The Hammer and the Blade (8 page)

  A quartet of cloaked men pelted across the street from the bazaar plaza and pushed their way through Egil and Nix.

  "One side, bunghole," said the tallest of the men. "It's pouring out here."

  Nix resisted the urge to sink his punch dagger into a kidney. Scabbards poked out from under the hem of the men's weathered cloaks, and each wore a boiled leather jack. The mouthy one threw open the door of the
Tunnel
. Faint lantern light, laughter, conversation, and smoke leaked out onto Shoddy Way.

  "I see manners haven't improved while we were away," Nix observed, his hands doing what they always did when someone bumped into him.

  "Fak you," the last of the men said over his shoulder, and the door to the brothel and tavern Nix now half-owned slammed in his face. He stared after them, rubbing his nose. He turned to Egil.

  "Are you as offended as I?"

  Egil raised his bushy brows and his eyes went to Nix's hand.

  Nix looked down and saw in his palm the small leather coin pouch he'd taken from the tall mouthy one.

  "I had to lift it," Nix said. "He bumped into me. And rudely so. At that point it's a matter of principle."

  "Principle?"

  Nix hefted the purse and put the weight at twelve or thirteen coins. "Principle indeed. I'll say twelve. Terns and commons only. Not a royal to be seen, not from those jackanapes. Take odds?"

  "From you? On that? Do I look like a fool?"

  "I won't answer that so as to spare your feelings." Nix fingered open the pouch and examined the contents. "Nine terns and three commons. Scarcely worth the effort."

  They had no need for more coin, so Nix sloshed through the mud over to the donkey cart and driver. The cart was sunk halfway up to the axle in mud. The donkey, ears flat, coat steaming, seemed to have given up trying to pull it, despite the entreaties of the cloaked driver, an old man with a creased face and a wispy beard. Three sacks of grain and a barrel lay in the back of the cart. The old man looked fearful as Nix approached. Nix donned his best "I'm harmless" smile.

  "For your trouble, granther," Nix said, and tossed the coins onto the bench board of the wagon. Two silver terns spilled out and the old driver seemed dumbstruck.

  "What is this?" the old man said, his voice cracked with age. The donkey shook the wet from his fur.

  Nix winked at the man and gestured at the slate sky. "Must be raining coin. Best collect what you can before it stops."

  The man looked up at the sky, then colored, perhaps realizing how silly he must have looked. He gathered the coinpurse, hands shaking. "Are you mad, goodsir?"

  "I wonder sometimes," Nix answered. "The gods only know. Goodeve, granther."

  "Orella keep and preserve you, goodsir."

  "That's well done," Egil said, when Nix walked back to him. "I never made you one for alms, much less grace."

  Nix's mind turned to the Warrens, the coin he seeded there, but he kept his thoughts from his face. "Pfft. I know nothing of alms or grace. I just know that an old peasant can use the coin better than us, and certainly better than that hiresword who bumped me."

  "That's truth," Egil said, and thumped Nix on the shoulder. "I'm thinking maybe you should've joined me in a priesthood."

  "I didn't want to shave my head," Nix said. "It would foul my looks."

  The great water clock of Ool rang the tenth hour, the deep notes audible across the city even over the rain.

  "On the hour," Nix said, and gestured at the Tunnel's door. "Shall we?"

  Egil shouldered open one of the double doors and they ducked inside.

  The cavernous common room, originally a dining hall no doubt, opened before them. Blue smoke fogged the air, gathered in clouds near the ceiling beams. Heads turned and looked up at their entrance, though the loud thrum of conversation and clink of tankards did not so much as pause. They stood there for a long moment, Nix expecting a raucous greeting, hearty congratulations, and instead…

  Nothing.

  His smile fell down to his boot heels.

  "Do they not know we own it?"

  "Seems not," Egil said. He crossed his arms over his chest and looked around, disapproval in his furrowed brow.

  A roll of thunder shook the building, summoned a collective "ahh" from the patrons, and dislodged a rain of plaster flakes from the walls.

  "It seemed nicer before we bought it," Egil said.

  Nix ignored him. "How could Tesha not tell anyone? We rescued this place from the Lord Mayor's revenue men. They should be applauding or something. Don't you think?"

  "Tesha's a madam, Nix, not a street crier." His nose wrinkled. "What's that smell?"

