Cinnabar Shadows (18 page)

"I'm right, aren't I?" Ruari asked, cracking a grin. "I'm right!"

Ruari didn't let that smile out too often, but when he did, it was contagious. Pavek took a deep breath
and clamped his lips tight. Nothing helped. Laughter burst out anyway.

"Nobody's perfect, Ru. It had to happen sometime."

"We'll go now—"

"The gates are locked until sunrise—and we may be escorted to the palace before then."

"But, if we're not—we're on our way to Codesh!"

Pavek considered modifying Ruari's plan from we to me. Codesh had a vicious reputation. There was
no need to risk his unscarred companions exploring its alleys, looking for a hole that might lead to the
reservoir cavern. No need to have them underfoot while he explored, either. But Lord Hamanu's enforcers
from the palace would come calling soon enough, and compared to the Lion-King, Codesh was no risk at
all.

Dawn's first light found the four of them tying their sandals by the front door.

"Leave that behind," he told Ruari and pointed to the bandaged staff the half-elf had in his hand. "In
case something goes wrong, that's all we've got."

Pavek disagreed, but they didn't have time for arguments. It was Farl's day, and the best time to slip
out Urik's west gate would be the moment when it opened up to let the farmers and artisans of that western
village into the city. The branch of the west road that led to Codesh would be nearly empty, but they'd be
well out of Urik's sight before they started walking along it.

The templar quarter was the busiest quarter of Urik at this early hour as bleary-eyed men and women
got themselves to their assigned duties. White-skinned Mahtra stood out in any crowd, and any clothing that
wasn't dyed yellow was glaringly obvious on the streets nearest House Escrissar. Pavek recognized a fair
number of the faces pointed their way. Surely he was remembered and recognized, too, but throughout the
Tablelands, no creatures were more adept at not-seeing what was directly in front of them than a
sorcerer-king's templars. In their own quarter, templars were very nearly blind.

They were more attentive outside their quarter. Pavek told his companions to keep heads down and
eyes aimed at the ground. He knew how information flowed through the bureaus. By sundown it would be
a rare templar who didn't know Just-Plain Pavek, the renegade regulator, had taken up residence in House
Escrissar. This time tomorrow, he'd have a slew of friends and enemies lining up to see what they could
gain or he could lose. Even now, hurrying toward the western gate, Pavek caught the occasional measuring
gaze from a face that had recognized him. In a very real sense, his troubles wouldn't begin until and unless
he successfully hunted Kakzim down.

The western gate was still closed when they arrived, but it had swung open by the time Pavek had fed
everyone a breakfast of fresh bread and hot sausage. Between them, Zvain and Ruari could eat their way
through a gold coin every day. The stash Pavek had brought from Quraite was shrinking at an alarming
rate. Grimly, he calculated they'd be bit-less in six or seven days. Even more grimly, he calculated that, one
way or another, by then money would be the least of his worries. He bought more food for later in the day
and struck a path for the crowded gate.

The regulators and inspectors on morning gate duty were busy taking bribes and confiscating whatever
caught their fancy. They didn't notice four plainly dressed Urikites going the other way. If they had, Pavek's
gouged medallion would have cleared their path, but by not using it, there was less chance of some
enterprising regulator sending a messenger back to the palace. Before he left the residence, Pavek had
written their plan on parchment and secured it with his porphyry seal. He told Initri to give the parchment to
anyone who came looking for them. Until she did, no one else knew where they were going or what they
planned to do.

Getting into Codesh several hours later was easier than Pavek dared hope. Registrators handled the
affairs of the weekly influx of market folk, but guarding the Codesh gate was a serious matter, entrusted to
civil bureau templars on loan from the city, none of whom stayed very long. Through sheer luck, Pavek
knew the man in charge, an eighth rank instigator named Nunk, and Nunk recognized him.

"I'll be a gith's thumb fool," Nunk grinned, baring the two rows of rotten broken teeth that spoiled his
chances with the ladies, as Pavek's twisted scar spoiled his. "The rumors must be true." He held out his
hand.

