Mistress of the Empire (24 page)

The Spy Master licked jam off his fingers and said, ‘I want news. It’s pressing. A spice seller ostentatiously dressed, and wearing metal jewelry. He had barbarian bearers. Can you find him?’

The bread seller scrubbed sweat off his fat jowls. ‘If you
can wait until sundown, when we toss the dough scraps out for the beggar children, I could have an answer for you.’

Arakasi looked irked. ‘Too late. I want the use of your messenger runner.’ Like sleight of hand, a twist of parchment appeared in his fingers. Perhaps the Spy Master had hidden it all along in his sleeve, Hokanu thought, but he could not be sure.

‘Get this delivered to the sandalmaker’s on the corner of Barrel Hoop Street and Tanner’s Alley. The proprietor is Chimichi. Tell him your cake is burning.’

The bread seller looked dubious.

‘Do this!’ Arakasi said in an edged whisper that raised hairs on Hokanu’s neck.

The bread seller raised floury hands, palms out in submission, then bellowed for his apprentice. The boy left with the parchment, and Arakasi paced like a caged sarcat the entire interval he was gone.

The leather worker Chimichi proved to be a whip-thin man with desert blood, for he wore sweat-greasy tassels with talismans under his robe. His lank hair fell into his eyes, which were shifty. His hands had scars that might have been made by a slip of the knife at his craft, but more likely, Hokanu thought, from their number and location, by the skilled hand of a torturer. He ducked through the curtain, still blinking from sunlight, a roll decked with jam in the precise pattern of Arakasi’s gripped in one fist.

‘Fool,’ he hissed at the priest. ‘You risk my cover, sending an emergency signal like that, and then summoning me here. The master will see you burn for such carelessness.’

‘The master will certainly not,’ Arakasi said drily.

The leather craftsman jumped. ‘It’s you yourself! Gods, I didn’t recognise you in those temple rags.’ Chimichi’s
brows knotted into a scowl worthy of his Tsubarian heritage. ‘What’s amiss?’

‘A certain spice seller, decked with a gold chain and carried by Midkemian bearers.’

Chimichi’s expression lightened. ‘Dead,’ he stated flatly. ‘His bearers with him. In a warehouse on Hwaet Broker’s Lane, if the footpad who tried to exchange chain links for centis at the money changers can be relied on to tell the truth. But that such a man had gold at all belies the chance he fabricated his tale.’

‘Does the imperial patrol know about the corpses yet?’ Arakasi broke in.

‘Probably not.’ Chimichi laid his roll aside, and rubbed a jammy knuckle on his apron. The deepset, shifty eyes turned to the Spy Master. ‘Ever see a money changer report what he didn’t have to? The taxes on metals are not small, these days, with our Light of Heaven needing to increase his army against the threat of the hard-line traditionalists.’

Arakasi cut short the man’s rambling with a raised hand. ‘Seconds count, Chimichi. My companion and I are going on to that warehouse to inspect the bodies. Your task is to stage a diversion that will occupy the Emperor’s patrol long enough to see us in and out of the building. I don’t want an Imperial White left free to investigate those murders beforetime.’

Chimichi flipped back dark hair to reveal a grin, and startlingly perfect white teeth. The front ones had been filed into points, deep desert fashion. ‘Keburchi, God of Chaos,’ he swore in evident delight. ‘It’s been long time since we had a good riot. Life was starting to get boring.’

Yet by the time he had finished his sentence, he was speaking to an empty room. He blinked, startled, and muttered, ‘The man’s mother was a damned shadow.’ Then his face knitted in concentration. He hurried off
about the business of turning an ordinary, peaceful day of business in the trade quarter into unmitigated chaos.

Dusk fell, deepening the gloom in the already dim warehouse. Hokanu crouched beside Arakasi, a burning spill in his hand. Outside, shouts and the sounds of breakage echoed from the adjacent streets; someone howled obscenities over the din of shattering crockery.

‘The wine merchants’ stores,’ Hokanu murmured. ‘In a very few minutes we’re going to have company.’ He paused to shift the rolled cloth spill, which had burned nearly down to his fingers. ‘The doors on this building were not very stout.’

Arakasi nodded, his face invisible beneath his priest’s cowl. His fingers moved, furtively fast, over the body of the bearer, which was well past rigor mortis and already starting to bloat. ‘Strangled,’ he murmured. ‘All of them.’

