The small buildings were nearly uniform, all cubes three meters high and maybe eight meters wide and ten meters deep, with a door on the right side, and a slit across the remainder of the front of each building. M’kar watched through several sets of drac eyes as people opened the door to step into a building with their burdens. They came back out a few moments later empty-handed, and pushed up on the top portion of the slit in the front wall. Support bars dropped down as the top half lifted upward, and it turned into an awning, extending out into the clearing.
It's an open air market, Thyal
said, after M’kar watched a dozen more buildings be opened, and bundles and
crates unloaded and shared the images with him.
It’s an illegal market.
I still don’t understand why Tress thought she
smelled hooples, though, he said, after they watched a few
proprietors set about assembling racks outside their shops.
M’kar didn’t respond. She focused on a heavy-set
figure that had emerged from the jungle. She sent the dracs up for
reconnaissance and backtracked him, discovering a path through the jungle. That
path led down past the place where Tress had caught the scent of hooples. M’kar
held still, watching the figure who was little more than a dark silhouette.
Then he stepped into the light and paused,
turning from side to side to study the bustle of the half-assembled market.
Is that --? Thyal made a mental sound
that equated with choking.
Jorono Cynes. Only the need for silence
kept M’kar from spitting. That explains the hoople smell. Tress either
caught a glimpse of him, or she heard him -- he talks to himself constantly,
he’s talking to himself now. She didn’t know what she heard or saw, but it
translated into hooples in her head.
How had Cynes escaped custody and the sentence
that guaranteed he stay under strict watch and unable to travel the galaxy for
the rest of his days? Had he gotten his hands on hooples, despite all the
precautions taken to keep hooples from falling into anyone’s hands, much less
his?
What are you going to do? Is it going to be fun? Thyal’s
chuckle held all the mischief of their childhood adventures and exploits.
I certainly hope so.
M’kar left the dracs patrolling the sky while she
headed back up the slope. The first thing to do was let Tress and Jorgan know
they had done very good, then send them back to the camp. She sent Barroo back
to Decker, requesting he send Spitfire to escort the children. M’kar paused a
moment to be grateful Treinna hadn’t yet sent Moonrise back down to the camp to
spend the night with Tress. Explaining what her daughter was doing right now
might be tricky. Especially if she had to calm a panicky drac who only knew
that this situation wasn’t what her Human parent expected. M’kar swore she
could hear Decker bellow when he read the last part of her message, which she
had scratched into the plasti-strip, because there was no code to stand for the
most important words in the message: Cynes here.
Spitfire popped in, spitting and snarling, but quietly. Barroo brought M’kar a plasti-strip with two words code punched into it: Wait. Coming.
“Thought you might want to join the fun,” she whispered, and gestured for Tress and Jorgan to obey Spitfire and go. She settled down where she could comfortably sit and close her eyes and really concentrate on what the dracs were showing her of the market as it opened. She saw enough details that she had a plan by the time Decker marched up the slope to join her, seething and yet somehow silent with his intensity.
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