by John Daulton
“What’s that?” she said, more to herself than to Black Sander.
Two of the tendrils that waved around Altin and Orli in their amber cocoons swung up and out of view, and shortly after, the edge of a platform came into view. The two newlyweds were lifted up over it and placed on a wide beam. The beam was so long it disappeared into the distance with no end in sight. There were others like it nearby, some in parallel, others running crosswise at even intervals, all together like latticework, albeit a very great one. Large, shadowy things loomed in the distance, shrouded by darkness and blowing mist, frost perhaps, as the marchioness had suggested.
The two of them were placed upon the beam together, Orli slightly ahead of Altin. The tendrils released them both and then seemed to simply float away. Soon after, there was little more to see, Altin and Orli, once again, just sitting there. Black Sander almost turned away to look at Jefe and El Segador, compelled to by the audacity of their wait, but then Lady Meade blinked.
The marchioness saw it too, for she said, “Well, there we have it. She’s not dead.” She turned from the mirror then as if that had been the signal she was waiting for. “Now, you,” she said, gazing down her nose at Jefe. “What is this about the royal armor?”
Black Sander finally turned, relieved that the wait was over and curious to see how much damage she had done. But the expression on Jefe’s face was just as sanguine as it had been when he was out in the waiting room. Black Sander let out a silent breath. He had to give the man credit: he was good at what he did.
Beyond good. A half hour later, Jefe and Vorvington were laughing like old friends over a bottle of elven wine, and the Earth man was making promises to deliver, in exchange for a case of the fine libation, a case of another fine libation from his homeland called “tequila,” which he promised was the very nectar of Earth. The marchioness, while hardly so convivial as those two, had actually deigned to let everyone sit down. Everyone but the “minions.”
Black Sander and El Segador were dismissed like children soon after the wine was poured, with Vorvington even calling after, “Take him into the city and show him around.” It was a suggestion to which Jefe had boisterously agreed, acting tipsier than he could possibly be.
Black Sander gritted his teeth, but nodded that he would comply. If his part in securing the mechs required that he play tour guide, then that was how it had to be.
“Let’s get you into something less conspicuous,” he said, looking El Segador up and down. “There’s no sense shouting to every blank on Prosperion that you are here.”
Chapter 38
Roberto and Deeqa Daar left the Glistening Lady not far off the road, a quarter mile west of the Decline. They’d come in slow and set down quietly and with lights off. As soon as they were off, the ship turned on its camouflage, vanishing into the night.
As it had been last night when they’d met with Vorvington, the wind whipped around them, whipping the folds of their cloaks, garments that Kettle had forced on them after having chased them down as they left Calico Castle’s front gate.
They bent into the wind and made their way onto the road, and soon after, they were winding their way down the Decline. Despite Tytamon’s comment about businesses in the city shutting down during the day rather than at night, there were scant few of them lit up as they went down. There was a candle shop with lights on as they passed, but not invitingly so. Deeqa commented that it had the same name as the warehouse through which they contracted several of their Goblin Tea suppliers: Gevender’s.
“Yeah, I think that sneaky little bastard Tenderthrift has his stubby fingers in everything, probably on all sides,” Roberto replied. “And frankly, I’ll be perfectly happy to buy homing lizards from him too if he’s got a shop somewhere up ahead. At this point, I don’t really care where they come from.”
Two men fell in behind them as they rounded the first of the steep hairpin turns that bent the Decline back on itself as it cut its way down the cliff. Roberto and Deeqa both saw them. The tail was still with them after they passed through a better-lit stretch where four businesses in a row were open—none of which promised homing lizards inside.
As the lights were fading behind them, Roberto glanced to Deeqa, who nodded. They stopped and turned around, Roberto throwing back his hood as he spoke. “You got a half second to back off, or we’re going to drop you both where you stand,” he said. The barrels of both Deeqa’s nine-millimeter pistols pushed pointedly in the direction of the men from beneath her cloak, revealing the source of the menace if not the nature of it. “Actually, she’s going to do it,” he amended. “I’m just going to laugh.”
The taller of the two men glared out from beneath his own hood, but saw something in the aspect of his intended victims that turned him and his companion around. Roberto watched them go until they were beyond the light, heading back to the hairpin. He shook his head and grinned at Deeqa, who shrugged. They set off again.
They made their way down the rest of the Decline without event, and without homing lizards, and moved into the city, where the lights grew brighter and more frequent the closer they got to the harbor.
They turned down this way and that, expecting at any point to find something promising, but nothing stood out.
“How does a town support this many bars and taverns?” Deeqa marveled. “Where do this many drinkers come from?”
“The ocean,” Roberto said. “They come in with the tide.”
Finally a man and what looked to be his wife came along the walk, moving quickly with their heads down. “Hey, excuse me,” said Roberto, doing his best not to sound threatening given where they were and what time of night it was. “Any chance you know where a guy could pick up a homing lizard this late?”