"What rumors?" Pavek asked, taking Nunk's hand as if it bad been offered in friendship rather than in
hope of a bribe. Although, in fairness to Nunk, if five bureau ranks weren't layered between regulators and
instigators, they might have been as friendly as templars got with one another. Neither one of them had
ever been tied to the numerous corrupt cadres that dominated the civil bureau's lower ranks. They both kept
to themselves, which, given the hidden structure of the bureau, meant their paths had crossed before. The
biggest obstacle between them would always be rank. It ran the other way now, with far more than five
levels separating an instigator from Hamanu's favorites. Pavek couldn't blame Nunk for currying a bit of
favor when he had a chance.

"Rumors that you're the one who brought down a high bureau interrogator. Rumors that you're the one
who made Laq disappear. Rumors that you've got yourself a medallion made of beaten gold."

Pavek stopped pumping the instigator's hand and fished out his regulators' ceramic with the gouged
reverse. "Rumors lie."

"Right," Nunk replied with a fading smile. He led the way to the small, dusty room that served as his
command chamber. He closed the door before asking: "What brings you and yours to this cesspit, Great
One? Remember, I helped you before."

Pavek didn't remember any help, just another templar prudently deciding to mind his own business at a
moment when Pavek impulsively decided to get involved. Still, he'd have no trouble putting in a good word
or two on Nunk's behalf, if the opportunity arose, as it probably would. "I remember," he agreed, and
Nunk's jagged grin returned, full strength. "I want to go inside and look around, maybe ask a few questions."

"No gold, not yet. Got things to finish first."

"Laq?"

"Seen any around?"

"Not since the deadheart disappeared and everyone connected to him went to the obsidian pits. Lord,
you should have seen it—the Lion Himself marching through the quarter calling out the names. I'll tell you
something: the city's cleaner than it's been since my grandfather got whelped. Rumor is we'll be at war with
Nibenay this time next year, and the lion always cleans house before a war, but this time it's different. The
scum he sent to the pits wasn't just Escrissar's cadre. He cast a wide net and the ones that got away left
Urik."

"Not all of them. I'm looking for a halfling, Escrissar's slave—"

Nunk's eyebrows rose. It was common knowledge halfling slaves withered fast.

"When I saw him, he had Escrissar's scars on his cheeks. He's the one who cooked up the Laq poison,
but he didn't go down with his master. I think he's gone to ground in Codesh. You keeping watch on any
halfling troublemakers? Name's Kakzim. Even if the scars were just a mask, like Escrissar's, you'd know
him if you'd seen him. You'd never forget his eyes."

"Don't know the name, but we've got a halfling lune living in rented rooms along the abattoir
gallery—he'd have to be a lune to live there. He's a regular doomsayer—there seem to be more of them all
the time, what with all the changes now that the Dragon's gone. He gets up on his box a couple times a day,
preaching the great conflagration, but this is Codesh, and they've been preaching the downfall of Urik since
Hamanu arrived a thousand years ago. A faker's got to deliver a miracle or two if he wants to keep
drawing a crowd in Codesh. Can't speak about this halfling's eyes, but from what I hear, he's got a face
more like yours than a slave's—no offense, Great One."

"No offense," Pavek agreed. "I'd like to get a look at him. Which way to this abattoir?"

Nunk shrugged. "Don't go inside, that's what regulators are for—or have you forgotten that?" He stuck
two fingers between his teeth and whistled. An elf with very familiar patterns woven into her sleeve
answered the summons. "These folk want to take a look-see through the village and abattoir."

She looked them over with narrowed, lethargic eyes, Pavek had stuffed his medallion back inside his
shirt when the door opened. He left it there, letting her draw her own conclusions, letting her make her own
mistakes.

"Four bits," she said. "And the ghost wears a cloak."

It was a fair price, a fair request: Kakzim might spot Mahtra long before they spotted him. Pavek dug
the money out of his belt-pouch.

Her name was Giola, not a tribal name, but elves who wound up wearing yellow had little in common
with their nomadic cousins. She armed herself with an obsidian mace from a rack beside the watchtower
door before leading them to the village gate, which, unlike the gates of the Lion-King's city, was never wide
open.

"You know how to use that sticker?" she asked and pointed at Pavek's sword.

"I won't cut off my hand."

"That's a lot of metal for a badlands boy to carry around on his hip. There're folk inside who'd slit your
throat for it. Sure you wouldn't rather I carried it for you? Push comes to shove, the best weapon should be
in the best hands."

