The Vondish Ambassador loe-10

by Lawrence Watt-Evans

  “Perhaps you don’t,” Ildirin said soothingly, “but perhaps you do, and careful questioning may discover it.”

  “But I don’t.”

  Ildirin sighed. “Then think of this as your chance to ride in a fine carriage, and perhaps visit a house in Allston, and spend more time in this pleasant young man’s company, and be paid a round for your trouble.”

  “A round?”

  “Eight bits. Yes.”

  “In copper? Not iron?”

  Ildirin snorted. “Girl, I am the overlord’s uncle. I haven’t even seen an iron coin in the last twenty years!”

  “Foreign sailors try to use them sometimes,” Gita said. “My uncle gets furious if I accept them.”

  “As well he should,” Ildirin said. “They haven’t been legal currency in the city for more than two hundred years.”

  “We use them on the docks sometimes,” Emmis said. “For gambling, when we don’t want to risk real money, since we do get them from foreigners sometimes and they aren’t accepted anywhere.”

  “Interesting,” Ildirin said. “I hadn’t known that.” Then he focused on Gita. “Did any of the Lumethans try to pay with iron?”

  “No,” Gita said, and the questioning that had gone so long at the inn was begun anew in the carriage.

  The nobleman switched back and forth between Gita and Emmis, trying to ferret out new details. Emmis did his best to answer Lord Ildirin’s questions, but also looked out the windows every so often, trying to identify the route they were taking.

  They rolled along Warehouse Street, almost into Spicetown, and then turned onto Moat Street, before turning again onto North Street, which brought them out onto the plaza in front of the Palace. It would never have occurred to Emmis to take so northerly a path, but it did avoid any sort of upgrade, and of course Lord Ildirin would be accustomed to routes that led to and from the Palace.

  They did not stop in the plaza, though, but rolled across it at a stately pace as people hurried out of the path of the horses, and out the southeast corner, up onto Arena Street.

  Here at last was an upgrade they could not avoid, but it did not seem to trouble the horses or the coachman; the carriage rolled on, unhindered, up Arena Street.

  Lord Ildirin’s questions were finally slowing, to Emmis’s relief; he really could not see any significance in whether or not he had noticed the length of Hagai’s fingernails — which he hadn’t — or in some of the other details Ildirin was now asking about. He was relieved that Ildirin’s questions had never approached too closely anything Lar had told him not to repeat; the old man seemed to be focused entirely on what had taken place at the Crooked Candle, or on his encounter with the two assassins, and not interested in why Lar had come to Ethshar.

  And then, rather than asking another question, Lord Ildirin gestured toward the guardsman sitting beside Emmis and said, “This is Ahan, by the way. He will be accompanying you on your errands.”

  “What errands, my lord?” Emmis asked, startled.

  “Whatever errands your employer sends you on; I want you out of the house while the two of us speak. The coachman will be escorting Gita back to the Crooked Candle, but I assume the ambassador can find something more constructive for you to do.”

  “You’re done with us, then?”

  “For the present.”

  “And have you figured out who the Lumethans hired to kill the ambassador, or where they might be found?”

  Emmis regretted the snide words even as they were leaving his lips, but apologizing would probably only make matters worse; he let the question stand.

  Lord Ildirin smiled at him — not a nice smile this time, not like his previous expressions. “Not yet,” he said. “Have you?”

  “No,” Emmis said. “I’m just a dockworker and guide. I don’t investigate anything.”

  “Of course.” Ildirin glanced at Gita.

  “I just help out my uncle!” she said. “None of this has anything to do with me.”

  “And I just help out my nephew,” Ildirin said. “It seems a better use of my time than sitting around waiting to die.”

  Gita looked at him nervously, then turned away.

  The exchange made Emmis uncomfortable; he looked out the carriage window just in time to see them negotiate the turn onto Through Street.

  “We’re here,” he said.

  Ildirin glanced out. “So we are,” he said.

  A moment later the carriage came to a halt, and three of the four inside passengers debarked at the front door of the rented house. Gita started to climb out as well, but Lord Ildirin held up a bony hand to stop her.

