by Paul S. Kemp
"Why would they sneak? They don't know we're out here."
"Those two sneak out of habit, I expect."
"Truth," Derg said. He ordered a third of the detachment around to the rear of the Tunnel and the men jogged off.
"Shite night and shite street for this kind of duty," Derg said. He looked longingly back at the bazaar.
"Aye," Baras said.
A voice sounded from a shadowed alley next to the Tunnel.
"Baras, is that you?"
Baras and his men whirled on the speaker, hands on their hilts.
The speaker stepped out of the alley, holding his empty hands out wide.
"No threat here, lads," the man said, walking toward them, and Baras placed his voice at last.
"Jyme?"
"Aye," Jyme said, and hurried across the way. "Gods, man. What are you doing here?"
Jyme looked a bit older than the last time Baras had seen him, but he remained as thin as a willow reed. His thin mustache and beard looked like a dusting of soot on his narrow face. One eye and half his face were red and swollen, as if from a punch.
"Working."
"Working?" Jyme said, and glanced around the men. "I heard you wasn't watch anymore."
"I'm not," Baras said, and didn't bother to explain. "What happened to your face?"
Jyme's thin mouth curled in anger. He ran a hand over his swollen eye. "Big tattooed fakker got over on me in the Tunnel."
"Tattooed?" Baras said. "Egil? The priest?"
Jyme spat. "He's no priest. Wait, how do you…?"
Jyme looked around at the men again, their blades, their eyes focused on the Tunnel. He looked at the empty horse-drawn wagon on the street before them. His eyes widened as realization set in.
"You're looking to take that one down, ain't you? The priest, I mean?"
"None of your concern," Baras said.
"He gave me this eyeshine," Jyme said. "I been waitin' on him to come out myself. Figured I'd acquaint him with my blade as answer for his punch."
Baras said nothing, but didn't figure Jyme would come out on the bloodless end of a fight with the priest.
"None of this concerns you, Jyme. Be on your way. We'll have a drink come another day."
"I ain't going nowhere," Jyme said. "Like I said. I'm waitin' on that priest to show. Maybe I'll just wait here with you, yeah?"
"I can have you moved," Baras said.
Jyme sneered. "Arrested, like? After all we saw together back in the watch? Come on, Baras. Besides, I'll make enough noise in the going that your ambush here'll go for nothing."
Baras turned to face him, irritated.
Jyme took a step back, hands raised. "Listen, I just want in. You know I can account for myself with a blade. I don't even want payment. I just want that priest to get his, see?"
Baras considered it. Jyme had been a decent watchman once, and an extra blade didn't hurt.
"If you're in, you're in," Baras said. "That work for you?"
"Yeah," Jyme said. "Works."
"Good," Baras said. "When they come out, we take them. If they don't come out, we go in and get them. But I need them both alive. And you're to do exactly as I say."
"Ah, you're no fun, Baras."
"I'll introduce you to the men."
By the time the water clock tolled three hours past deepnight, the Tunnel was almost empty. A few drunks slouched over tables, sleeping. Gadd and Egil escorted them out the door and Gadd made a half-hearted attempt at sweeping the floor.
Nix's eyes kept going to the stairway. No one had emerged from the upstairs pleasure rooms for hours. Nix didn't think any patrons remained up there, or at least he hoped not. In his mind's eye, he saw Kiir… servicing that country hob, and it bothered him more than he liked to admit.
Gadd's cups, tankards, and platters stood arrayed behind the bar in formation, an army of ceramic and tin. Nix put Kiir from his mind and tried to fight down yawns.
"You can go, Gadd," he said to the towering tapkeep. "We'll close up." He gestured at himself and Egil and spoke slowly. "We will close."
Gadd seemed to take his point and nodded. He gathered his cloak, smiled, showing eye teeth filed to sharp points, and took his leave.
"What do you suppose his story is?" Nix said. "Got more ink on his arms than a sorcerer's spellbook. And those teeth."
"He's from the east and brews the gods' own ale," Egil said. "That's all I know and all I need to know."
"Speaking of his ale," Nix said, and jumped over the bar. He shook the last tapped hogshead and it sloshed satisfactorily. "Still half-full."
"Let's remedy that."
"Aye."
Nix placed the sloshing barrel on the bar and drew two tankards.
"To ownership, then," Nix said, hoisting his tankard.
"Ha!" Egil said, and bumped it with his own. "To an eventful first day."
"Agreed."
They sat at the bar, their bar, for the next hour. They sat in comfortable silence, as only friends can do, with Ool's clock tolling the time, the Lord Mayor's portrait staring down at them, and Egil tossing his dice to no apparent purpose. Before long Egil had his head down, snoring on the bar, the eye of Ebenor tattooed on his head keeping watch on the priest's behalf.
Nix continued his war with yawns, shaking the hogshead from time to time, determined to finish it for no reason other than a sense of completion.
