Taking a deep breath, he let go his hold and dropped, his body brushing lightly against the wall. If he touched the wall too much, it would push him out and away to fall helplessly. As he felt his legs come in front of the window, he moved his feet inward, toward the window sill.
Stone smashed against his soles, his palms slapped hard against the sides of the window, and he hung precariously, leaning outward. The thickness of the wall, the depth of the window, denied even a fingernail’s hold. Only the outward pressure of his hands kept him from hurtling to the street.
Muscles knotted with the strain, he drew himself forward until he could step within Samarides’ dwelling. As his foot touched the carpet-strewn floor, his hand went to the worn leather of his sword hilt. The room was dark, yet his night-accustomed eyes could make out the dim shapes of cushioned chairs. Tapestries, their colors reduced to shadings of gray, hung on the walls, and a dimly patterned carpet covered the marble floor. With a sigh he relaxed, a trifle, at least. This was no sleeping chamber, with someone to awaken and scream an alarm. It was about time something went right on this night of continuous near-disaster.
There were still problems, though. He was unsure whether the worst of these was how to get out of the dwelling-or how to get to his goal.
Samarides’ house was arranged around a central garden, where the gem merchant spent a great deal of his time among the fountains. The only door of the room in which he displayed his treasures opened onto the ground-floor colonnade around that garden.
It would have been easy to climb down from the roof to the garden, and Baratses had told him exactly the location of the door to the treasure room. Now he must make his way through the corridors, and risk coming on servants or guards.
Opening the door a crack, he peered into the hall, lit by gilded brass oil lamps hung on chains from bronze wall sconces. Tables inlaid with mother-of-pearl stood at intervals along walls mosaicked in intricate patterns with thousands of tiny, multihued tiles. No one trod the polished marble floor. Silently he slipped into the corridor.
For a heartbeat he stood, picturing the plan of the house in his mind.
The treasure room was in that direction. Ears straining for the slightest hint of another’s footstep, he hurried through the halls with a tread as light as a cat. Back stairs led downward, then others took him down again. Their location and the fact that their dark red tiles were dull and worn marked them as servant’s stairs. Twice the scuff of sandals from a crossing corridor gave warning, and he pressed his back to a wall, barely breathing, while unseeing servants in pale blue tunics scurried by, too intent on their labors to so much as glance down the branching way.
Then he was into the central garden, the high, shadowed walls of the house making it a small canyon. Splash and burble echoed softly from half-a-score fountains, scattered among fig tree and flowering plants and alabaster statuary. The treasure room lay directly opposite him across the garden.
He took a step, and froze. A dim shape hurried toward him down one of the garden paths. Silently he moved further to the side, away from the light spilling from the doorway. The approaching figure plowed. Had he been seen, he wondered. Whoever was coming moved very slowly, now, seeming almost to creep, and made no sound at all. Abruptly the figure left the slated walk and moved toward him again. His jaw tightened; no other muscle of him moved, not so much as an eyelid blinking. Closer.
Ten paces. Five. Two.
Suddenly the strangely still-dim figure froze, gasped. The big youth sprang. One hand cut off sound by covering the mouth that uttered it.
His other arm pinned the figure’s arms. Teeth dug into his calloused palm, and his captive flung about wildly, kicks thudding against his legs.
“Erlik take you!” he hissed. “You fight like a woman! Stop that, and I’ll not hurt-“
It penetrated his mind that the body he held was rounded, if firm. He side-stepped to the edge of the light from the doorway, and found himself studying large, brown eyes that were suddenly frowning above his hand. It was a woman, and a pretty one, with satiny, olive skin and her hair braided tightly about her small head. The biting stopped, and he loosed his grip on her jaw. He opened his mouth to say he would not harm her if she gave no outcry, but she cut him off.
“I am a sorcereress,” she whispered hoarsely, “and I know you, Conan, far-traveler from Samaria, or Cymria, or some such place. You think you are a thief. Release me!”
