Dagger (мир воров)

by David Drake

  He was probably fourteen years old or so. He looked younger, but bad diet pinched and stunted the faces of those born here into permanent childhood.

  "Now the others," chirped a little voice. "Do not kill a snake and leave its tail!"

  The caravan master was on his knees. He did not recall closing his eyes, but he opened them now. The man with the staff was on his feet again and straightening his disordered cape. The manikin was back on his shoulder, strutting proudly with hands on hips.

  "You," said Samlor very distinctly. "Shit it in or you'll join 'em."

  The little figure yelped and disappeared again.

  Samlor, Star, and the stranger were alone with the dying youth. The other two toughs had disappeared down the alley, and no one else seemed to have entered the passage behind the caravan master. There were voices from within the taproom, deep and hectoring, but Samlor didn't care enough to try to understand the words.

  His niece, shivering also, minced over to him without looking down and put her arms around Samlor's shoulder. "I'm sorry you hurt your ear, Uncle," she said in a voice that trembled with the child's attempts to control it. "I shouldn't have-"

  She hugged him harder. "But I thought I could climb up from the bench when it was dark and I didn't know where you were-" Her words tumbled out like flotsam in the current of the sobs wracking her little body.

  "- and the, those men came and 1 couldn't do anything!"

  "You did fine, darling," the Cirdonian muttered. He encircled the child with his left arm, careful that the point of his push dagger was turned outward. He couldn't put it away until he cleaned it-as his right hand was cleaning the watered steel of the longer knife on the pantaloons of the boy whose breathing had ceased in a pair of great shudders. "But you've gotta listen to me, or really bad things could happen."

  The blade of the long dagger showed a nick midway up on edge, but it had come through the struggle at least as well as any other knife was likely to have done. Samlor tried to sheathe it and found the new blade was a trifle too broad near the tip to fit in the scabbard meant for the knife it replaced.

  He slid it beneath his belt instead; wiped the push dagger; and rose with that miniature weapon in his right hand while his left arm guided Star behind him again.

  He thought he recognized the man who was fingering his staff now that his cape was rearranged.

  "Who would you be, my friend?" Samlor asked without hostility or any other motion.

  "My name is Khamwas," the fellow said in a cultured voice that tried to be calm. The peak of his hood must have added several inches to his height, because he was clearly shorter than the caravan master as well as being much more slightly built. "I'm a stranger here in your city."

  The manikin silently reappeared on Khamwas' shoulder. The tiny features were unreadable in the dim light, but the figure's pose was apprehensive.

  "Did you have a friend in that tavern?" asked the caravan master softly. When his right thumb turned to indicate the wall of the Vulgar Unicorn, the point of the push dagger winked knowingly toward Khamwas' eyes. "A brother, maybe?"

  Reaching out on a sudden whim, Samlor jerked open the other man's cape. He knew the body he'd thrown ahead of him through the tavern window was dead, but the faces were so much alike. .

  There were no bloodstains on this man's clothes and the garments themselves were different-though of a not dissimilar fashion. A linen tunic bared Khamwas' right shoulder but covered most of his chest, and the belt that cinched it at the waist was of dark brocade, red or blue- certainly not gold.

  "I beg your pardon," Khamwas said, touching his cape closed again with cautious dignity. "I have no brothers, and I don't know anyone in this city. I'm a scholar from a far country, and I've come to ask a favor here from a man named Setios."

  "Uncle, that-" blurted Star, catching herself before Samlor's free hand could waggle a warning.

  "A bird who flies to the nest of another," chirped the manikin sententiously, "will lose a feather."

  "What in hell is that?" asked the caravan master deliberately, pointing at the manikin with his right index finger. The bodkin-bladed push dagger parallelled the gesturing finger as if by chance.

  The manikin eeped and cowered. Khamwas reached across to his right shoulder with his cupped hand, as if to shield and stroke the little creature simultaneously.

  "He does no harm, sir," the self-styled scholar replied calmly. "I-when I was younger, you understand-prayed to certain powers for wisdom. They sent me this little fellow instead. His name is Tjainufi."

