Blood Ties tw-9

by Robert Lynn Asprin

  Sensing either his embarrassment or his detachment, Kama made ready to leave the room. "I'll talk to him, Walegrin, but you're still his only eyes and ears out at that place and he won't want to lose you. Maybe we'll take the priest; I've got the stomach for that, but we can't touch her. Even if she didn't have some sort of divine protection, she's still Kada-kithis's cousin and he'll crucify anyone who rids him of her."

  "I know that. I tell it to myself over and over whenever I'm with her. She's using me all the while she pretends to listen or care. When we're alone there's hate and disgust. It's unnatural."

  Kama paused at the foot of the stairs. "The only thing unnatural about it is that she's a woman and you're a man- otherwise many men think it's a most natural, and satisfactory, arrangement."

  Bitterness and anger had pushed the taste of bile into his mouth. He almost asked about the men of the 3rd, or the Stepsons, or her father who could not lie with a woman, only rape one. In the end, though, he swallowed and stared out the casement, away from her.

  "It helps, sometimes, to bathe, to scrub yourself with a coarse cloth until you've shed your own skin," she added in a gentler voice as she disappeared up the stairs.

  He waited until he was certain she was gone before making his own way back through the twisted streets. There was an old Ilsigi bathhouse between the garrison barracks and their stables. Cythen made use of it frequently, regardless of the season, often getting his lieutenant, Thrusher, to help her build the fires and haul the water. He had generally ignored them; indulged them, if the truth be known, because they were shy about the time they spent together. Perhaps he would join them... no, not that, but leam how the fires were built and follow Kama's usually wise advice.

  The narrow streets of the Maze gave way to the Street of Smells, which more than merited its name these days. He crossed it and made his way into the Shambles where the chamel houses, infirmaries, and butchers plied their trades. A year ago this had been where the dead dwelt: an area of Sanctuary given over to magic and other worlds. For a while, after the spring plague, the Shambles had been almost completely abandoned, but they were occupied again.

  Theron had proclaimed his command to rebuild Sanctuary's walls throughout the Empire. Singly, in pairs and in small groups, men had begun to come to the Imperial anus to make their fortunes. Roustabouts, seventh sons, and exiles from the ongoing Wizardwall skirmishes took over the empty buildings of the Shambles and took their places on the work gangs. They drank, whored, and otherwise indulged themselves in ways that made longtime residents smile uncomfortably, for these men had great expectations that, so far, Sanctuary had not beaten out of them.

  They had their own taverns as well-the Broken Mallet, Tunker's Hole, and Belching Bili's-laid out in a row, spilling sound and light onto Offal Court despite the night's heat. Walegrin watched as a man staggered out one bright doorway and relieved himself in the street before choosing another route. The newcomers didn't get into much trouble-yet.

  The chamel houses were busy. Sacks of lime were stacked hight against the buildings. Moonlight turned the dust a glowing, yellow-green. It reflected off the carapaces of the night-flies, the jewel-colored insects which had recently appeared here and which were too beautiful to be vermin. He'd heard the Beysib glassmakers were having some success instilling the colors in their work and that traders were taking egg cases to aristocratic gardens all over the Empire.

  Walegrin watched their swirling dance. Its ethereal beauty took the stench and the heat from his mind, but spared him enough awareness to know he was, suddenly, not alone. Tensing imperceptibly, he located the sound and let his fingers hook casually over his belt-and his sword hilt. He spun around into an armed crouch as the intruder hailed him. "Whoa! Commander?"

  He recognized the voice and wished to the gods he didn't. With his sword still at the ready, he straightened up. "Yeah, it's me. What do you want. Zip?" The Rankan waited while the PFLS leader came down the street. There was an ugly shadow across the young man's face-courtesy of the treachery he'd found at Chenaya's hands. He'd been proud that Sanctuary had never marked him. Those days were probably over.

  "You keepin' your promises. Commander?"

  Walegrin shifted his weight nervously and with evident distaste slid his sword back into its scabbard. "Yeah, I'm keeping promises. You got a problem you can't handle?"

