by Aaron Pogue
The only other structure in sight was Ahmed’s camel pen. In busier times it served as much as a horse stable as a proper camel pen, but it seemed poorly suited to the task. The thin, cracked wooden slats that made up the pen’s walls were sun bleached and sand blasted, and fully half of them hung loose or slapped against their posts. Yet somehow no one had ever heard of Ahmed losing one of his patrons’ charges.
As Corin approached the pen, a shape that he’d mistaken for another of the loose fence posts peeled away and revealed itself to be a child. He’d have made a fine street urchin in Aepoli—thin as a post, hip-high to Corin, and missing all but a handful of teeth. His eyes were sharp, though, and he carried himself with a bobbing reticence that probably passed for respect. Corin recognized it as prudent caution. This was a child after his own heart.
“Take your horse, Effendi?” the urchin called, hand extended.
Corin chuckled. “As you can see, I have neither horse nor camel.”
“No, but you can see I would have served you well if you had. That must be worth a coin or two.”
Corin barked a laugh. “Here’s my offer: Tell me who has come by here today, and when, and that will earn a handful of silver.”
The child spat. “That would cost you good king’s gold, and me my hand. Effendi.”
Corin took a knee to face him on a level. He pressed a heavy silver coin into the boy’s hand and met his eyes. “That’s yours regardless. But all I need to know is if my shipmates passed this way. If they’re still here. Three Godlanders like me. Likely wounded. It would have been this afternoon.”
The boy spent a moment idly prodding one of his remaining teeth with the tip of his tongue while he considered how he’d answer. At last he shrugged and looked down at his feet. “I guess they wouldn’t have horses, either.”
Corin frowned. “I don’t—”
But it hadn’t been a question. The boy went right on. “Just two men walking through the dunes, one carrying another on his shoulder like a bag of grain.” He shrugged again. “If they had no horses, they were no concern of mine, so I couldn’t tell you anything.”
Corin grinned, but kept his voice solemn. “I can hardly fault you for that. Keep your coin all the same.”
The boy ducked his head and turned to resume his place in the shade, but Corin caught his shoulder. Voice cast low, he asked, “Are they still here?”
The boy tore free of Corin’s grasp. “I told you I can’t answer questions like that.” He went three paces, plopped down by the fencepost, and closed his eyes against the sunset glare. Almost idly, he said, “But I can say the tide has not yet changed. That’s no one’s secret, right?”
“Exactly right,” Corin said. He flipped the boy another coin, loosened his sword in its sheath, and pushed through into Ahmed the Fig’s Fine Brothel for Weary Desert Travelers.
It looked considerably more impressive on the inside. The same high, rocky soil that made this spot so bad for farming had allowed Ahmed to dig down and build a stable structure below the sun-seared earth. From the outer door, Corin descended a dozen steps into a wide, dark pit of a common room. Low tables stood here and there in an apparently random arrangement. Cushions surrounded the tables, but at the moment they were all unoccupied. One glance was enough to show Corin his old crewmates weren’t in the common room.
That didn’t rule out the private rooms around the edges of this one, hidden behind heavy curtains, but Corin had his doubts that Tommy Day would spend that kind of coin. No, far more likely they were waiting on the jetty out back or already aboard some smuggler’s ship and simply waiting for the tide to turn.
That last possibility seemed like the greatest risk, so Corin headed straight toward the storeroom and the jetty. But he’d barely taken a step before Ahmed appeared to intercept him. The seedy little man barely came up to Corin’s chin. He was thin and greasy, with a fringe of tight, graying curls and deep-set eyes that never stopped moving. They barely touched on Corin, but the Fig effortlessly interposed himself on Corin’s path and corralled him.
“Isn’t this that Corin Hugh, once captain of the Diavahl? Some call you Old Grim’s heir—don’t bother to deny. You do me great honor!”
“You do me too much. I’m just a humble sailor looking for safe passage.”
“But first you will enjoy my hospitality! Stay a night. No charge for you, and I’ll see you have no cause for complaint.”
Stay a night at the Fig’s brothel? He’d be lucky if he woke to find that only his possessions had been stolen. He’d be lucky if he woke at all.