He slipped forward through the dark, while lines of bright light from wildfire or torches shone through the gaps in the wall boards. His concentration never wavered.

Hokanu flinched as the flame in his hands crept lower. He shifted grip, and lit the last wad of linen he could spare from his already scanty loincloth. By the time he looked up, Arakasi was searching the spice seller’s corpse.

The man’s chain and fine silk robes were all gone, looted by the footpad Chimichi had mentioned. The illumination cast by the spill picked out enough details to establish that the man had not died by strangulation. His hands were contorted, and blind, dry eyes showed rings of white. The mouth hung open, and the tongue inside had been bitten through. Blood blackened the boards and his still combed and perfumed beard.

‘You’ve found something,’ Hokanu said, aware of Arakasi’s stillness.

The Spy Master looked up, his eyes a faint glint under his hood. ‘Much.’ He turned over the man’s hand, revealing a tattoo. ‘Our culprit is of the Hamoi Tong. He bears the mark. His posing as a man in residence across the rift speaks of long-range planning.’

‘Not Jiro’s style,’ Hokanu summed up.

‘Decidedly not.’ Arakasi squatted back on his heels, unmindful of the bang of a plank striking the cobbles close outside the warehouse. ‘But we’re meant to think so.’

Out in the night, a sailor cursed, and somebody else roared back in outrage. The din of an irate populace surged closer, overlaid by the horn call of one of the Emperor’s Strike Leaders.

Hokanu also had discarded the parchment with the Anasati seal as a plant. No son of Tecuma’s, and no Lord advised by a devil as clever as Chumaka, would ever condescend to the obvious. ‘Who?’ Hokanu said, the sharpness of his desperation cutting through. Every minute that passed increased the chance that he would never again see Mara alive. Memory of her as he had left her, pale, unconscious, and bleeding, all but paralysed his reason. ‘Can the tong even be bought to do more than assassinate? I thought they took on their contracts in anonymity.’

Arakasi was once again busy sorting through the spice seller’s underclothes. The fact they were fouled in death did not deter him, nor did the stench upset his thoughts. ‘The telling word, I suspect, is “contract.” And does any hard-line traditionalist in this Empire have riches enough to toss golden chains to beggars just to make sure we have a trail to follow?’ His hands paused, pounced, and came up with a small object. ‘Ah!’ Triumph colored the Spy Master’s tone.

Hokanu caught a glimpse of green glass. He forgot the
stink of dead men, hitched closer, and thrust the spill toward the object that Arakasi held.

It proved to be a small vial. Dark, sticky liquid coated the inside; the cork, had there been one, was missing.

‘A poison vial?’ Hokanu asked.

Arakasi shook his head. ‘That’s poison on the inside.’ He offered the item for Hokanu to sniff. The odor was resinous, and stingingly bitter. ‘But the glass is green. Apothecaries generally reserve that color container for antidotes.’ He glanced at the spice seller’s face frozen in its hideous rictus. ‘You poor bastard. You thought you were being given your life at your master’s hand.’

The Spy Master left off his musing and stared at Hokanu. ‘That’s why Mara’s taster never suspected. This man ingested the very same poison that she did, knowing it was a slow-acting drug and sure that he was going to get the antidote.’

Hokanu’s hand trembled, and the spill flickered. Outside, the shouts reached a crescendo, and the snap and rattle of swordplay drew closer.

‘We must leave,’ urged Arakasi.

Hokanu felt firm fingers close over his wrist, tugging him to his feet. ‘Mara,’ he murmured in an outburst of uncontrollable pain. ‘Mara.’

Arakasi yanked him forward. ‘No,’ he said sharply. ‘We have hope now.’

Hokanu turned deadened eyes to the Spy Master. ‘What? But the spice seller is dead. How can you claim we have hope?’

Arakasi’s teeth flashed in fierce satisfaction. ‘Because we know there’s an antidote. And the poison vial has a maker’s mark on the bottom.’ He tugged again, hauling a numbed Hokanu toward the loosened board by the dockside through which they had originally made entry. ‘I know the apothecary who uses that stamp. I have bought
information from him in the past.’ The Spy Master bent and ducked out into the steamy, odorous dusk of the alley behind the fishmonger’s. ‘All we have to do is avoid this ruckus that Chimichi started for our benefit, find the man, and question him.’

Hokanu ran.