  The manikin stared balefully at Khamwas, but his tiny arm reached out to pat the hand protecting him. "A fool who wants to go with a wise man," he said, "is a gooSe who wants to go with the slaughter knife."

  Samlor blinked. He was confused, but that probably didn't matter, not compared to a dozen other things. "You know my name, then?" he said, harshly again, sure that Khamwas had to have some connection with the stranger in the tavern. A sorcerer who knew your name had the first knot in a rope of power to bind you. .

  "Sir, I know no one in your city," Khamwas repeated, drawing himself up and planting the staff firmly before him with his hands linked on it. "I have a daughter the age of your niece, so I-tried, I should say, to intervene when she seemed to be in difficulties."

  He paused. For an instant his staff glowed again. The grain of the wood made ripples in the phosphorescence, and a haze of light wrapped Khamwas' hands like a real fog.

  Star reached past her uncle and touched the staff.

  The glow flickered out as Khamwas started, but a tinge of blue clung to the child's fingers as she withdrew them. Samlor did not swear, because words had power-especially at times like these. His left hand caressed his niece's hair, offering human contact when he could not be sure what help, if any, the child required.

  If Khamwas' toying had done any harm, he would be fed his liver on the point of a knife.

  Star giggled while both men watched her with fear born of uncertainty. She opened her fingers slowly and the glow between their tips grew and paled like the sheen of an expanding soap bubble. Then it popped as if it had never been.

  Khamwas let out his breath abruptly. "Sir," he said to the caravan master, "I didn't realize. Forgive me for intruding in your affairs."

  Tjainufi, who had disappeared when Star lifted light from the staff, now waggled an arm at Khamwas and said, "Do not say, 'I am learned. Set yourself to become wise."

  Khamwas would have stepped by and continued up the alley, but Samlor restrained him with a gesture that would have become contact if the scholar had not halted. "You saved Star from a bad time before I got here," he said. "And likely you saved me, besides distracting the little bastards. My name's Samlor nil Samt." He sheathed the little dagger behind his collar. "You and I need to talk."

  "All right, Master Samlor," agreed the other man, though the way his lips pursed showed that the suggestion was not one he would have made himself. He gestured up the passageway, the direction from which the Cirdonian had come, and added, "There are more suitable places to discuss matters than here, I'm certain."

  "No," said Samlor flatly, "there's not."

  It wasn't worth his time to explain that the direction in which Khamwas was headed would be a no-go area for at least the next hour. The passageway was narrow enough to be defended by one man, and both flanks were protected by masonry that would require siege equipment to breach. If their luck were really out, they could be attacked from both directions simultaneously, but that risk was better than being trapped in a cul-de-sac with no bolthole.

  Given the nature of Sanctuary, this was probably the safest place within a league in any direction.

  "What do you know about Setios?" the caravan master demanded, no more threatening than was implicit in the fact that he had already demonstrated his willingness and ability to kill.

  Star was squatting, her skirts lifted and wrapped around her thighs to keep the hem from lying in the muck. A tiny glow spun
within the globe of her hands as she cooed. Its color was more nearly yellow than the blue which had washed Khamwas' staff.

  The glow was reflected faintly by the eyes of the dead youth.

  Khamwas' face worked in something between a grimace and a moue of embarrassment as he watched the child. "Ah," he said to Samlor. "That is, ah-are you. .?"

  The caravan master shook his head, glad to find that the question amused him rather than arousing any of the other possible emotions. "On a good day," he said, "I might be able to recite a spell without stumbling over the syllables- if somebody wrote 'em out for me really careful." That was an exaggeration, though not a great one,

  "My sister, though," he added, embarrassed himself for reasons the other man should not be able to fathom, "that was more her line."

  To the extent that anything besides sex was Samlane's line.

  "I see," said Khamwas, and he continued to glance down at the child even as he returned to the earlier question. "I don't know Setios at all," he explained, "but I know- I've been told by, well-"

  He shrugged. Samlor nodded grimly; but if this fellow called himself scholar rather than wizard, he at least recognized that the latter was a term of reproach to decent men.