  There was no love lost between these men. Zip had wielded the ax that had hacked Illyra's gut open and broken her daughter in two. They'd meant to fight to the death that day-only Tempus's accidental intervention had stopped them. Walegrin judged it extremely likely that he'd finish the job someday; someday after Tempus was gone and Zip's absence wouldn't raise embarrassing questions.

  "Not me personally-unless you lied to your priest and the Riddler both. Well, you coming with me?"

  Liking it not at all, Walegrin fell in step behind Zip and followed him into the alleyways. The truth was, and the garrison commander knew it, that Zip's feelings were never very personal. He and Illyra had had a run-in more than a year ago and he'd stabbed her then-but that had had nothing to do with his attack on her daughter and neither had meant that Zip felt any more strongly about her than he felt about anyone. Tempus's Ratfall farce had probably secured Zip's loyalty and good behavior about as well as it could be secured.

  There wasn't really any reason for Walegrin's sweat to go cold as they tunnelled through another cellar and he knew he'd not get back to a street he recognized without help before

  sunrise.

  They were at another of the PFLS safe-houses, an old, uninviting structure whose only doorway opened on a blind courtyard. Glancing at the rooftops, Walegrin knew they weren't a stone's throw from the Wideway-but he'd never imagined this house and its courtyard existed. He wondered how many other boltholes like this the PFLS retained and if even Tempus truly had them under control.

  "It's upstairs," Zip called and vanished through the half-ruined doorway.

  It took a few moments for Walegrin's eyes to adjust to the faint-shadowed darkness of the house. By the time they had, he'd heard the groaning and flailing about in the upper room- the room to which Zip was leading him. The Torch had offered to keep Zip and the two other piffles who had survived Chenaya's ambush in sanctuary at the palace until their wounds had healed. Zip had refused for both himself and his men; Walegrin figured he regretted it now.

  Certainly the smell of blood was strong enough in the airless room they were crowded into. A lump-tallow candle provided sputtering, smoky light. Walegrin took the sconce from the wall and studied the place. He shoved a smaller man aside and headed for the comer where the whimpering was coming from, then brought himself up short.

  "It's a woman!"

  "It usually is," Zip replied. "She's been like this for three days. Around sunset we thought she was going to have it, finally. But it's only gotten worse. You gonna help?"

  Walegrin knelt down and had his worst suspicions confirmed. This was no hell-cat PFLS fighter; this wasn't even the result of a private quarrel; no, this was a girl, a child really, lying on the filthy wood, her clothes long since torn and discarded, laboring to get a child out of her belly.

  "Sweet Sabellia's tits," he swore softly.

  The girl opened her eyes. She tried to say something to him but the sounds that came from her were too ragged for him to understand.

  "I could stitch up a cut, maybe. Maybe get Thrush.... Shit on a stick. Zip-I can't do anything for her. I'm not a goddamned midwife." He stood up and took a step away.

  "She needs a midwife," another voice told him, the man he'd pushed aside who was no more a man than the girl in the comer was a woman.

  "She needs more than a midwife. She needs a bloody miracle!"

  "We'll settle for a midwife," Zip countered.

  "You're crazy. Zip. Three days she's been here? Three days? Maybe two days ago; maybe even at sunset she needed a midwife. You can't possibly move her; she's half-dead already."

  "She's not!" the you
th shouted, his outrage turning to tears. "She needs a midwife-that's all." He turned to Zip, not Walegrin. "You said-you said you'd find someone."

  The PFLS leader's facade of uncaring arrogance cracked a bit-enough so the garrison commander could recognize a familiar despair. You made your men trust you so you could ask them to do the impossible and get results, but then they turned around and asked you to do the impossible as well. Walegrin didn't need to like, or even respect. Zip to sympathize with him.

  "What about it? You know anyone?" Zip asked.

  "Who'd come here? At this hour?"

  Walegrin twisted his bronze circlet free, pushed the loose hair off his forehead, and blew a lungful of air through his teeth. The unborn baby chose that moment to send its mother into a back-wrenching arc of pain and terror. As she thrashed about Walegrin saw more than he wanted to see: a tiny leg dangling below the girl's crotch. Even he knew babes were supposed to enter the world the other way around.

