Echoes of Betrayal

by Elizabeth Moon

  “Nor will I,” Arvid said. “With your commission, I will say, I can afford a hiresword as escort—”

  “If you will, Ser Burin, I can find you a reliable person, an experienced soldier.”

  “That is very kind,” Arvid said.

  “And now I must speak to the host—I do not know if he knows yet about Harnik.”

  “And when you are finished with that,” Arvid said, “perhaps you would like your pots and pans?”

  “Certainly.”

  Arvid watched as the young captain spoke to the host. He could read Jostin’s reaction. No, none had come to tell him … the man was not worried, and that in itself was a mystery. He himself was worried, more worried than he wanted to show. If he had been targeted because he had talked to Harnik and the Phelani—because he had interfered with the spy listening to the Phelani soldiers—his disguise of harmless merchant had frayed past usefulness, his careful nurturing of that image was effort and time wasted. The two thieves who’d escaped earlier … What were they telling the Guildmaster?

  He finished the hot-pot and the plum-jam tart with cream for dessert. The soldiers who’d rescued him hadn’t stopped with the round he bought them; they occupied three tables nearest the bar and seemed to be interested only in dicing and ogling the serving girls. Selfer’s escort, one woman and three men, did not drink, though they chatted easily with the others.

  Selfer came back to his table. “The host says Harnik left long before breakfast, taking his things from his room but leaving a tip. Took his horse from the stable; the stable night guard had him sign out. Said he had a journey to go.”

  “A short one,” Arvid said. “Well, let’s get your purchases to you.” He stood and led the way to his room. He knocked on the door in case Dattur was taking his nightly bucket bath—gnomes bathed more often than anyone needed, he was sure—and Dattur opened the door. “Captain Selfer,” Arvid said. “He has come for the pots and things I bought for the Phelani.”

  “Is good,” Dattur said. “You need talk?”

  “Not much,” Arvid said. “Stay.”

  Dattur sat cross-legged on his bed and picked up the work he’d been doing, sewing pockets into some garment, while Arvid showed Selfer the pans, including the mark on the one, and the receipts from the merchants who’d sold them. “These are said to be new—these two I bought used, because they seemed in good condition.”

  “Fine,” Selfer said. “And you got them for less than my soldiers could. What’s your price?”

  “What would you have paid?” Arvid asked. Selfer’s answer matched what he would have asked. Selfer paid over the coins, and Arvid put the pots in the sack he’d used for the jars of mead.

  Selfer watched Dattur sewing for a long moment. “Does he ever make gloves?”

  “Make gloves,” Dattur said. “Is that you want gloves?” He leaned over and pulled a sack from under his bed. “Make these gloves.” He spilled several pairs of gloves from the sack. “Already sold, these gloves. Take tomorrow.”

  “May I?” Selfer asked, reaching toward the gloves. Dattur handed him one.

  “Make good. Gnomes never make bad.”

  “Would he—would you, pardon me—have time to make gloves for soldiers?”

  Dattur looked at Arvid. “My lord?”

  “As you wish, Dattur.”

  “Must finish work paid and work promised. Then make gloves. Need hands.”

  “Hands?”

  “Measure. Not all hands same.” Dattur spread his own. “My glove my hand. Ser’s glove ser’s hand.”

  Dattur, Arvid noticed, had a much thicker accent with Selfer than he now used with Arvid. Nonetheless, he and Selfer came to an agreement on the price of gloves if Dattur provided the leather or if the Company did.

  After Selfer left, Arvid talked to the innkeeper.

  “You’re right,” Jostin said. “If they think you know what Harnik knew—what they killed him for—they’ll be after you next.”

  “Already, I think,” Arvid said, describing how he’d been shadowed and then attacked. “And it’s deep winter, and I don’t know where else to go. Yet I bring danger on your house by being here.”

  “Not that much,” Jostin said. “And you’re friends with the Foxes. They will not let much go wrong here, though I notice they’re not coming down as much as they used to.”

  Arvid forbore to explain that he was one of the reasons.

  “You can stay here, for all of me,” the host said. “But you won’t be able to go about and trade, will you?”

