The dwarf left, shutting the door behind him.
"So," Jason said, "you're going back to Holtun-Bieme with Ellegon?"
"That's what I wanted to talk to you about." She shook her head. "No." She swallowed heavily. "Mom and Dorann are going there. I'm going with you."
* * *
There was something Father had once said about what he called his "command voice," about how if you said something, if you gave an order with perfect and complete faith that it would be obeyed, then it would be obeyed.
I will be obeyed; she will do what I say. "You are not," he said, willing himself to believe that he would be obeyed. "You will go to Holtun-Bieme on Ellegon's back. With the others."
She pursed her lips for a moment, then took a quick chew on her lower lip, and just for a moment he thought she was going to give in.
But then she shook her head. "Look, I don't like it any more than you do. Less—I'd much rather stay here, shooting blanks. But—"
"You will—"
"You will hear me out, shithead." She slammed her hand down, hard, on the bed. "No—I'm sorry. Wrong approach." She closed her eyes and formed her hands into fists, then relaxed them and her whole body. "Let's try it this way: hear me out, please?" she said, softly, her eyes resting on his eyes, her hand resting on his hand.
It couldn't hurt to listen. "Go ahead."
"You're going under the assumption that the three of them—both our fathers and Ahira—are alive and carving a swath through the slavers, heading this way. Sort of like that last run thing he used to talk about, except that it's an announcement that your father's alive. Correct?"
He nodded. "It's just an assumption."
She returned his nod. "But it makes sense. There's a lesser probability that this is some scheme of the Slavers' Guild to get you out of Holtun-Bieme and chasing after ghosts, but if that had been the case they would have been ready to jump you in Enkiar.
"It sounds a lot like your father. I've been re-reading his letters; Karl Cullinane has been champing at the bit for years, wanting to get out from under that crown. This is just the sort of thing he'd try to pull, particularly since he'd know he'd have to settle down after it."
"But what does that have to do with—"
"Listen to me! Think it through, damn it," she said. "Who do you think's running the operation? Your father? Look, I've been raised to think highly of the great and powerful Karl Cullinane, but if they've survived this long, it's because they're doing something tricky. A lot of tricky things—you think the slavers looking for them are all idiots? You think that they can't track a team consisting of a dwarf, a big man and a bigger man with seven fingers? It has to be something tricky.
"And tricky isn't something your father is. Or was. Ahira can be subtle, but this whole thing smells of craftiness." She dipped two fingers into her belt pouch and produced a copper coin. "Look," she said, slipping the coin into her right fist, then holding both fists out in front of her. "Quickly, which hand is it in?"
He shrugged. He'd seen the sleight before. If it had been done well—and it had—there was no way that he could tell which hand held the coin.
"The right," he said, picking one at random.
"Nope," she said, as she opened her first, revealing an empty right hand. "Guess again."
"The left," he said, then realizing that since she was letting him guess again, it couldn't be in—
"Wrong again." She held up an empty left hand. She picked the coin out of her lap. "You think like your father. I think like mine.
"This is my father's show. If you haven't latched onto that by now, it's because you don't think enough like Dad. There are only two people I know who can follow his thinking, convoluted as it is. One of them's Ahira; he and the dwarf have been working together since before I was born." She shrugged.
"And the other one's you?"
"Good guess, Jason. Have Ellegon drop us off outside Elleport and we'll hire a boat and find them. Trust me, I'll find them for you. There's just one thing I want you to do."
"Yeah?"
"Keep me alive while I'm doing it," she said. She swallowed, hard. "You may not understand about this, but I've got to tell you that I'm scared shitless."
He knew something about being scared. He knew a lot about being scared. But it wasn't something he was yet brave enough to admit to a pretty girl, not if he didn't have to.
She stuck out a hand. "We got a deal, Cullinane?"
He took it. "We've got a deal, Slovotsky."
CHAPTER 16
Elleport
All the rivers run into the sea, yet the sea is not full.
