The Yellow silk r-4

by Don Bassingthwaite

"I… " Words failed him. He held his head high and bluffed. "I am a representative of Shou Lung. What I was doing there is the business of me and my emperor."

  The lines on Mard's face only grew deeper. "So you're some kind of ambassador?"

  Li hesitated for a heartbeat and then nodded. Impersonating an imperial ambassador. He would have been executed if he tried this in Shou Lung! So far away, though, there was no one to know any different. At his nod, though, Mard's eyes flicked up and down and settled on Li's face once more. "Where's your staff?" he asked. "I never met an ambassador without a retinue that could fill a room." His nose wrinkled in disgust. "And what happened to your clothes?"

  "I was robbed," Li said again. He clenched his teeth and hissed his words between them. "My clothes were stolen. I need your help. I have been to two guard stations this morning and was thrown out of both."

  "You're close to being thrown out of here as well!" Mard snarled. "If I take you up to the citadel, will Kargil Ninton recognize you?"

  Li blinked and hesitated again. This time, though, he must have hesitated too long because Mard crushed the papers in his hand and spat, "Lord Kargil Ninton, First Consul of Spandeliyon! The man any ambassador to Spandeliyon would go to see!" He spun around sharply and nodded to the servant who had opened the door. "Get him out of here!" He marched back down the hall toward the stairs. Li stared after him, open-mouthed-and for the first time registered the black-haired man who stood to one side of the hall, watching and listening. Tychoben Arisaenn!

  "Wait!" Li called. "Wait!" He pulled against the servants who were trying to haul him back toward the door and managed to get one arm free. He pointed desperately toward Tycho. "He knows me! He knows I was robbed last night. He dug me out of the snow!"

  Mard stopped. The servants stopped. All eyes turned to Tycho.

  The singer gave Li a single cold glance, his mouth set hard and tight. He turned to Mard Dantakain and raised his eyebrows innocently. "He's mad," Tycho said. "I've never seen him before in my life."

  Rage fell on Li like a toppling wall of red-hot iron bricks. He was vaguely conscious of screaming something incoherent at Tycho, of snapping the elbow of his free arm into the face of one servant trying to grab him and stomping down sharply on the shin of the man who was still holding him. Then suddenly he was free as servants shouted and scrambled away. "Mad? Mad? " Li howled and hurled himself at Tycho.

  The singer flinched back, raising his hands and opening his mouth. Li had fought spellcasters before, though. He dropped fast and swept out with a leg to knock Tycho's feet out from under him, but Tycho yelped and managed to hop and dance over the sweep. Li bounced up instantly and grabbed a fistful of Tycho's shirt before he could recover his balance. He hauled him in close and smacked him hard across the face. "You lying dog!" he spat in Shou. "You hairy, lying-"

  Hands and arms grabbed him from behind. Li lashed out with his arm to the back and right and a lean man with a resemblance to Mard Dantakain went staggering back, one hand clutching his nose. A swift kick straight back should have caught another attacker, but didn't. This time Li caught a glimpse of the Captain of the Guard himself. Mard's face was dark red and angry as he dodged back expertly and closed again with his arms held wide. The Shou shot down, pulling a dazed Tycho over his head to receive Mard's grapple in his place. The impact slammed them all into a pair of doors that gave way under their combined weight and tumbled them into the room beyond.

  They found themselves face to face with a beautiful young woman posed seductively on a broad table, a harp in her arms, her dress pulled down to show her shoulders and tucked up to expose her knees.

  Li simply stopped, still crouched low, startled more than stunned. Tycho, down beside him, froze and made a strangled noise. Behind them both, Mard froze as well. For a heartbeat, they all just stared at the young woman. She stared back in shock.

  Mard Dantakain let out a window-rattling roar, grabbed Li's head with his left hand, Tycho's with his right, and cracked them hard together.