  “No … I do have payment—”

  “I’m not worried about that,” Jostin said. “But how to explain that a man who’s been in and out for tens of days never shows his face?”

  “And just when I was thinking the Fox Company commissions would give me a start on the coming year,” Arvid said.

  “I don’t like the feel of the city this past year,” Jostin said. “The mercenaries are all right—they’re rough folk, but mostly honest enough—the ones who come here, anyway. But there’s been more trouble, more blood, more nasty talk … You’ve heard about the counterfeiting, I suppose, being a merchant?”

  “To beware of false coins, yes. I came down here thinking Guild League coinage was safer than northern—”

  “And so it was, once. But I’m telling you, I have to keep the scales and test-jar up front now. Not only for my people, but there’s those complain about every coin they get in change. And some of ’em are bad, including what I get from my banker, though he always makes good any shortage.” He shook his head. “And thieves is bolder. I’ve found thief-marks on the stable walls—don’t know what they mean, but thieves made ’em is clear enough.”

  “Do you paint them out?” Arvid asked.

  “Over and over,” Jostin said. “But they come back.”

  “How long has that gone on?” Arvid suspected it had started when the rumors of the gnome road showed up.

  “Last summer … around Midsummer. Can’t remember if it was before or after, but around then. I used to know the thieves who worked this part of town—they knew me and knew they’d better pick no pockets nor start no fights in my bar. But now—I get that feeling, you know, that sort of prickle, that there’s trouble about, but it’s not faces I know. The ones I knew haven’t been in since—oh, a little after the Autumn Evener.” A knock came at the door, and a voice Arvid recognized as the cook asked for the host. “Just a moment,” he said loudly, and then, softly, to Arvid, “Was I you, I’d take to my bed for a tenday or so, and I’ll say you’re sick and like to die. Think of something in the meantime.”

  “Thank you,” Arvid said. He had begun to think of something like that himself, but having the host on his side was an unexpected bonus.

  When Dattur went up to Fox Company’s winter quarters, he carried a note to Captain Selfer—Arvid explained his situation and suggested that Dattur might also be at risk.

  Confinement to his room palled, but everywhere in the inn were staff who might chatter and customers who might not be what they seemed. Finally he begged the host to let him take the job of night watch in the inn stables. In the dark, he would not be recognized, he was sure.

  “I suppose you can use that sword you’ve been wearing?”

  “Yes,” Arvid said. “I may come from a merchant family, but my father knew I would travel and thus would likely need to defend myself.”

  “Well, you can work alongside old Mardan if you want. He’s wearing down, he tells me. If you catch someone coming over the wall, kill them if you can—you have killed?”

  “Yes,” Arvid said, careful to use a tone of disgust. “I did not enjoy it.”

  “No good man does,” Jostin said. “But it is less trouble with the city watch if they’re dead—t’watch know I don’t go hunting, and they are glad enough to have no explanations to make. You’ll need a different cloak, all dark; you can use my old bad-weather one.”

  “Thank you,” Arvid said.

  It was a
fter closing when he ventured out, wrapped in Jostin’s dark cloak, hat pulled low. No one was about but Jostin, just locking up the back door. “Here’s a meat roll for your turn of night,” Jostin said. “Mardan knows you’re coming; he’s in the stable.”

  Thin snow fell; the lantern burning at the inn’s back door picked out one flake and then two. Across the stableyard, two more lanterns burned: one at the stable entrance, one by the back gate. Arvid made his way to the stable. Mardan was checking the horses in their stalls.

  “Takin’ my job, are ye?” He sounded half-sulky, half-relieved.

  “Master Jostin said you could use the help.”

  “Well, then, ye walk the bounds for me. Up there, the catwalk. Call if ye need me.”

  Arvid climbed the stairs. Down in the courtyard, three dim circles of light; over the stable wall, the lane that ran past it was solid dark. It reminded him of his early days as a thief apprentice, up on a roof in the dark and cold. Be a shadow, his trainer had said. And yet Mardan usually walked back and forth … He walked up to the corner of the inn itself; it rose another story higher than the stable roof. No windows out of which a guest could escape without paying, not on this side. He turned and walked back. From below, he might be visible in this light snow, a shadow moving through twirling flakes, no more. No one could see his face.

