Exiled: Keeper of the City

by Peter Morwood

  “Bosh on the stone and water,” said Aiewi. “Let them have it and welcome.”

  “But, Lords, we have not completed inquiries—”

  “If you would spend less time with courtesans, perhaps you would have completed them,” said Aratel. “This kind of dilatory and inappropriate behavior is exactly what we are finding intolerable. But in view of your long and faithful service—”

  What have you all been doing of late then? Reswen thought about saying, and decided against it. It would make things worse. There was more to think about, for he knew what the phrase Aratel had used would mean: a dismissal or a raise ... and he didn’t think it was the latter. “Lords—”

  “The matter needs no more discussion,” said Mraal.

  “We are in the process of working out other details of the trading treaty, and that particular detail is sufficiently minor that it will be handled immediately. Tomorrow, in fact, in the main square, to please our guests.”

  Reswen’s heart turned right over in him. With that decision he could feel something bad starting to come toward him, toward the whole city, and there was nothing he could do to stop it. “And what else are we going to do to please our guests?” Reswen said, his anger beginning to show in good earnest now. “Lords, have you given thought to the caravan scheduling they are proposing? The numbers of visitors during the peak periods in the spring and fall are in the hundreds, not the tens that one expects of a caravan—and those are exactly the times when an attack is most viable because of the easy desert crossing and the favorable weather. The treaty sets no limits on how they may be armed, and no limits for how many large carts over a certain size may be allowed—carts that could transport siege engines or other devices for attacking a city’s walls—”

  “You are overconcerned,” Aiewi said mildly. “They intend us no harm.”

  “Perhaps not these people, Lord. But who knows when their governments may change? And when they do, if this treaty remains unchanged as it stands at the moment, someone who did intend us harm could do no end of it. An army at your gates, instead of traders.” Then Reswen saw the closed faces, and understood. He schooled himself to keep his voice level, for he needed to convince them more than he needed to salve his own annoyance. “But you’ve become concerned about our trade with the Lloahairi, have you not? You see in worsening relationships with an unreasonable Lloahairi government the end of all the old agreements, and so you are determined to make another, more lucrative deal with the Easterners while the buyers are so fortuitously at hand in your market. Then you will let the Lloahairi go to their preferred hell in their own way. And anything I could think of to say, no matter how reasonable, would be vain at this point.”

  Some of the lords looked at him, and away. Some would not look at all.

  “Lords,” Reswen said, suddenly thoroughly disgusted, “my position requires me to give you my advice. I have done so. Having so done, may I have your leave to depart? I have a police force to run, and various other business to attend to.”

  “Not the murder investigation,” said Mraal.

  “I will make no move to interfere with Investigator Thailh, or even to contact him,” Reswen said.

  “Go then,” said Mraal. “Fair day.”

  Reswen bowed and went out.

  When he got to the office, still fuming, he opened the door and found Thailh sitting there waiting for him. “I don’t see you,” Reswen said, tossing his cloak over a chair.

  “That’s good,” Thailh said, “because I’m not here.”

  Reswen smiled, and the motion of his whiskers going forward felt as if it might crack his face. “Those idiots,” he said softly. “Those chop-licking, tail-waving, lie-by-the-fire—”

  Thailh’s resigned and humorous expression as he folded his arms and sat back to listen made Reswen laugh out loud. “All right,” he said. “It was pretty annoying. But I’ll live. What have you found?”

  Thailh shrugged his tail a bit. “Not much. But this I’m sure of: if our strangler hadn’t killed Shalav, the ambassador would have done it himself.”

  Reswen sat down, his ears forward. “Tell me,” he said, and bent down to rummage in the drawer for a bit of dried meat. “And be quick about it. You can’t be seen here.”

  “One of our people stumbled across some of Maikej’s briefs from the Lloahairi government,” Thailh said. “Thanks, don’t mind if I do. There were some pretty letters, I can tell you that. Notes from the party now in power that this bitch-mrem has to be gotten rid of by whatever means. And Maikej apparently has a good motive to see to it, for the two of them have apparently been enemies, in the political sense, for about ten years. She got him dismissed from some other post, a minor one, for incompetence.” Thailh paused a moment to chew. “According to the embassy’s own staff, there were some horrendous arguments between Maikej’s arrival and the last night Shalav was alive. Shalav had had a change of mind, and was refusing to be relieved of her post; she and Maikej almost came to blows.” Thailh smiled wanly. “The staff were rather hoping they would fight; no one can stand Maikej but the people he brought with him. The feeling was that Shalav would have ripped his ears and tail off and shoved them where the moons don’t shine.”

  “Pity she didn’t,” Reswen said.

  “We agree on that. Anyway, she was last seen after another argument with Maikej, a real fur-puller—seems he accused her of planning to have him assassinated.”

  “Shalav? The mrem’s a fool. That’s not her style at all.”

  “I agree, but that’s what he accused her of, and she wouldn’t stand for it. The new embassy staff say she left in a huff. The old staff either won’t talk, or say that Maikej ordered her out and told the staff to lock the gates behind her. The porter refuses to say anything at all ... someone’s thrown the fear into him.”