  “You will stay in the carriage, please,” he said. He reached for his purse and counted out eight bits; she crouched in the door of the coach, waiting, as he did. Then he held out the handful of money.

  She cupped her own hands, and he poured the coins into them.

  “Thank you, my lord,” she said.

  “You’re welcome,” he said. Then he called to the coachman, “Take her to Shiphaven Market and leave her there, then come back here and wait for me.”

  “Yes, my lord.”

  One of the two guards who had been riding on the back of the carriage had jumped down; the other remained in place. While Emmis and the disembarked guard unloaded Emmis’s two bags, Lord Ildirin took a moment to whisper instructions to the man on the carriage, then turned away.

  The coachman shook the reins, and the carriage rolled away, leaving Emmis, Lord Ildirin, and two guardsman behind. Emmis lifted his baggage, delighted to have it back. He wondered whether anything might be missing. He peered after the carriage, hoping for one more glimpse of Gita; she had saved his belongings for him, which had been kind of her, but it didn’t mean he didn’t think she might have gone through a few things and perhaps appropriated an item or two. She was pleasant enough, but he didn’t trust her.

  “Now, to meet with this ambassador,” Ildirin said, and the four of them turned toward the big green door.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Emmis glanced sideways at the guardsman.

  Lord Ildirin had said the man’s name was Ahan, and had assigned the guardsman to accompany Emmis to the Wizards’ Quarter. He had insisted that Emmis go away while he discussed matters of state with the ambassador, and Lar, after his initial surprise and reluctance, had agreed.

  “It’s nothing you’d be interested in,” he had said.

  That might well be true, but Emmis still resented being ordered out of his own new home. He had insisted on taking the time to put his miraculously-recovered luggage in his own room, with the door securely locked. He had also insisted on a few words with Lar before allowing himself to be escorted out the front door.

  Escorted he had been, though. Emmis and Ahan had then walked from Through Street up Arena to Wizard Street, and in all that time the guard had not said a word.

  The other guardsman, the one Emmis and Lar had found on Games Street the night before, had been chatty and reasonably friendly; this Ahan, though, seemed to feel that talking on duty violated proper procedure. Even smiling seemed beyond him.

  Emmis could not decide whether that was a good thing or a bad one. It meant that he didn’t need to explain anything, and could rest his voice after Lord Ildirin’s long interrogation, but it also made him a little nervous. What was the man thinking, behind those expressionless features?

  It probably didn’t matter, Emmis told himself. Lord Ildirin had told Ahan to accompany Emmis, so Ahan was accompanying Emmis; he hadn’t told Ahan to do anything else, so far as Emmis knew, so Ahan presumably wasn’t going to interfere in any of Emmis’s business.

  Of course, if Ahan weren’t along, Emmis might have gone somewhere other than the Wizards’ Quarter. The house still needed more furniture and kitchenware, and another trip to the market to replenish the pantry would not be a bad idea.

  But trying to dicker with carpenters or farmers with a soldier standing at his shoulder did not appeal to Emmis. Magicians would be
less intimidated, and he really did want to talk to a theurgist about that doorway shrine; even if he couldn’t work in any other questions, it would be good to settle that.

  And other questions were certainly a possibility. Lar’s instructions, when they had discussed Emmis’s intentions, had been interestingly vague, probably because Ildirin and two guards had been within earshot. Lar had agreed that the shrine needed to be identified, and the proper treatment of the idol therein determined, but then he had added, “And of course, if anything else comes to mind, you could ask the theurgist about that, as well.”

  “Anything else?”

  “Yes — whatever you think we might need to know.”

  “Ah,” Emmis had said.

  That could cover a very broad range of subjects indeed, from Annis the Merchant to the towers of Lumeth, from Vond the Great Warlock to hiring assassins. Emmis wasn’t sure just which of those questions Lar most wanted answered, but he couldn’t very well ask with Lord Ildirin and his men there.

  “You’ll need to pay, of course,” Lar had said, handing him a purse.

