Murder in Tarsis (3 page)

So instead of lunging in, Nistur stood back, fully on guard. Instead of attacking the man before him, he beat strongly at the curved blade. The hilt flew from a hand that seemed to have become nerveless. Ironwood seemed to be devoting all his efforts just to keeping on his feet. But Nistur knew full well that the defensive dagger was also a weapon of assault. Using his point to threaten the other’s face, he slid in and rapped the broad blade with the edge of his buckler. The weapon skittered musically on a snow-bare patch of paving stones.

Slowly, Ironwood’s knees gave beneath him, and he fell to the alley with a rustle of scales. Reptile hide after all, Nistur decided. Not metal. With a foot he turned the man over, and the black eyes glared at him, the limbs twitching uselessly.

“I fear I must finish this, my unfortunate friend,” Nistur said, resheathing his sword. “Do not take it too hard. I do not know from what condition you suffer, but clearly you had little future left as a mercenary, and I now understand why you were so alone.”

He drew the dirk from his thigh boot. The beautifully polished ten-inch blade flashed in the moonlight. Like his sword, it was single-edged, intended primarily for thrusting but with a thick spine that added power to a cut, a handy feature to use against an opponent not expecting such a maneuver.

As he knelt by the fallen mercenary, Nistur was overcome by a wave of revulsion. There was no honor in this. The man was helpless through no fault of his own nor through any efforts on Nistur’s part. A fine but unlucky swordsman was going to die at the behest of some repulsive aristocrat who hated the mercenary and despised the assassin, but who wished to keep his own velvet-gloved hands clean.

These were profitless thoughts, he told himself. He placed his point against the man’s throat. Even as he performed the act, Ironwood’s left hand flashed upward, something glittering in it. Nistur felt a blow beneath his chin and a spreading numbness. He tried to drive his point downward but found he could not. A concealed dagger! What infamy! He sat heavily, and the snow sent a chill through the seat of his breeches.

“I am slain—and justly—for my unmanly hesitation,” Nistur said, wishing he had some better last words prepared. It was an unforgivable oversight in a poet. “Nonetheless, sir, that was dishonorable, even for a mercenary! I would have expected better from you.”

Ironwood creaked out a laugh. “Had that been a dagger, would you be talking now?” He seemed to be forcing the words past a half-paralyzed larynx. “Nay,

your tongue would be nailed to your palate. Here is the maid that kissed you.” The mercenary’s left hand shook, but Nistur saw clearly the gold ring on the smallest finger. Now turned so its thin band was inward, it displayed ribbons of gold worked into an intricate knot. The assassin had seen its likeness before.

“The Knot of Thanalus!” he wheezed.

“Aye. Even one such as I keeps back one defense against need. Now, assassin, you are bound to me and may do me no harm.” He tried to laugh, but at last his powers of speech failed him. He seemed to have lost control of his limbs utterly. Nistur expected to see the man’s eyes roll back, but they remained steady, still doing his bidding when all else had failed him. Clearly, the assault with the ring had been Ironwood’s last act of volition and must have required a great effort of will.

Nistur was in a quandary. He was now bound to serve the man he had tried to kill. He did not question the fact. Had the spell not been potent, he would have succeeded in driving his point home, even having suffered a mortal wound. The problem was, what could he do? He had no idea what ailed the mercenary. Was it mortal, or would it pass? Either way, a freezing alleyway was no place for either of them to spend the night.

The assassin got to his feet and retrieved his cloak; then he gathered Ironwood’s dagger and sword. He turned to see a cloaked form crouched over his former victim and current master.

“Here, now! Who are you? Get away from that man!”

The figure looked up. Within the cowl, Nistur saw the face of the one called Shellring, expelled from the tavern by the barkeep. “He needs help,” said he or she, Nistur was not certain which.

“Truly. I never would have guessed, left to my own poor mental devices.”

“I’ll get help,” said Shellring, straightening and bumping into Nistur as he came forward to thrust the odd person away. “Oops. Excuse me, sir. I’ll be back presently.”

