The Illyrian Adventure by Lloyd Alexander
Author:Lloyd Alexander
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00
CHAPTER 11
"I thought so," Vesper said. "I just wanted to make sure."
"Lincilla, how could you have known?" Nilo looked at her with a mixture of astonishment and admiration.
"I had to guess a lot, and the guesses turned out to be right," said Vesper. "Little things here and there. For one, you showed up at the hotel just when we needed a dragoman. A neat coincidence? It might have been. Or might not."
"It was not," admitted Nilo. "We knew of your arrival in Zenta. Two farenkis are not easily overlooked, especially when one of them is so charming. We soon learned your destination."
"At first, I wondered if you were the one who tried to kill me in the Old Town, coming back to finish the job. That didn't fit very well. You wouldn't have waited, you'd have done it right away. So, you weren't an assassin. And you certainly weren't a dragoman. "
"I was not a good one?"
Vesper smiled at him. "You were—well, you were very likeable. Otherwise, you were a disaster. You couldn't have been a real dragoman.
"A spy for the Zentans?" Vesper went on. "I doubted that. You were truly anxious to get out of town. For some important reason. Why didn't you just pick up and go? Then, just to see how it worked, I imagined what someone would do if he had to travel safely for a long distance. There were a lot of possibilities. Including being a dragoman for two farenkis who were under royal protection. That fit nicely, with Milan, Silvia, maybe some others, keeping an eye on things along the way. A cavalry escort that turned out to be Illyrian rebels. You had to be one of Vartan's people. So important? So valuable? Vartan himself.
"It was a good guess," Vesper added. "Then, just now, as soon as you came in, everybody stopped talking and eating, and they all turned to look at you as if nothing would happen until you got here.
"Don't worry, Nilo. I won't tell anyone. Neither will Brinnie."
I stood there too bewildered to speak, let alone tell Nilo's secret. Or Vartan's secret. He had changed so suddenly and completely. His whole bearing was different. He had an air of easy authority, as if long accustomed to being obeyed. His eyes were sharper and harder now that he had thrown off the guise of a feckless layabout. He looked a litde dangerous. I preferred him when he was feckless.
"One thing I still haven't figured out," said Vesper. "Who stabbed me?"
"I do not know," said Nilo, "and that, Lincilla, troubles me greatly."
Here, I broke in to say that a more immediate question was our getting back to Alba-Collia.
"And to Colonel Zalik?" said Nilo. "That would be unwise."
He drew a sheaf of papers from his jacket. "In Vitora, we took the opportunity to investigate the bimbashi 's office. We hoped to find information useful to us. We did. We also found these."
Vesper leafed through the papers which Nilo handed to her. "A receipt for our equipment—it got there the day before we did.
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