When the dissonant notes of Ool's clock proclaimed the fourth hour after deepnight, Kulven had set and Minnear rode high in the vault. Viridian light leaked through the Tunnel's windows to stain the floor, the mullions putting a crosshatch on the floor. By then, Nix was done. Fatigue and drink blurred his vision. He slid from the stool, leaned on it for a moment to steady himself. He was drunker than he'd realized. He staggered for the doors.
The common room felt enormous with no one in it. Dying embers crackled in the huge hearth. Nix stumbled, caught his balance on the hearth, and patted it appreciatively.
Made from mortared stones tossed up onto the banks of the Meander by the river's slow current, the hearth struck Nix as one of the sturdiest things he'd ever seen. He imagined all of Dur Follin could fall and the hearth and chimney of the Slick Tunnel would remain, keeping company with the Archbridge, jutting out of the ruins like a stone giant's erection.
The image made him chuckle, and chuckling made him lightheaded, and lightheadedness caused him to hook a foot on the leg of a chair as he walked. He stumbled and fell to the floor, cursing. Face down on the wood floor, he called for Egil. A snort and an inarticulate mumble answered him. He chuckled, rose to all fours, and the door of the Tunnel flew open. Through the table and chair legs he saw boots, five pairs, presumably attached to legs.
"We're closed," he said, using the end of a table to pull himself up. "Just neglected to bar the–"
Five men stood just inside the doorway, the four men Nix and Egil had made earlier as city watch, and the loudmouthed hiresword with the thin mustache whom Egil had punched in the face. Loudmouth had a shine on his right eye and a nasty grin on his thin lips. The rest had ill intent written on their faces.
"Shite," Nix said.
Beard spoke with the voice of a man used to being obeyed. "Nix Fall and Egil of Ebenor, you are both hereby detained under the authority of the Lord Mayor."
Egil groaned, lumbered up from his stool, and stood there swaying and squinting.
"What is all this now? Lord Mayor what?"
"How things looking now, slubber?" said the hiresword to Nix.
Nix didn't quite understand how the hiresword connected to the watchmen, but the threat of arrest helped clear the mold from his mind. He steadied himself on the back of a chair.
"I'm sure we can work this out," he said. "Now–"
"If you resist, we are authorized to use force," said Beard.
"Egil's voice boomed from behind Nix. "I asked: what is this now?"
The hiresword sneered. "This is you getting payback, priest."
The s
ound of opening doors carried from the second floor of the Tunnel, the murmur of voices.
"Stay up there," shouted Beard. "Everyone stay up there. We are on the Lord Mayor's business."
Tesha's voice carried down from the top of the stairs. "How do we know you speak truth?"
"Just do as I say, woman!" said Beard, and nodded at one of his guards, who bounded up the stairs, drawing his blade as he went.
"Back," the man at the top of the stairs said. "Stay back by authority of the Lord Mayor."
Nix heard angry grumbling from Tesha and her workers.
"It'll be fine, Tesha," Nix called, still trying to make sense of what was happening. "Egil and I will work this out."
"I know how you two work things out!" she shot back.
Nix's words seemed to relax Beard. To Nix, he said, "Now you're talking sense. So just come along and–"
"I said we'd work it out," Nix said. "But I meant with blood. Mostly yours. Maybe you understood me to mean something else?"
Beard's eyes narrowed and the tension in the room reasserted itself. He sighed and shook his head. "Bring them. Not dead, but beaten is fine."
The two watchmen and the hiresword advanced across the common room. The watchmen had fists clenched around truncheons. The hiresword had only his fists, but made up for it with the violence of his eyes.
Egil roared from behind Nix and the nearly empty hogshead arced over Nix's head as if shot out of catapult, the remaining ale misting the air in its wake. It slammed into the mouthy hiresword's chest, knocked the air from his lungs in a whoosh, and sent him sprawling. The side of his face caught a chair on the way down, no doubt aggravating his eyeshine.
The men hadn't pulled steel, so Nix didn't either. Instead he grabbed the nearest piss pot, heavy and sloshing with urine and spit – whose job was it to empty those anyway? – and flung it awkwardly at the two remaining men. They scrambled out of the way of the pot but a spray of piss caught them both.
"Ha!" Nix said, grinning, and darted back toward the bar and Egil, deliberately tipping a few tables behind him as he went.
"Does this still count as the same day?" he asked the priest. "Because if so, it's been really eventful."
"Same day in my view," Egil said. He picked up a barstool in each hand, holding each by a leg, and brandished them like oversized clubs. "Here's a match for the twigs you carry, whoresons!"
"What in the name of the gods is going on down there?!" Tesha shouted.
Nix wished he knew. He leaped over the bar, under the watchful gaze of the Lord Mayor's portrait – Gadd really needed to take that down – and grabbed two tankards. He hurled them at the two watchmen stumbling through the toppled tables he'd left behind him. One of the tankards clipped the taller of the two on the cheek and stunned him. The other ducked and Egil used the opportunity to charge them, roaring.