  Back and forth once, twice, thrice … then down the stairs and across the court to the stairs on the north side. Mardan peered out to watch him start up the stairs, then ducked back into the warm stable. On this side, the catwalk circled the entire roof—over the cowbyre and adjoining storage open to the stableyard as well as a row of rooms that opened onto the street beyond. One, he knew, was a dormitory for the inn staff. Three adjoining housed prostitutes. Arvid faced into the biting north breeze and made the full circuit back to the roof of the north side of the stable and then back down and across.

  The easy way in would be that—only a single story to climb and the catwalk to lead an intruder to the stableyard. But that street, wider, had more traffic even late at night; the women hung lamps outside their doors. Though men often clustered there, that in itself would make it harder for a thief to climb unobserved, though a night like this was a little safer. Still, the north wall, whitewashed, had neither nearby trees nor vines to aid a climb. Thief-assassins, Arvid thought, would be more likely to come out of the dark lane on the south side, where they might have placed climbing hooks and concealed them with thief-marks.

  He made only two circuits of the larger catwalk and then moved back down and across to the south side and climbed up again. He wished he could risk going out to check the outside walls, but he knew the stable postern groaned on its hinges. He started off along the catwalk, feeling the grit of the snow underfoot, moving slowly but steadily as old Mardan would. One circuit. Two. On the third, instead of going back down the catwalk stairs, he simply sank down on his haunches slowly, as if descending. Drew his sword. And waited.

  Snow fell silently out of the dark sky. Below, in the courtyard, Mardan paced across the stableyard, barely visible in the dim light of the gate lantern, and disappeared into the cowbyre. It would be warm in there, and Arvid hoped he would take his rest. The old man would not fare well in the fight Arvid expected.

  Time passed. Arvid shifted his weight carefully, moving as slowly as a shadow might move, to ease one knee and then another. He thought of the meat roll in his pocket but decided against eating it.

  Then he heard the first noise, a faint crunch from the lane … boots on snow. He looked across the lane. One possibility would send a partner up on that roof with a crossbow to shoot the watchman. That building had snow outlining every roughness; he should be able to see a shadow moving across it. But the next noise came from below, more vibration than noise … one then another. Someone tapping climbing hooks into the crevices of the wall with a padded hammer. Ting-chink … a hook slipped, hit a stone of the wall.

  Silence again. Arvid easily imagined the thief below, listening for any sound, hoping all were asleep or out of hearing.

  Then the softened thuds of the climbing hooks being hammered in returned … paused … resumed again, nearer. Arvid slid his dagger out of his boot. While climbing a wall, it was almost impossible to hear someone on the other side of it; one’s attention fixed on the task itself, on balance and the stability of handholds and footholds.

  Arvid had positioned himself in the corner, just beyond the stairs; the way he’d been trained, climbing the corner was considered bad technique. Sure enough, the shadow that rose above the catwalk and eased over to the roof, visible only by its disturbance of the falling snow, did so well away from the corner. Arvid waited. Another shadow joined the first; the two moved closer; he heard the rasp of drawn blades.

  Though they would not see a motionless shadow, they might see an indistinct shape where snow had fallen on him. Would they believe some rubbish piled in the corner? Or would they attack? Arvid watched as they came nearer—they clearly knew where they were going—and turned at the head of the stairs. As he had hoped.

  He had the best chance to kill them both as they went down those narrow, steep stairs, with the least disturbance to warn whatever thieves were left on watch in the lane. He took one last look along the catwalk before standing to take them in the rear—and froze. Another came over the edge of the roof, this time faster, with less care, and, as it moved toward the stairs, pulled something over its shoulder. By the dim suggestions of movement, Arvid knew it was not a blade he faced but a crossbow.