  "I know what she is," Nix said in a surly tone. "Even so, she should have told someone. And it's the eel stew."

  "The stew? Really? How'd I not notice it before?"

  "Maybe it was nicer before we bought this place, too."

  Perhaps thirty patrons sat at the sturdy, time-scarred tables that dotted the wood-planked floor of the common room, all of them hard-eyed slubbers of one ilk or other. Small lanterns hung from the cracked walls or sat on the rickety tables, lurid light for a lurid crew. The stink of stale incense, sour sweat, and hasty sex clung to the warped floorboards.

  A wide, sweeping staircase, probably once grand but now decrepit, led to the second-floor pleasure rooms. Three of Tesha's girls and one of her men lingered on the stairs, their poses professional and seductive, the dim light hiding the ragged hems of their threadbare clothing. Nix could not recall their names, though he knew their faces.

  Morra the serving girl danced through the crowd, her face puffed and red under the tight bun of her brown hair, the tankards she bore sloshing with Gadd's ale. Her simple dress swayed on her thick legs. She saw Egil and Nix and acknowledged them with a tilt of her chin.

  "Greets, loves," she said, as she hustled past them.

  "Milady," Nix said, offering a half-bow, and Morra smiled sweetly over her shoulder.

  Loud laughter sounded from one of the corner tables, where a group of teamsters in tell-tale green guild armbands huddled over their beers. The fattest of them gesticulated wildly with his pipe as he made a point about this or that.

  In the dim corner near the raised stage sat the four hireswords. They were just sitting down, speaking quietly among themselves, the mouthy one wearing a sour expression and patting at his cloak. Perhaps he realized he'd "dropped" his coinpurse somewhere. Morra set the ales down before them and danced away to another table.

  "I need a drink," Egil said.

  Nix's eyes went to the curved bar, behind which Gadd ruled. To Nix's knowledge, the willow-thin, tattooed tapkeep spoke but a few words of Realm Common, but his subjects – tankards, cups, jiggers, and hogsheads – obeyed his every command.

  Two more of Tesha's girls, Lis and Kiir, leaned suggestively on the bar. Nix nodded at Kiir, a lithe, red-haired lass whose pale skin reminded him of polished ivory. Both girls smiled at Egil and Nix.

  "Kiir is pleasing to view, not so?"

  "Aye," Egil said. "Strong girl, to look at her."

  "Indeed."

  "I wager she could take you in a grapple."

  Nix grinned as the thought played out in his imagination. "I think I should like to find out one day."

  Morra breezed by them again, this time with an empty platter.

  "But maybe not today, yeah?" Egil said. "Today we drink. Come."

  Egil pulled Nix toward the bar, but Nix held his ground a moment longer. "Wait."

  "Wait what? I thirst."

  "Gods, man! Look about you. This place is ours now! What are your thoughts?"

  The priest looked around, stroked his beard, and said, "I think we bought the worst tavern in Dur Follin."

  "You what?"

  "I blame you," Egil said matter-of-factly, and walked toward the bar. "Gadd, a draft! A big one!"

  "Here, too!" called one of the hireswords. "And quicklike!"

  "Coming, loves!" Morra called to the hireswords.

  One of the teamsters spilled his beer and loosed a stream of swearing, much to the amusement of his comrades.

  "For a man with a mystic eye tattooed on his scalp," Nix said, trailing Egil across the common room, "I fear you're not seeing the potential here. We can turn the place around, pretty it up."

  Again Egil harrumphed. "Pretty it up? Putting a dress on an orlog, more like."

  "Gods, you're in a mood tonight."

  They bellied up to the bar, bookended by Kiir and Lis.

  Gadd, his thin arms covered in a sleeve of patterned tattoos depicting mythological creatures from Vathar, filled a metal tankard from the tapped hogshead behind the bar and placed it before Egil.

  "Make that two, yeah?" Nix said to Gadd. To Kiir, he said, "Anything for you, milady?"

  She smiled shyly. "No, my lord."

  Gadd grunted an acknowledgment and nodded with a vigor that made his waist-length topknot dance. The long-stemmed wood pipe he smoked, filled with fragrant leaf from the east, burned in a clay tray atop the bar. The smell of the blue smoke curling up from its bowl made Nix lightheaded. Gadd soon had a tankard of ale foaming before Nix.

