The McCanahan swallowed the cheap wine that had been chilled in a coil of refrigerated stil. He nodded. "I know a way."
It was on his lips to say more when his sidewise glance surprised a momentary gleam in the gentle brown eyes. He needed no psychiatrist to read that triumph for him, even though it was quickly veiled behind her curving lashes. Now why should a slave girl of the palace know that feeling because of what I said? he asked himself.
The McCanahan put his arm about the girl, drew her in against him. With his lips buried in the yellow mass of her hair, he whispered, "It ought to be worth a lot to the Senn to get that knowledge! With such a weapon they need never fear the sfarri again. They could cast them out! Even seek alliance with the Solar Combine!"
It was his last words that tensed the muscles across her soft back. Instantly, the muscles were relaxed, and she melted closer against him, her soft lips moving across his face to find his lips.
The McCanahan kissed her. Why not? But he was warned, and only a fool disregards a warning. And Kael McCanahan, as he drank from the scented lips of Slyss the slave girl, was even then congratulating himself that no McCanahan was ever a cursed gossoon.
He let her go after a while. She was a pleasant little thing, but she was no Flaith. He said, "Suppose I agree to trade my weapon for freedom from the High Mor? How do I know the Senn can guarantee my liberty?"
"I have the keys," she whispered. "Tonight I will come for you, to lead you through the dungeons, to the vaults below the dungeons, where the sea seeps in through solid rocks. No sfarran ever walks down there. It is a dead, damp place. But the Senn go there to hide from the sfarri. It is the one safe place on all Senorech. Slyss will take you there."
He lingered over her lips, close by the unlocked cell door, to bind their bargain. But when she was gone, he took to pacing his cell, his brows drawn together. She wants more than the body of Kael McCanahan, that one, he told himself. The weapon I possess, and me! Or am I playing the buffoon in thinking she was fond of me? He went back over their meetings and discovered to his chagrin that each of her moves seemed calculated. Like a sfarran! Cold, careful! Even her kisses lacked the fire such a woman should bring to them!
As the sun sank below the hills above Akkalan, the McCanahan rested. He was fresh when Slyss came to him on her bare feet, her key grating silently into the cell lock. "Slib, the jailer, lies drugged with wine," she told him. "He won't stop us."
She went quickly along the cell corridor ahead of him. At an intersection in the rock walls she slipped to the right, into dark shadows. He heard the rough grate of metal, and a section of the floor was rising and falling, as a balanced slab of rock fell back to expose a number of handhewn stone ledges that served as steps.