The face of chaos - Thieves World 05 (23 page)

he shrugged '-octopus, their squid?'

The S'danzo woman laughed. 'Master - Samlor,' she demanded, 'is Heqt a giant toad that you might find near the right pond?' The man touched his medallion, and his eyes narrowed at the blasphemy. Illyra went on, 'Porta is a god, or an idea - if there's a difference. A fisher-folk idea. Some of them have always had images, little carvings on stone or shells, hidden deep in their ships where the nobles never venture for the stink ... And now they have something else to bring them closer to their god. They have -' and she looked from the child's medal, which had told her much, to the Cirdonian's eyes, which in this had told her even more '-the girl you call your niece.'

Samlor hil Samt stood with the controlled power of a derrick shifting a cargo of swords. The booth was suddenly very cold. 'Lady,' he said as he paused in the doorway. 'I thank you for your service. But one thing. I know that the Rankans say their storm-god bedded his sister. But we don't talk about that in Cirdon. We don't even think about it!'

Except when we 're drunk, the stocky man's mind whispered as his hand flung down the sash. His legs thrust him through the pattering curtain and again into the square. Except when we're very drunk, but not incapable ... may Samlane burn in the Hell she earned so richly!

Amazingly, the execution was still going on. Lord Tudhaliya's breechclout was black with sweat. His body gleamed as it moved through its intricate dance. His swords shone as they spun, and the air was jewelled with garnet drops of blood. The victim's forearm was gone. Tudhaliya's blades were sharp, but they were too light to shear with a single blow the thick bone of a human upper arm. Right sword, left sword - placing cuts only, notching ... Tudhaliya pivoted, his back to his victim, and the blades lashed out behind him, perfectly directed. The stump of the victim's elbow bounded away from the block. She moaned, a bestial sound... but she had never been human to Tudhaliya, had she? The Beysib entourage gave well-bred applause to the pass. Their left fingertips pattered on their right palms.

Samlor strode out of the Bazaar. He was thinking about a child. And he was thinking that murder might not always be without pleasure, even for him. In the years since Samlor's first visit to Sanctuary, the tavern's sign had been refurbished. The unicorn's horn had been gilded, and his engorged penis was picked out with red paint, lest any passerby miss the joke. The common room stank as before, though it was too early to add the smoky reek of lamp flames. There were a few soldiers present, throwing knucklebones and wrangling over who owed for the next round. There were also two women who would have looked slatternly even by worse light than what now streamed through the grimy windows; and, by the wall, a man who watched them, and watched the soldiers, and - very sharply - watched" Samlor as he entered the tavern. No one was paying any attention to the fellow in the corner with the sword, the lute, and a sneer of disgust at the empty tankard before him. 'Ho, friend,'

Samlor called to the slope-shouldered bartender. 'Wine for me, and whatever my friend with the lute is drinking.' The instrument had inlays of ivory and mother-of-pearl, but Samlor had noticed the empty sockets, which must recently have been garnished with gems.

The women were already in motion, lurching from their stools - remoras thrashing towards the shark they hoped would find their next meal. It was to the pimp against the wall that Samlor turned with a bright smile, however. 'And for you, sir -' he said. His thumb spun a coin through the air. Its arc would have dropped it in the pimp's lap if the fellow had not snatched it in with fingers like eagle's talons. The coin was silver, minted in Ranke, a day's wage for a man and as much as these blowsy whores together could expect for a night. 'If you keep them away from me. Otherwise, I take back the coin, even if you've swallowed it.' Samlor wore a smile again, but it was not the same smile. The women were backing off even before the pimp snarled at them. The minstrel had risen to take the cup Samlor handed him from the bar. It was wine, though poverty had drunk ale on the previous round. 'I thank you, good sir,' the man said as he took the cup. 'And how may Cappen Varra serve you?'

Samlor passed his left hand over the sound box of the lute. The coin he dropped sang on the strings as it passed. 'A copper for a song from home,' he said. He knew, and from the sound the minstrel knew also, that the coin had not been copper or even silver. 'And another like it if you'll sing to me out on the bench, where the air has less - sawdust in it.'