Beard, helping the hiresword to his feet, said, "I said you're under arrest by authority of the Lord Mayor!"
"That's shite!" said Nix, firing tankards as fast he could. "Where are your uniforms?"
Gadd would not be pleased with Nix's desecration of his temple. He caught one of the men upside his head with a large mug, eliciting a curse.
"Ha!"
"And your writ?" Egil said, swinging his stools like bludgeons. "Where's that?"
One of the stools caught the smaller of the two men full in his midsection. The wood snapped, but the blow sent the man reeling. In desperation, the other man went head down, charged, and grabbed Egil around the waist. The impact drove the priest back a step, but he steadied himself, dropped the stool, bent, picked the man up by his waist, and heaved him sideways. Arms careening, the man slammed into a table. The legs gave way with a snap and man and wood collapsed to the floor. For good measure, Egil stepped over and kicked him while he was down.
"Why don't you just tell us what this is actually about?" Nix said, pegging Beard in his mailed chest with a tankard.
"Damn it!" Beard cursed.
"Let's just kill them!" the hiresword said, and started to draw his sword. Beard halted the draw by grabbing the man's hand.
"Pull that blade and not one of you walk out of here!" Nix promised.
Beard turned and shouted through the open door.
"Derg, send in the rest!"
"The rest!" Nix said, disbelieving, tankards held in each hand. "Oh, come on!"
Egil grabbed another chair with both hands, lifted it high, and charged toward Beard and the hiresword. He stopped cold when another eight men poured through the Tunnel's open door, all of them helmed, armed, and armored. More watch.
"Over here, Egil!" Nix said. He leaped over the bar and pulled the wand from its tube.
The priest hurled the chair he held at the men storming into the common room and retreated to Nix's side.
"Don't destroy everything!" Tesha shouted, trying to work her way around the watchman holding her and her workers at the top of the stairs.
"I think she'll work out as manager, don't you?" Nix said.
"You gonna use that wand or not?" Egil said, glaring at the men.
Beard crossed his arms over his chest. "Beat them senseless if that's what it takes. They come with us and they come with us now."
"I don't think so," Nix said, grinning.
As one, the new men and the hiresword charged the bar.
Nix spoke one of the handful of words he knew in the Language of Creation, the syllables odd on his tongue, causing a tingle in his lips. The wand answered the word, warmed in his hand, and he hurriedly touched it first to himself then to Egil, and concluded by pronouncing a second word in the language.
The pearl flashed and a sudden burst of opalescent light staggered him, elicited surprised shouts from the onrushing men. He felt the magic take hold in him and his vision blurred for a heartbeat. His body tingled all over and started to change size, his gear and clothing, too. He knew Egil would be experiencing the same thing. He grinned and raised his fists, imagining himself and Egil wading through the men like giants, their fists like cudgels.
"Ha!" he exulted. "And now, curs, prepare…"
His voice sounded strange, higher-pitched. Instead of wonder and fear in the eyes of the men, he saw instead eagerness, mirth. They rushed forward anew.
"Nix!" Egil shouted, the priest's ordinarily deep voice also an octave higher.
The top of the bar reached Nix's eyes. The onrushing men looked like the giants.
How could that be?
"Shite," he muttered, as realization dawned.
The damned wand had shrunk them to half their normal size!
"I'm sorry, Egil. I thought–"
"Describe for me a time when one of your items worked as you thought! One time!"
Mercifully Nix had no time to reply. Nine men came at them in a rush, fists flying. Nix ducked a punch, landed an uppercut that should have floored the man he struck, but which instead barely staggered him. Someone grabbed his arm and flung him against the bar, while another dove at his legs. Nix might as well have been a child. He gave a kick, missed, and the man wrapped his legs and pulled him down. Another man jumped atop him, pummeled him with short punches to the head, again and again. Nix saw sparks, tried to squirm free, but hadn't the strength. He heard Egil roaring in anger before a final punch caused everything to go dark.
Things quieted downstairs, but Tesha could not see past the guard who barred the stairs. "I want to see whoever's in charge," she said to the guard, a young man with a lazy eye and scraggly beard. He refused to make eye contact with her.
"Sorry, but–"
Tesha stepped up close to the boy. "Don't give me 'sorry,' boy. Get me whoever's in charge."
Tesha turned to her workers, all of them in their nightclothes, frightened-looking.
"Ask them where Nix is, Tesha," Kiir said. "Please."
Tesha nodded. "I'll see to it. Now, all of you go back to your rooms. Leave this to me. Go on, now."
Reluctantly, muttering, they headed back for their
rooms. As soon as they did, Tesha turned on the young guard, wearing the imperious expression that few men could long endure.
"Now," she said. "Your commander."
Without waiting for him to respond, she pushed past him and descended the stairs. He fell in behind her, a dog at heel.