He was careful to keep such thoughts from his expression, though. It was dangerous business offending someone like the Fig. Shadows shaped like men lurked around the edges of the room. Large men. Corin had no wish to tangle with them. So he bowed his head and offered his regrets.
“I hate that I must pass up such a generous offer, but my business calls me urgently away.”
“Surely you can spare one night!”
“Alas, but there are affairs more pressing than the comforts of one poor sailor. I cannot spare a minute. I must catch the very next ship that passes your jetty.”
So saying, Corin tried to push past Ahmed, but the little man slapped a firm hand on Corin’s chest, and two of those menacing shadows solidified as quickly. Hulking guards came forward, and they wore long, curved knives the way a courtesan might wear strings of pearls.
Corin swallowed hard and fell back a step. He moved his hand slowly toward the purse on his belt and spoke plainly. “I’ve no quarrel with you, Fig. We are both businessmen. Name your price, but I must be on the next ship sailing for the sea.”
Ahmed grinned, gregarious as ever. “The tide won’t change for an hour yet, and I am a host before I am a businessman. Come and have a drink with me—”
“Ahmed,” Corin interrupted, begging, but he cut short when the hulking guards started forward, fury in their eyes.
The Fig clapped his hands lightly, and the guards fell back. Then he caught Corin’s elbow and guided him toward a private room on the back wall. “Show honor, Corin Hugh, and we will return every favor. But please show honor. Godlanders’ blood leaves such a cruel stain.”
Corin smiled, lips tight, and went meekly along. He strained for a glimpse through the jetty door as he went, but it was all smoke and shadow. Distracted as he was, Corin misplaced a step. His foot landed in some slick spill on the hard stone floor, and he went to one knee before he caught himself. The hand that caught him landed in the same spill that had tripped him—something thick and sticky and warm. The stink of it was a metallic tang.
“Ah, you see?” Ahmed cried. “Just as I was saying? What kind of host am I?”
He clapped his hands again and barked, “Fetch Corin Hugh a rag to clean his hands. Godlanders’ blood!” He spat, every bit disgusted with himself, but his gaze never left Corin’s face, and there was immense satisfaction in his eyes.
Corin fought to hold his grin. The blood was drying on his hand, congealing into a too-tight glove. It was warm, but not warm enough, and it had lain thick in that pool.
Whose was it? That was the question. Corin would shed no tears to learn that Tommy Day’s belly wound had bled out on the floor here. Especially if he could compel Billy Bo to point him toward Ethan Blake.
But if it had been Charlie Claire, if Tommy Day had murdered him here while this greasy Fig stood witness…well, Corin had a list of men who needed killing. It would be no extra effort to add one more name.
But first he had to learn the truth. Corin fought down his anger and disgust to answer with a quiet calm. “Godlanders’ blood is no strange thing for me. Perhaps I could share a trick or two.”
Ahmed gave a grin. “I would be forever grateful. But come! Our drinks will lose their chill. This way! We have been waiting.”
Ahmed strolled ahead, chatting amiably about local politics and weather. Corin followed after, bracketed by the hulking guards. They hadn’t asked him to surrender either of
his visible weapons. That thought didn’t comfort him at all. It only meant they knew that they were faster.
Ahmed was first to reach the outer wall. He caught the curtain’s edge in one hand but, like a true showman, waited until Corin stepped up close before pulling it aside. Corin tensed himself against the surprise. He clenched one hand tight around his sword’s grip, the other on his dagger’s, and braced himself to spring out of the guards’ reach. Then he took the final step, so close that his nose nearly brushed the heavy textiles, and rolled his eyes toward Ahmed. “Well?”
Ahmed frowned, grumbled something, and whisked the curtains back. They revealed a private room like others Corin had seen—a low dining table and cushions, a pile of heavy blankets in one corner—but this one held a liquor cabinet too, and a great mahogany writing desk. There was a chair as well, out of place here, though it matched the desk nicely. It looked to be master-crafted woodwork and fine Ithalian leather.
And bound and gagged in the chair was Charlie Claire.