The hairs on the back of his neck stirred. How could she know? He seemed to have a talent for running afoul of sorcerers, a talent he would just as soon lose. His grip was loosening when he became aware of the amused gleam in her big eyes, and the way her small, white teeth were biting a full lower lip. For the first time he took in her garb, snug, dull black from neck to toes. Even her feet were covered in ebon cloth, with the big toe separated like the thumb on a mitten.
Holding her out from him by her upper arms, he was unable to suppress a smile. Slender, she was, and short, but the close fit of her odd garments left no doubts as to her womanhood. She kicked at him, and he caught it on his thigh.
“Sorcereress?” he growled softly. “Then why do I think you’ll change your story should I take a switch to your rump?”
“Why do I think that at the first blow I’ll howl loudly enough to bring half the city?” she whispered back. “But truly I don’t wish to. My name is Lyana, and I’ve heard of you, Conan. I’ve seen you in the streets.
And admired you. I just wanted to sound mysterious, so I could compete with your other women.” She shifted in his grasp, and her round breasts, large on her diminutive slimness, seemed even more prominent.
Her tongue wet her lips, and she smiled invitingly. “Could you please put me down? You’re so strong, and you’re hurting me.”
He hesitated, then lowered her feet to the ground.
“What is this garb you wear, Lyana?”
“Forget that,” she breathed, swaying closer. “Kiss me.”
Despite himself his hands came up to clasp her face. Before his fingers touched her cheeks, she dropped to her knees and threw herself into a forward tumble past him. Stunned, he still managed to whirl after her.
One tiny foot flashing from the middle of her roll caught him under the ribs, bringing a grunt, slowing him enough for her to come to her feet facing the wall … and she seemed to go up it like a spider.
With an oath Conan leaped forward. Something struck his arm, and he grabbed a soft, black-dye rope, hanging from above.
“Mitra blast me for a fool!” he grated. “A thief!”
Soft laughter floated down from close enough over his head to make him peer sharply upwards. “You are a fool.” The girl’s soft tones brimmed with mirth. “And I am indeed a thief, which you’ll never be. Perhaps, with those shoulders, you could be a carter. Or a cart horse.”
Snarling, Conan took hold of the rope to climb. A flicker caught the corner of his eye, and he felt more than heard something strike the ground by his foot. Instinctively, he jumped back, losing his grip on the rope. His grab to regain it brushed only the free end as it was drawn up.
“It would have struck you,” the girl’s low voice came again, “had I intended it so. Were I you, I’d leave here. Now. Fare you well, Conan.”
“Lyana?” he whispered roughly.
“Lyana?” Mocking silence answered him.
Muttering under his breath, he searched the ground around his feet, and tugged a flat, black throwing knife from the dirt. He tucked it behind his swordbelt, then stiffened as if stabbed.
The girl was a thief, and she had come from the direction of the treasure room. Cursing under his breath he ran, heedless of the rare shrubs and plants he passed.
An arched door led into the chamber where Samarides kept his most valuable possessions, and that door stood open. Conan paused a moment to study the heavy iron lock. That the girl had opened it he had no doubt, but if she had been within, then any traps must have been disabled, or else be easily avoide
d.
The Cimmerian hesitated a moment longer, then started across the chamber, floored in diamond-shaped tiles of alternating red and white.
The emerald goblet, he had been told, stood at the far end of the room on a pedestal carved of serpentine. At his second step a diamond tile sank beneath his foot. Thinking of crossbows mounted on the wall-he had encountered such before-he threw himself flat on the floor. And felt another tile sink beneath his hand. From the wall came a rattling clink and clatter he had been a thief long enough to recognize. The sinking tiles had each released a weight which was pulling a chain from a wheel. And that in turn would activate … what?
As he leaped to his feet a bell began to toll, then another. Cursing, he ran the length of the room. Twice more tiles sank beneath him, and by the time he reached the dull green mottled pedestal, four bells clanged the alarm. The pedestal was bare.
“Erlik take the wench!” he snarled.