  Emmis had not yet looked inside, but he had felt the surprising weight of that purse, and he suspected he was carrying a couple of rounds of gold — far more than the cost of identifying a shrine. Which made the guard’s presence a little more reassuring. Ordinarily Emmis was perfectly capable of defending himself from the city’s more unsavory residents, but a purse full of gold was a considerably greater temptation than he usually offered.

  Ahan’s presence might make it difficult to ask any really interesting questions, but Emmis intended to try.

  They passed Wizard Street, then Sorcery Street, then the mysteriously-named Gaja Street, and Ahan had still not said a word. Emmis glanced down Warlock Street, wondering if he might catch a glimpse of Ishta, but he did not.

  Then finally they reached Priest Street, where he turned right — and stopped.

  Ahan almost ran into him, but still said nothing.

  “Do you know any of these people?” Emmis asked, with a gesture at the signs and shop-fronts.

  “No,” Ahan said. “Should I?”

  “You never bought a prayer, or consulted a god’s oracle?”

  “No. My mother did when I was a child, but she dealt with an old man in our own neighborhood, she didn’t come here.”

  Emmis sighed, and looked along the street again.

  Theurgists were a little different from most other magicians; it wasn’t always the magician’s name on the signboard. Many of the signs instead announced the name of a temple or shrine, such as the Temple of Divine Peace, or the Sanctuary of the Priests of Asham.

  Emmis had no idea who or what Asham was — perhaps a god, perhaps a high priest, perhaps a place, or a cult or, for all Emmis knew, a rock someone had decided was holy. He did not want to take the time to find out what Asham was, or what sort of divine peace might be offered; instead he looked further, hoping for more informative names.

  Kirsha the Immaculate didn’t sound especially promising, nor did High Priest Senesson of Southmarket. The Temple of True Healing at least gave him some idea what services it might provide, but was not what he wanted.

  He began walking down the street, looking at the window displays — unlike the other streets, many of the buildings here didn’t have ground-floor windows, but some did. He ignored shrines and fountains and altars; those didn’t tell him anything. Many of the businesses were quite elaborately decorated, with gods and goddesses painted on doors or panels, with glittering tapestries hung in windows; bright enamel and gleaming gilt were everywhere. Shrines were common on most streets in Ethshar, but here they proliferated wildly, with idol-filled niches seemingly every few feet, sometimes two or three built into a single wall one above the other.

  Amid all this gaudy spectacle one shop caught his attention, and he stopped.

  It was indeed a shop, rather than a temple, with a relatively plain wooden door painted purple, flanked by largely-empty display windows curtained with maroon velvet. If not for the signboard Emmis might have thought the proprietor was some other sort of magician entirely, since after all, there was no law saying that only theurgists could operate businesses on Priest Street. It was merely custom for the various sorts of magician to sort themselves out into individual streets, and several streets did mix multiple varieties.

  This shop was so plain in comparison to its neighbors that it seemed to belong somewhere else entirely — among the warlocks, perhaps.

  The sign above the door, however, read CORINAL THE THEURGIST, and a gilt-edged placard in the left-hand window proclaimed, “Practical Prayers for Many Purposes: We Can Summon More Than A Score of Deities!” Smaller print at the bottom added, “If We Cannot Aid You Directly, We Offer An Inexpensive Referral Service.”

  That sounded like exactly what Emmis needed. He crossed the street and tried the door.

  It opened easily, and he peered in to what appeared to be a deserted study. Three high-backed chairs were arranged around a low table, and the walls beyond were lined with bookshelves. Although it was full daylight outside most of the room was dim — the curtains were drawn. An oil lamp was burning in a bracket above the table, however, casting a pool of light.

  “Hello?” Emmis called.

  A head suddenly appeared around the side of the chair most nearly facing away from him, as a white-haired old man turned to look at him.

  “Oh, hello, there,” the old man said. “Come in!”