  He locked stares with Zip and racked his memory for a competent, but foolhardy, midwife.

  Molin Torchholder had told him, back when he'd begun taking orders from the priest, that in the Rankan Empire a place's population was usually about fifteen times its tax roll. Until the coming of the Beysib, the Prince had collected taxes, or tried to collect taxes, from some four hundred citizens: Say 6,000 people in the city, not counting Beysibs and newcomers, and Walegrin knew, or could recognize, most of them.

  He had a memory for faces and names; had made a hobby of it since his childhood right here in Sanctuary: Moreover his mind was sufficiently flexible to recognize people years after he'd last seen them. He'd recognized Zip, remembering him as a street tough about his own age-always surrounded by followers, always fighting, never winning. He'd recognized another not long ago: a lady living in moderate style and comfort near Weaver's Way.

  "Maybe," he told them and headed for the door.

  "I'll be going with you," Zip countered and preceded him down the stairs.

  They left a different way than they'd come, squat-walking through a gap Walegrin would not have noticed without Zip to lead him. The safe-house shared a wall with a dilapidated warehouse. A warehouse which should have been empty, judging by the way Zip recoiled when they confronted the burning lamps and the little man coming toward them.

  "Muznut!" Zip shouted and the bald little man came to a shame-faced stop.

  Dressed in drab Sanctuary rags, it took Walegrin a moment to realize he was actually looking at a Beysib who was well-known to, if not exactly friendly with, the PFLS leader. He didn't recognize the foreigner, but he'd know him the next time they crossed paths.

  "We share with them, for a price," Zip tried to explain. "Some fish want to get out of the water." He turned to the Beysib and snarled: "Get back to your tub boat, old man. You've got no business here after sundown!"

  The man's eyes went wide and glassy, like he'd seen a ghost, then he turned and ran. Zip stood staring after him.

  "Umm," Walegrin said, pretending disinterest. "I thought we were in a hurry. If this is your shortcut to Weaver's Way, I don't think much of it." He sniffed disdainfully, as the locals expected the Rankans to do, and took note of the smells in the air. Only one was worth remembering: distilled light oil such as he had smelled when Chenaya ambushed the PFLS and they'd retaliated with their fire-bottles.

  "Can't trust those fish," Zip said as they approached the door the Beysib had left open in his haste to leave the warehouse.

  "Ain't that the truth," Walegrin agreed, and wondered if Zip were truly preoccupied enough to believe that a Rankan soldier hadn't figured out where the oil and glass for his fire-bottles was coming from.

  The PFLS leader set a good pace along the Wideway. Sweat came up and clung to the both of them. Once they crossed the Processional, though, and entered Sanctuary's better neighborhoods, Walegrin took command with Zip walking nervously beside him.

  "You sure about this place?" the dark-haired man demanded.

  "Yeah. I'm no fool. You'll owe me one."

  Zip stopped, touching Walegrin's arm as he did, so the two men stood facing each other.

  "Pork all, Walegrin. It's for the girl back there, not me."

  "That's part of the job. You owe me for keeping quiet about your warehouse back there and your fish glassblower."

  "They're shit-dumb, man. He thinks we own the place, so we charge him rent."

  "It's not going to wash. Zip." Walegrin watched as the other man went white and furious in the moonlight. "Now look: You're dealing with the guy who brought Enlibar steel to this hole. You got yourself a nice advantage there, but right now you don't need it, correct? Everybody's at peace; you're one of us. And, now that I've got the pieces in my head- well, I can get to better Beysib than your Maznut.

  "But let's say I don't want to. Let's say I don't trust some of my allies any more than you do, but the time comes, maybe, that I need a fire-breathing hero, then you come running, Zip-or Shalpa's cloak itself won't hide you from me. Understood?"

  Zip weighed his options in silence.

  "Maybe you can find another warehouse," Walegrin bantered easily. "Maybe something will happen to me before it happens to you. I remember you from the Pits, long before Ratfall, and I'm betting you want to be a hero just once in your life. But you don't swear right now, and you'll tear Weaver's Way apart looking for her... and you won't find her." He smiled his best triumphant smile.

  "What do you get out of it?"

