Exiled: Keeper of the City

by Peter Morwood

  Reswen smiled gently. Krruth, as he had often told superiors and juniors alike, had been “raised old-fashioned,” and considered many of the styles and habits of modem Niau to be downright decadent. “I don’t mind a little dirt,” Reswen said. “It’s sedition that concerns me. That was all he talked about?”

  “And food, sir. Not that that creature needs any more of it. Great gross thing that he is.”

  “Yes, well. What about the others? Rirhath and his uncongenial lady?”

  “Rirhath went back to Haven early, cuffed the servants, drank himself stinking, and went to bed. Kirshaet stayed at the Councillory till the priest left, and went back with him and the underpriests. Same for her—drink, too much of it, and bed.”

  “With her husband?”

  “Yes. They were in a fine state this morning, I tell you. On my life, sir, I wouldn’t want a marriage like that.”

  “No argument there. The other merchants?”

  “Went back not too long after you left, sir.”

  Reswen digested it all for a moment. “All right,” he said, “keep watching them all closely. I want one of our people with each of them at every possible moment—manage it however you like. Especially watch that priest.

  I’ll make notes on everything that Kirshaet female told me, and you can set the lads to finding out how much of it was mere slander and how much might be used against one or more of these people if we needed to.”

  Krruth looked at Reswen a little oddly. “There was someone else, sir.”

  “Well?”

  “Laas.”

  Reswen rolled his eyes slightly. He could see that his staff was going to be teasing him about this one for a while. “Yes?”

  “She took Kanesh back to Haven with her, sir.”

  Reswen shrugged. “She’s a courtesan, for pity’s sake. I just want to find out whose orders she’s taking ... for she admitted to me last night that she was working for someone. Have her listened to wherever she goes that we can keep someone with her. Otherwise, I’ll manage it.”

  “Very well, sir—”

  Someone pounded on the door. Reswen put his paw to his head and moaned softly. “Why do my office help have to be so efficient? Come in, don’t just stand there hammering!”

  The door opened, and in burst young Second-Oct Recruit Creel, gasping like a bellows. “Ah, Creel,” Reswen said on seeing him, “just what I needed to make my morning complete. Come in, young son, and sit down and tell me what’s on your mind. How’s the bunorshan-herding business?”

  “Invaders, sir!” said Creel, and coughed, and fell more than sat in the chair that Reswen had indicated.

  “No, no,” Reswen said, massaging his temples gently, “that was yesterday.”

  “No, sir, today!”

  Reswen glanced up from under his brows. “Not another caravan, surely. We’re not due one for, oh, another couple of eightdays—”

  “Bigger than the usual caravan, sir,” Creel said as Krruth handed him a cup of water. He drank hastily and noisily, and then said, “They’re wearing Northern colors. Lloahai.”

  “Are you certain? Gold and white?”

  “Yes, sir. It’s a big party, and there are twelve litters, and a lot of foot soldiery. More than anyone would need for an escort, no matter how far they’d come.”

  Why does everything have to happen at once? Reswen thought unhappily. “Well,” he said, “I’m just glad the walls are still manned.”

  Krruth looked at Reswen with some discomfort. “They’re not, sir.”

  “What?”

  “The Arpekh canceled the alert at the end of the reception last night. The cohorts are at normal status.”

  Reswen briefly said things about the parentage and sanitary habits of the Arpekh, separately and collectively, then grabbed a wax tablet, scraped on it with savage speed, and dug his chop into the bottom of the page with unnecessary force. “Runner!” he shouted, and a slightly surprised-looking kit from one of the pool waiting around the constabulary offices poked his head in.

  “This to the city cohorts, and right now. I’ll be down at the gates shortly. If they have any questions, have Commander Sachath wait on me there.” He was scribbling again as he spoke. After a pause, he jabbed the shorthand of his signature into the second tablet and looked up. “Then this one to the Lloahairi Embassy—hand it to one of your friends out there as you go out. My compliments to the ambassador. What are you waiting for?”