The streets were a bedlam of noise and fleeing citizens, with Arakasi a shadow among them distinguishable only by his voluminously flapping priest’s robe. Hardened to a warrior’s fitness as he was, Hokanu was not accustomed to bare feet. After stubbing his toes on raised bits of cobblestone, sliding precariously through slime in the gutters, and once landing heel first on a broken bit of crockery, he would have welcomed even ill-fitting sandals despite the resulting blisters. Yet if Arakasi was aware of his difficulty, he did not slacken pace.

Hokanu would have died rather than complain. Mara’s life was at stake, and every passing minute made him fear that she might already be beyond help, that the hideous slow-acting poison might have damaged her beyond healing.

‘Don’t think,’ he gasped aloud to himself. ‘Just run.’

They passed a pot seller’s stall, the proprietor rushing about in his nightshirt, shaking a fist at passersby. Arakasi pressed the Shinzawai to the right.

‘Warriors,’ he murmured, scarcely out of breath. ‘If we go straight, we’ll run right into them.’

‘Imperials?’ Hokanu obeyed the direction change, a grimace on his face as his toes squished through something that stank of rotted onions.

‘I don’t know,’ Arakasi replied. ‘The light plays tricks and all I see are helmet plumes.’ He took a deep breath. ‘We won’t stay to find out.’

He ducked left into an alley yet more narrow and noisome than the last. The sounds of the riot were fading, replaced
by the furtive skitter of rats, the dragging steps of a lame lamplighter on his way home from work, and the creak of a costermonger’s cart being hitched to a bone-skinny needra.

Arakasi drew up his hood and ducked into a moss-crusted doorway. ‘We’re here. Mind the portal – the arch is very low.’

Hokanu had to bend over to enter. Beyond lay a cramped courtyard, choked with weeds and what looked to be a physician’s garden, overgrown with medicinal herbs. There was a fish pool at the center, also overrun with weeds and sedges; Hokanu stole a moment to wash his feet. The water was piss-warm, and noisome. He wondered in disgust if people or dogs had used the spot for a privy.

‘That was originally a cistern,’ Arakasi whispered, as if in answer to his thought. ‘Korbargh dumps his wash water in it, by the smell.’

Hokanu wrinkled his nose. ‘What sort of a name is Korbargh?’

‘Thuril,’ the Spy Master answered. ‘But the fellow’s no native of the highlands. By blood, I’d say he has more of the desert in him. Don’t be deceived. He’s smart, and he speaks as many tongues as I do.’

‘How many is that?’ Hokanu whispered back.

But Arakasi had already raised his hand to knock at the plank that served Korbargh as front door.

The panel opened with a jerk that caused Hokanu a start.

‘Who’s there?’ A gruff voice snarled from within.

Unfazed, Arakasi said something in the gutturals of the desert tongue. Whoever he addressed tried to yank the door closed, but the stout wood jammed ajar as the Spy Master shoved his censer in the opening. ‘Let us in t’see your master, skulking dwarf, or your tongue I’ll have out’f your face!’ he said in a gutter Tsurani dialect used by thieves and beggars.
His tone was one that Hokanu had never heard from him, but that made his flesh crawl.

The dwarf said something back that sounded like an obscenity.

‘Not good enough,’ Arakasi replied, and with a swift inclination of his head invited his supposed penitent to help him storm the door.

Frantic with concern for his wife, Hokanu fell to with a will. He slammed his shoulder against the panel with such force that the dwarf was knocked backward, and the leather hinges burst inward. Over a boom of downed wood, Arakasi and Hokanu fetched forward into what appeared to be a foyer, tiled in terra-cotta, and decorated with friezework left over from times when the neighborhood had been more prosperous. The dwarf was yammering in a mixture of languages, that his fingers felt crushed, and his head was bruised by the door bar, which had been kicked from its brackets, and now lay in splinters on the floor.

‘It was rotten anyway,’ Hokanu observed, scraping splinters from his shoulder. ‘In no condition, certainly, to keep out as much as a rat.’

A touch from Arakasi urged quiet. Hokanu obeyed rather than bridle at the presumption. As a huge, toweringly muscled stranger in a robe embroidered in li birds entered, the Shinzawai noble’s eyes widened. ‘Desert blood, did you say?’ he murmured sotto voce.