  Reswen thought about it for a moment. “In either case, she goes out ... and fortuitously runs into the strangler.” He looked at Thailh. “Does that strike you as a little strange?”

  Thailh broke out laughing. “To put it mildly.”

  “What are you going to do now?”

  “Set my assistants to asking some more questions of these people,” Thailh said, “and in the meantime, go back to the drapers’ and keep asking questions. At least now I have two pieces of evidence.”

  “May they be of use. Keep in touch, if you can.”

  “There shouldn’t be any problem.” Thailh laughed again. “I mean, we’re the secret police, for gods’ sake! We’ll manage something.”

  Reswen smiled a bit as Thailh slipped out of his office, and began making a new list of things he wanted his people in Haven to start listening for. When it was done, he brushed another message to Laas, and sent it out after Thailh, with certain instructions. And then he set to work looking very busy ... while he waited.

  HE WAITED a couple of days. It wasn’t easy; but fortunately he had enough matters to keep him busy in reality and not just in seeming.

  “Sir?” the runner said, poking his head into Reswen’s office on the second day. “Constable- Gellav says to tell you that the mrem you had put in the quiet cell a few days back is shouting for you. Says he has something to tell you.”

  Reswen smiled and got up. “Tell him I’ll be right there.”

  Outside the cell, nothing could be heard, but young Gellav was standing there in a state of great excitement. “I’ve been sitting over the listening-pipe for about a year, it seems like, sir,” he said. “When he started to shout, I was so surprised I almost strangled myself with my tail. What do you want to do with him?”

  “You’re going to do it,” Reswen said. “He’s had a bad few days in there, and we don’t want to remind him of who put him there, not just now; it might make him sullen again. Take a lamp in with you, and a couple of stools, so he doesn’t have to sit on the floor while you talk. Get another constable to stand outside the d
oor, and get a flask of wine. Don’t water it; if it goes to his head, no harm done, especially if it makes him talky. Give him some dried meat as well—that makes a hungry mrem even more talky than wine. And be kind about it all. You’re going to be the good constable, as opposed to the nasty wicked policemaster who threatened poor Nierod and put him through all this. If he reviles me, you help him at it, and never care who’s listening. You remember the questions I asked him?”

  “Indeed yes, sir.”

  “Well enough. I’ll listen to you, and if I want information about anything when you’re done, I’ll scratch on the other end of the listening pipe so that you can check with me and then finish. You know the sound I mean?”

  “Oh yes, sir, we use it as a signal sometimes ourselves, to let each other know when another cell’s ready for someone being moved.”

  “Fine. And when you’re done asking the questions, if he’s answered what we want to know, put him in one of the upstairs cells. Tell him if he remembers anything else, we might—might—find a way to let him out and let him work for us. But no guarantees. Can you hold that hope low enough to make him jump for it?”

  “I think so, sir.”

  “So do I. You manage it, my lad, and I’ll see about getting you something worth jumping for. Now off with you.

  Then Reswen went upstairs one level, to the regular cell blocks, and positioned himself over the listening tube to Nierod’s cell. There was a sort of low moaning going on in there, a hollow noise, like a mourning ghost. Reswen nodded, satisfied.

  Gellav gathered his props and went in, and for a little while Reswen heard nothing but frantic thank-yous, and the sounds of sloppy and hurried eating and drinking. Then Gellav began asking his questions, and it was as Reswen had thought: The wretched Nierod had some thought of trying to suborn the young officer first, and offered him a bribe. Someone else would pay the good constable well if he could only be got out of here, everybody knew constables didn’t make much money, hey, what about some money— Gellav was firm, though, quite firm. And he didn’t have to be firm for long, for the sudden food and wine after deprivation turned Nierod giddy. His mood swung from momentary craftiness to miserable, weeping despair at not being able to bribe the constable, and from that to pathetically desperate desire to tell Gellav anything he wanted to know. And now Reswen leaned close to the listening-pipe, as Gellav said, “Who was it hired your contact, man? Tell me, then, and it may be I can do something for you.”

  Nierod’s voice dropped as if afraid that someone else might overhear him. “He said it was a foreigner, he said, a great mrem, a great mrem, with gold, gold enough for a lot of jobs. He wouldn’t tell me what foreign parts the mrem came from, he said he didn’t know all the names of the places. He said he thought the foreigner had been here a few tens of days, maybe more, he started to see the mrem around the market and the shops, always buying, always asking where things came from. He said, ‘I went to sell him some lash, I thought he was one of those foreigners who wants forbidden things, drugs, stolen things, you know—and I thought right. He has business, a lot of business, and there’s enough for us too.’ ”

  “Where would he meet this foreigner? There’s a lot of them in town.”

  “Don’t I know it, dirty things, what do we want with them? The Whites, he came from the Whites somewhere, one of the big guesting-houses.” Reswen breathed out softly. “The Whites” was slang for the well-to-do area between the mercantile quarter and the embassies and good marble houses of the Eastside: The houses there tended to be finished in white stucco. He made a mental note to have someone go around and make inquiries at all the better guesting-houses for travelers who might have come in during the last thirty or forty days. There would be a lot of them, but he didn’t care.