Spinning, he dashed from the chamber. And ran head-on into two spear-carrying guards. As the three fell to the floor it flashed into Conan’s head that it was just as well he had not dallied to choose something to make up for the loss of the goblet. His fist smashed into the face of one guard, nose and teeth cracking in a spray of red. The man jerked and sagged, unconscious. The other scrambled to his feet, spear ready to thrust. Had he delayed, Conan thought, they could likely have held him in the chamber long enough for others to arrive. His sword flickered from its sheath, caught the spear just behind the head, and the second guard found himself holding a long stick. With a shout the man threw the pole at Conan and fled.
Conan ran, too. In the opposite direction. At the first doorway of the house he ducked inside, bursting into the midst of servants nervously chattering about the still ringing bells. For an instant they stared at him, eyes going wider and wider, then he waved his sword in the air and roared at the top of his lungs. Shrieking men and women scattered like a covey of Kothian quail.
Confusion, the Cimmerian thought. If he spread enough confusion he might get out of there yet. Through the house he sped, and every servant he met was sent flying by fierce roars and waving blade, till cries of “Help!” and “Murder!” and even “Fire!” rang down every corridor. More than once the young Cimmerian had to duck down a side hall as guards clattered by, chasing after screams and yelling themselves, until he began to wonder how many men Samarides had.
Cacophony run riot tilled the house.
At last he reached the entry hall, surrounded on three sides by a balcony with balustrades of smoke-stone, beneath a vaulted ceiling worked in alabaster arabesques. Twin broad stairs of black marble curved down from that second-floor balcony to a floor mosaicked in a map of the world, as Zamorans knew it, with each country marked by representations of the gems imported from it.
All of this Conan ignored, his eyes locked on the tall, iron-studded doors leading to the street. A bar, heavy enough to need three men for the lifting, held them shut, and the bar was in turn fastened in place by iron chains and massive locks.
“Crom!” he growled. “Shut up like a fortress!”
Once, twice, thrice his broadsword clashed against a lock, with him wincing at the damage the blows were doing to his edge. The lock broke open, and he quickly pulled the chain through the iron loops holding it against the bar. As he turned to the next chain, a quarrel as thick as two of his fingers slammed into the bar where he had been standing. He changed his turn into a dive to the floor, eyes searching for the next shot.
Instantly he saw his lone opponent. Atop one flight of stairs stood a man of immense girth, whose skin yet hung in folds as if he had once been twice so big. Lank, thinning hair surrounded his puffy face, and he wore a shapeless sleeping garment of dark blue silk. Samarides. One of the gem merchant’s feet was in the stirrup of a heavy crossbow, and he laboriously worked the handles of a windlass to crank back the bowstring, a rope of drool running from one corner of his narrow mouth.
Quickly judging how long it would be before Samarides could place another quarrel in the crossbow, Conan bounded to his feet. A single furious blow that struck sparks sent the second lock clattering to the floor. Sheathing his sword, the Cimmerian tugged the chain free and set his hands to the massive bar.
“Guards!” Samarides screamed. “To me! Guards!”
Muscles corded and knotted in calves and thighs, back, shoulders and arms, as Conan strained against the huge wooden bar. By the thickness of a fingernail it lifted. Sweat popped out on his forehead. The thickness of a finger. The width of a hand. And then the massive bar was clear of the support irons.
Three slow, staggering steps backwards Conan took, until he could turn and heave the bar aside. Mosaic tiles shattered as it landed with a crash that shook the floor.
“Guards!” Samarides shrieked, and pounding feet answered him.
Conan dashed to the thick, iron-studded doors and heaved one open to crash against a wall. As he darted through, another quarrel slashed past his head to gouge a furrow in the marble of Samarides’ portico.
Tumult rose behind him as guards rushed into the entry hall, shouting to Samarides for instructions, and Samarides screamed incoherently back at them. Conan did not look back. He ran. Mind filled with anger at a young woman thief with a too-witty tongue, he ran until the night of Shadizar swallowed him.
Chapter II
That quarter of Shadizar called the Desert was a warren of crooked steets reeking of offal and despair. The debaucheries that took place behind closed doors in the rest of the city were performed openly in the Desert, and made to pay a profit. Its denizens, more often in rags than not, lived as if death could come with the next breath, as it quite often did. Men and women were scavengers, predators or prey, and some who thought themselves in one class discovered, frequently too late, that they were in another.
