stomach?

At the door, he smelled a rich waft of jasmine, and envisioned suddenly what he might find inside—the shop's proprietor, back from her long buying trip, unpacking perfumed oils and incense and stacking them neatly on shelves. Her hair would still be bound in a scarf to keep the road dust out of it, but a strand would have escaped into her eyes, and she would brush it aside with the back of her wrist....

Koseth stepped into the doorway and saw, with a wave of irritation, nothing of the kind. Thyan, the shop assistant, was scooping dried jasmine from a jar into a cone of paper. There was none of the commotion and clutter that attended a return from a buying trip, and, most telling, no proprietor.

"She's not back yet?" he asked, to be sure.

Thyan frowned judiciously at the level of jasmine in the cone, producing two neat creases in the brown-black skin between her brows. "Hullo, Your Grace. You mean Snake?"

"Yes, I mean Snake."

"Not yet, but I expect her back any day."

"You've said that since last Rainday." Then it was his turn to frown. "She's not overdue, is she?"

Thyan looked at him oddly and twisted the paper cone closed. "No. She's doing a route through the Waste, and there's a lot that can come up."

He knew that, of course. He had spent years in the desert that lay between Liavek and Tichen, before his title came to him and he had to return home and tend it. What he felt, he decided, was restlessness brought on by the season's change, the loose-ended feeling of being between the End of Wine and Festival Week.

"Hullo!" called a large, rough-edged male voice from the back of the shop.

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