Dagger (2 page)

Not a threat, only a man with something to sell, thought the Cirdonian as he sidled away from the stranger to get to the bar. Harmless, almost certainly—

but

Samlor moved to his left, guiding Star ahead of him so that his body was between her and the weapon that the other man insisted on displaying. The fellow had sized up Samlor as he entered the Vulgar Unicorn, guessing his occupation from his appearance. A con man's trick, perhaps; but not an assassin's. There was no reason to take chances.

"When are we going to sleep, Uncle?" asked Star with a thin whine on the last syllables which meant she was really getting tired. That was understandable, but it meant she was likely to balk when she needed to obey. She might even call him

"Uncle Samlor" despite being warned that Samlor's real name would make both of them targets.

Star was an unusual child, but she was a child nonetheless.

"Two mugs of blue John," said the Cirdonian, loudly enough for the tapster halfway down the bar to hear him. They already had the attention of the fellow, an athlete gone to fat but still powerful. He was balding, and his scars showed that he had been doing this work or work equally rough for many years. If something had cost him his left thumb during that time—

he was still the one

walking around to tell the tale, wasn't he?

'7 want—

" Star piped up.

"And two beers to wash it down," Samlor said loudly, cutting her off. As his left hand reached down for his belt purse, he let it linger for a moment where Star's hood covered the whorl of white hair that was the source of her name. She quieted for the moment, though the touch was gentle.

Star's mother had immersed herself in arts that had ultimately killed her—

or had

led her to need to die. Her child had terrifying powers when necessity and circumstances combined to bring them out.

But Samlor hil Samt had no need of magic to frighten anyone who knew him as well as the child did. He would not cuff her across the room; not here, not ever. His rage was as real as the rock glowing white in the bowels of a volcano. The Cirdonian's anger bubbled beneath a crust of control which split only when he chose that it should, and he would never release its destruction on his kin, blood of his blood ... his seed.

Star was old enough to recognize the fury, and wise enough to avoid it even when she was fatigued. She patted her protector's hip.

The coin Samlor held between the middle and index finger of his left hand was physically small but minted from gold. It was an indication to the sharp-eyed tapster that his customer wanted more than drink, and a promise that he would pay well for the additional service. The man behind the bar nodded as he scooped clabbered milk from a stoneware jug under the bar.

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There was no drink more refreshing than blue John to a dusty traveller, tired and hungry but too dry to bolt solid food. It was a caravaner's drink—

and Samlor

was a caravaner, obvious to anyone, even before he ordered. He shouldn't have been surprised at the way a stranger had addressed him.

Samlor's cloak was pinned up now to half-length as he would wear it for riding. When he slept or stood in a chill breeze, it could cover him head to toe. The fleece from which it was tightly woven had a natural blue-black color, but it had never been washed or dyed. Lanolin remaining in the wool made the garment almost waterproof.

The tunic he wore beneath the cloak was wool also but died a neutral russet color. Starting out before dawn on the caravan road, Samlor would wear as many as three similar tunics over this one, stripping them off and binding them to his saddle as the sun brightened dazzlingly on the high passes. The bottom layer against his skin of silk, the only luxury Samlor allowed himself or even desired while he was on the road.

He was a broad-shouldered, deep-chested man even without the added bulk of his cloak, but his wrists would have been thick on a man of half again his size. The skin of his hands and face was roughened by a thousand storms whipping sand or ice crystals across the plains, and it was darkened to an angiy red that mimicked the tan his Cirdonian genes did not have the pigment to support. When Samlor smiled, as he did occasionally, the expression flitted across his face with the diffidence of a visitor sure he's knocking at the wrong address. When he barked orders, whether to men or beasts, his features stayed neutral and nothing but assurance rang in his chill, crisp tones.

When Samlor hil Samt was angry enough to kill, he spoke in soft, bantering tones. The muscles stretched across his cheekbones and pulled themselves into a visage very different from the way he normally looked; a visage not altogether human.