The tavern of Abuletes was one of the Desert’s best, as such was accounted there. Few footpads and fewer cutpurses were numbered among its patrons. Graverobbers were unwelcome, though more for the smells that hung about them than for how they earned their coin. For the rest, all who had the price of a drink were welcome.
When Conan slapped open the tavern door, the effluvia of the street fought momentarily with the smell of half-burned meat and sour wine in the big common room where two musicians playing zithers for a naked dancing girl competed unsuccessfully with the babble of the tavern’s custom. A mustachioed Nemedian coiner at the bar fondled a giggling doxy in a tall, red-dyed wig and strips of green silk that did little to cover her generously rounded breasts and buttocks. A plump Ophirean procurer, jeweled rings glittering on his fingers, held court at a corner table; among those laughing at his jokes-so long as his gold held out, at least-were three kidnappers, swarthy, narrow-faced Iranistanis, hoping he would throw a little business their way. A pair of doxies, dark-eyed twins, hawked their wares among the tables, their girdies of coins clinking as their hips swayed in unison.
Before the Cimmerian had taken a full step, a voluptuous, oliveskinned woman threw her arms around his neck. Gilded brass breastplates barely contained her heavy breasts, and a narrow girdle of gilded chain, set low on her well-rounded hips, supported a length of diaphanous blue silk, no more than a handspan in width, that hung to her braceleted ankles before and behind.
“Ah, Conan,” she murmured thoatily, “what a pity you did not return earlier.”
“Have some wine with me, Semiramis,” he replied, eying her swelling chest, “and tell me why I should have come back sooner. Then we can go upstairs-” He cut off with a frown as she shook her head.
“I ply my trade this night, Cimmerian.” At his frown, she sighed. “Even I must have a little silver to live.”
“I have silver,” he growled.
“And I cannot take coin from you. I will not.”
He muttered an oath under his breath. “You always say that. Why not? I don’t understand.”
“Because you’re not a woman.” She laughed softly and traced a finger alon
g his jaw. “A thing for which I am continually grateful.”
Conan’s face tightened. First Lyana had made a fool of him this night, and now Semiramis attempted the same. “Women never say their minds straight out. Very well. If you’ve no use for me tonight, then I’m done with you as well.” He left her standing with her fists on her hips and her mouth twisted in exasperation.
At the bar he dug into his purse and tossed coppers onto the cracked wooden surface. As he had known it would, the sound of coins penetrated the wall of noise in the room and drew Abuletes, wiping his fat fingers on the filthy apron he wore over a faded yellow tunic. The tavernkeeper made the coins disappear with a deft motion.
“I want wine for that,” Conan said. Abuletes nodded. “And some information.”
” ‘Tis enough for the wine,” the tavernkeeper replied drily. He set a wooden tankard, from which rose the sour smell of cheap wine, before the big youth. “Information costs more.”
Conan rubbed his thumb over a gouge in the edge of the bar, made by a sword stroke, drawing the fat man’s piggish eyes to the mark. “There were six of them, as I recall,” he said absently. “One with his knife pricking your ribs, and ready to probe your guts if you opened your mouth without his leave. What was it they intended? Taking you into the kitchen, wasn’t it? Didn’t one of them speak of putting your feet in the cookfire till you told where your gold is cached?”
“I have no gold,” Abuletes muttered unconvincingly. He could spot a clipped coin at ten paces, and was reliably rumored to have the first copper he had ever stolen buried somewhere in the tavern.
“Of course not,” Conan agreed smoothly. “Still, it was Hannuman’s own luck for you I saw what was happening, when none else did. ‘Twould have been … uncomfortable for you, with your feet in the coals and naught to tell them.”
“Aye, you saw.” The fat man’s tone was as sour as his wine. “And laid about you with that accursed sword, splintering half my tables. Do you know what they cost to replace? The doxies were hysterical for all the blood you splattered around, and half my night’s custom disappeared for fear you’d cut them down as well.”
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