The rumors were just beginning to make a splash here. In a few days, or a few tendays, it would be old news, but now it was all flying fast and furious, and there was no way to sort the truth out from the noise.
If there was any truth to be sorted out.
Damn.
Janie had the only good idea that occurred to any of them all afternoon: since they wanted to know who was killing the slavers, the best place to go was the guild section of the market.
The Slavers' Guildhall was ahead; the steel pens outside held only half a dozen people, although there was ample room for a hundred.
Bren Adahan leaned toward him. "What do you say we skip this? We already have enough information. Too much."
Jason nodded. "Just what I was thinking."
"Then why didn't you say it?" Jane whispered, irritated.
* * *
"More beer, if you please," Durine called out.
There was no immediate response.
He pounded his fist on the table. Tankards and platters rattled on the battered wooden surface, spoons, knives and spicers dancing for a moment. "More beer, if you please," he repeated, his voice almost a whisper.
"My pleasure, sir. My pleasure," the innkeeper called back, scurrying out with two fresh tankards of what was probably the worst beer Durine had tasted in years. The stocky man across the table started to glare at him, but clearly thought better of it; he decided that the watery stew in his bowl was interesting to watch. "Your food will be ready in a moment, or right now, if you'd like," said the innkeeper.
"No rush," Durine said, sipping at the beer. Awful stuff. Was it as bad as the beer they'd had in the barracks a couple years back, from the barrel where they later found a drowned mouse? It was a close call.
Tennetty pursed her lips, inclining her head slightly toward the nearest of the three skinny men with seamen's pigtails who were seated together, down the bench from where she and Durine sat. Her ears were sharper than his; she'd heard something that suggested the sailor knew something of interest.
The dining room of the inn had probably been the outside not too long ago: the long room ran across the front of the inn, as though it were an enclosed porch; the door that led inside was large, thick and weatherbeaten.
At the far end of the room, a pair of ragged children of indeterminate sex—the older perhaps seven, the younger perhaps five or so—took turns slapping at each other and stomping on the treadle that turned the spit over the cooking fire. A heavily freckled, moderately pretty girl in her early teens occasionally paused in her dicing of carrots and onions to ladle some more brown sauce over the leg of lamb on the skewer, then waited a few moments for the sauce to burn in a bit before slicing off another few pieces of meat and stacking them haphazardly on a platter.
There was definitely some wild onion in the sauce; Durine could smell it from where he sat.
But just as the cook finished preparing a plate for the two of them, the sailor mopped up the last juices on his plate with a slab of bread, crammed the dripping slice in his mouth and stood, pushing his plate away, resting his hand for a moment on the shoulders of one of his comrades to steady himself. He turned to leave.
Tennetty tilted her head closer to Durine's. "He was saying something about 'the Warrior' and some island." She rose and he followed, ignoring the way the innkeeper looked curiously at them, then decided that it wasn't any of his business why they had decided not to eat the food that came with their rooms.
Durine and Tennetty followed the sailor out into the daylight.
The business district was crowded as they followed him toward the docks, through streets filled with sailors from the boats in the harbor; with merchants bringing dried meat and bagged grain down toward the docks, or returning from there with their hands pressed to the sides of their tunics, accompanied by a guard or two watching the crowd nervously for pickpockets or robbers; with ragged children playing their endless games of tag through the cobbled streets; with horses standing hitched in front of flatbed wagons, pissing noisily on the road.
Every city was the same.
"Try to look a bit less conspicuous," Tennetty said. "You're not built for following people."
"No," Durine said, "I'm not." He was every bit as tall as Karl Cullinane, and while his physique was the middle-heavy one of a wrestler's, he was heavy with muscle, not fat. He wasn't as pretty as the Emperor or Kethol were, or even as pleasantly ugly as Pirojil was—
But he wasn't supposed to be pretty, or inconspicuous. He was supposed to be large and dangerous. That was what the Emperor had kept him around for, and that was what he was good at: breaking things, and threatening to break things, whether the thing to be broken was a stout door or a thin neck.
