Parl Dro stepped back, a sloping lame man’s step, but perfectly timed, and the blade carved the air an inch from his side. He was somewhat above average height, and the girl not tall. She had been aiming as close to his heart as she could.
“Now will you take yourself off!” she cried, in a panic apparently at her own intentions as much as the missed stroke. “You’re not welcome.”
“Obviously.”
He stood beyond her range, continuing to look at her.
“What do you want?” she spat at last.
“I told you. A drink of water.”
“You don’t want water.”
“How odd. I thought I did. Thank you for putting me right.”
She blinked. Her long lashes were almost gray, her eyes a hot, dry tindery color, nearly green, not quite.
“Don’t try word games with me. Just go. Or I’ll call the dogs.”
“You mean those dogs I’ve heard snarling and barking ever since I came through the gate.”
At that, she flung the knife right at him. It was a wide cast, after all; he judged as much and let it come by. It brushed his sleeve and clattered against the side of the well. He had had much worse to deal with a few days back.
“Too bad,” he said. “You should practice more.”
He turned and walked off and left her poised there, staring. At the gate he hesitated and glanced around. She had not moved. She would be shocked, but also dreaming that she had got rid of him. It was too soon for that.
“Perhaps,” he called, “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
Leaving her knife lying by the well, she flashed back into the house and slammed the door. In the stillness, he heard the sound of bolts.
He pulled the hood over his head.
His face was grim and meditative as he turned again onto the road and started toward the village.
The village was like a hundred others. One broad central street which branched straight off the road. The central street had a central watercourse, a stream, natural or connived, that carried off the sewage, and in which strange phosphorescent fish swam by night. Stepping stones crossed the water at intervals, and at other intervals alleys as narrow as needles ran between the houses. Most of the buildings facing on the main thoroughfare were shops, their open fronts nocturnally fenced in by locked gates. Houses on the thoroughfare had blind walls, keeping their windows to the rear, save for the rare slit that dropped a slender bar of yellow gold onto the ground.
The three inns, however, made up in light and noise what the village, mute and dark amid its grain fields and orchards and the vineyard scent of late summer, otherwise lacked.
The first inn Dro bypassed. It was too loud and largely too active for his requirements. The second inn was but two doors away, and plainly served also as the village brothel. There had been enough trouble with women. As he went by, a sly-eyed curly girl shouted from the open entrance the immemorial invitation, and, when he ignored her, screamed an insult connecting virility, or lack of it, to a limp. That made him smile a moment. The final inn stood on a corner formed by the central street and an adjacent alley. It too was loud and bright, but to a lesser degree. He found the writing on the sign was virtually illegible. The door was also shut, as if to say: I am not actually inviting any of you to enter.
When Dro pushed the door wide enough to be admitted, the entire roomful of occupants turned to see who was coming in. Their reaction on learning was disturbed, but vague.