—Ecclesiastes 1:7
There just isn't any pleasing some people. The trick is to stop trying.
—Walter Slovotsky
Ellegon dropped them off before dawn, near the Orduin just north of Findarel, a small riverfront village less than a day's ride from Elleport and the Cirric. They were too close to the dock area to risk a light, so it took longer than usual to unload their gear from the dragon's back, and then get Kirah, little Dorann and Kennen aboard again.
The dwarf didn't like any of it, and while they were unloading he stood by, explaining to all and sundry how much he didn't like it.
He loathed riding on dragonback, he abhorred the idea of Kirah going to Biemestren, he found idiotic the idea of Doria Andrea going to Biemestren, he thought the idea that he was going to Biemestren was detestable—
Why not just tell him to shut up or you won't take him to Biemestren?
*Because I wouldn't mean it,* the dragon said, *and I don't like making phony threats. If I don't take Kennen to Biemestren I would have to leave him with you. Either that, or abandon him. Abandoning him would not sit well with King Maherralen, and I'd prefer not to be met with a hail of bolts the next time I stop off in Endell. So I'll just bear up bravely under the weight of the irritation.*
And be a fine, fine example to me, Jason thought.
—and Kennen very particularly was not fond of the idea of Jane going off into who-knew-what kind of trouble with a bunch of spindly humans, and he loathed the fact that the saddles were rigged for these oversized excuses for persons, and he was angry that the lap-belt chafed him, and he thought it was absolutely ridiculous that it was taking so long to get everybody and everything unloaded and then get the three of them reloaded, and—
*Shut up, Kennen.*
The dwarf took a long look at the dragon and started complaining again.
—and it was incredibly stupid that Kethol couldn't work any faster than that, how the—
*Shut up or I'll roast you,* the dragon said, slightly parting his reptilian jaws, letting just a whisper of flame escape from between his teeth.
The dwarf shut up.
Oh. I didn't think of that. I should have said, "Try threatening to burn him."
*Sarcasm ill becomes you.* There was a distant, draconic chuckle that held the sharpness that meant it was only for Jason.
But, finally, Jane's mother, Kirah, and her sister Doria Andrea were strapped back into their places on the dragon's back, and so was the dwarf. All of the goods for Jason and the company had been unloaded, while both the Slovotsky family possessions and the trade goods destined for Biemestren were safely lashed into place.
They were done. It was none too early, either; the blackness of the eastern sky was turning into dim darkness, threatening to brighten into a new day, and the dragon had to be away.
Jane's mother called down a last urging to be careful, her voice carefully balanced between her own fear for her older daughter's safety and the need to continue to reassure her younger daughter that there was nothing to worry about, and wasn't the ride on Ellegon's back fun? And wasn't it just wonderful that they were going to get to do it again now!
*Three tendays,* Ellegon said. *On Pefret. I'll be there; I hope you are. Preferably all of you, and our three friends.*
"Preferably." Just keep things quiet.
Ellegon shrugged. *We don't
have much longer until word reaches Biemestren, but even when it does, we'll keep it from your mother, just as long as we can.*
"Please," Kirah called down, "be careful."
His pounding wings sending leaves and sticks and dust flying about, the dragon leaped into the air, leaving behind Kirah's gentle words to her daughter, Dorann's shouts of excitement, and a few stray oaths from Kennen.
Tennetty already had her rucksack on her back. "Saddle up, people," she said. "I want us to catch the first barge out of Findarel."
She could have passed as a trader, if you didn't know her. She had her glass eye in the empty socket, and it could pass a cursory inspection. Jason hoped she would pass; her identity was too good a clue to his own. The charm that the Spidersect cleric had placed on the eye kept it moist in appearance, and slaved it to the motion of her real eye.
Her sword was stowed with the common gear—women wearing swords were enough of a rarity to be suspicious—but she could protect herself somewhat with the oversized bowie at her waist and with the two pistols she carried, one in a holster under her left armpit, the other tucked into the top of her right boot.
