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Caleb made a disgusted sound. “Casanova’s her creature. He’s also petrified of ruining that pretty face of his. Even if he didn’t turn traitor, we can’t rely on him to do a damned—”
“Not Casanova!” I said, because I pretty much agreed with that sentiment. “Pritkin.”
Caleb looked at me like I’d finally tipped the scales, like I’d been hovering in his mind between eccentric and downright nuts, and he’d finally decided where the arrow pointed. “And just how,” he said heavily, “do you expect us to reach him? The odds were bad enough before; any minute now, we’ll have the whole city on our asses!”
“But the city will expect us to be hiding, if we figured it out, or hanging around the souk if we didn’t. They won’t expect us to be going after Pritkin.”
“Yes, yes, that’s probably true. And there’s a reason for that,” Caleb hissed. And then he abruptly pulled up the hood on my robe.
“What—”
“Don’t look behind you, but a bunch more guards just ran into the souk.”
So much for any lingering faith I had in Rian. Goddamnit! If she had a neck, I’d wring it, I thought, glaring through the space under his arm at a bunch of guards who were pulling off veils and jerking robes apart and generally acting like none of the people had any damned rights at—
My thoughts screeched to a halt, just like something else had recently. Something else that was still poking out of a ruined shop front. Because around here, you were either a have or a have-not, and it looked like the haves could do whatever the hell they damned well pleased.
And nobody questioned it.
“Come on,” I told Caleb. “I have an idea.”
• • •
“You’d think we’d get more for a fine camel thing than that,” I grumbled at Caleb, ten minutes later.
“Ever since the XP-38 came out, they’re just not in demand.”
“What?”
“You don’t get cultural references, do you?”
I frowned. “I get them. You just have weird ones.”
“That was from Star Wars. It wasn’t weird.”
“I’ve seen Star Wars and that wasn’t in it.”
“In the first movie, when they’re in the desert?” he asked. “When they have to sell Luke’s speeder?”
“Oh. You mean the old ones.”
“The old ones? The old ones? You mean the only good—” He saw my expression. “Never mind. What did we need more money for?”
“So I could get an outfit like yours,” I said, looking enviously at the rich green woolly fabric of his long, caftanlike garment. It was warm. It was attractive. It covered his ass.
“What’s wrong with the one you have on?”
“Other than the fact that I look like a hooker?”
I tugged at the back of the tight pink panties I was wearing, but it didn’t help. They were still at least two sizes too small and riding up my butt. But they’d been the closest thing the merchant we picked had that we could afford. And we hadn’t had time to comparison shop.
Of course, it didn’t matter if you were in a nice, all-encompassing robe like Caleb’s. It was a little more problematic when it came to sexy slave girl attire, particularly when the only thing I had on besides the ass-baring panties was a pair of diaphanous, slit-up-to-heaven harem pants and a top that wasn’t covering as much as my bra had. But it was the pants that were really bothering me for some reason.
“You look like I Dream of Jeannie without the ponytail,” Caleb said, helping not at all.
“I think it looks like they copied it from a low-rent Aladdin,” I snapped. “Along with everything else.”
“If there was copying, I’d say it was the other way around,” Caleb said, glancing a little longingly at the buildings we were passing. The people here might not have wood, but they’d used what they had to full advantage, carving lintels, columns, stairs, even elaborate grills over their windows, all out of the same red stone.