  CHAPTER 4

  Tycho had been thrown in jail-briefly-many times during his life. He had seen the inside of Spandeli-yon's dockside guard station fairly frequently during his later childhood. After Veseene had taken him as her apprentice, he had seen the inside of many similar jails, from east to west around the Sea of Fallen Stars. It was something of a hazard of the itinerant lifestyle. He had seen jails that were kept fastidiously clean. He had seen jails that made stables look pleasant. He had seen jails that were run with efficient cruelty and those run with casual disorder. In Tantras, he had passed a night in a jail that put each prisoner into their own bare little cell, almost like monks in a monastery. In Raven's Bluff, just down the coast, he had been flung into a prison that was little more than a vast building with one lock on the outer door and prisoners swarming loose within; he had been forgotten there for almost a tenday before Veseene managed to find him.

  He had never before, however, been thrown into a jail cell normally reserved for traitors, assassins, and other dangerous, desperate types. Spandeliyon's middle town guard station had precisely one very highly secured cell. Among the folk of dockside-and even the middle town-it was a thing of rumor and speculation, mockingly referred to as "the King's Chamber." If Tycho had been in a better mood, he might have taken greater note of the place, maybe with an eye to embellishing on its rather ordinary appearance and using the experience to earn himself a few extra pennies at the Wench's Ease.

  But he wasn't and he didn't.

  "— acting like a horse that's been turned into an ore and made even more stupid', Tycho ranted for the seventh or eighth time. The words came out slurred. His lower lip was split and swollen where Li Chien had hit him. He rattled the manacles that chained him to the wall of the cell and held his arms suspended like a marionette. "Locked up for what? Because you apparently don't have the sense to be civil. Idiot!"

  He glared across the cell, a matter of only about ten feet, at Li Chien. The King's Chamber was solid stone, with no features to it other than a heavy, steel-bound door and an assortment of chains hammered into the stark walls with stout pins. It was dark, the only light coming from a lantern on the other side of a small, barred window in the door. There was nothing between Tycho's behind and the winter-cold floor except the fabric of his breeches. Li Chien was in no better situation. Somehow, though, he managed to look as if imprisonment bothered him not a bit. His smooth face was calm, his posture relaxed. He said nothing. His eyes were even closed. Tycho might almost have thought that he was asleep except that every so often his ears twitched slightly at a particularly vile insult.

  It was the most reaction Tycho had managed to get out of him since they had been bundled out of the Dantakain house, bags over their heads and their arms bound, and marched through the snow. Tycho had caught the sound of Laera pleading and screaming with her father and of Jac-erryl trying to argue with Mard. The only words to escape the captain of the guard's lips, however, had been a few terse commands for the captives to be searched and for Tycho's strilling and other effects to be collected and sent to the guard station. Unseen hands had taken everything from him-even the tube of beljurils. He had struggled at that, but Jacerryl's voice had been in his ear. "Don't worry. Mard might be furious, but he sticks to the law like honey. They'll be safe."

  The trip through the snowbound streets had been remarkably short. They had been in the King's Chamber before the daze of having his head cracked against Li Chien's had even worn off.

  His anger at Li Chien, however, had yet to fade. "I mean, going up to hightown in clothes that smell like beer and fish guts, walking right up to Mard Dantakain's house, and demanding to see him-just what did you think, that he was going to welcome you with open arms?" Through the shadows, Tycho caught a tightening of the muscles along Li Chien's jaw. He growled. "I know you can hear me, Li Chien." He switched to Shou. "Maybe you've just been having trouble understanding me-I said that you've got the brains of a horse, the grace of an ore, and t
he gratitude of a rabid weasel!"

  Li Chien's eyes popped open and he sucked in air. His entire body seemed to clench at once "And you," he seethed in an explosion of rage, "are a liar with all the morals of a rutting goat! You were sleeping with the man's daughter!"

  The venom in his voice was wasted. "I never even kissed Laera!" Tycho shot back.

  "It looked like she was ready for more than a kiss."

  "That wasn't my doing! If I'd gone into that library on my own, I wouldn't have let anything happen." A tiny whisper of doubt tickled Tycho's mind but he thrust it away. He would have rebuffed Laera's advances. "This is your fault," he said. "You attacked me, remember?"

  "You lied to Mard Dantakain!" spat Li Chien. "You knew I was telling the truth and you lied. All you had to do was tell him what happened last night and-"

  Tycho leaned forward sharply. If the chains hadn't held him back, he might have lunged at Li Chien. "What happened last night? You mean how you insulted me, ignored every attempt I made at warning you, and then, when I saved your life, how you snuck away like a thief without even saying 'thank you'?" He wrenched fruitlessly on his chains. "You're right, I should have supported you-О Emissary of Imperial Shou Lung! You want to talk about lies, how about that one? If you're an ambassador, I'm the Witch-Queen of Aglarond!"