Poor Charlie looked ghastly, his face and chest caked with mostly-dried blood from the scalp wound. He had new bruises too, on his face and hands and forearms. There’d clearly been some struggle, but he was subdued now. His hands and feet were all tied tightly to the heavy chair—so tightly the cords were cutting deep into his wrists and ankles. His face was pale, from the pain or from the loss of blood, but his eyes were open and alert. They widened as they fixed on Corin, and some new terror gripped the man. He struggled anew despite his bonds, despite the hulking guard who stood behind him, and he received a brand new blunt trauma to his skull as punishment.
His head snapped violently forward at the blow, then lolled limply, though his eyes still fluttered with some trace of consciousness. The sight of him so unsettled Corin that it froze him in place. Ahmed said something that Corin didn’t catch, and again louder; then he clapped his hands, and one of the hulking guards shoved Corin between the shoulder blades hard enough to send him staggering into the room.
At the motion, Corin’s mind started working once again. He caught his balance on the second step but took a third anyway, with thoughts of flinging himself on Charlie’s warden. The slithering whisper of steel on steel stopped him, and he turned to find more guards in the room. Three on Charlie, two for Corin’s escort, and Ahmed himself was said to be a ruthless killer with a bit of cord. Corin’s heroism flared up hot and bright when he saw what they’d done to a battered member of his old crew, but overwhelming odds rushed in and doused it like an ocean swell.
So Corin drew up short. He buried any indication that he’d ever meant to fight, and with a wholly disinterested expression, he turned to Ahmed. “It seems this room is already in use. I’d hate to interrupt these men before they’re done. Perhaps another?”
Ahmed laughed. It was a grating cackle. “You do nothing to deceive me, Corin Hugh. You try and try and try and try again, but I can see beneath your skin. I can peer into your coward’s heart. I know that you know this man. I know that you were once his captain and that you would not much like to see him dead.”
Corin raised an eyebrow, feigning unconcern. “He played his part in a mutiny against me. Kill him and I’ll thank you for it.”
Ahmed called his bluff. The Fig clapped his hands once, and the guard standing close behind Charlie Claire knotted a fist in the sailor’s blood-soaked hair. He hauled back hard, jerking Charlie’s chin up and eliciting a groan despite the knotted gag. With his other hand, the guard whipped out his heavy dagger in a wide arc and brought it slashing back toward Charlie’s throat.
Corin screamed, an animal protest, and flung himself forward to intervene. But two hands fell like blacksmith’s hammers on his shoulders and clamped tight, dragging him back into his place. Still, his reaction seemed to be enough. The guard stopped the dagger just before it tore the deckhand’s throat open, though it came close enough to draw a thin new flow of blood. It looked to be a graze, but bright, fresh blood washed down to damp the drying clot on Charlie’s shirt.
Corin rolled his head to glare back at Ahmed. “Let him go! What has he ever done to you? He’s just a stupid deckhand. Let him go!”
“Ah, but he has value to me in this current state.”
“What could he mean to you?” Corin snarled, but he saw the answer even before Ahmed said it.
“He gives me power over you. Power over the legendary Corin Hugh. And that is worth something.”
Corin caught a deep breath and then forced it out slowly. He calmed his hammering heart and wrestled his emotions into order. They were doing nothing to serve him now. He took another calming breath, then rolled his shoulders. “Have your thugs release me, so we can talk like gentlemen.”
“Oh, no. You struck a truer note before. We are not gentlemen, but businessmen. Still…” He clapped his hands, and those iron clamps on Corin’s shoulders relented. Corin stretched, wincing, then turned back to face Ahmed.
“You’ve always shown a…flexible nature,” Corin said. “And a shrewd sense for seizing an opportunity. I can respect that. But this time you’re mistaken. I’m worth nothing to you.”
Ahmed raised his eyebrows, doubtful, but he said nothing.
Corin pressed his case. “I was a famous pirate captain once, it’s true. But I have been marooned. I’m nothing now. I have no crew, no ship, no more treasure than the purse on my belt. I do understand a smart businessman seizing a chance that falls into his lap, but I am not the prize you think I am. I’m worth almost nothing to you. Same as Charlie here.”
As he said it, Corin turned to gesture back to Charlie Claire, and with the gesture shifted half a pace closer to him.
