by John Booth
“I think it’s all rather a letdown,” Don said as he looked again at the clock face. “I would bet you money that it never worked and it was made by the glassmakers at Ranwin as a joke or maybe a work of art.”
“You are probably right, Don,” Daniel said as he led Don from the clock. ‘Thank you!’ he thought at the clock as he left.
“Let us hope the Greenhouse and its fruit are more interesting than this place.” Jalia said as they trudged back to the gate.
Tel handed them their weapons before he opened the gate, which amused Daniel a great deal. He hoped these guards never came face to face with a real enemy, as they would surely die.
It was easy to find their way to the Greenhouse. From the market square, they could see along the long straight avenue leading to its door. The avenue was a wide paved road, large enough for two wagons to pass by each other. This was fortunate because there was a steady stream of wagons laden with fruit heading to the docks while an equally steady stream of empty wagons was going the other way.
The Greenhouse was flatter on top than a true hemisphere would be. It looked more like someone had sliced the building from a much bigger ball, so while it was half a mile in diameter it was less than six hundred feet tall at its apex. The Greenhouse doorway extruded out of the dome a good two hundred feet, creating a huge arched tunnel. They were heading towards this door.
Daniel tapped Jalia on the shoulder to signal she should slow down and let the others get ahead of them. Jalia slowed her pace until she could talk to Daniel without the others hearing.
“What’s the matter?” she asked, seeing the concerned expression on Daniel’s face.
“The Clock and I had a conversation. It told me we were heading into a trap,” Daniel said in a whisper. Jalia’s eyebrows rose at this news, but she accepted it without question.
“Did it give you any details?” There were many kinds of traps in the universe and they had four people with them to worry about. Jalia instinctively loosened the dagger at her waist.
“No, and it’s not the kind of warning I can pass on to the others without some sort of explanation. I think it might generate more questions than I could cope with, if I told them that a magic clock told me.”
“Do you trust it?” Jalia grinned as a thought occurred to her. “It was a bit two faced when you think about it.”
Daniel found he was grinning back at her. Jalia’s sense of humor had a way of defusing tension.
“I can’t see why it would lie to me, or what it could gain by doing so. What worries me is its use of the word trap, rather than ambush or fight.”
“The ring is always very literal in its interpretation of what you ask it for and your brother found that the magic dagger was even more pedantic.” While speaking, Jalia ran through a number of possible scenarios in her mind.
“I very much doubt we will find ourselves falling into a hole in the ground. More likely we will be put into a situation where we are encouraged to think we are in control, but where there are hidden factors making it unlikely we survive.”
“That sounds the most likely explanation,” Daniel agreed. “And we both know that the best way to deal with a trap…”
“…is to spring it,” Jalia finished for him. “I will have a word with Hala. You go and keep the others amused.”
Daniel rejoined the rest of the group and started telling them an implausible tale involving three naked young girls, a midget and a step ladder. Jalia pulled Hala away from the others. Nin was going to follow her, but became fascinated by Daniel’s story and found himself drawn back to where he could continue to listen to it.
“We are walking into a trap,” Jalia told Hala, “It is probably aimed only at Daniel and me, but they will almost certainly have plans for the rest of you should you try and intervene,”
“Shouldn’t we go back to the Steam Dragon?” Hala looked around at the busy street nervously. Her hand went to her dagger without her mind being aware of it.
“Then they would attack us later, but that time we wouldn’t know where or when it was going to happen. They will undoubtedly be waiting for us as we enter the Greenhouse. When something happens, look around for people pretending to be passersby. They will be the real threat.”
“What am I looking for?” Hala asked in some confusion while trying to avoid getting into a state of panic. All the people on the road frightened her anyway; she had grown up in a place where ten people were a crowd. There must be well over a hundred people near them on the road and they could all be enemies.
“Look for people doing exactly what you are doing right now, fingering the hilt of their knives without even being aware of it.”
Hala’s hand shot from her knife as if it was suddenly red hot. Jalia grinned, her teeth gleaming in the sun. Hala realized with a shock that Jalia was enjoying herself. Hala had rarely seen her look so happy.
“We all make unconscious moves, even professional assassins. Most likely, these people will have their knife or equivalent weapon hidden inside a coat, but you will be able to recognize who they are, provided you know what to look for.”
Relf Upkiss was getting impatient. He had been waiting in the tunnel between the Greenhouse’s inner and outer gates for a considerable length of time and there was still no sign of his targets.
The tunnel was designed to stop the hot air getting out and prevent cold air getting in. An arrangement of levers ran the length of the tunnel to hold one set of doors closed when the others were open. The doors themselves were massive metal-framed glass monstrosities. They slid sideways when open to a width considerably greater than that of the road which continued into the Greenhouse.
The reason Relf had picked the tunnel as the spot for his ambush would be obvious to anyone as soon as they saw it. While the tunnel was quiet and almost empty on most days, the days when a steam ship was in dock were very different. There was a mad rush to get the fruit picked from the tree, into the carts and down to the docks. As a result, the tunnel was packed with people trying to get full carts out and the empty carts in.