The woman gripped the man’s arm tightly, and he drew a dagger from beneath his coat, one he’d been gripping all along. “Back off, thieves. I’ll cut you open, don’t think I won’t.” Roberto could tell by the way he said it that he was as terrified as his wife. They hugged the wall of the shop front they were passing and scooted past as quickly as possible. It was a mystery what the two of them were doing out this late, but the woman’s eyes were red rimmed. Roberto suspected they might be going to or coming from having had to post some ransom or pay some awful bribe.
“Maybe I won’t retire here,” he said, glancing to his companion. “Not much for hospitality.”
A man lurched out of a bar and staggered toward them. Roberto eyed him, wondering first if he might be a threat; second, upon deciding he wasn’t, wondering if he might be of some use; and third, upon his having pivoted and blown the contents of his guts against the wall, deciding to give him a considerable grant of right of way.
They asked a few others that they encountered, but everyone was either too drunk, too afraid of them, or too busy sizing them up as potential victims to be of any use. The one group of sailors who would have been useful were just ashore from Sansafrax and had no idea about homing lizard vendors at all. One of them did remark that Deeqa had pretty eyes and an even prettier mouth, which almost got him shot, which in turn would have been a shame, given that the lads were apparently the only marginally civil people in the entire city.
After making their way back and forth through town for nearly a half hour, Roberto decided they needed to just go in and ask somewhere. He looked up and surveyed the street they were on. Three taverns, an opium den, two brothels, and two businesses proclaiming themselves the finest choice for something called sanza-sap, which was something neither of them were familiar with. However, based on the comatose people lying along the walks in front of these places like stacked garbage—and knowing what he knew of Orli’s plight on the slaver’s ship—Roberto decided a regular old tavern would be the least likely place to piss him off.
He scanned the signs above the doors of the nearby drinking establishments. None of them had dancing illusion magic on the rooftops like the brothels did, but one of them made Roberto laugh. “Look there. The Harlot’s Pocke
t. That’s funny.” He started for the stairs.
“Why is it funny?” Deeqa asked as she eyed the monster of a bouncer standing outside the door.
“It’s one of those double entrées Orli is always talking about. You know, two meanings: one plain, one sexually delicious.”
She looked at him, for a moment even more bewildered than before.
Roberto frowned at her. “Girl, you need a sense of humor. It’s right here next to a whorehouse. Think about it. That shit is hilarious. Maybe the proprietor is a halfway decent guy.”
She thought about it a moment more, then shook her head. “It is entendre, not entrée. And you are like a child.”
“I know,” he replied, putting on a grin. To the bouncer he said, “What’s the cover, my man?” He tried to sound a little like Altin with that but failed.
The bouncer looked at him, then tilted a little to look into Deeqa’s shadowed cowl. He was nearly as tall as she was. He grunted a single note under his breath, then motioned toward the door with a sideways twitch.
“Thanks a lot, old sport,” Roberto said, still trying to sound Prosperion. He winked at Deeqa, and together they went in.
The place was almost exactly what Roberto had expected it would be. Smoke clung to the ceiling in a thick cloud, the worst of which Roberto was just short enough to clear. The interior was dark and drab, and nobody seemed to have ever cared in the least about decorating. Patrons sat around tables, making noise and cursing over dice and games of cards. Others sat quietly, peering out from under hat brims and hoods, watching who came and went. Two buxom bar wenches roamed the spaces in between, one of them laughing and giggling gaily every time someone groped her, while the other poured drinks on those who treated her likewise. The doused men would laugh and order another, and Roberto figured she’d probably been playing that game for the proprietor for years.
“There,” Deeqa said, nodding toward a brutish man standing behind the bar, pouring drinks for two sailors who looked as if they were about to slide off their stools and sleep beneath the bar. Roberto noticed a young man in the shadows nearby watching them, a lean fellow with a tuft of red hair that glinted dully like copper wire in the darkness.
They made their way directly to the bar, Roberto watching those who watched him and matching their stares long enough for them to recognize that he didn’t care. He bellied up to the bar, with Deeqa beside him turning her back to it so she could watch out into the room.
“What can I get you?” the barkeep asked, not looking up at them.
“I need a homing lizard,” Roberto said.
“What do I look like?” the man said, gazing up at that. He flipped his hands over for a moment to convey how dumb he thought Roberto’s statement was. “Buy a drink or get out.”
“Fine. Two of whatever isn’t poisonous. Ale or wine.”
“Which is it?”
“Wine. House wine is fine.”
The barkeep turned and got a pitcher off the back counter, a crude clay thing and a far cry from the silver they’d been served from barely an hour past. “Show me your color, friend.”
Roberto paused, the question on his face. The bartender rolled his eyes and started to turn away, but Deeqa turned long enough to place a gold coin on the bar.
“Hestra,” said the man. “You’re either brave or fools.”
“It’s all we got,” Roberto said, keeping his voice as low as he could.
“Well, you’ll have half these bastards following you out,” the man said, taking it and pouring the drinks. “You’ll have to give me a moment to get your change. I don’t keep that lying around.”
“Keep it,” Roberto said. “Look, I need a damn homing lizard. Where can I get one, like, right now?”
“If I had one, I’d give it to ya,” the man said. “But I ain’t.”
“So who does? Someone in here have one? Or at least somebody sell them that’s open still?”
