"And Transtime Tours is fitting Vall
out with a bag of tools; he's going to do repair work and carpentry."
"Oh, good; you'll be welcome anywhere," Zara, the sculptress, said.
"They're always glad to entertain a singer, and for people who do the
fine decorative work they do, they're the most incompetent practical
mechanics I've ever seen or heard of. You're going to travel from
village to village?"
"Yes. The cover-story is that we're lovers who have left our village
in order not to make Vall's former wife unhappy by our presence,"
Dalla said.
"Oh, good! That's entirely in the Dwarma romantic tradition," Bronnath
Zara approved. "Ordinarily, you know, they don't like to travel. They
have a saying: 'Happy are the trees, they abide in their own place;
sad are the winds, forever they wander.' But that'll be a fine
explanation."
Thalvan Dras, the big man with the black beard and the long red coat
and cloth-of-gold sash who lounged in the host's seat, laughed.
"I can just see Vall mending pots, and Dalla playing that mandolin and
singing," he said. "At least, you'll be getting away from police work.
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