It would be difficult for Jalia or Daniel to spot his men among the workers who were walking beside the carts. His men would be able to get close, and a single stab of a knife would see a victim dead.
Relf would have preferred to ambush them without warning, but Gally Sorn had been insistent they must stage a fight. She wanted it to look like a minor tussle that had gone wrong, rather than a planned assassination. Relf couldn’t figure out why this was important to her. What did any of the Sorns care if one of their enemies knew that they had struck again?
Another reason he was impatient was that he had had time to think. While the stories floating around about Jalia al’Dare and Daniel al’Degar had to be exaggerated, Relf knew that there must be more than a grain of truth in them. Even a small grain of truth would make these people the most dangerous he and his men had ever gone against.
It was clear that this thought had also occurred to his men because they were acting twitchy, moving around so much that even a child would have been able to pick them out from the crowd. Relf hoped they would settle when their victims turned up. After all, Jalia and Daniel had no reason to suspect they were walking into a trap and would arrive like lambs to the slaughter
Jalia stood in front of the outer door to the Greenhouse and waited impatiently for them to open. Behind her was a line of empty horse-drawn carts. She had wondered when she first saw the Steam Dragon what it could possibly carry to justify its immense holds and now she knew. Fruit must be very popular in Slarn for the Boat Company to carry so much.
The door slid sideways and the group were harried forward by shouts and oaths from the cart drivers. Halfway down the tunnel there was a large area where people could get off the road to stand and watch the wagons go by. As soon as Jalia saw it, she knew that this was where they would be attacked. She glanced to Daniel who nodded to tell her that he had spotted it too.
The carts continued to push them f
orward and the group spilled into the watching area.
“I’ve a good mind to tell those cart drivers exactly what I think of them,” Cara said as she rubbed at her ankle. One of the cart horses behind her had clipped her heal with its hooves and Cara had limped into the watching area.
“From the words they are using on each other and their horses, I very much doubt you could tell them anything they haven’t heard before,” Daniel pointed out.
“I might add a little emphasis to my words with my sword,” Cara said furiously.
“That might work,” Don conceded. He smiled at his sister’s evident discomfort as she rubbed the back of her heal.
While they were talking, Relf and his men had closed in on them. They recognized Jalia’s distinctive clothing as soon as she entered the tunnel. Relf had four of his men by his side and they were very visible. His other men were spread among the crowd in the watching area, wearing clothing similar to the Greenhouse workers who were in the tunnel.
“You are the stinking worm infested whore, Jalia al’Dare,” Relf said pointing at Jalia. “I saw you in Brinan, running around the town like you owned it. Acting like you were royalty while spreading your legs to all who asked. I heard that even the street dogs in Brinan enjoyed you.”
Jalia took a step forward in instant rage, but Daniel put a hand on her shoulder and held her back. Their eyes met and she moved behind him to stand by Hala.
“Jalia does like sex, but then doesn’t everyone,” Daniel told Relf and gave him a disarming smile. “Have we met before, friend?”
“I don’t make friends with pederasts and pimps,” Relf replied with a sneer. “I’ve heard the only sex you can get is with children who know no better.”
“Which must be why I never manage to get any sex at all,” Daniel said in a truly mournful voice. People had gathered around them and they laughed at Daniel’s self-depreciating words.
While he spoke to Relf, Jalia and Hala scanned the crowd for the real threat. Cara, Don and Nin looked on in confusion, astonished that their friends would tolerate such insults. Cara began to draw her sword and Don pulled her back, realizing that Daniel was playing some sort of game to which they had not been invited.
Relf was getting increasingly frustrated by his inability to get Daniel and Jalia to fight. The four men stood in a vee behind him held onto their swords nervously. The plan had been that Jalia and Daniel would attack them. That would give them a defense if the Governor was to get involved later and interrogate them.
“I hear that you were a trader once, but that your donkeys were too stupid to walk in anything but circles,” Relf carried on. “It is true, isn’t it, that your donkeys were your offspring after you mated with their mother?”
Daniel drew his sword, “I think you should withdraw that comment before I am forced to skewer you.” He was smiling pleasantly, but his eyes glittered with ice.
“Are you both trying to start a fight?” Relf shouted as he and the men at his side drew their swords.
Daniel stepped forward leaving Jalia and Hala behind him, neither of the girls drawing their swords and instead watching the people milling behind him.
“Only with me, my friend,” Daniel shouted just as loudly so that the entire crowd could hear. “And I don’t usually start fights, but I do finish them.”
Relf knew that he and his men had no choice but to fight Daniel and leave Jalia alone. Five against one should soon see him dispatched, even without help from his men in the crowd, and that would leave Jalia to be taken care of later. He stepped forward with his men following close behind.
Five against one are formidable odds, but only if the five in question can get the room to surround their victim. Daniel moved back towards the road, making it impossible for the men behind Relf to do anything but follow him with their swords drawn.
Relf stuck a vicious blow at Daniel’s head. Daniel parried it easily, but made no move to take advantage of the opening that the move created. He moved back into the melee of people behind him.