Cappen Varra followed with a careful expression. He gave the lute a gentle toss in his hand, just enough to make the gold whisper again in the sound chamber.

'So, what sort of a song did you have in mind, good sir?' he asked as he seated himself facing Samlor. The minstrel had set his wine cup down. His left leg was cocked under him on the bench; and his right hand, on the lute's belly, was not far from the serviceable hilt of his dagger.

'A little girl's missing,' said Samlor. 'I need a name, or the name of someone who might know a name.'

'And how little a girl?' asked Varra, even more guarded. He set down the lute, ostensibly to take the cup in his left hand. 'Sixteen, would she be?'

'Four,' said Samlor.

Cappen Varra spat out the wine as he stood. 'It shouldn't offend me, good sir,'

said the minstrel as he up-ended the lute, 'there's folk enough in this city who traffic in such goods. But I do not, and I'll leave your "copper" here in the gutter with your suggestion!'

'Friend,' said Samlor. His hand shot out and caught the falling coin in the air before the sun winked on the metal. 'Not you, but the name of a name. For the child's sake. Please.'

Cappen Varra took a deep breath and seated himself again. 'Your pardon,' he said simply. 'One lives in Sanctuary, and one assumes that everyone takes one for a thief and worse ... because everyone else is a thief and worse, I sometimes fear. So. You want the name of someone who might buy and sell young children?

Not a short list in this city, sir.'

'That's not quite what I want,' the Cirdonian explained. 'There is - reason to think that she was taken by the Beysib.'

The minstrel blinked. 'Then I really can't help you, much as I'd like to, good sir. My songs give me no entree to those folk.'

Samlor nodded. 'Yes,' he agreed. 'But it might be that you knew who in the local community - fenced goods for Beysib thieves. Somebody must, they can't deal among themselves, a closed group like theirs.'

'Oh,' said Cappen Varra. 'Oh,' and his right hand drummed a nervous riff on the belly of his instrument. When he looked up again, his face was troubled. 'This could be very dangerous,' he said. 'For you, and for anyone who sent you to this man, if he took it amiss.'

'I was serious about the payment,' Samlor said. He thumbed a second crown of Rankan gold from his left hand into the right to join the piece already there.

'No, not that,' said the minstrel, 'not for this. But... I'll give you directions. Go after dark. And if I thought you might mention my name, I wouldn't tell you a thing. Even for a child.'

Samlor smiled wanly. 'It's possible,' the caravan-master said, 'that there are two honourable men in Sanctuary this day. Though I wouldn't expect anyone to believe it, even the two of us.'

Cappen Varra began fingering an intricate sequence of chords from his lute.

'There's a temple of Ils in the Mercer's Quarter,' he began in a rhythmic delivery. It would have suited the love lyrics his face was miming. 'Just a neighbourhood chapel. Go through it and turn right in the alley behind ...'

It had been three hours to sundown when Samlor left the Vulgar Unicorn, but it took him most of the remaining daylight to shop for what he would require during the interview. Nothing illicit, but the city was unfamiliar; and the major purchase was uncommon enough to take some searching. He found what he needed at last at an apothecary's.

The streets of Sanctuary had a different smell after dark, a serpent-cage miasma that was more of the psychic atmosphere than the physical. Under the circumstances, Samlor did not feel it would be politic to carry his dagger free in his hand as he might otherwise have done. He kept a careful watch, however, for the casual footpads who might waylay him for his purse, or even for the wine bottle whose neck projected from his scrip.

The chapel of Ils had once had a gate. It had been stolen for the weight of its wrought iron. There was nothing pertaining to the cult in the sanctuary except a niche in which the deity was painted. There might at one time have been a statue in the niche instead; but if so, it had gone the way of the gate. Samlor slipped through unobtrusively, though he was by no means sure that the drunk asleep in the corner was only what he seemed.

