Page 11 of To Tame a Viking Warlord

"Peace be upon you, Ismail. You have let these good men warm your stall for me." She did not look at them. "I offered you thirteen a week ago. You will tell me now it is fifteen."

"It is fifteen. There is a Venetian coming this afternoon."

"There is always a Venetian coming." She let the smile reach her voice. "And when he comes and sees your goods still unsold at noon, he will offer you twelve, and you will take it, because I will have gone home and these good men to the harbor. You will have spent your whole day earning less than I offer you now. In gold. Before the sun is high."

One of the buyers understood he had lost, muttered, and rose and went.

"Thirteen and a half," Ismail said, "and you are robbing me."

"Thirteen and a half, and I send the next three men who ask me for goods to your stall and not the souk gate." She held out her palm over the scales. "And they will heed me because of my good name."

He sighed, nodded his head and the deal was done.

As she waited for him to gather the supplies, she overheard a conversation between two men one stall over, looking over ivory. She had marked them without seeming to when she sat down. Two foreigners. She deduced them as al-Habasha, perhaps Zagwe or Axumite from the manner of clothes and weaponry. The first was very tall, lean and dark, with a warrior's stillness. The second was closer to her age. He was fairer, his skin a burnished copper-gold. He wore fine plain cotton but his bearing was unmistakable. Both men had shotel swords at their side. But Samira deduced this was a personal guard and his high-born charge.

They thought no one near them understood their tongue, so they spoke freely. It was not Arabic, nor Berber. Then it struck her. They were speaking Amharic. She caught more of their conversation.

"We have been too long at this stall," the guard said. "You said we would look and leave. You are still looking and moving like an old man."

"I am considering my choices carefully."

"Can you consider faster before we melt in this heat?"

"Patience, Ajani." The younger man said. "Was it not you who taught me to reflect deeply before making rash decisions?"

"I meant in life and death matters, Li'uli Kato, but not over an ivory comb or leather purse!"

"But what if the comb is not of good quality and my grandmother is displeased with the gift?"

"Our nigišiti will be thrilled with whatever you choose, as long as it comes from you. What she will not be pleased about is if you are discovered hiding in the souk. Come away."

A silence. Then the younger man, lighter now: "You worry like an old woman, Ajani."

"I worry like a man who wishes to keep his head on his shoulders. Come."

Samira kept her eyes on the scales and her breathing even. She could not believe Prince Kato, the son of Queen Gudit, was indeed walking through the marketplace dressed like a common trader. But she could not dwell too long; she had to be back at the house before her father returned.

Samira sealed her goods under her own mark for the porter, rose with her knees stiff, and did not look at the two men again. When she gathered Tiziri and turned for the gate, the two men had already gone the other way.

She put them out of her mind. She had a longer walk than she liked and the morning was growing hotter.

They were halfway to the tanners' gate before the mark on her wrist began to burn and itch.

Samira did not break her stride. She adjusted her haik, and kept one hand firmly on her dagger, but in the turning of her head she caught him. A man in a gray djellaba, hood raised though the day was warm, standing at the mouth of a lane they had already passed. Not buying. Not looking at any of the hundred things a man might look at in a crowded street.

Looking directly at her.

"Tiziri. Do not look. We are being followed."

Tiziri's breath caught. "The gray robe. He was at Ismail's corner."

"You saw him too?" Samira asked.

"He was there when you closed the deal, Sayyida. He has been with us since the souk," Tiziri replied.

Since the souk. He had not found them by chance. He had known where she would be. The cold in her belly became something close to terror, because it meant that whatever her father feared already knew more of her than it had any right to know.

"Walk," she breathed. "Not too fast."