"Move it, people," she said.
Durine looked at her, long and hard, as though to say that she wasn't running things here, and that as far as he was concerned she'd never run things; but Kethol must have caught Jason's headshake out of the corner of his eye, and nudged the bigger man, who subsided.
* * *
Jason swapped a trade knife for passage for all six of them, and got the chief bargeman to throw in two meals and the use of his tent. Durine, Kethol and Bren Adahan were tired; they hadn't gotten much sleep the day before.
Tennetty was unimpressed. If she had been negotiating, the bargeman would have thrown in some local coin, and thanked them smartly for the bargain. Or so she said.
Jane, on the other hand, wasn't visibly bowled over by Tennetty's claim. She tilted her head toward Jason as they leaned against the forward rail, watching the river bend and turn in the distance.
"The other possibility, of course," Jane murmured, "is that Tennetty would have pushed him so far, so hard that he would have called for the local armsmen." Which was entirely possible.
Still, maybe Tennetty would have gotten a better deal. Space wasn't at a particular premium today: the bags of grain and barrels of dried beef weren't piled more than shoulder high anywhere on the barge. There were only a dozen or so chicken cages with their clucking birds idiotically eyeing the outside world as they floated gently toward somebody's stewpot. There was even enough room for the bargemen to have all four of their mules on board, carefully hitched and hobbled at the rear rail, instead of trotting along the mulepath on the riverbank, the same path they would take to haul the barge upriver.
Riding or walking, downriver was easy on the animals, although it was a bit trickier for the bargemen. Instead of using their poles simply to keep the barge far enough from the riverbank to avoid grounding it, the four brawny men, their torsos gleaming with sweat, worked in almost silent coordination to keep the massive craft well toward the middle of the river. The current was fastest there, and business waited for no man. Still, they had to keep the ungainly craft under control, anticipating the turns of the swollen Orduin.
Which were, granted, familiar to them. But the work was hard; all four of them were heavily muscled, and the chief bargeman's hand had been hard and strong when Jason had shaken it.
The day wore on, and with a changing of the guard it was Jason's, Tennetty's and Jane's turn to nap in the shade of the tent, with Durine posted just outside. Tennetty unbuckled her belt and lay down flat on her back, folding her hands over her belly as she shut her eyes.
Jason decided that he was tired; when Janie unselfconsciously stripped down to bare skin and slipped into her blankets, he barely noticed.
Just as he was stretching out and deciding that he really couldn't sleep, that he had a responsibility to keep an eye on everything, tiredness overcame him and he dropped off to sleep.
* * *
Durine woke him when they were only a short while out of Elleport; the other two were already up and out of the tent.
Jason rubbed the backs of his hands against his gritty eyes and scratched at where the bugs infesting the tent had bitten him—all over, basically—and took a few moments to dress, again checking his pistols to make sure that both of them, the one in his shoulder holster and the one in his rucksack, were loaded, which they always were, and turning the cylinder until the chamber under the hammer was the one just ahead of the empty one, then dryfiring each pistol once to make sure that the mechanism still worked, which it did.
Valeran, his teacher, had taught him to handle firearms ritualistically; adapting to a new ritual wasn't difficult.
In only a few moments the pistols were checked and ready and stowed. He walked out into the afternoon.
As the barge rounded the final bend, the bargemen swung the craft out into the river to avoid a pair of barges bound upriver, then bent their backs and their poles to bring it back into the quiet water near the banks, so that it wouldn't be carried away into the Cirric.
Beyond the banks the fields stood idle, expanses of rotting cornstalks proclaiming that they had been harvested neither recently nor long ago, but somewhere in between.
"There's the docks, over there," one of the bargemen said, indicating a direction with a jerk of his chin as he once again bent his back to his pole. It took longer for them to maneuver the barge over to its berth than Jason would have thought it should, but only a few moments for the waiting dock crew to grab the expertly thrown lines, pull the barge in tight against the dock and tie it firmly in place.