Tennetty had a thin neck, and one that probably deserved breaking. But Jason had said not to, and even if the boy wasn't emperor yet, he was the closest thing to it. Besides, Bren Adahan had said she ought to be kept alive, and even if the baron was a fucking Holt he was a tame one, long as Aeia was leading him around by his—
He suddenly realized that he was alone, that while he had been woolgathering Tennetty had slipped away. He scanned the crowd for her, but there was no sign.
Still, the sailor was ahead, pausing at an alley to loosen the drawstrings of his trousers and relieve himself in the gutter. Fastening himself up, he seemed to see something ahead, and vanished into the alley.
Durine quickened his pace.
The narrow alley between the two three-storied buildings was nearly blocked by a man-high pile of dirt; there seemed to be some sort of excavation going on in the cellar of one of the buildings. There was barely enough room for Durine to squeeze by.
By the time he did, Tennetty already had the situation well in hand. She was standing over the bound form of the sailor, who was making only quiet noises around the wad of cloth she'd jammed in his mouth. A nice decoy; although one would expect a sailor to know better than to follow a strange woman into even a well-lit alley. Then again, Elleport was a well-policed town, within its limits.
Durine bent over the man.
"We know you know about the Warrior," he said, talking quietly, slowly, patiently, knowing that when a man as large and powerful as he talked just that way it could chill the blood. "Let me tell you what is going to happen: I'm going to take out your gag, and you're going to quietly, quietly, answer all our questions." He dug two fingers into his pouch and came up with an imperial quarter-mark, a small silver coin the size of Durine's little fingernail. "After that, I am going to give you this, and you're going to walk away, and forget this happened, and never, never mention it to anyone."
Tennetty slipped her eye patch over her glass eye and smiled at the way the man's face whitened even further as he realized who she was.
"Take the patch off and go stand watch," Durine said.
She thought about it a moment, then moved off to do just that. He was getting tired of her habit of hesitating before complying, and he wouldn't have minded doing something about it, but Jason had said no.
Durine worked his fingers for a moment. It wouldn't be fair to take out his frustration on the sailor, so he just seized the man's face in his right hand, letting the sailor feel just a trace of the strength in his fingers. "Don't worry about her. Worry about me. If you don't do exactly what I've told you, if you lie to me, if you call out, if you ever tell anyone anything about this, I'm the one who's going to find you, wherever you are, lay hold of you by the back of your head, and grind your face against the palm of my other hand until you don't have a face anymore. Do you have any difficulty in believing me?"
The sailor tried to shake his head.
"Good."
From over by the mound, Tennetty laughed. "We are not nice people," she said.
The sailor talked at length.
* * *
The others had their ways; Kethol had his.
He followed the woman past the unblinking eyes of the house's bouncer, upstairs to her crib. The room was tiny,
barely big enough to hold the pallet on the floor and a pitifully small wooden chest that probably contained all the whore owned. There was a large iron padlock on it, and he had spotted the poorly hidden pocket in the collar of her thigh-length shift where she kept the key.
She unbelted her shift and dropped it to one side. Underneath she was glistening from her bath; Kethol had insisted that she clean herself first. There was enough filth in the world, and on the road.
Damp and naked, she reached for his tunic, but he pushed her hands away. "I can undress myself," Kethol said.
For just a moment, her eyes widened. Perhaps she'd heard a trace of threat in his voice, and while there were limits to what he could do to her, he had rented her for the night and nobody would complain about a few bruises. That came with the rental, too.
He nodded his head toward the pallet, and she obediently slipped under the thin blanket.
He undressed swiftly but unhurriedly, folding and stacking his clothes carefully, leaving his scabbard on the floor where he'd be able to reach it in the dark, then blew out the lamp and joined her under the blankets.
She reached for him, but he gripped her wrists.