Arakasi disregarded the comment and instead said something in desert tongue to the dwarf, whereupon the creature stopped howling, scrambled to his feet like a hunted gazen, and fled through a nook in a side wall.

‘Gods above,’ boomed the giant in the effeminate robe. ‘You’re no priest.’

‘I’m glad you see that,’ said the Spy Master. ‘It saves us unnecessary preamble.’ He moved as though to push back his hood, and his sleeves fell back, revealing a crisscross
of leather ties. The knife sheaths they secured were empty, their contents a silver flash in Arakasi’s hands as he lowered his arms.

Hokanu’s gasp of surprise that Mara’s Spy Master should own weapons of precious metal was canceled by a bull bellow from Korbargh. ‘So! You’re the one who killed my apprentice.’

Arakasi licked his teeth. ‘Your memory works well, I see. That’s good.’ His knives might have been gripped by a stone statue, they were so steady. ‘You’ll recall, then, that I can strike you through the heart before you can think, let alone run.’ To Hokanu the Spy Master said, ‘Unwind my belt and tie him, wrist and ankle.’

The giant drew breath to protest, and quit at a twitch of Arakasi’s wrist. Hokanu took the greatest care not to come between the two as he unknotted the priestly cincture; it was braided needra hide, and tougher than spun cordage. Hokanu tied the knots tightly, fear for Mara canceling any mercy he might have felt for the man’s comfort.

A huge wooden beam braced the ceiling, with horn hooks inset for hanging the oil lamps preferred by the rich; they held only cobwebs now, but unlike the leather loops used by the poor for the same purpose, they had neither rotted nor weakened.

Following Arakasi’s glance, Hokanu almost smiled in vindication. ‘You wish him strung up by the wrists?’

At Arakasi’s nod, the giant screeched in a tongue Hokanu did not recognise. The Spy Master replied in equally guttural accents, then switched language out of politeness to his master. ‘There is no help for you, Korbargh. Your wife and that lout of a bodyguard you sent with her are detained. There is a riot going on, and Imperial Whites are out in force, barricading off the streets where she was shopping. If she is wise, she will shelter the night in a hostelry and return home in the morning. Your servant
Mekeh is currently hiding under the ale barrel in your back shed. He saw how your last apprentice died, and as long as I am here, he will not dare to show his face, even to summon help for you. So I ask, and you will answer, what the antidote was that should have filled the vial my companion will show you.’

Hokanu hauled the cord taut, half hitched it secure, and produced the green flask retrieved from the dead trader in the warehouse.

Already pale from having his arms wrenched upward, Korbargh turned white. ‘I know nothing of this. Nothing.’

Arakasi’s brows rose. ‘Nothing?’ His tone sounded regretfully mild. Ah, Korbargh, you disappoint me.’ Then his expression hardened and his hand moved, fearfully fast.

Steel arced in a blur across the room. The blade grazed past Korbargh’s cheek, shearing off a lock of greasy hair, and stuck with a thunk in the support beam.

In changed intonation, Arakasi said, ‘There are three ciphers, in desert script, on that vial. The hand is your own. Now speak.’ As the prisoner raised his chin for renewed denial, Arakasi interrupted. ‘My companion is a warrior. His wife is dying of your evil concoction. Shall he describe his more inventive methods of extracting information from captured enemy scouts?’

‘Let him,’ Korbargh gasped, afraid but still stubborn. ‘I won’t say.’

Arakasi’s dark eyes flicked to Hokanu. He gave a half-smile that was mercilessly cold. ‘For your Lady’s sake, tell the man how you make prisoners talk.’

Grasping the Spy Master’s drift, Hokanu set his shoulder against the wall. As if he had all the time in the world, he described methods of torture cobbled together from hearsay, old records found in the Minwanabi house as it was being cleansed for Mara’s arrival, tales told to unsettle new
recruits, and a few things he improvised. Since Korbargh did not appear an imaginative man, Hokanu lingered with unholy relish over the grisly bits.

Korbargh began to sweat and shiver. His hands worked at his bonds, not out of hope of escape, but in mindless, desperate fear. Gauging his moment to a nicety, Hokanu turned to Arakasi. ‘What method should we try first, do you think, the heated needles or the levers and ropes?’

Arakasi scratched his chin, considering. His eyes seemed to caress the alchemist’s quivering body. Then he smiled. It was a smile that caused Hokanu to suppress a shiver. ‘Well,’ he drawled. His eyes were ice. ‘You want to know what I think?’