Still, the sun was getting low in the sky as they left the barge, making their way across the floating dock to the shore, all of them staggering a bit as they got their land legs back.
Bren Adahan took the lead. "The first thing we should do," the baron said, "is to find some lodgings for the night. Tomorrow we get to find out what's going on."
"Or," Jane put in, "at least what the locals think is going on."
CHAPTER 17
Questions and Answers
Kindness is within our power, but fondness is not.
—Dr. Samuel Johnson
A little gentleness goes only a short way. Ladle it out generously, and often, when you can.
—Walter Slovotsky
Jason, Jane and Bren Adahan made their way through the farmers' market, toward the docks and the Slavers' Guildhall. Elleport wasn't exactly Pandathaway, but the markets had some charm.
Just goes to show that you can waste a lot of time and effort doing more planning than is necessary, Jason thought. As it turned out, "the Warrior" and his two companions were the talk of the market, and the rumors were flying thickly. Too thickly: the story was growing in the telling.
Jason and the others had made some changes to their appearance: with their gear stowed in their rooms under the watchful eye of Kethol, they could tolerate a careful search. Jason and Bren wore the raw leather of Wehnest cattlemen, and Janie was in the ragged shift and rude iron collar of a slave. The fact that the collar had a secret catch that not only allowed her to take it off, but brought out a slim blade that could easily slice through leather or flesh, was not apparent.
That she had very nice legs, however, was. When they'd stopped to get directions toward the guild pens, they'd gotten several offers on her.
They stopped at an appleseller's stall, Bren quickly negotiating for three shiny apples, each about the size of his fist, then handing one to Jason, tossing the smallest to Janie, and biting into the third himself.
The appleseller was a short, wan man, vaguely toad-faced, yellowing teeth showing for just a moment as he eyed Janie in her shift and collar. Jason muffled a glower, while Bren Adahan shared the appleseller's smile.
"Had her long?" the merchant asked, while Bren Adahan eyed a basket of apples as though pretending to consider buying more.
"
A while," Bren Adahan said. "I picked her up in Wehnest, to make the trip more pleasant."
"I can imagine."
Janie didn't blush, although she did lower her eyes.
"Cooks, too," Bren Adahan said. "But I've had better. I thought I'd sell her here, but I'm beginning to suspect that the market isn't good right now."
"Not from the guild," the merchant said, "although a private sale might bring you some good luck." He shrugged. "You might try Emmon the silversmith, over on the Street of the Dead Dog—he always seems to have some extra coin, and a keen eye for flesh. Though that ax-faced woman of his'd probably make him resell her."
"Not the guild?"
He shook his head, then shrugged. "The slavers are nervous about buying, what with the Warrior and his friends running around slitting their throats and then vanishing." He picked up and hefted an apple, the shiniest of the lot, and then polished it still further on his apron, before calling out to the baker across the way and tossing the apple in a practiced high arc that brought it almost exactly into the baker's outstretched palm.
The baker threw a quarter of a head-sized loaf back; the appleseller tore off a hunk and nibbled at it.
Jason forced a slow nod. "Where were they last seen?" He bit into his apple again.
The merchant looked him over thoroughly. "I wouldn't, young man. The hilt of your sword may be well-worn, but trying to take on Karl Cullinane isn't something for an amateur. Particularly not one who enjoys a good apple as much as you do." He raised his hand in a brief salute of dismissal. "I'd like your business again."
The three walked off.
"Too much information," Jane murmured.
The Warrior and his men had been spotted in Lundeyll, and on Salket, and on half a dozen of the Shattered Islands, and in Enkiar, and Nyphien. Slavers had been found dead in Pandathaway itself, and on ships bound for Ehvenor. There were three of them, armed with nothing more than swords and knives; there were a score of them on a stolen slaver ship; hundreds of them could appear at any time. They were nowhere and everywhere.
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