He rarely became that angry; and he was not angry now,

only cautious and in need of information before he could lead Star and her legacy out of this damnable city.

The clabbered milk was served in masars, wooden cups darkened by the sweating palms of hundreds of previous users. As the tapster paused, midway between reaching for the coin now or drawing the beer first, Samlor said, "I'm trying to find a man in this town, and I'm hoping that you might be able to help me. Business, but not—

serious business."

That was true, though neither the tapster nor any other man in this dive was likely to believe it.

Not that they'd care, either, so long as they'd been paid in honest coin.

"A regular?" asked the balding man softly as his hand did, after all, cover the gold which Samlor was not yet willing to release.

"I doubt it," said the Cirdonian with a false, fleeting smile. "His name's Setios. A businessman, perhaps, a banker, as like as not. Or just possibly, he might be, you know . . . someone who deals with magic. I was told he keeps a demon imprisoned in a crystal bottle."

You could never tell how mention of sorcery or a wizard was going to strike people. Some very tough men would blanch and draw away—

or try to slit your

throat so that they wouldn't have to listen to more.

The tapster only smiled and said, "Somebody may know him. I'll ask around." He turned. The coin disappeared into a pocket of his apron.

"Uncle, I don't like—

"

"And the beers, friend," Samlor called in a slightly louder voice. There was little for a child to drink in a place like this. Star didn't have decades of caravan life behind her, the days when anything wet was better than the smile of a goddess. The beer was a better bet than whatever passed for wine, and either would be safer than the water.

"This is a very special knife," said a voice at Samlor's shoulder. The Cirdonian turned, face flat. He was almost willing to disbelieve the senses that told him that the stranger was

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pursuing his attempt to sell a dagger. In this place, a tavern where unwanted persistence generally led to somebody being killed.

"Get away from me," Samlor said in a clear, clipped voice, "or I'll put you through a window."

He nodded toward the wall facing the street, where wicker lattices screened the large openings to either side of the door. The sides of the room were ventilated by high, horizontal slits that opened onto alleys even more fetid than the interior of the tavern.

Samlor meant exactly what he said, though it would cause trouble that he'd really rather avoid.

Star wasn't the only one whom fatigue had left with a hair trigger. The man wasn't a threatening figure, only an irritating one. He was shorter than Samlor by an inch or two and fine-boned to an almost feminine degree. He wore a white linen kilt with a scarlet hem, cinched up on a slant by a belt of gorgeous gold brocade. His thigh-length cape was of a thick, soft, blue fabric, but his torso was bare beneath that garment. The skin was coppery brown, and his chest, though hairless, was flat-muscled and clearly male.

The stranger blinked above his smile and backed a half step. Samlor caught the beers that the tapster glided to him across the surface of the bar.

"Here, Star," said the Cirdonian, handing one of the containers down to his charge. "It's what there is, so don't complain. We'll do better another time, all right?"

The beer was in leathern jacks, and the tar used to seal the leather became a major component of the liquid's flavor. It was an acquired taste—

and not one

Samlor, much less his niece, had ever bothered to acquire. At that, the smoky flavor of the tar might be less unpleasant than the way the brew here would taste without it.

The tapster had crooked a finger toward a dun-colored man at a corner table. Samlor would not have noticed the summons had he not been sure it was coming, but the two men began to talk in low voices at the far end of the bar. The tavern was lighted by a lantern behind the bar and a trio of lamps hanging from a hoop in the center of the room.

The terra-cotta lamps had been molded for good luck into the shape of penises. There was no sign that the clientele of this place was particularly fortunate, and the gods knew they were not well lighted. The cheap lamp oil gave off as much smoke as flame, so that the tavern drifted in a haze as bitter as the faces of its denizens.