“Bleck’s on Front Street sells them. So does Carper’s Carrier Pigeon at the bottom of the Decline. That’s it. But I doubt you’ll find either open now.”
“Well, crap. We walked by that carrier pigeon place, and it was definitely shut up tight. I thought this town was a round-the-clock affair.”
“I can get you one,” said a voice from the shadows near the wall. The young man who’d been watching the sailors drinking themselves into oblivion stepped into better light. Roberto pulled back reflexively upon seeing how pockmarked his face was. Huge scars like craters all up and down his cheeks and jawline. There were angry red lumps in other places, likely making more craters to come. Roberto almost offered to introduce the youth to Doctor Singh, but bit his tongue. “Where?” Roberto said instead. “How fast?”
“How fast do you need?”
“I need it like an hour ago.”
The boy frowned. “Well, I can’t do that. But I can get you into Talbin Bleck’s.”
“You his kid or something?”
“No.”
“Then how we getting in?”
“How you think?” the boy said.
“That’s okay,” Roberto said. “Someone will have one around here.” He was half-tempted to just shout it out, when Deeqa put her hand on his arm. She crooked an eyebrow in the direction of the boy and shrugged, barely discernibly.
“Fine,” Roberto said. “Let’s go.”
He turned to go.
“You gonna drink those?” the youth said, pointing to the cups.
“No,” said Roberto. “We’re good for now.”
The boy swigged down Deeqa’s cup and chased it with Roberto’s. Then he led them back out through the crowd.
Two men jostled them as they came through the door, and for a moment, Roberto was staring into the bright blue eyes of a man he was sure he knew. The man looked out under a cloak pulled down just as low as Deeqa’s was, but Roberto saw him, and he saw the flash of recognition there. Or at least he thought he did, but the man pushed past him, driven by the hand of a man in a wide-brimmed hat and a cloak to match, both black as starless sky. Roberto thought he looked familiar too, and he turned back to look, but both of them were gone. In their place were two other men, shorter, broader at the shoulders, dirty like miners or men who work digging in the earth. Roberto blinked and shook his head. He looked up into the smoke, and groaned. Maybe he wasn’t short enough to be clear of it after all, whatever it was.
Deeqa and the red-haired youth met him in the street. In the light of the illusions and lamps up and down the street—those that were lit, anyway—he could tell the boy couldn’t be more than eighteen or nineteen.
“This way,” said the boy. “It’s only six blocks from here.”
“Don’t screw with us, dude,” Roberto said.
“So why you want them, anyway?” said the boy. “And what’s it worth to you?”
“Shouldn’t you have asked that before we came out here?”
“You just paid a crown for two drinks and gave them to me. My take from a pair of homing lizards will be good.” He flashed a greedy smile over his shoulder at them. “And why does an Earth ship captain need a homing lizard at all? I thought you all sent your messages through the air somehow, with some kind of machine.”
Roberto exchanged glances with Deeqa before answering, measuring his reply. “Who says I’m an Earth ship captain?”
“I’m not stupid, you know. I make my living by paying attention to things.”
“I guess so.” They walked in silence for a time.
“So you gonna tell me?” he asked finally, as they turned another corner. “It’s just up here,” he added as they went along. “Third one there, on the left.” He pointed to a low building, near the end of the block. The sign above it read Bleck’s Bakery.
“They sell homing lizards at a bakery?” Roberto made a face at Deeqa, but she was too busy looking around.
“We’ve got four of them,” she said. “Three between those two buildings back there, one more by the broken rail. Been on us since
we left.”
“Figures,” Roberto said. He’d missed them completely. “I should have known you were a shithead,” he said to the boy.
“Wasn’t me, swear,” said the kid. “I’d be dead if I was a double-crosser all this time. Look at me.” He looked down at himself. “I ain’t got nothing for a fight.”
“Size doesn’t mean much. Any monkey can learn to shoot. Or sword fight, for that matter.” He looked up ahead of them along the street. He didn’t see any movement up there.
“I can handle myself with a sword,” the boy said. “Can’t afford one, though.” He moved to the walkway on their left. “Come on. We can move quick, get in through the back. They won’t know which we went in.”
“You want us to follow you down that dark alley, with four guys on our ass, so that we can get a homing lizard from a bakery?” he asked. “I mean, I get that you figured out we are from Earth, but you should know that it’s not a whole planet full of morons. I mean, we have plenty, but, you know, not all of us.”
“Up to you,” said the youth. “But I give you my word. Thief’s honor, I swear it.”
“Why does that not mean anything to me?” But Roberto was moving along behind. “You die first, thief, just so you know.”
They slipped into the narrow space between two buildings, Roberto having to squeeze through sideways, for his shoulders were too wide. He pulled his blaster out and was ready to come out firing on the other side.
The boy was waiting for them when they came through.
Roberto looked left, then right. Deeqa reached up and grabbed the roof by its overhang. She pulled herself up and vanished into the darkness.
“Down here,” the boy said as they went along. “My name is Breks,” he said as they crept along the wall. “But everyone calls me Squints on account of me always watching everyone. I never met nobody from Earth before. I heard there ain’t no magicians nowhere at all on the whole planet. Is it true? A whole world with just us blanks?”