"Please," she said, "I'll do whatever you want. Anything."
"I've paid for the room, and for you, for the night," he said. "I decide what we do."
"Yes sir," she said as his grip tightened.
"First," he said, "you'll tell me how you came to be here."
She told him a long and rambling tale that began on Keelos island, where she was sold into slavery when her father lost the farm, and continued with her being freed by a Home raider team, and with her decision to try to return to her home, and how there was nothing there, and how she hadn't any skills, and what could she do, and . . .
"And about the Warrior . . ." he said, interrupting.
While he held her wrists in his hands, she told him everything she knew. Karl Cullinane and his two companions—or maybe his twenty companions, or perhaps his hundred companions; nobody knew for sure—were everywhere at once. There had been raids throughout the Cirric and along the shore of the Cirric. Everywhere.
"That's all I know, sir, really."
His grip relaxed.
"How do you want me, sir? Do you want me to—"
"Shh," he said, letting her go. "I just want you to hold me. Gently. All night long." He was paying for the night; he could have whatever pleasure he wanted. Being held made him feel almost alive.
INTERLUDE
Laheran
Where the lion's skin will not reach, you must patch it out with the fox's.
—Plutarch
The rooms in the Triple Hamlet Inn were clean, but Laheran paced them like a caged beast. This was the place to wait, but waiting came hard.
Salket was only a matter of time, Laheran had decided. The question was, where? Salket was a big island; there were four guildhouses spread out across its length.
Cups-and-coins was not Laheran's favorite game. Children played it with walnut halves and walnut shells; in the streets of Pandathaway, jugglers sometimes played it for copper and silver and gold.
The principle was the same: put one coin of silver and two of copper under three small, identical cups. The juggler would move them around the polished surface of the board he held across his lap, fingers dancing deceptively, until you were thoroughly confused. If you set your coin, be it of copper or silver or gold, in front of the cup with the silver coin in it, you won a coin equal to your bet; if you failed, the juggler kept your coin.
There were many swindles, of course. Sometimes you might think that you'd heard the tink of the silver coin against one cup, and gleefully set your coin in front to it, only to find a copper underneath; the clever juggler had merely tapped a ringed finger against the side of the cup, mimicking the sound of the coin.
Wherever you looked, wherever you knew the silver coin would be, it wouldn't be. If you guessed randomly, your chances were one in three; if you tried to guess wisely, you had no chance.
Laheran was tired of playing cups-and-coins. The writ of authority that Guildmaster Yryn had given him had been useful; Laheran had ordered the other guildhouses on the island shut down, leaving only the one house in the Triple Hamlet open. And well-defended.
Some of the defenses were obvious. Laheran and two dozen guildsmen had taken rooms down the street from the guildhouse, and were—some of them openly, some of them covertly—keeping a tight watch on both the town and the house.
Some were subtle; Cullinane wasn't the only one who could set a trap. The locks on the heavy doors to the slave kennels had been booby-trapped; turning a key to the left, the normal way to unlock a sprung lock, would release a deadfall that would crash through the ceiling from the room above, crushing whoever stood in front of the door.
Other precautions had been taken with the approaches to the rear, barred windows; the most important safeguards had been taken with the slaves themselves, with the poor wretches locked in the cage. It was hard, but guildsmen had to make sacrifices.
Laheran paced back and forth. The waiting was the hard part.
CHAPTER 18
Aboard the Gazelle
The dawn speeds a man on his journey, and speeds him too in his work.
—Hesiod
That glowing red ball hanging just over the horizon had damn well better be the setting sun, bucko.
—Walter Slovotsky
About the time that Elleport disappeared over the horizon, Jason came up on deck, one pistol seated firmly in his shoulder holster, a thong holding it firmly into place for extra security on the rolling deck. His sword was belted tightly around his waist, along with his Nehera-made bowie.
The real giveaway, though, were the Home-made shirt and button-front blue jeans.