Korbargh bucked against his bonds. ‘No!’ he said hoarsely. ‘No. I’ll tell you what you wish to know.’

‘We’re waiting,’ Hokanu cut back. ‘I think that tapestry rod in the next room would serve very nicely as a lever. And I know where we can find those flesh-eating insects close by –’

‘Wait! No!’ Korbargh screamed.

‘Then,’ Arakasi interjected reasonably, ‘you will tell us the recipe for the antidote that should have gone in this vial.’

Korbargh’s head twitched frantic affirmative. ‘Leaves of sessali steeped in salt water for two hours. Sweeten the mixture with generous amounts of red-bee honey so your Lady doesn’t vomit the salty herbs. A small sip. Wait a minute. Another. Wait again. Then as much as she can take. The more she swallows, the faster she’ll heal. Then, when her eyes clear and the fever leaves her, a small cup of the mix every twelve hours for three days. That’s the antidote.’

Arakasi spun to face Hokanu. ‘Go,’ he said curtly. ‘Take the horses and run for home. Any healer will have sessali herb in his stores, and for Mara, time is of the essence.’

Anguished, Hokanu glanced at the strung-up figure of Korbargh, sobbing now in hysterical relief.

‘I will pursue his connections,’ Arakasi said urgently, and found himself addressing empty air. Hokanu had already disappeared through the broken door.

Night air wafted through the opening. Chilling Korbargh’s sweating flesh. Down the block, two drunken comrades reeled their way homeward, singing. Someone threw a pot of wash water out of a window, the splash of its fall broken by a startled yelp from a street cur.

Arakasi stood motionless.

Unnerved by the silence, Korbargh stirred in his bonds. ‘Y-you are g-going to let me g-go?’ He finished on a note of crispness. ‘I did tell you the antidote.’

A shadow against the darkened wall, Arakasi turned around. His eyes gleamed like a predator’s as he said, ‘But you haven’t said who purchased the poison, in the bottle disguised as an antidote.’

Korbargh jerked against his bonds. ‘It’s worth my life to tell you that!’

Cat-quiet, Arakasi stepped up to his prisoner and wrenched the knife out of the beam; of incalculable value in the metal-poor culture of Kelewan, the blade flashed in the dimness. The Spy Master fingered the steel, as if testing the edge. ‘But your life is no longer a bargaining point. What has yet to be determined is the manner of your death.’

‘No.’ Korbargh whimpered. ‘No. I cannot say anymore. Even were you to hang me, and the gods cast my spirit off the Wheel of Life for dishonor.’

‘I will hang you,’ Arakasi said quickly, ‘unless you talk: that is certain. But a blade can do hurtful damage to a man, before a rope is used to dispatch him. The question is not honor or dishonor, Korbargh, but a merciful end, or lingering agony. You know the drugs that can bring blissful death.’ Touching the tip of the knife to the fat of
the prisoner’s upper arm, he said, ‘And you know which drugs on your shelves make you writhe in torment before death, drugs that heighten pain, keep you alert, and make time seem to pass slowly.’

Korbargh hung from his wrists, his eyes huge with fear.

Arakasi tapped his knife point, thoughtful. ‘I have all the time I need, but none I’m willing to waste listening to silence.’

‘My wife –’ began the desperate poison seller.

The Spy Master cut him off. ‘If your wife gets home before you have told what I need to know, she will join you. Your bodyguard will die before he can cross the portal, and you will watch me test my methods on her. I will dose her with drugs to keep her conscious, then carve the flesh from her body in strips!’ As the big man began to weep with terror Arakasi asked, ‘Will your dwarf apprentice sack your house, or give you both an appropriate funeral rite?’ Arakasi shrugged. ‘He’ll steal everything worth selling, you know.’ Looking around, he added, ‘Given your location and your clientele, I doubt anyone will be quick to report your murder to the City Watch. It’s possible no priest will ever say a prayer for either of you.’

Korbargh snarled something unintelligible, and Arakasi stopped threatening. He stepped forward, grasped the hem of his captive’s robe, and cut away a strip of fabric. The cloth was not silk, but the weave was fine, and ribbon embroidery adorned the hem. Arakasi expertly twisted the length into a gag. Before he could bind it over Korbargh’s mouth, the huge man gasped and pleaded.