"In your dreams, Great One," Pavek replied, using a phrase only templars used. Between friends, it
was commiseration; between enemies, an insult. When Pavek smiled, it became a challenge Giola wisely
declined.

"Have it your way," she said with a shrug. "But don't expect me to risk my neck for four lousy bits.
Anything goes wrong, you're on your own."

"Fair enough," Pavek agreed. "Anything goes wrong, you're on your own." He'd never been skilled in
the subtle art of extortion, which was probably why he was always skirting poverty. He didn't begrudge
Giola for shaking him down, but he didn't intend to give her any more money, either. "Let's go. We're
looking for a way underground, a cave, a stream, something big enough for a human—"

"A halfling," Ruari corrected, speaking up for the first time since they entered the watchtower and
earning one of Pavek's sourest sneers for his unwelcome words.

"Halflings, humans, dwarves, the whole gamut," Pavek continued, barely acknowledging the half-elf's
interruption. "Maybe a warehouse or catacombs—if Codesh has any."

"Not a chance, not even a public cesspit," Giola replied. "The place is built on rock. They burn what
they can—" she wrinkled her nose and gestured toward the several smoky plumes that fouled Codesh's air.
"The rest they either sell to the farmers or cart clear around to Modekan."

Giola led them through the gate after the boy and his animals.

Codesh was a tangled place, squeezed tight against its outer walls. Its streets were scarcely wide
enough for two men to pass without touching. Greedy buildings angled off their foundations, reaching for
the sun, condemning the narrow streets to perpetual, stifling twilight. When one of the slops carts Giola had
described rumbled past, bystanders scrambled for safety, shrinking into a doorway, if they were lucky;
grabbing the overhanging eaves and lifting themselves out of harm's way, if they had the strength; or racing
ahead of the cart to the next intersection, which was rarely more than twenty paces away.

Every cobblestone and wall was stained to the color of dried blood. The dust was dark red, the
garments the Code-shites wore were dark red, their skin, too. The smell of death and decay was a tangible
presence, made worse by the occasional whiff of roasting sausage. The sounds of death mingled with the
sights and smells. There was no place were they didn't hear the bleats, wails, and whines of the beasts
waiting for slaughter, the truncated screams as the axe came down.

Pavek thought of the sausage he'd paid good money for at Urik's west gate and felt his gut sour. For a
moment he believed that he'd never eat meat again, but that was nonsense. In parched Athas, food was
survival. A man ate what he could get his hands on; he ate it raw and kicking, if he had to. The fastidious or
delicate died young. Pavek swallowed his nausea, and with it his despair.

He gave greater attention to the places Giola showed them—he was paying for the tour after all. They
came to a Codesh plaza: an intersection where five streets came together and a man-high fountain provided
water to the neighborhood. For all its bloody gloom and squalor, Codesh was a community like any other.
Women came to the fountain with their empty water jugs and dirty laundry. They knelt beside the curb
stones, scrubbing stains with bone-bleach and pounding wet cloth with curving rib bones. Water splashed
and dripped all around the women. It puddled around their knees and flowed between the street
cobblestones until it disappeared.

"The water. Where does the water come from? Where does it go?" Pavek asked.

Giola stared at him with thinly disguised contempt. "It comes from the fountain."

"Where does it come from before the fountain? How is the fountain filled? Where does it drain?"

"How in the bloody, bright sun should I know? Do I look like a scholar to you? Go to the Urik archive,
hire yourself a bug-eyed scribe if you want to know where water comes from or where it goes!"

Several cutting replies leapt to the front of Pavek's mind. With difficulty he rejected them all, reminding
himself that most people—certainly most templars—didn't have his demanding curiosity. Things were what
they appeared to be, without why or how, before or after. Giola's life was not measured in questions and
doubts, as his was.

But without questions, there wasn't much to say except, "Keep moving, then. We're still looking for a
way underground. Some sort of passage—"

"Or a building," Mahtra interrupted. Her strangely emotionless voice was well-suited to dealing with
low-rank templars. "A very old building. Its walls are as tall as they are wide. The roof is flat. There's only
one door and inside, there's a hole in the floor that goes all the way underground."

Pavek cursed himself for a fool. He'd been so clever looking for his second passage into the reservoir
cavern that he'd never thought to ask if there was another building like the one Mahtra had led them to in
Urik's elven market.