  "Here too, I said!" called the hiresword again, presumably to Morra. "Over here, you cow! I thirst!"

  "Someone best take that slubber a beer before his voice irritates me further," Egil said.

  Nix read the creases in Egil's brow the way an oracle read chicken entrails, and they told him the priest's ire was up. He really was in a mood.

  Not good.

  "Come now," Nix said. "Are you really that mad about buying this place? We agreed it was a good idea."

  Egil merely harrumphed again.

  "Something else, then?"

  "A beer!" the hiresword called.

  The lines in Egil's forehead deepened, Ebenor's eye in a squint.

  Nix didn't see Morra so he grabbed a tankard of ale from Gadd and asked Lis, "Would you mind taking this to that oaf?"

  "I'm not a serving wench," Lis said, pouting.

  "I know, milady. But if I take it to him, I fear I'll stab him in the eye."

  "That'd be a well-earned stab," Egil said.

  "Please?" Nix asked, pleading with his eyes.

  Lis sighed, shook out her long black hair, fluffed her breasts, and took the tankard in hand.

  "You are the landlord, now," she said, and walked off.

  Nix grinned at that. "Tesha
did
tell someone!"

  "She told all of us," Kiir said. "She seemed put out by it, I'd say."

  "Put out?" Nix said, frowning. "How so?"

  Kiir seemed to realize she'd spoken out of turn. Her soft eyes looked everywhere but Nix's face. Her cheeks colored, visible even through her makeup. "Just that… well… I think she… There she is! Maybe you should ask her yourself."

  Kiir grabbed Nix's tankard and took a long drink while Nix turned to watch Tesha descend the stairs. She wore a flowing blue dress with a tight-fitting bodice, and her dark hair hung in waves around her olive skin. Nix had heard that she'd been a harem slave once, owned by some minor sultan of Jafari, but he'd never dared ask. Her severe features did not invite familiar talk. Nix, who'd faced devils, who'd stared down three assassins hired by Kazmer the Flame to take Nix's tongue, acknowledged that Tesha intimidated him. She wasn't like most women he knew; or maybe she was, and he just didn't know women like he thought he did.

  She slid down the stairway with the grace of an aristocrat. She spoke softly to the men and women in her employ who stood at the stair rail. Nix read her lips.

  "Posture, ladies."

  "Smile, Arno. Always smile."

  Nix raised a hand to get her attention. He faltered like a boy when her eyes fell on him and her brow furrowed. He stood there like a statue, arm raised, no doubt a doltish expression on his face. He conjured the words he would speak, played them out in his mind –
Milady, Tesha. You certainly are a lovely sight
.

  Shouts from the loudmouth hiresword ruined his fantasy.

  "Even the whores serve tables here! Maybe it's not the shithole I took it for."

  His three fellows laughed and Lis, who had just set down the tankard of ale at their table, donned a fake smile while two of the men pawed at her backside.

  "Where do you think you're going?" the hiresword said loudly, jumping up from his chair and boxing in Lis against the table. He took her by the wrist, none too softly. "I might want more than a beer."

  From the stairs, Tesha said, "Lis, please come see me. Goodsir, if you'd like–"

  The hiresword turned and glared up at Tesha. "What? Am I not good enough for a whore's company?"

  "That's not what I meant at all," said Tesha.

  Nix stood up, thinking to impress Tesha by diffusing the situation.

  "Here's an idea," he called. "Why don't you just take your hands off of her, retake your seat, and enjoy another drink with your crew. It's on the house."

  Tesha pursed her lips and stared daggers at him. He had no idea why.

  The man did not release Lis. He cocked his head, squinted his eyes. "Don't I know you? Ain't you Nix Fall?"

  Nix bowed, pleased to be recognized. "Indeed, I am. I see my reputation precedes me. Now–"

  "This doesn't involve you now, does it, Nix Fall? So maybe you should close your hole, shouldn't you,
Nix Fall
." He shook Lis by the arm as he spoke. "This is between her and me."

  "There is no you and me unless you pay," Lis said, still playing her role. She tried to sound playful, but Nix could see the hiresword's grip caused her pain.

  "We'd like to settle up here," said the fat teamster, as he and his companions rose and edged away from their table, out of the verbal line of fire.