  There was a thump as he closed a thick book, another thump as he set it on the table, and by the time Emmis and Ahan had stepped into the shop the old man was rising from his chair and approaching them, hand extended. He was short, but solidly built, despite his obviously advanced age.

  “I’m Corinal,” he said. “How can I help you?”

  Emmis blinked at him. “This looks more like a library than a magician’s shop,” he said.

  “I like to read,” Corinal said mildly.

  Emmis nodded. “Of course,” he said. “But you’re a theurgist?”

  The old man smiled crookedly. “It says so on my sign, certainly, and wouldn’t it be foolish to advertise that if it weren’t so?”

  Emmis shook the offered hand, and returned the smile a bit sheepishly. “I had a question or two,” he said.

  “Questions I can answer, or questions requiring divine assistance?”

  “Probably requiring divine assistance,” Emmis said.

  Corinal nodded. “I’ll see what I can do to get you your answers, then.” He glanced at Ahan, who had closed the front door and was now standing with his back to it. “Might I ask one of my own first, though?”

  “I... yes, of course,” Emmis said.

  “Why is this soldier here?”

  Emmis turned up an empty palm. “Ask him,” he said.

  Corinal turned to Ahan. “Well?”

  Ahan cleared his throat. “Lord Ildirin has ordered me to accompany this man wherever he goes, to guard him against attack, to prevent him from committing any illegal acts, and to report back on his actions.”

  “Bodyguard, jailer, and spy, all on just two feet, then?” Corinal asked. “And why does Lord Ildirin care what becomes of him?”

  “I do what I’m told, sir; I didn’t ask why.”

  “This is Lord Ildirin, the overlord’s brother... no, I’m sorry, the new overlord’s uncle?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  He turned back to Emmis. “Do you know why Lord Ildirin has decided you require such attention?”

  “Because I work for the Vondish ambassador to Ethshar, and stopped an assassination attempt on him yesterday.”

  “Oh, really? That’s charming! Honestly, I’m delighted to hear that. A Vondish ambassador, you say? From that upstart empire south of the Small Kingdoms?”

  “Yes.”

  “And Lord Ildirin thinks the assassins might decide to retaliate against you for your interference, or perhaps you’re secretly working with the assassins, or perhaps there
aren’t any assassins and this is all part of some complicated scheme you’re involved in, or all of these at once, and so he’s assigned this fine fellow to follow you around and make your life difficult until he’s more nearly satisfied that he knows what’s happening?”

  “Something like that,” Emmis agreed.

  “And you’ve decided to come ask me your questions anyway? Then you have nothing to hide?”

  Emmis grimaced. “I haven’t done anything wrong,” he said. “And I thought I’d have an easier time dealing with you with this guard at my elbow than I would trying to dicker with cabinet-makers and cutlers.”

  “You are wise beyond your years, young man. Come in, sit down, both of you, and tell me what you want to know.” He gestured toward the chairs.

  A moment later the three of them were seated around the table; Emmis could see that the book Corinal had been reading was entitled The Pursuit of the Shatra. He had no idea what a shatra was, or why anyone would pursue one; the book looked very old.

  “Now, what did you want to ask me?” Corinal asked.

  “Ah. The ambassador has rented a house on Through Street in Allston, and the house has a shrine by the door. We wanted to know whose shrine it is, and what would be appropriate for us to do with it.”

  “Oh, an easy one. That’s exactly the sort of question best answered by Unniel the Discerning, goddess of information about theurgy, sorcery, and certain other topics. I can summon her for half a round of silver.”

  Emmis automatically said, “I’ll pay two bits,” but in fact he was relieved. As magical prices went, four bits in silver for anything was a bargain.

  “Three bits in silver and one of copper,” Corinal countered.

  “Three silver bits,” Emmis said. “No copper.”

  “Don’t expect me to be so flexible on more difficult matters, should any arise,” Corinal said, reaching up for something from one of the shelves. “Unniel is easy, though, so you have a deal. Tell me about this shrine, and just where it is.” He pulled out a thin book that had a quill inserted in it like a bookmark, set it on the table, then reached up again and found a small bottle of ink.