"Really, Master Samlor," said the stranger, "you must look at this dagger." The Cirdonian's name made time freeze for him, though no one else in the Vulgar Unicorn appeared to take undue notice. The flat of the weapon was toward Samlor. The slim man held the hilt between thumb and forefinger and balanced the lower edge of the blade near the tip on his other forefinger—

not even a razor will cut

with no more force than gravity driving it.

Samlor's own belt knife was clear of its sheath, drawn by reflex without need for his conscious mind to react to the danger. But the stranger was smiling and immobile, and the dagger he held—

The dagger was very interesting at that.

Its pommel was faceted with the ruddy luster of copper. The butt itself was flat and narrow, angling wider for a finger's breadth toward the hilt and narrowing again in a smooth concave arc. The effect was that of a coffin, narrow for the corpse's head and wider for his shoulders until it tapered toward his feet again.

The hilt was unusual and perhaps not unattractive, but the true wonder of the weapon was its blade.

Steel becomes more brittle as it becomes harder. The greatest mystery of the swordsmith's art is the tempering that permits blades to strike without shattering while remaining hard enough to cleave armor or an opponent's weapon. A way around the problem is to weld a billet of soft iron to a billet of steel hardened with the highest possible carbon content. The fused bar can then be hammered flat and folded back on itself, the process repeating until iron and steel are intermingled in thousands of layers thinner than the edge of a razor. 10

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Done correctly, the result is a blade whose hardness is sandwiched within malleable layers that absorb shock and give the whole resilience; but the operation requires the flats to be cleaned before each refolding, lest oxide scale weaken the core and cause it to split on impact like a wand of whalebone. Few smiths had the skill and patience to forge such blades; few purchasers had the wealth to pay for so much expert labor.

But this stranger seemed to think Samlor fell into the latter category—

as the

caravan master indeed did, if he wanted a thing badly enough. The blade was beautiful. It was double-edged and a foot long, with the sharpened surfaces describing flat curves instead of being straight tapers like those of the knife in Samlor's hand. The blade sloped toward either edge from the deep keel in the center which gave it stiffness—

and all along the flat, the surface

danced and shimmered with the polished, acid-etched whorls of the dissimilar metals which comprised it.

Because of their multiple hammered refoldings, the join lines between layers of iron and steel were as complex as the sutures of a human skull. After the bar had been forged and ground into a blade, the smith polished it and dipped it into strong acid which he quickly flushed away.

The steel resisted the biting fluid, but some of the softer iron was eaten by even the brief touch. The iron became a shadow of incredible delicacy against which the ripples of bright steel stood out like sunlight on mountain rapids. Even without its functional purpose, the watermarked blade would have commanded a high price for its appearance.

Samlor's eyes stung. He blinked, because in the wavering lamplight the spidery lines of iron against steel looked like writing.

The stranger smiled more broadly.

"Unc—

" began Star with a tug on the caravan master's left sleeve. The iron shadows in the heart of the blade read, "He will attack" in Cirdonian script. A moment before, they had been only swirls of metal. The stranger's hand slid fully onto the hilt he had been

pinching to display. He twisted it in a slashing stroke toward Samlor's eyes. Samlor didn't believe the words written on steel. He didn't even believe he had seen them. But part of his nervous system—

"mind" would be too formal a term for

reflex at so primitive a level—

reacted to the strangeness with explosive

activity.

The Cirdonian's left hand shot out and crushed the stranger's fingers against the grip of his weapon, easily turning the stroke into a harmless upward sweep. The metal that Samlor touched—

the copper buttcap and the tang to which scales of

dark wood were pinned to complete the hilt—

were cooler than air temperature

despite having been carried beneath the stranger's cape.

Samlor's right hand slammed his own dagger up and through the stranger's ribcage till the crosshilt stopped at the breastbone. The caravan master could have disarmed his opponent without putting a foot of steel through his chest, but reflex didn't know and instinct didn't care.

The stranger—

the dead man, now, with steel from his diaphragm to the back of his throat—