  "Serve your god, that he may guard you," said Tjainufi, stroking his master's-could Khamwas be called that? – right ear.

  "He has," Khamwas went on after the awkward pause, "a stele from my own land, from Napata-"

  "Of course," Samlor interrupted, placing the stranger at least. "The Land of the River."

  "The river," Khamwas agreed with a nod of approval, "and of the desert. And in the desert, many monuments of former times-" he paused again, gave a gentle smile " – greater times for my people, some would say, though I myself am content."

  "You want to-retrieve," said Samlor, avoiding the question of means, "a monument that this Setios has. Is he a magician?"

  "I don't know," said Khamwas with another shrug. "And I don't need the stele, only a chance to look at it. 'And, ah, Samlor-?"

  The caravan master nodded curtly to indicate that he would not take offense at what he assumed would be a tense question.

  "I will pay him well for the look," the Napatan said. "It's of no value to him-not for the purpose I intend it- without other information. It will give me the location of a particular tomb, which is significant to me for other reasons."

  The light in Star's hands was growing brighter, throwing the men's shadows onto the wall of the alley. Khamwas' face looked demonically inhuman because it was being illuminated from below.

  Samlor touched his niece's head. "Not so much, dearest," he murmured. "We don't want anybody noticing us here if we can help it."

  "But-" Star began shrilly. She looked up and met her uncle's eyes. The light shrank to the size of a large pearl, too dim to show anything but itself.

  "She didn't know how to do that before," said Samlor, as much an explanation to himself as one directed toward the other man. "She picks things up."

  "I see," said Khamwas, and maybe he did. "Well."

  He shook himself, to settle his cape and to settle himself in his resolve. "Well, Master Samlor," the Napatan continued, "I must be on." He nodded past Samlor toward the head of the alley.

  "Not that way," said the caravan master wryly, though he did not move again to block the other man.

  "Yes, it is," Khamwas replied with a touch of astrin-gence. He stiffened to his full height. The manikin on his shoulder mimicked the posture, perhaps in irony. "The direction of Setios' house is precisely-" he extended his arm at an angle toward Samlor; hesitated with his eyes turned inward; and corrected the line a little further to the right " – this way. And this passage is the nearest route to the way I need to follow."

  "Do not do a thing you have not first considered carefully," Tjainufi suddenly warned.

  The caravan master began to chuckle. He clapped a hand in a friendly fashion on Khamwas' left shoulder. "Nearest route to having your head stuck on a pole, I'd judge," he said. The Napatan felt as fine-boned as he looked, but there was a decent layer of muscle between the skeleton and the soft fabric of his cape.

  "Look," Samlor continued, "d'ye mean to tell me you don't know where in the city Setios lives, you're just walking through the place in the straightest line your- friends, I suppose-tell you is the way to Setios? Are these the same friends who gave you wisdom?"

  The caravan master nodded toward Tjainufi.

  "I think that's my affair, Master Samlor," said Khamwas. He strode forward, gripping his staff vertically before him. His knuckles were white.

  The manikin said, " 'What he does insults me, says the fool when a wise man instructs him."

  Khamwas halted. Samlor looked at the little figure with a frown of new surmise. There was no bad advice-only advice that was wrong for a given set of circumstances. And, just possibly, Tjainufi's advice was more appropriate than the Cirdonian had guessed.

  "All I meant, friend," Samlor said, touching and then removing his hand from the other man's shoulder, "was that maybe there aren't any good districts in Sanctuary-but your straight line's sure as death taking you through the middle of the worst of what there is."

  Star had stood up when Khamwas started to walk away. The light which now clung to her left palm had put out tendrils and was fluctuating through a series of pastels paler than the colors of a noontime rainbow. Impulsively, she hugged the Napatan's leg and said, "Isn't it pretty? Oh, thank you!"

  "It's only a-little thing," Khamwas explained apologetically to the child's uncle. "It-I don't know how she learned it from seeing what I did."