  Li Chien started to snap a reply but stopped. His face fell and he looked away. "That lie is between Mard Dantakain and me," he said stubbornly. "But for walking away from you this morning-" He glanced up again and Tycho was startled to see that anger was actually fading from his face and a look of shame taking its place. "-I apologize. What I did was no way to repay your kindness. I'm very sorry. You are right to be angry."

  For the first time in a very long while, Tycho found his mouth opening and closing in speechless astonishment. "Well," he managed finally. "All right then;"

  He sat back against the cold wall and just looked at Li Chien. The Shou looked back. Neither of them said anything. Uncomfortable silence hung in the air-until Li Chien's stomach broke it with a loud, hollow growl that echoed off the stone walls. He flushed. "Excuse me. I haven't eaten."

  "It might be a while before you do. I don't know if they'll bring us anything before dinner." He turned his gaze up to the ceiling of the cell, almost lost in the darkness. It was hard to tell what time it was. His own stomach was empty, though. He'd guess that it was at least well into the afternoon now. "Are you an ambassador, Li Chien?" he asked.

  "Just Li, Tycho. Li Chien is what my mother calls me." The Shou sighed. "I'm no ambassador. I'm just a clerk in the imperial bureaucracy."

  Tycho raised his eyebrows. "You fight well for just a clerk."

  "You healed me, didn't you? Are you just a singer?"

  "True enough." Tycho shifted and his chains rattled again. "So what brings an imperial clerk all the way from Shou Lung to Altumbel?" Li said nothing. Tycho looked at him. The Shou had his head down and was staring at the floor between his knees. "Not the sort of thing you can talk about?" Tycho shrugged. Li shook his head. "That's fair."

  "Tycho," said Li without looking up, "tell me about Brin. Is there anyone in Spandeliyon who isn't afraid of him?"

  "Mard Dantakain. Crazy old Riverhand the Sage out on the edge of town. A few people in the middle and high-towns who haven't actually heard of him, maybe. Anyone with any sense is afraid of Brin. He came to Spandeliyon just about a year ago and set himself up by finding the biggest gang boss in dockside and burning his house down. With him inside. Then he just moved in and took over. He's slick. When he doesn't want to be linked to something, he'll trick someone into doing his dirty business, but when he wants to make a point, he makes it in a very big way. A lot of people in dockside and middle town who cross him have problems with knives. Or pigs."

  "Pigs?"

  "Brin passes himself off as a swineherd. He even likes to do his business in a sty. I don't know who he's trying to fool, but it sure gives him a crazy edge. People aren't just scared of him because he's mean. They're scared of him because there's a very good chance he might be insane, too."

  "What about you? Are you scared of him?"

  "Witless. It's the only smart way." Tycho considered Li for a moment. "You know, for someone who's looking for Brin, you don't seem to know a lot about him."

  "I don't. I only heard about him in Telflamm-rumors that said he was here in Spandeliyon." He hesitated then added. "Brin isn't actually the reason I came west from Shou Lung. He's just a link."

  Tycho had to stop himself from leaning forward too eagerly. "Oh?" he asked. "A link to what?" He tried to dredge up everything he had heard about Brin's career as a pirate before the one-eyed halfling had come to Spandeliyon. There were always tales linking pirates to fantastic treasure hordes… and what had Li said back in Mard Dan-takain's entrance hall? That he served the bureaucracy of Shou Lung in the Department of Lost Treasures? Li was biting his lip in uncertainty. Tycho waited, giving him his time, not wanting to pressure him and lose this tale.

  It wasn't to be. Just as Li swallowed, drew breath, and opened his mouth, there was noise out in the corridor. Footsteps. The rattle of keys in locks. Li's mouth closed firmly. Tycho ground his teeth in frustration. Patience, he told himself, patience.

  The door opened and three figures stepped into the cell. With the lantern in the corridor behind them they were nothing but silhouettes for a moment. "Magistrate will see you now," said one as the other two moved forward with more keys. Light splashed across guard uniforms marked with the crest of the city. "On your feet."