  The messenger went out the door as if he’d been kicked. Reswen rubbed his head again and said, “Is there anything else I need to know about?”

  “Nothing that won’t wait, sir.”

  “All right. Back to work, both of you. Creel, well done. But for pity’s sake, boy, do you have to run everywhere you go?”

  “You do, sir,” Creel said in tones of purest hero-worship.

  Reswen made a sardonic face. “There should be a message there somewhere, Creel. Take your time now, because twenty years from now, when you have my job, you’re going to have to run everywhere then too. Now get out of here.”

  Creel and Krruth went out, one at a run, one stalking thoughtfully. Reswen got up, stretched, picked up his cloak, and gazed out the window for a moment—then discarded the cloak and headed out at a trot.

  So once again Reswen found himself waiting on the walls, with old Sachath standing beside him, the two of them looking down at the approaching entourage with some annoyance.

  “Knew you were going to do this,” Sachath said amiably, as soon as he set eyes on Reswen. “Can’t let a man sleep after a good party, can you?”

  Reswen grinned at him a little, for Sachath, as commander of the guard, had been much in evidence at the reception last night, and had done himself nobly over the wines there. “If I can’t sleep, why should you?” Reswen said. “What I can’t understand is why those idiots rescinded the alert. They knew its purpose.”

  “Hhuh,” Sachath said, a disgusted noise. “They saw fat priests and traders, last night, and decided in their cups that maybe there was nothing to be afraid of At least, that’s one idea. Me, I think the sight of soldiers makes the Arpekh nervous, whether they’re someone else’s soldiers or our own. Silly old mams, they are. A city needs a standing force in evidence if it’s to stay its own and not be swallowed by the first force to walk by. But gods only know what th’ Easterners are thinking of such policy—panic like blind kittens one minute, throw caution out with the dirt the next—”

  Reswen nodded morosely, watching the gold-and-white liveries of the Lloahai come closer in a long trailing line. There was this small mercy at least; that none of the Arpekh were present here this morning, and Reswen heartily wished that all their heads felt like his had a little earlier. This too, he thought, there are none of them here to be explaining what was going on in their sodden brains last night, and that will make my position that much stronger when they come whining to me about what the city cohorts are doing on alert again. Here came a foreign force right up to our walls, and if not for my people, they could have walked right in here—

  The problem was that there was a little too much truth in that. Looking out at the approaching lines of soldiery, Reswen considered that Creel had been right: There were far too many armed men here for just another escorted caravan, and the great number of liveried personnel suggested that this entourage had little or nothing to do with trade.

  “And they’re well before time,” Sachath said, having fallen into his own thoughts for a moment.

  “They are that,” Reswen said. It was something that was bothering him more and more as minutes went by. The relationship that Niau had with the little nation of Lloahai had been cordial enough of late, though they had had the occasional war in the past, usually over the trade route leading westward. Niau’s lands sat just to the south of it, and Lloahai’s to the north; the two tended to watch one a
nother carefully, making sure that neither tried to strangle the other’s precarious lifeline to the wealthy countries of the west. ‘

  Caravans were pretty carefully scheduled, according to treaty, so that neither sphere of influence would ruin the other’s markets. This one should have been perhaps a hundred armed mrem, escorting a large trail of baggage beasts bearing northern fruits, the cloths made from the various native Lloahairi furs and fibers, and some of the grains, like yellowseed and oilberry, that would not grow in Niau’s lands. It would have stayed about an eightday and a half, while the jobbers negotiated prices and divided up the goods. That was always a busy time for Reswen. Crime in the city rose somewhat as mrem with more money than usual to spend went out to spend it. He had been preparing for this, as usual, and for the normal cheerful excesses of the caravan people in taverns and whorehouses. Then toward the end of the second eightday, the selling and packing of Niau goods would begin—whitegrain and various beers and wines, the local silks, and bunorshan hide and wool—and the caravan would be off again. That someone had changed the schedule was not a good sign at all. The arrival of the caravans was vital to the Niauhu economy ... and implied the status of relations with their near, uneasy neighbor to the north.