It was a clear afternoon, the sun just beginning its fall toward the horizon, the ship rolling lazily as it quartered the waves. Jason's stomach didn't like the rolling gait, but it wasn't complaining emphatically.
Bren Adahan was stretched out on a blanket on the deck by the rail, sunning himself, wearing only a towel tied sarong-style around his waist.
"We didn't discuss this," he said, raising himself up on an elbow.
He caught himself. It really didn't matter whether they had discussed it or not, not anymore. A group of a half-dozen people traveling to Klimos to exchange trade knives for nacrestones might be well-armed—given that Klimos wasn't entirely civilized, they'd better be—but it was unlikely that they'd have both guns and Home apparel . . .
. . . unless they were from Home.
No longer lolling idly at the tiller, Thivar Anjer's eyes widened. His creased face, walnut brown in the bright sunlight, wrinkled into a scowl as he started to turn toward Bothan Ver, the grizzled old sailor who was the Gazelle's only crew, but stopped himself.
"A time for truth, it seems," Anjer said.
"So it seems," Durine said. He was seated cross-legged at the stern, near the captain. Stripped to the waist, the big man dipped the bathing ladle over the side and into the water, then brought it up and poured the water over his head, giving himself a sketchy sponge-bath. His thick hands rubbed at a hairy torso crisscrossed with pink scars, rivulets of flesh through a forest of hair.
"Durine," Jason called out, sniffing at the cake of soap he'd retrieved from his rucksack. It was real Pandathaway soap, made from Mel copra and who knew what else, smelling of flowers and sunshine. "Catch." He tossed the cake to Durine, who quickly wiped his left palm dry on the deck and reached up to let the soap smack into his palm.
Durine smiled a quick thank you, then began to lather his massive chest and belly.
Kethol was stretched out on the narrow free space at the bow, shaded by the jib, his eyes closed, hands folded over his stomach, apparently asleep. "Makes it easier," he said, his eyes still closed, not moving, "not to have to keep up a disguise."
Which was why Jason had done it. Besides, if he didn't, Tennetty was going to.
Tenne
tty came up from below, squinting in the daylight, now in her leathers, her hands patting her guns and the hilts of her sword and knife as though for reassurance. Balancing easily on the deck, she eyed the horizon, then reached down to help Jane Slovotsky up through the hatch. "Too bad," Tennetty murmured, "that Ganness wasn't in Elleport."
"Avair Ganness?" Jane Slovotsky raised an eyebrow. She was wearing a white blouse and a tight pair of Home denim shorts; incongruously, she had heavy shoes on her feet. Nice legs, though. Maybe a bit too skinny. But not much.
Another wave broke below the bow, spattering them all, making the metal cooking box hiss. Jane raised a hand to wipe the sea water from her face, the light, golden hairs on her forearm glistening with sun and spray. "Tennetty, you really expect that any time we need transportation by water, Avair Ganness is going to be around?"
"You haven't ridden with Ganness."
"No, but I have heard about him. Cullinanes and their friends seem to keep getting him in trouble, costing him ships."
"They do, at that." Tennetty laughed.
Jason liked that. He hadn't seen her laugh, not much, not since that night on the Mel beach, the night that Father died, or didn't.
The wind caught the peak of another whitecap, spraying them all again.
The rear deck was crowded, and Thivar Anjer didn't like it much. He glared at them while Bothan Ver went forward to where the half dozen needle-nosed rapentfish their nets had scooped up that morning were grilling over the steel cooking box.
"So. We're seeking Karl Cullinane," the captain said, not really a question. "What will happen when we find him?"
Jason opened his mouth to say something about how all the captain would have to do was drop them off at the rendezvous with Ellegon, but Bren Adahan beat him to it.
"You will go your way, and we will go ours," Bren Adahan said. "We'll use his transportation."
"If he and his friends have any," the captain mused. "Very well—I'll go my way with double the money, and all of the trade knives."
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