Before Shellring could go two paces Nistur grabbed a thin shoulder, spun the figure around, and performed a quick, practiced frisk. This satisfied him of two things. One was that Shellring was female, although young and thin to the point of emaciation. The other was the nature of her profession. He held up before her eyes two purses, one bulging and the other flat. The suspension strings of both had been neatly severed.

“Getting his was no great feat, but please accept my compliments upon your appropriation of mine. I never felt a thing.”

Shellring seemed not in the least abashed. “How did you know, then?”

“In the first place, acts of disinterested charity have been woefully rare in my experience. In the second, I have seen you move with great adroitness this evening, yet you jostled me like the veriest oaf. This alone was sufficient to warrant a closer look. I am astonished that you did not get his ring.”

“I tried,” she admitted. “It wouldn’t come off.”

“Many would have removed his finger to get it.”

Now she looked offended. “What do you take me for?”

“Let us pass over that question in a delicate silence. Is there someplace where my friend can find relief for his condition?”

She frowned down at the recumbent form, which was no longer even twitching. “He’s your friend? You could’ve fooled me.”

“He is now, and I feel the most urgent need to make him well. Answer my question. I will pay you well for your guidance.”

“I know a healer. He’s a good one. Lives out in the old harbor. And you don’t need to pay me,” she added haughtily. “I can steal what I need.”

“I did not mean to insult your professional expertise. Here, you carry his weapon belt and helmet. I’ll carry him. Lead the way, but don’t get too far ahead.”

“You plan to carry him by yourself?” she said skeptically. “He’s half again your size!”

“People are so easily deceived by appearances.” Nistur stooped and grasped the fallen man by one arm. Straightening, he pulled the mercenary halfway up, then got a shoulder into his midsection. Standing fully, the assassin had the warrior neatly balanced over his shoulder. “For instance, you probably would not have guessed that I am a poet, would you?”

“Not right off,” the thief admitted.

As they slowly walked back down the alley toward the harbor, thin clouds began to form and fresh snow began to fall.

“How much farther?” Nistur demanded. He was trying not to display fatigue, but his breath was beginning to wheeze, sending twin jets of steam from his nostrils. The armored man across his shoulder seemed to be growing heavier by the minute.

“Not far. It’s one of these hulks. Around here somewhere, anyway.”

With this conditional reassurance, they went on, searching among the grounded ships.

When the sea had receded from Tarsis many years before, it had left a huge fleet stranded in the harbor. The Cataclysm had struck at the end of the sailing season, when everything from fishing smacks to war galleys had been secured in the docks or riding at anchor. The bulk of them had been trading vessels: fat-bellied ships sporting two or three masts, with capacious hulls and large cabins for passengers, officers, and crews. Most had settled to the sandy harbor bottom on even keels and had gone nowhere since, at least not intact.

Over the years, many of the ships, especially the smaller ones, had been broken up as a ready source of sawn lumber, others for firewood. A few had rotted and were now nothing but malodorous heaps of wood pulp. But many had been utilized as cheap housing by the poor and the outcast. The Cataclysm had been felt here as a

great earthquake, in which thousands had been killed by falling masonry and brick. Many of the survivors never again felt safe in stone houses, and the old ships gave them a sense of safety.

Most of the hulls so utilized were propped upright with great, slanting timbers. These prevented them from rolling over on their sides. Some had even been built upon, with superstructures using wood cannibalized from other ships, so that they now towered several stories above their former decks, with windows, balconies, and awnings. Some had been painted in bright colors or had the signs of inns, taverns, or shops above doorways carved through their hulls. Most, though, were mere slums, rotting beneath the sun of summer or freezing in the winter, with the wind whistling between timbers from which the pitch and caulk had long since fled.

The population of the harbor were, technically, Tarsian, but they were not of Tarsis proper. The people of the city did not consider those of the harbor to be true citizens, and the latter did not much care to associate with the former, who were almost as contemptuous of them as they were of foreigners and nonhumans.