  "Maybe I'm going to need a home-grown, fire-breathing hero," Walegrin replied, thinking of Rashan and the altar out at Land's End and hoping that Kama would approve.

  Zip gave his word and they continued in silence, alone on the streets, until they reached Weaver's Way.

  "Keep out of sight," Walegrin told his companion before he climbed the steps to rap loudly on the door.

  "Be gone wi' you!" a voice called from inside.

  "It's the Prince's business! Open up or we'll break through the door."

  There was a long silence, the sounds of two heavy bolts being drawn back, then the door cracked open. Walegrin smacked the heel of this hand against the upper part of the door and threw the weight of his hip against the lower. It gave another few inches but not enough for Walegrin to enter. He looked down at the house guard.

  "I want to talk to the Mistress zil-Ineel. Call her." He emphasized his request with another shove, but the house guard was braced as securely as he was and the door didn't budge.

  "Come back in the morning."

  'Wow, fat man."

  "Let him in, Enoir," a woman called from the top of the stairs. "What's Eevroen done now?" she asked wearily as she descended.

  Walegrin gave the hapless Enoir a leering smile and pushed his way into the open room. "Nothing unusual," he told the woman. "I'm here to see you."

  "I haven't done anything to warrant a midnight visit from the garrison," she retorted with enough fire to convince Walegrin that he had indeed come to the right house.

  He softened his stance and his voice. "I need your help. Or, rather, a young girl in the Shambles needs your help."

  "I... I don't know what you're talking about."

  "You're Masha zil-Ineel; you were Mashanna sum-Peres t'lneel until your uncles went bankrupt and married you off to Eevroen. You lived on Dry Well Street in the Maze until somehow you got lucky, disappeared for almost a year, and came back to buy this place."

  "I came by my good fortune the hard way: honestly. I've paid my taxes."

  "When you lived in the Maze, Masha, you worked as a midwife-with a doctor present east of the Processional, without one the rest of the time. The girl in the Shambles- she's been in labor for three days, in this heat. Once upon a time visiting the Shambles was moving up for you; I'm hoping you won't be afraid to go there tonight."

  Mash sighed and let her lamp rest on the handrail. "Three days? There won't be much I can do."

  But she would come-the answer showed on her face before she said anything. Eno
ir protested and insisted he accompany her but she ordered him to remain at the house and retreated upstairs to dress. Walegrin waited, politely ignoring Enoir's barbed glances.

  "You have an escort in the street?" Masha asked when she returned, one hand pulling a prim, but almost transparent, shawl around her shoulders and the other carrying a battered leather chest.

  "Of course," Walegrin replied without hesitation as he, rather than Enoir, held the door open.

  He called for Zip as soon as the door had shut behind them. "That is your escort?" Masha sneered, the edge in her voice trying to cover her discomfort and fear.

  "No, that's our guide; I'm the escort. Let's get moving." Whatever Masha zil Ineel was doing now that she had money, she hadn't let it soften her. She let the shawl drape loosely from her shoulders and kept pace with them along the Path of Money. The heavy chest seemed not to slow her at all and she refused to let either man carry it. The moon set; Walegrin bought a brace of torches from the Processional night-crier and they continued along their way, avoiding the Maze though all of them knew the secrets of its dark passages. They came into the Shambles and halted.

  A knot of torch fires was headed toward them, bobbing, even falling, as their bearers shouted into the still, hot air. It reminded the three native Sanctuarites of the riotous plague marches that told the city's better-off citizens when death had erupted in the slums. Silently Zip melted back into the shadows, pushing Masha and her white shawl behind him. Walegrin slipped the straps off his green-steel sword and shoved the stump of his own torch into a gap in the nearest wall.

  A gang of newcomer workmen emerged from the darkness. They staggered and stumbled into each other and their shouting proved to be the once-tender chorus of a love ballad. Walegrin shrugged a good deal of the tension from his shoulders but held his ground as they took note of him and lurched to a halt.

  "A whorehouse, off-sher, where the wimmen're pretty?" their ersatz leader requested, drawing the outline of what he considered an extremely attractive woman in the air between them. His cohorts broke off their singing to whistle and laugh their agreement.