  The shadow stopped in front of him, at the top of the stairs, and bent to span the bow. Arvid stood and lunged in the same moment, his sword driving through the thief’s cloak and clothing, catching a moment on a rib. Arvid twisted the blade, and it slid on. The thief staggered and fell … but the bow was spanned, and the thief writhed, bringing it around. Arvid knocked the crossbow prod askew with his dagger; though the bowstring hummed, the bolt flew wide. Then he buried the dagger in the thief’s throat and freed his sword.

  Below, one thief had turned on the stairs and was almost on him; Arvid turned to meet the attack. He had height, but his back was to the outer wall, a sheer drop twice his height and only a low parapet. He parried, thrust, parried again, thrust again, using every advantage to drive the thief down the stairs, but the man was also skillful. And thief-cunning; a thrown knife caught in the innkeeper’s heavy winter cloak before Arvid had seen it coming. It would not be the only one, he knew, and they would all be tipped with poison.

  And what was the thief now below doing?

  “Ha! What’s this!” Old Mardan came out of the cowbyre, drawn by the clash of blades. Arvid didn’t look. He had to get past the one nearest before he could help Mardan. Mardan’s call was just enough to distract the thief on the stairs as Arvid thrust again; the thief made a weak parry, and Arvid redoubled before the thief got his blade back in position. The thief shifted his feet, and slipped on the trodden snow of the steps. Arvid thrust again, closing; he felt his blade meet resistance and pushed harder. The thief slipped again, and then he was tumbling backward, grunting. Arvid came down as fast as he could without slipping.

  As he reached the foot of the stairs, the lantern light glittering on the snow-covered stableyard was enough to see by. Over by the postern someone stood hunched—was that Mardan or the first thief? The man who had fallen pushed himself up and made a grab for Arvid’s legs. Arvid kicked out, jumped past him, then whirled and thrust hard into the man’s body even as he felt a breath of air on his cheek from another thrown knife. He thrust again, this time at the angle of neck and shoulder; blood spurted out, dark against the bright snow, and the man went limp.

  When he turned, Mardan had advanced cautiously toward the man at the postern, his club held before him. But already the gate was moving; the hinges groaned, and someone outside pulled it wide. The noise it made should have waked half the city. The man turned, and before Arvid could reach him, he had dodged Mardan’s clumsy swipe with th
e club and slashed the old man across the throat. Mardan fell; two more men came in, and Arvid faced three, all with blades out.

  Well. Simyits was not with him tonight, that was certain. You might ask me. His knees almost gave way. “Fine, then,” he muttered. “I ask you.” Say my name. Arvid’s mouth went dry. Through his mind ran the names of saints and gods he had never called on but to curse. One is enough. Gird. It had to be Gird. He worked his tongue around in his mouth as the men advanced, spreading out in a wide arc. The one on the right end had his blade in his left hand. “Gird,” he managed in a sort of grunt. “Help.”

  Then they rushed him.

  Arvid shrugged and charged, aiming at the one who was moving to his right. If he could get them into a spiral, getting in one another’s way, maybe—but they knew better. He hesitated, luring them closer, and then once more charged at the left-handed man, sidestepped, and tried a backhanded draw cut as he strode past. The fellow yelped—against thieves’ discipline, that—and then cursed, but Arvid was safe in his chosen corner, back to the staircase that led up over the cowbyre.

  He could retreat up it; they could come at him only one by one then, but one of them, he could see now, had another crossbow slung to his back. And backing up a snow-slippery stair with a cloak he might step on and trip himself would be stupid. Still, in the corner, they couldn’t all get at him, and in this corner in particular, he could dive to his heart-hand and roll around the frame of the cowbyre.

  He glanced for an instant at the back of the inn, solid and silent … but … that lantern by the back door now showed a dark opening, and a dark figure—no, two—no, three—moved out onto the snowy courtyard. Arvid hoped very much these were not more thieves.

  “Who are you?” one of the thieves asked softly in thieves’ cant.

  Arvid did not answer but parried the attack of the one on the right with his dagger and the one in the center with his sword. He huffed like a man out of breath. Indeed, he felt a tightness in his chest.

  “Are you new in town?” asked another, this time in Common. “A hiresword? You’ve made a mistake, angering the Guild.”