“Would you like me to go get them? The bones and broth, I mean?” she offered.
“Oh goodness, no! You couldn’t carry them—they’re chunga bones—too big and heavy for a female to life!” Keelah exclaimed. “But if you could please go tell Res. Tizlah that we’re ready for them, she’ll have two of the guards carry them over on a roasting pan. Do you think you can find her?”
“I’m sure I can,” Bobbi said confidently. “She has to be somewhere in the kitchen, right?”
“Either there or back in the pantry,” Keelah told her and pointed to the far end of the large, crowded room where there was a separate storage room. “If you can’t find her out here, she’ll most likely be in there.”
“I’ll find her,” Bobbi said. “You just keep stirring the bulbs.”
She left her new friend and went looking through the kitchen. Saurian women were everywhere—chopping and stewing and mixing and making. There were clouds of steam coming from boiling pots and pans and many different cuts of meat dressed in different ways for roasting. It was shaping up to be a true carnivore’s feast, Bobbi thought.
In one corner she saw the Ornith eggs lined up neatly in their long packing crates—apparently they would be cooked last. Someone had managed to get a twelfth egg too, so there were an even dozen. Bobbi wondered what hapless Ornith they had taken it from and hoped that she hadn’t been hurt, whoever she was.
Though she found the lizard people of Saurous interesting, her heart was still back on Avria Pentaura, with the kind and thoughtful residents of the little village she’d called home for the past six months. That was hardly surprising, though, since she had only been kidnapped yesterday, she thought.
She was just about to give up on finding Res. Tizlah, who she couldn’t seem to locate anywhere, when one of the Saurian male guards grabbed her by the shoulder.
“Hey, you’re the little mammalian female Rep. Dragon Claimed, right?”
“Yes I am and you’d better take your hands off me if you don’t want him to chop them off,” Bobbi said icily.
“Sorry!” He withdrew his black-clawed, six-fingered hand at once. “I was just told that you’re wanted in the pantry.”
“By Res. Tizlah?” Bobbi asked hopefully. She remembered Keelah saying that if she couldn’t find the Saurian woman anyplace in the kitchen she ought to look there.
“In the pantry,” the guard repeated, jerking his head, his forked tongue flickering. “Go on, you’re wanted.”
“Fine,” Bobbi said shortly. She walked past him and then past a wall that held an enormous oven which seemed to be roasting an entire carcass of some animal that had to be as big as a Bison. Past the oven, which was giving off a sweltering heat that was even too hot for Bobbi in this freezing world, she saw a door that seemed to lead into a storeroom of some kind.
There—that must be the pantry, she thought to herself. I’m sure I’ll find her there.
“Res. Tizlah?” she called, as she walked through the door and into a room filled with row upon row of shelves filled with dry and canned ingredients. “I’m here. The bullah bulbs are ready for the bones and broth. They—”
But the words died on her lips as a tall, scaly figure stepped out from behind one of the many shelves. It was a Saurian, all right, but it wasn’t Res. Tizlah.
“Hello, little female,” hissed Zerlix. “So nice of you to come.”
21
“Where is he? Where the fuck did he go?” Dragon turned in a circle, heedless of the bodies of the fallen Clan members around him.
There had been a fight—a needless and pointless one, as far as he was concerned. Zerlix had started it by insulting the leader of the main crew of the Poison Daggers—a Clan who the Crimson Blades had previously shared an alliance with. But Dragon sincerely doubted their alliance would last now—in fact, they’d be lucky if they didn’t go to war.
Normally, when the crews of two rival Clans met on the boarders of their territories, they simply nodded silently and passed each other. At most, they might exchange a word or two of greeting. But the moment Zerlix had seen the Poison Daggers crew, he had seemed intent on picking a fight.
“Hey, Lavish!” he’d shouted at the head of the crew. “Get off our territory!”
The other male had bristled, of course.
“Old Town is Poison Daggers territory,” he’d replied stiffly. “The last treaty says so.”
“Oh yeah?” Zerlix had crossed the street in question and gotten right up in the other crew leader’s face. “Well I say Old Town is Crimson Blades territory. So get the fuck off our turf.”
Dragon had been appalled, though of course he had followed his Big Brother. As the second in command, he had to back up the crew leader, even if he was being an asshole. Still, he had tried to stop things before they escalated.