“This is it!” Shellring said triumphantly. The cutpurse stood before the hulk of a tubby merchant vessel of middling size, dwarfed by the huge, long-voyage treasure argosies. Still, to Nistur’s eye it looked snug and well maintained. Like the others, its masts were long since gone, replaced by a single chimney from which smoke ascended invitingly. It was all the more inviting as Nistur grew more tired and colder, and as the snow began to sift down more heavily. Pale yellow light glowed through the leaded glass of the stern-castle windows

Shellring pounded on a door beside a massive, slanting support timber. “Old man! Let me in!” She pounded again, and after a few moments the door opened, spilling

warm yellow light onto the snowy harbor bottom.

“Who is it? Shellring? Are you in need of help?” Nistur could not see the speaker.

“Not me. There’s a man here who’s in awful shape. Can you look at him?”

“I suppose so. Bring him in.” Whoever it was stood aside from the doorway, and the young woman passed through. Stooping and twisting to get his burden through the doorway, Nistur followed. Within, he found himself in a cavernous room that had once been the forward hold of the merchant ship. Riblike timbers curved up the sides, and massive crossbeams loomed overhead. Illumination came from oil lamps burning in sconces attached to the ribs.

“Stabbed in a fight, eh?” The speaker was a man of distinguished years, white of hair and beard. He wore a severely plain, sacklike gown of coarse brown cloth, topped by a cowl and half-cape of matching material.

“He bears no wound,” Nistur said. “He was stricken a little while ago by some strange malady, and my little friend here tells me that you are skilled in healing.”

“I have some modest skills in that area,” the old man said. “I am Stunbog, a very humble practitioner of the arts.”

“The tubby one can pay,” Shellring said, helpfully. “He’s a hired kil—ouch!” Nistur’s hand had clamped on her bony shoulder.

“I am a poet, Nistur by name, and the friend of this most unfortunate man. Please do what you can to aid him.”

“I’ll do that, pay or no pay. Myrsa, come take this man to the infirmary and get him out of this lizard skin.”

A woman came forward from a dim recess of the room. She was much taller than Nistur, with a broad, handsome face flanked by thick braids made up of hair that was

oddly mixed, red and gold. She was clearly a barbarian of some sort, he could not name her people, though he considered himself a fair judge of the various nations and tribes of the world. She took the inert man from his shoulder and, even as he was relieved of the weight, he was amazed at the ease with which she handled the stricken warrior. Her powerful, statuesque body was clad in garments of beautifully dressed hides that fit her like a second skin, their intricate embroidered designs almost like tattoos in the lamplight. Bulky as she was, her fur-topped boots made no sound on the wooden flooring as she bore her burden into a small side room and shut the door behind her.

“I will examine him presently,” said the healer. “Come and warm yourselves while Myrsa gets him ready.”

The assassin and the thief followed the old man to the after part of the hold, where they ascended a stair to a large room that must once have been the captain’s cabin. It had windows of leaded glass, benches alongside a table of massive wood and, best of all, in one end of the cabin a stout brick fireplace, in which a cheery blaze burned upon ornate andirons.

In the warmth Nistur doffed hat and cloak, hanging them on pegs that had once held a captain’s sea cloak. Stunbog took a pitcher of hammered copper from the hearth and poured warmed wine into glazed earthenware cups.

“I thank you most gratefully,” Nistur said as the wine did its work, warming his chilled body and easing the ache in his shoulder. “I do not know what came over my friend. One moment he was fight—he was as lively as you could ask, the next he was trembling and losing the use of his limbs. Then even his voice went. He seems able only to breathe. And his eyes are alert. Clearly, he is conscious.”

“I see,” Stunbog said. “He showed no sign of infirmity before he was stricken?”

“Earlier in the evening I detected a slight trembling in one of his hands,” Nistur said. “And a little later …” He hesitated.

“Later?” Stunbog urged.

“Well, this may not be relevant, but we heard a strange sound, rather like thunder, an odd sound in such weather. I saw him looking skyward, and he wore a look of… almost of terror. Surely such a hard-case mercenary could not fear thunder. Perhaps he suffered some sort of delusion, a vision of horror.”

“A sound like thunder? But you yourself saw nothing?”

“For a moment I thought…” He paused, as if embarrassed. “Well, no, I really saw nothing.”

“I see,” said the old man, pondering.

The barbarian woman came into the cabin. “He’s ready for you now,” she said, her voice so thickly accented that Nistur could barely understand her.