  Samlor noticed that the staff glowed only when Khamwas could concentrate on it, but that the phosphorescence in Star's hand continued its complex evolutions of shape and color even while his niece was hugging and smiling brightly at the other man.

  The light glinted on the bare blade of Samlor's new dagger, harder in reflection than the source hanging in the air seemed.

  The caravan master blinked, touched his tunic over the silver medallion of the goddess Heqt on his breast, and only then slid the weapon back from its temporary resting place beneath his belt. The twisting phosphorescence gave the markings a false hint of motion; but they were only swirls of metal, not the script he thought he had again seen.

  Khamwas watched with controlled apprehension. Deciding that it was better to go on with his proposal than to wonder why Samlor was staring at the knife whose guard still bore dark stains, the Napatan said, "Master Samlor, you understand this city as I do not. And you're clearly able to deal with, ah, with violence, should any be offered. Could I prevail on you to accompany me to the house of Setios? I'll pay you well."

  "Do not walk the road without a stick in your hand," Tjainufi said approvingly.

  "We need to find Setios, Uncle Samlor," said the child in a voice rising toward shrill. She released Khamwas and instead tugged insistently on the elbow of her uncle's right sleeve. "Please can we? He's nice."

  Cold steel cannot flow, twist, parse out words, thought the caravan master. The nick in the edge was bright and real: this was no thing of enchantment, only a dagger with an awkward hilt and a very good blade.

  Star pulled at Samlor's arm with most of her weight. He did not look down at her, nor did his hand drop. That arm had dragged a donkey back up to the trail from which it had stumbled into a gulley a hundred feet deep.

  "Please," said the child.

  "Friend Samlor?" said the Napatan doubtfully. The knife was only that, a knife, so far as he could see.

  Go with him, spelled the rippling steel at which Samlor stared.

  The words faded as the glow in Star's hand shrank to a point and disappeared.

  "I was ready," said the caravan master slowly, "to find a guide in there."

  He did not gesture toward the tavern. He was speaking to himself, not to the pair of living humans with him in the alleyway. They stared at Samlor, his niece and the stranger, as they would have stared at a pet lion who
suddenly began to act oddly.

  "So I guess," Samlor continued, "we'll find Setios together. After all-" he tapped the blade of the coffin-hiked dagger with a fingernail; the metal gave a musical ping.

  "- we're all four agreed, aren't we?"

  Star leaned toward her uncle and hugged his powerful thigh, but she would not meet his eyes again or look at the knife in his hand. Khamwas nodded cautiously.

  "We'll circle out of the Maze, then," said Samlor matter-of-factly. "Come on."

  The way down the alley meant stepping over the body of the youth he had just killed.

  This was Sanctuary. It wouldn't be the last corpse they saw.

  CHAPTER 3

  THE BODY SPRAWLED just inside the alley would have passed for a corpse if you didn't listen carefully-or didn't recognize the ragged susurrus of a man breathing while his face lay against slimy cobblestones.

  "Mind this," said Samlor, touching first Star, then Khamwas so that they would notice his gesture toward the obstacle. Human eyes could adapt to scant illumination, but at this end of the alley the dying man's breath was all that made it possible to locate him.

  The manikin on Khamwas' shoulder must have been able to sense the situation, because he said, "There is no one who does not die." His voice was as high as a bird's; but, also like a bird's, it had considerable volume behind it.

  The Napatan «scholar» reached toward his shoulder with his free hand, a gesture mingled of affection and warning. "Tjainufi," he muttered, "Not now. .»

  Samlor doubted that Khamwas had any more control over the manikin than a camel driver did over a pet mouse which lived in a fold of his cloak. Or, for that matter, than Samlor himself had over his niece, who was bright enough to understand any instructions he gave her-but whose response was as likely to be willful as that of any other seven-year-old.

  Now, for instance, a ball of phosphorescence bloomed in the cup of the child's hand, lighting her way past the dying man despite the caravan master's warning that illumination-magical or otherwise-would be more risk to them than benefit, at least until they got out of the Maze.