Lords of Rainbow by Vera Nazarian

gaze of the one called Elas momentarily touch upon her.
    Other conversations around the dinner tables had long since broken off into their own private topics.
    Ranhé, who saw everything, knew that the man Elas was aware of her also, as he too had been aware of all. They were both quite alike in that respect. From where she sat, Ranhé saw him engaged in quiet, seemingly oblivious conversation with his aunt and cousin. She watched the movements of his hands as he would sometimes gesture, the fingers and jewels of the rings caught on orange fire; the way he moved his head lightly, and the line of his profile against the blackness of hair. There was a streak of pallor in that hair, a pale albino lock.
    She had not seen him so closely in the silver dusk. He had been a shifting chameleon, and now she found him better defined. She recalled visual flashes of memory of how he had fought in the whirling mist of the clearing seething with Bilhaar. And then she contrasted the images with the present, his calm poise. . . .
    Dinner was over, and guests were beginning to rise. A servant brought out hot mulled wine to those who could afford it. Nilmet did not decline the good drink, as he watched two men head upstairs to sleep.
    Before all had retired for the night, Elas rose from his seat and announced loudly that he wanted to hire a couple of men to travel with them to the City. “I need a driver,” he said, while Ranhé chose not to look his way. “And another to ride guard with me. Someone who is willing to fight, if need be. I want no repeat of what took place earlier today. And, I will pay well.”
    Elas had glanced around the room as he was saying these words, and most lingered, considering his offer. He had seen that freewoman sitting at one of the farther tables, the one he thought he’d never encounter again, and wondered now what she would do. He had mentioned nothing of her part in the incident to anyone here. And neither had she.
    She was much younger, plain-looking now in the light, with no heroic mystery of silver evening shadows to surround and cloak her. Indeed, how plain she was! There was even something vaguely repulsive about the unkempt lines of her face. And her eyes, which he remembered as almost inhuman with something , some essence, he now couldn’t even catch for one moment. His first impression of her in the night—so sexless that consequently it was easy for him to accept, even then, that she was a woman and not a youth—was now simplified by the light of the monochrome. All otherworldliness was gone. Elas had heard of women like her, upon occasion, who chose to live outside the normal ways of men and women. Freewoman she was indeed.
    And that, besides other things, meant that she had real skills to maintain her alienation. At least one such skill, that of the sword, he had himself witnessed.
    He watched the rest of the room, and thought, You are all cowards. Even an offer of a reward cannot cure you.
    “ No thanks, my lord,” said one man, reinforcing his thoughts, breaking the silence. Others began nodding, muttering something incomprehensible, and started again to disperse.
    A smile of derision gathered at the corners of Elasand’s mouth. “Fifty gold dahr ,” he said, “to the driver. Seventy to the guard.”
    Everyone paused once more. Nilmet, from where he sat, sucked in his breath, saying to himself mockingly, “Well, old Nilmet Vallen, now would be as good time as any to change professions, eh?” And he chuckled. The sum was a small fortune.
    The fingers of Ranhé’s right hand drummed faintly on the tabletop. She half turned to Nilmet, saying lightly, “My friend, this may well be the one good reason to abandon philosophy. Go instead, and be well hired.”
    Elas glanced quickly at her, but once again she eluded a direct gaze.
    The military guildsmen stood frowning, looking from one to the other. “Well,” one said, “I suppose I might be able to drive for you, m’lord, for fifty