  Li, however, was already leaping up with a clatter of chains and a sharp storm of Shou curses. The guards, two men and a woman, jumped back, hands reaching for weapons. Tycho came to his feet as well. "Li!" he said in Shou. "Calm down! They're just here to-"

  "I know her, Tycho! I saw her last night." Li pointed an arm at the woman guard. "She's in Lander's pay!"

  A woman's face emerging from shadows and falling snow, torchlight showing a uniform-a guard uniform, Li realized now. "She came past last night while Lander and his men were robbing me," he spat at Tycho, "and just left when Lander told her it was Brin's business and paid her off!"

  Blood was pounding in his head. He tried to reach forward with both hands, but the chains binding him made it impossible. "She's corrupt! She's-"

  Tycho looked startled but also shook his head sharply. "Li, it's all right! They're taking us before a magistrate, that's all. Be quiet or you'll just make things worse. If we're lucky we could be out of here soon." He twisted around to face the guard who had stayed by the door, clearly the leader of the trio. "The Shou is confused," the singer said quickly in the common tongue of the west. "I'm trying to calm him down."

  "You speak his language? You tell him we don't want any trouble, but we're ready for it." The guard pulled out a club and held it up where Li could see it. "No trouble," he said loudly. "You understand?"

  "Got that?" Tycho asked in Shou.

  Li clenched his teeth and nodded. Chained and helpless, there was little he could do anyway. He did not, however, take his eyes off the woman guard. "I don't trust her," he growled.

  "You don't have to. Just stay calm. Let me do the talking and I'll get us both out of this."

  There didn't seem to be any other choice. Li swallowed his anger and stood still as one of the guards, a thick-necked man approached him warily. His arms were freed from the chains, and bound together in front of him. The corrupt woman guard treated Tycho the same way, though perhaps with a little less fear. When both of them were ready, the third guard led the way out of the cell, down an ugly, damp hallway, and up a flight of narrow stairs.

  Li was marched along in the middle of the group. As they ascended the stairs, he heard the woman's voice murmuring behind him. "Hey Tycho, they say you were carrying on with Dantakain's daughter. 'S true?"

  "I wouldn't call it carrying on, Desmada. The young lady was just an enthusiastic student."

  Li twisted around for a second to look
over his shoulder at Tycho and the guard. "You know her?" he asked in Shou.

  "Hush!" Tycho said sharply. "I know a lot of people. Now be quiet!"

  The exchange earned them both a hard glance from the leading guard and Li a rough jerk on the arm by the guard at his side. Li did, however, manage to lock eyes with the woman guard-Desmada-just briefly.

  There was nothing in her gaze except vague curiosity.

  Li turned back around and kept shuffling along under his guard's guidance. His mind, though, was on Desmada. She didn't recognize him. How was that possible? It had been dim last night, he supposed, and she had only caught a brief glimpse of him before Lander had run her off. He had probably looked rather different, too, beaten and bruised. Still, there was something disconcerting in her lack of recognition. Could she really care so little as to pay no attention to a man being beaten on her watch?

  And Tycho treated her as if nothing were out of the ordinary. The more he saw of the ways of Spandeliyon, the less he liked the town.

  The stairs led into another short corridor, from which a door let them all into a large room filled with the dazzle of sunlight. After so long in the dim shadows of the cell, the light was almost blinding. They were marched a short distance and stopped. "Prisoners Tychoben Arisaenn and Kangli Shen, magistrate," said the lead guard, completely mangling Li's name.

  "Blessed Tyr," came a wheezing voice out of the glare, "nobody said he was elf-blood."

  Li squinted against the light and looked around. They were in a vaulted chamber dominated by tall windows in one wall and an imposing raised dais on another. On the dais was a very large and heavy chair. Seated in it was a very tall and thin old man in severe robes. Li fixed him with a frustrated glare. "I am not an elf!"

  In the shadow of the great chair, another man rapped a heavy rod against the floor. "Respect for the magistrate!" Li immediately received two hard pokes in the side, one from the guard who stood on his left and one from Tycho on his right. The singer also gave him a scowl and a short hiss for silence.