  “All right, then. What was it that this foreigner told your contact to have you do?”

  A noisy slurp at the wine. “He says, ‘People are riled up about the strangers coming in, the Arpekh doesn’t tell anymrem anything, their own people, let’s show ‘em that they have to tell mrem what’s going on. Get people mad in the marketplace, tell ‘em about an army coming, an army of stranger mrem, these Easterners coming to take over the city, ‘cause that’s all they want to do really, they’ll try and trick us and buy the Arpekh to get ‘em to do the strangers’ will.’ And I did that, I did it, nothing wrong with it, you can’t have foreigners coming in and doing stuff like that, we fought ‘em and beat ‘em so they couldn’t!” There was a real sense of outrage in the dulled, thickening voice.

  “Well enough. So you did that. What else were you supposed to do?”

  “Unnngh ... My head hurts.”

  “I know, poor creature. Come, tell me what I need to know, so we can put you upstairs where there’s a bed and a warm place for you to get clean. Come, now. Maybe even better than that. Maybe out of here entirely.”

  “Out, yes, just let me out and I’ll never—”

  “Ah now, make no promises you can’t keep, nor I’ll make you none.” Reswen smiled to himself a little at the slangy, country accent working its way back into Gellav’s speech, from who knew how many years back. The recruits tended to lose it in academy, and some of them swore at that loss much later when they could have used their milk accent for undercover work. “What else were you after doing, then?”

  Nierod’s voice dropped again. “It was a worse thing, a worse thing than just making people mad. But there was more gold for it. He gave me a string.”

  Reswen’s whiskers stood straight out.

  “A string?” said Gellav.

  “Like this, a smooth shiny string. This long.” The voice dropped even further. “My friend, he said, ‘There’s someone who’s cheated the great mrem, cheated him in the market. We’ll tell you who it is when he’s ready. You need to watch them and when they go for a walk in the dark one night, come up behind ‘em and use this string on ‘em. Choke ‘em dead, and leave the string there.’ A lot of gold he gave me, and there would be more when it was done. A lot more, even. And the foreigner said, wouldn’t no mrem ever find out about it, because the police, they thought they knew who was doing it, some mrem else, and that other mrem would answer for it, he’d get the spike. And I’d have my gold.” The voice suddenly broke out in weeping. “My gold ... my gold ... ”

  There was a pause. “Let me think if there are any other questions I need answered,” Gellav said, and fell silent. Reswen grinned silently at the listening-pipe and did nothing.

  “Come on, then,” Gellav said. “Come on with you, mrem. Puli, give me a hand with him.” And the noises of scuffed straw and weeping faded away.

  Now then, Reswen thought with immense satisfaction. Now then!

  He left the cramped little listening-room and loped off upstairs.

  •

  She rolled over in the golden warmth of the overworld at a sudden feeling of chill. There was nothing that caused such a feeling but trouble or danger, and she had no idea what could be going on here that could possibly endanger her. The vermin were quite blind to her doings.

  She blinked, trying to trace the feeling, but it was gone. The merest chill ... Still, even the occurrence of such a tiny thing, such a minuscule breach in the walls of her peace of mind, was intolerable to her. She could allow nothing to interfere with her work here; her masters would be furious, and more to the point, her status—her potential status—as one of them would be endangered. I must look into this....

  She willed the overworld under her into solidity, and around her the brightness of day increased with her interest. There were ways to keep track of what one was doing with magic, a way to track the effect of chance and event on one’s plans. They were slightly strenuous, but they were worth it.

  She began the spell. It was not one that could be done offhand, even for her, even out of the hardest skin. The careful, subtle pattern of hissing was one of the last things her old master had taugh
t her before she had reduced him, in an unguarded moment, to bloody fragments. She performed the Nine Circlings, making very sure of the usual ritual movements with the tail, and then began the chant, with great care for the intonation of the sounds. Pride rose in her as she recited: pride in her own ability, in the flawless way she wove and hissed the spell, pride in the magic itself, a sort of magic endlessly more delicate, complex, and involved than the crude shout-and-wave stuff that the vermin did. This was the great art of her people, which truly had set them apart from the beasts since time was young, and continued to do so, though the vermin might prance and shrill their little cantrips and mock the majesty and power of the Eldest People, Let them prance as they liked; they were no match for the Eldest, as they would find now, and continue to find.

  She paced and hissed her way through the spell. Light gathered around her, the many-colored light of the overworld, hot like fire, but the heat was not hurtful. It exalted, it clarified the mind. The light, in all its colors, swirled, parted, knotted about itself, parted again in strands and tendrils, seeking a shape, experimenting with junctures, breaking them when they did not work, trying others. She paced and hissed, and slowly the light knitted itself into a webwork around her, a frame of throbbing connections. Slowly she brought the first part of the spell to conclusion, stood in the center of it all, and looked about.

  The spell had wrought a representation of what she had done with her magics since she began her work here. Pressure on a mind here, a death there, everything showed: and each mind she had touched or influenced or controlled showed here, with its connections and conversations with other minds all indicated as well. She looked around at it all with some slight haste, for the spell drew on all the live minds to which it referred, and even she could not hold it there for long.