The Fig didn’t seem to notice. “Can it truly be? Corin Hugh has fallen so low?”
“I am afraid it is.”
Ahmed clucked his tongue, disappointment clear in his expression. “Ah, such a shame. And here I thought I had some better use for you than the one Tommy Day has already paid me for.”
Corin swallowed hard. “Tommy…what?” He stifled a curse. He’d taken this all for an act of Ahmed’s own initiative, but if Tommy had already placed on offer on the table, then Corin had misplayed his hand.
Ahmed nodded earnestly. “Oh, yes. He was here an hour gone. Paid a handsome fee for safe passage to Marzelle; then he paid me double that to lay a trap for you and see you dead.”
“And…and Charlie?”
“Half a livre to make him disappear. It would be insulting at four times the price, but I had my own reasons to take Charlie off their hands.”
Corin gaped. “So you could kill me?” He still had an ace up his sleeve. He took a confused step toward Ahmed and then two steps back toward Charlie. Six hostile gazes followed him, but no one yet moved to intervene.
Ahmed did come a step closer, overflowing with his victory. “Aren’t you listening? I never planned to kill you. I planned to use you. But now you say you are no use…”
Corin laughed and forced an uneven hiccup into it. “Wait! Wait! That’s not what I said.” Both hands rose defensively, and he backed slowly away from Ahmed. Two paces, three, until he bumped into the guard standing over Charlie Claire.
Ahmed showed his teeth in a predatory grin. “Are you prepared to change your story now? You might still have one last little bit of value?”
Corin sighed. “I suppose I do at that. You said Tommy Day took passage to Marzelle?”
Ahmed blinked, surprised by the sudden change in topic. “What? I…yes, but—”
“And he’s already gone?”
“Yes! But you are here! And I have Charlie Claire.”
“Had,” Corin corrected. He dropped his hand on Charlie’s shoulder and stepped through dream again.
It was a perfect exit. Except, somehow, it all went wrong. Something in the magic faltered, and Charlie Claire began to scream.
The world went soft and gray around Corin, but it didn’t instantly transform this time. Instead, everything went still. Ahmed the Fig, mid-clap. The guar
d behind Charlie Claire, slashing with his dagger. Four others starting forward, frozen on their first step.
The room receded, dwindling to a point in Corin’s vision, while everything else was thick gray fog. Then he began to move, soaring northward above the nothing, while the Fig’s establishment rolled to the horizon. But Corin had barely gone far enough to cross Khera before he slammed to an abrupt stop. And there in the air before him, surprised as ever, was the woman he’d met twice in the city streets. She cried out in shock, and perhaps Corin did as well, but the sound was gone a moment later. The vision was gone, and that strange woman with it.
Corin was back in Ahmed’s private room. The others still stood frozen, but perhaps they had begun to thaw. Perhaps Ahmed’s hands came closer together. Perhaps the guard’s dagger shifted downward. Corin ground his teeth and focused his will on a bolthole he knew in Marzelle, and tried to step through dream again.
Again the gray world rolled away, and Corin felt himself rushing down the same path he’d taken before. With an effort of will he heaved himself off course, veering sharply out around the city’s edge. Some touch of color lit the world below, just shadows and hard edges, but it was enough to show Corin the coastline flashing by, the stormy Medgerrad he knew so well, and moments later he saw the distant shape of rich Ithale.
No sooner had he passed over the land than another figure sprang into the air before him. This one Corin knew all too well. Ephitel himself, the tyrant king of gods. Shock and outrage washed across his face in the fraction of a heartbeat that passed before Corin reached him.
For his part, Corin felt nothing but animal rage. Before he could even think, the sword was in his hand. Corin swung with all his might, slashing at the monster’s throat—
And he was back in Ahmed’s office. Corin roared his fury, closed his hand more tightly on Charlie’s shoulder, and leaped away again. He went west this time, not east, but somewhere in the desert he encountered a new figure—a total stranger who had the grace and bearing Corin had learned to associate with the ancient elves. Again, as quickly as they met, Corin was thrown back. He closed his eyes and fixed his will and jumped. Another path, another interloper over Meloan. Another path, and an elf on the high seas near Jebbra Point.