The alley behind the chapel was black as a politician's soul, but by now the Cirdonian was close enough to operate by feel. A set of rickety stairs against the left wall. A second staircase. The things that squelched and crunched underfoot did not matter. There were other, stealthy sounds; but the guards Samlor expected would not attack without orders, and they would fend away less organized criminals as the Watch could not dream of doing. A ladder was pinned against the wall. It had ten rungs, straight up into a trap door in the overhanging story. Samlor climbed two rungs up and rapped on the door. He was well aware of how extended his body was if he had misjudged the guard's instructions.

'Yes?' grunted a voice from above.

'Tarragon,' Samlor whispered. If the password had been changed, the next sound would be steel grating through his ribs.

The door flopped open. A pair of men reached down and heaved Samlor inside with scant ceremony. Both of them were masked, as was the third man in the room. The third was the obvious leader, seated behind the oil lamp and the account books on a desk. The men who held Samlor were bravos; more perhaps than their muscles alone, but certainly there for their muscles in part. The leader was a black. The mask obscuring his face was battered from age and neglect, but the eyes that glittered behind it were as bright as those of the hawk it counterfeited. The black watched during the silent, expert search. Samlor held himself relaxed in the double grip as the guards' free hands twitched away his knife, his purse, his scrip; snatched off his boots, the sheath in the left one empty already but noted; ran along his arms. his torso, his groin. The only weapon Samlor carried this night was the openly sheathed dagger. To leave it behind as well would in this city have been more suspicious than the weapon. When the guards were finished, they stepped back a pace to either side. Samlor's gear lay in a pile at his feet, save for the dagger, slipped now through the belt of one of the burly men who watched him.

Unconcerned, the Cirdonian knelt and pulled on his left boot. The man behind the desk waited for the stranger to speak. Then. as Samlor reached for his other boot, the masked leader snarled, 'Well? You're from Balustrus, aren't you?

What's his answer?'

'No, I'm not from Balustrus,' Samlor said. He straightened up. holding the wine bottle. He pulled the cork with his teeth and spat it on to the floor before he went on. 'I came to buy information from you,' Samlor said, and he slurped a mouthful from the bottle.

The mask did not move. An index finger lifted minusculely for the chopping motion that would have ended the interview. Samlor spat the fluid in his mouth across the desk, splattering the topmost ledger and the lap of the seated man. The hawk-masked leader lunged upward, then froze as his motion made the lamp flame gutter. There was a dagger aimed at Samlor's ribs from one side and a long-bladed razor an inch from his throat on the other; but the Cirdonian knew, and the guards knew ... and the man across the desk most certainly knew that, dying or not, Samlor could not be prevented from hurling the bottle into the lamp past which he had spat so nearly.

'That's right,' said Samlor with the bottle poised. 'Naphtha. And all I want to do is talk to you nicely, sir, so send your men away.'

While the leader hesitated, Samlor hawked and spat. It would take days to clear the petroleum foulness from his mouth, and the fumes rising into his sinuses were already giving him a headache.

'All right,' said the leader at last. 'You can wait below, boys.' He settled himself carefully back on his stool, well aware of the stain on his tunic and the way the ink ran where the clear fluid splashed his ledgers.

'The knife,' said Samlor when the guard who had disarmed him started to follow his fellow through the trap. An exchange of eyes behind masks; a nod from the leader; and the weapon dropped on the floor before the guard slipped into the alley. When the door closed above the men, Samlor set the potential firebomb in a corner where it was not likely to be bumped.

'Sorry,' said the caravan-master with a nod towards the leader and the blotted page. 'I needed to talk to you, and there wasn't much choice. My niece was stolen last month, not by you, but by Beysibs. Some screwball cult of them fishermen.'

'Who told you where I was?' asked the black man in a voice whose mildness would not have deceived a child.

'A fellow in Ranke, one eye, limps,' Samlor lied with a shrug. 'He'd worked for you but ran when the roof fell in.'

The leader's fists clenched. 'The password - he didn't tell you that!'

'I just mumbled my name. Your boys heard what they expected.' Samlor deliberately turned his back on the outlaw to end the line of discussion. 'You won't have contacts with their religious loonies, not directly. But you'll know their thieves, and a thief wili've heard something, know something. Sell me a Beysib thief, leader. Sell me a thief from the Setmur clan.'

The other man laughed. 'Sell? What are you offering to pay?'