  Now here came a small army instead of the fruits and grains, and all those Lloahairi liveries said that this was something political. Damn, thought Reswen. What else is going to happen?

  He pushed away from the wall and headed for the stairs down to the courtyard. Sachath’s people fell back to let him through, and at the bottom of the stairs he found Shalav waiting for him.

  The Lloahairi ambassador was a tall, handsome creature, not as pretty as, say, Laas last night, but nevertheless a noble-looking she-mrem with a wily mind and a calm exterior that nothing ever seemed to trouble. Now she saw him coming and bowed a little in his direction, silver fur shifting under the Lloahairi gold-and-white ambassadorial robes.

  “Madam,” he said to her, and returned the bow. “Fair morning.”

  “Yes,” she said, and they stood quietly together for a moment, watching the gates swing open to admit the approaching entourage. “A little too damn fair,” she added under her breath, twitching.

  Reswen smiled. It was not the kind of morning to be wearing more clothes than one had to, and the elaborate formal robes had to make one who wore them feel as if she was standing in a tent. For a few moments more he stood by her in companionable silence. He did not precisely trust Shalav; the Lloahairi embassy had its own spies around the city, and occasionally one of theirs would run afoul of one of his. Since Niau and Lloahai had very different priorities about most things, one of Reswen’s jobs was to keep track of what the Lloahairi were up to in town ... who they were bribing, what they were after. But though Shalav might not volunteer information to the H’satei about what was going on in her government’s mind, neither did she hide bad news from Reswen when it might benefit them both, and she had done him and the H’satei the occasional good turn. They were friendly enough.

  “What’s this all about, Shalav?” he said under his breath.

  “Damned if I know,” she said, as the leading riders of the entourage came in.

  With that he had to be content, for the moment. The first few riders, in white quilted cotton armor bound with bonetree, bore the traditional long straight swords of the Lloahai, unsheathed; and one of them carried the Lloahairi banner with its white sun on yellow. Behind them came another mrem, a small rangy-looking white, in herald’s robes, with a pouch slung over his shoulder. This he removed. He bowed to Shalav, and presented it to her with some ceremony.

  She opened it, extricated a sealed parchment, and tossed the pouch back to the herald while she checked the seal. Then Shalav cracked the thing open and studied it. Reswen did his best to keep his eyes to himself ... for the moment.

  She hissed softly to herself. “Well, Reswen-vassheh,” she said softly, “there goes an admirable business association. I am recalled.”

  “Why?” he said as quietly, astonished.

  “Revolution,” Shalav said. “If you would wait on me this afternoon or evening, at your convenience ... I should be done with the Arpekh by then, and you will have to be formally introduced to my successor.”

  Reswen nodded and turned away, his mind in turmoil.

  He thought the Easterners had been a problem ... but this was worse. One part of his job in Niau had always been overseeing the city’s clandestine affairs with the embassies of the other nations there. It was a touchy business, at best, spying on one’s permanent guests. But tradition made it easier for him in that, when a city had an organization like the H’satei, the embassies knew that an official interest would be taken in them, and it was traditional not to make more trouble about it then pride made absolutely necessary. The relationship, when it worked, as it had with the Lloahairi Embassy under Shalav, could be cordial enough. But when a new embassy came in, or an old one changed staff, there was inevitably a period of assessment, during which both sides felt one another out for weak spots. Reswen’s forces were spread thin enough, at the moment, with half of them sitting either in or under Haven, watching and listening to the Easterners. Now this to handle as well—

  Oh, for last night, he thought, when life was simple and all I had to do was get drunk and talk to people....

  Already it seemed about a year away, the half-wicked, half-cheerful banter with Laas....

