'Didn't I hear word of some of them in these waters?' Dev wolfed down sweet shreds of pale meat and red slivers of pepper fruits. 'Seeing what they can buy or steal before some warlord burns their boats to the waterline?'

'Barbarians? No, someone's steering you astray.' The old woman stowed the chain securely deep within the breast of her many-layered dusty grey dress. 'They never come this late in the dry season. They burn redder than boiled crabs in the sun, die of it even.'

So whatever was stirring up the local domains, it wasn't opportunists from the north. Dev tried again. 'I heard Mahaf Coru's keeping a weather eye out for some kind of trouble.' He nodded in the general direction of the warlord's compound.

'He always does that.' The old woman busied herself peeling fleshy white roots to add to her cauldron.

Dev handed back the bowl and stood up. 'I'll see you again, mother.' The old woman cooked a savoury stew, even if she had precious little information to season it.

The next clump of trees sheltered a poet resolutely declaiming a florid description of setting out to sea. Dev recognised an epic he'd heard many times before.

'Perhaps I will float on the sea of love. The surging wave will lift me up, as the sinking waters will pull me down. Now rising, now falling, the deep will take me to that ocean without a shore.'

Unimpressed, the audience was struggling not to sink into sleep beneath the combined weights of food and the oppressive, humid heat. A hook-nosed man snored abruptly, interrupting the poet's speculations as to where the currents might take him and his travelling companions.

Dev shook his head. The entire audience would be asleep before this inept bard with his monotonous mumble told how a failed romance had driven him to voyaging, lamenting his beloved's loss along with the fatigue of travel. And the poet would be going hungry. No one would offer him a noon meal in return for such a lacklustre performance.

Amused, Dev savoured the lingering taste of pepper in his own mouth and moved on. The better poets would appear with the dusk, courted with the finest food the locals could offer. True artists would work new variations on the time-honoured themes of the travel epic, favourite metaphor for life's journey. Some would have musicians and dancers to accompany them. Others would have apprentices displaying scrolls of exquisite illustrations to the awestruck crowds.

They were welcome to such turgid entertainments. Dev preferred those performed away from the main throng, in the shadows of a small fire coloured with handfuls of dramatic powders, their verses enhanced by one or two scantily clad dancers, a well-muscled assistant ready to slap down anyone getting too close. Dev looked around. There'd been a one-handed poet, last time he'd visited this trading beach, a remarkably inventive lad for lascivious stanzas detailing the consolations a traveller might find to replace the woman he'd left behind.

Dev nodded slowly to himself. The one-handed poet had been summoned to entertain Mahaf Coru's guards every night, him and his accommodating dancing girls. Mahaf Coru and his wives might not be admitting any traders but a poet entertaining their guards might pick up some useful gossip.

Who might know if the boy was still hereabouts? Ifal, that's who. Come to that, Ifal always had the latest news. Dev paused and looked towards the sea shimmering in the sun. He shaded his eyes with a leathery hand and tried to distinguish between the distant pennants hanging limply at the mastheads of the lazily bobbing boats.

A lively bustle at his back startled him and he whirled around. One hand went to the Yava-styled dagger at his belt but no one was coming for him. The commotion was some way inland, where the spinefruit trees gave way to a grassy bowl ringed with the sprawling, flat-roofed houses that the Mahaf islanders favoured. The domain's elders, village spokesmen and the like would be waiting beneath the shade of their wide eaves, welcoming those traders who solicited their interest with cool fruit juices and hard bargaining. Curious, Dev hurried forward, easing past people obsequiously bowing and retreating; islanders and visitors here to trade mingling with travelling entertainers clutching their scrolls or juggling balls.

The crowd was melting away in front of a tall, armoured man. The sun shone so brightly on his chainmail, Dev winced to look at him. Rock crystal glittered on the brow band of his helm and the gold mounts on the scabbards of his twin swords flashed diamond fire. An arresting woman strode along the path her body slave was clearing. Lean and as tall as her attendant, she wore a brocaded white tunic over gauzy trousers. Her tightly plaited hair was covered with an iridescent scarf worked in silver and gold thread, gleaming like a butterfly's wing. She swept the trailing end back over her shoulder with one hand laden with silver rings, bracelets studded with chrysolite sliding down her smoothly oiled forearm. A rope of crystal drops was wound in tight coils around the base of her slender throat.

'Tarita Mahaf.' Some woman identified the noble lady to an ignorant visitor. 'Mahaf Coru's third and most recent wife.'

'Born sister to Yava Dirha,' added another of the gaggle of women, eyes wide. 'She was wife to Kithir Arcis before divorcing him.'

'Why did she do that?' wondered a fresh-faced girl.

'That's no one's business but her own,' a woman who could only be her mother said repressively.

Dev stood behind the women so he looked as if he belonged with them, and stared at Tarita Mahaf with the same eagerness as the rest. She had a wide reputation as a woman not to cross as well as an enviable network of alliances in her own right. At the moment, she had the air of a woman with a purpose. That had to have some bearing on Mahaf Coru's concerns. This day just got more and more interesting.

The noble woman's slave called out to a pale-skinned, clean-shaven man who bowed low with an engaging smile. A darker, heavyset man behind him set an iron-bound chest of black wood down on the bare earth. The smaller man promptly unrolled the gaily patterned rug he'd been carrying and laid it over the chest, sitting comfortably down. His companion took a step backwards, a club of dark wood with more iron studding than the chest sloped casually over one shoulder. Tarita's Mahaf's swordsman walked around the seated trader in a slow circle, his forbidding scowl deterring anyone from coming closer. The dutiful crowd retreated a few more paces.

Ignoring them all, Tarita Mahaf spoke briefly to the man sitting on the chest. The smaller man's smile widened. He stood up, snapping his fingers to his club-wielding companion as he did so. The big man caught up the chest once again and the pair of them followed as the warlord's lady turned to stride back towards the unseen compound and its closely guarded secrets.

'What does Tarita Mahaf want with him?' wondered the pretty girl.

'That's Ifal, the gem trader,' said her mother thoughtfully. 'There's been talk of marriage negotiations with Nor Zauri. Perhaps one of the girls needs bridal jewels.'

Dev doubted it. That wasn't the kind of thing Ifal traded in. He allowed the speculating throng to carry him along to the shade of some spinefruit trees. Casually disengaging himself from the chattering women, he yawned ostentatiously and lay down in a dry hollow between two gnarled roots. The bustle of excitement was dying back all around as people returned to their previous indolence beneath the burden of the day's heat.

Noting a spot of grease from the old woman's stew on his tunic, Dev rubbed his thumbnail across it. Lying back, he draped his arm over his face, for all the world like a weary traveller shading his eyes from the sun. Unseen, he focused all his attention on the oily smear gleaming on his thumbnail.