Bran Weld did not understand why the plan had gone awry, but he saw his chance as Daniel stepped towards him. He slipped his knife from out of his jacket to plunge it towards Daniel’s back. His hand stopped halfway to his surprise and he suddenly felt as weak as a kitten. The world seemed to spin around him and then he felt the incredible pain that a knife rammed deep into a man’s side generates. He turned his head and found Jalia grinning at him. He felt her rip her knife from his body causing massive blood loss. The world went black and he fell to the ground and died.
Relf was not aware of Bran’s departure from the world. Sweat poured down his back as he tried all his best strokes to absolutely no effect. He might as well have been fighting smoke for all the trouble he was causing the man. Relf became aware that things were not going at all to plan when two men behind Daniel fell to the ground causing him to stumble. Relf would have pressed his advantage had not the sightless eyes of Pete Haldal stared up at him and put him off.
Relf stepped back in shock and came close to getting skewered by the men behind him. He turned his head, shouting at them to back off, giving Daniel an easy target, which Daniel chose to ignore. When they fell back another five or six feet, Relf was able to look around.
A quick scan revealed that four of his five assassins were dead; each lying on the ground in a pool of blood. In every case, they held a knife in their hands. The people in the watching area had formed semi circles around the dead men while continuing to watch the fight.
Of his men in the crowd, only Talid Henk still lived and he stood with his hands firmly on his head. Jalia and a little girl were holding knives at his back. Jalia gave Relf a cheerful little wave with her free hand.
Relf knew his only chance was to run. He turned, pushing past his men and ran for the door. After a few confused moments, the men behind him began running after him. Daniel pointed his sword to the floor and walked over to Jalia. Cara, Don and Nin pushed through the crowd to join them.
“I was so busy watching you I never even thought about the possibility of assassins in the crowd,” Cara said in embarrassment.
“By the time we saw what was going on, we were too far back to do anything,” Don explained.
“Are you all right?” Nin asked Hala. She had slipped away from him when the men first began taunting Jalia and he had lost her in the crowd.
“Of course,” Hala replied, but her chattering teeth told another story as did the blood dripping from her knife and Nin put an arm around her to comfort her as best he could.
Jalia turned to face Talid Henk and moved her dagger so it pricked into his belly button. Cold sweat ran down the man’s face as he looked into Jalia’s deep blue eyes and saw not a hint of mercy.
“Who sent you?” she asked and the blade moved forward just enough to send blood down from his belly button.
“Mercy.”
“If you tell me truthfully; I will not kill you,” Jalia said smiling. Her smile did not comfort Talid. Her eyes told him he still faced death.
“Gally Sorn,” Talid said loudly. “We were to make it look like a street brawl. I don’t know why.”
“That’s a good boy,” Jalia said, withdrawing her knife from his stomach and performed a sweeping movement, cutting into his trousers and neatly severing his testicles.
Talid fell to the floor screaming trying to hold the severed parts together.
Daniel had raised one of his eyebrows
“I promised not to kill him and you let five of them get away,” Jalia said. She stooped to wipe her knife clean on Talid’s shoulder and walked away from the man and his agonized screams.
Daniel shrugged at the crowd. Those standing in front of Jalia found a sudden reason to be somewhere else and scattered.
“It’s absolutely typical that Daniel ignores it when they call me a whore, but reaches for his sword the minute they insult one of his precious donkeys,” Jalia told Cara cheerfully. “I hope this Greenhouse place is going to be worth all
the bother.”
13. The Greenhouse
As Jalia entered the Greenhouse proper, she was stunned at how hot and humid it was inside. The Greenhouse was reputed to be filled with the plants that once were part of the rain forests where the Atribar el Dou desert was today. Jalia was familiar with that part of the world and though it was hot there, it was also dry. She had expected the Greenhouse to be just as dry and the humidity surprised her.
“This is like nowhere in Jalon,” she told Daniel, who nodded in agreement.
“My shirt is soaked and I’ve only just walked in. Look at the butterflies! I’ve never seen any that big before,” Daniel replied.
Daniel pointed at a swarm of butterflies with wingspans of five or six inches flying past. If the Greenhouse’s purpose was to be an orchard, it was not laid out like any that Daniel had seen. It was a dense dark forest with a few narrow winding paths running through it. The road they were on ended within forty yards of the inner door in a large semicircular paved area filled with people and tables laden with strange fruit. People were arriving from the small paths with basketfuls of fruit, while others with empty basket were setting out into the forest.
The contents of the baskets were tipped onto the tables where some of the fruit was rejected by women sorting through them. Those they deemed acceptable they put into wicker baskets designed to be stacked on top of each other. When a basket was full, it was taken by one of the men loading the carts. There were dozens of sorting tables and as a result, the carts were filled rapidly. The noise of people shouting was overwhelming.
Cara walked to one of the tables and persuaded one of the girls to give her a sample. She returned to the group and cut the fruit with her knife.
“Only eat the inner flesh and discard the pips as well,” she advised as she handed them slices.
Jalia bit into the fruit cautiously and smiled at the taste.
“If all the fruits are as good as this I can see why the King of Slarn built this place.”
Daniel nodded and juice dripped down his chin.