  And then there was a police runner at his elbow, and Reswen turned to him in great annoyance at having his reverie disturbed, and almost spat at the poor innocent before thinking better of it. “What, then?” he said.

  The runner held out a paper. Reswen unfolded it, only partly conscious, as he read it, of the Lloahairi entourage slipping past him, a great many mrem with long swords and a great many beasts loaded down with baggage. On the thick paper, brushed with incongruous grace (considering the source) were the words: You have a problem. Marketplace. Lorin.

  “Shall I take an answer, sir?” said the runner. “It came from the offices.”

  Via Sithen, I suspect. “Go back and tell my secretary that I’ll be back before noon. Tell him also that if the Arpekh are looking for me, I will wait on them when possible, and meantime they should consult the Lloahairi Embassy. I’ve got something to take care of. Have a runner waiting at the Nigh Gate to the market in half an hour.”

  •

  And off he went, feeling his pads begin to sweat.

  It was second-to-last market day, but that in no way began to explain the noise the place was making as he approached it.... It was audible easily three blocks further away than usual. And there was something about the sound that made Reswen’s fur begin to rise. Any policemrem comes to know certain crowd noises that mean very specific things: the hissing undertone of a mob about to attack something, the mutter of fear, the overstated noise of rage that will not be expressed in violence. But this was something in its way worse. It was not specific. Fear and anger and the attack-hiss were all mixed in it, and they shifted unpredictably. There was no telling what would happen, or what was causing it.

  Reswen slipped into the market by the Nigh Gate, which had been the city gate once, and paused there, leaning in the shadow of the old, soot-crusted stones. No one paid him the slightest notice, which was mildly unusual by itself, for he was in his everyday uniform and was at least identifiable as a policemrem. Nearest him, there was some kind of noisy argument going on over by the butchers’ stalls, twenty or thirty voices going on at once, every now and then scaling into a yowl. And for as far as he could see across the marketplace, there was precious little buying or selling going on. Everywhere, little groups of mrem-housefolk, servants, what-have-you—were standing and talking loud. The roar of all the voices almost deafened him to the one that spoke in his ear.

  “Fine fool you made of yourself last night,” it said.

  Reswen let himself be drawn back
into the little niche in the gateway. There was just enough room for a couple of friendly mrem to stand there abreast—it had been a guardhouse, once—and he and Lorin folded their arms and faded back into its shadow in a companionable-looking sort of way.

  “And you were there, I suppose,” Reswen said to Lorin.

  Lorin snorted. “I went past. Look, master, I had to tell you. There are magic-workers there.”

  “Where?”

  “Your precious Easterners. One or two of them. Maybe more. I could tell, even outside the room.”

  “How?” .

  Lorin looked mildly uncomfortable. “It’s like scent … but you can’t smell anything.... I can tell. But I couldn’t guess which ones they were, with all those bodies about.”

  Reswen held quite still and considered that. “I’ll wager I know who one of them is,” he muttered, thinking of blue eyes—thinking of how just one glance had affected him for almost a day, thinking of Aiewa last night, utterly besotted by the blue eyes....

  “Who?”

  “No, I’m not going to tell you. Look, shortly there’ll be a runner here from the constabulary. I want you to go with him and get into servant’s clothes. He’ll take you around the house where the Easterners are staying. Can you tell if you get close enough, and there aren’t many other mrem around?”

  Lorin looked doubtful. “It depends. There are ways of hiding it.”

  “Will you try?”

  Lorin nodded.

  “Good fellow,” Reswen said, looking out uncomfortably at the market. It was getting even louder out there. A crowd seemed to be gathering down at the far end. “Give the runner the word ‘razor’ and he’ll know you’re from me. And look you,” he added, “tell him to send some extra constables down here. Tell him I said to pull our people off Northside for the morning, and get them into the market. Something’s brewing. Meanwhile what about that stone-and-water business?”