The Sable City (The Norothian Cycle) (27 page)

Nesha-tari said nothing but led her band north up the waterfront, walking ahead with Shikashe just behind her, Amatesu staying close to Zeb and the barrow. Zeb watched Nesha-tari walk, and his thoughts were simple.

He noticed their surroundings only dully as the group passed by tall granaries, then a sheltered cove of the harbor where Codian warships sat at anchor. They turned east at the head of the cove, passing in front of a blocky, ancient fortress of black stone, renovated and flying the Codian flag from four towers. Beyond the fort a grand boulevard ran north, so wide that a series of miniature parks with low stone walls filled the center lanes, trimmed grass and shady trees from which birds were just beginning to sing. Nesha-tari turned up the boulevard and walked up the right-hand side of the street in front of gaily painted row houses with flower boxes under tall windows, plated with high-quality glass.

The rain picked up, dripping onto Zeb’s nose from the edge of his helmet. Amatesu lifted the cloth covering in the barrow and put her patched, high-collared jacket beneath it with the bags, leaving her in a long shirt of coarse cloth. The shukenja then managed to distract Zeb from ogling Nesha-tari as she turned her face up to the rain, which arched her back a bit, and ran her hands back through her long, black hair, ringing out strands and actually cleaning it for the first time in what must have been ages. She did so while stepping nimbly among the cobbles more smoothly than Zeb was managing with the wood-wheeled barrow.

“
Amatesu, may I ask you something?”

Amatesu glanced at Zeb, and the slight, unconscious smile that had begun to play at the corners of her mouth disappeared, returning her face to its typical look of solemnity. She wrung her hair a final time and let it plaster loosely against her face and over one shoulder.

“
A unseemly concern with one’s appearance is…unseemly. I bathe to be clean, and to be healthy, but not so that I might be…”

“
Pretty?” Zeb asked. Amatesu kept looking forward.

“
As you wish,” Zeb said. “But whether you are pretty or not is not really up to you. I mean, I suppose we could get you a long wax nose. Maybe with some warts.”

Amatesu quickened her pace to move a few steps ahead of the barrow, but she did not go so fast that Zeb failed to catch the brief return of her smile.

The blocks the group passed as they moved up the grand boulevard alternated between quite nice houses and prosperous cafes and stores. Many structures had flat roofs with long stone gutters expelling spouts of water over the flagstone sidewalks and out onto the brick street, splashing quite a bit. The group moved more to the center of the road, passing along the tiny parks with their knee-high walls. Zeb saw that several had cisterns, open basins of clean water, and all had wooden benches under the old trees.

“
This is a nice town,” he said, but Amatesu still walked on ahead of him and did not comment.

Zeb’s gaze had returned to Nesha-tari’s aft by the time the group drew near the city wall, where stables and inns lined a roundabout in front of a tall, ugly gatehouse of mismatched stones. It was nearly dawn now with the sky a lightening shade of gray, but while a few loaded wagons stood waiting the teamsters remained sheltered on porches as the rain grew stronger. Nesha-tari slowed her stride and looked around as she walked, allowing Zeb and the Westerners to catch up. More than a few of the fellows loitering on the porches stared at Nesha-tari, and Zeb was surprised to feel a twinge of antipathy toward them.

As Nesha-tari walked for the gatehouse through which a wide stone corridor without a gate gave into a courtyard, one figure left a porch. A bandy-legged goblin with large, jade-green feet emerging from beneath a battered raincoat approached Nesha-tari, wearing a wide-brimmed hat pressed down on its head hard enough that its ears jutted out sideways. Shikashe gave the creature a glare but as it looked up Zeb recognized it by its bronze-colored eyes as the same one Nesha-tari had followed away yesterday. It met her before the tunnel through the gatehouse and handed over a slim leather packet, then looked at the Far Westerners and Zeb in turn. Its rubbery lips split in a grin, giving its face an oddly knowing expression.

“
Good luck,” the goblin said in Codian. “You’ll be needing it.”

Nesha-tari stowed the satchel and passed into the dark tunnel through the gatehouse, Shikashe and Amatesu now close behind her with Zeb and the wheelbarrow bringing up the rear. They were out of the rain for several paces and Zeb could have used a stop to dry his face, as he could not let go of either arm of the barrow without upsetting it. But Nesha-tari was again moving rapidly, already stepping out of the tunnel through dripping water with the others close behind.

They stepped out into an open courtyard enclosed by the ugly walls, with a second exit gate still shut up across the way. The only adornment in the unpleasant place was an old basin in the center with weeds growing around a dead tree stump. Nesha-tari was still walking but Zeb stopped as a voice spoke behind him. He looked back, thinking maybe the goblin was following them and had called out. The speaker was not a goblin, nor was he speaking in Codian.

A tall man stood bundled in gray robes, leaning against the gatehouse wall beside the tunnel the others had just exited, sheltered from the rain by a stone overhang. His hood was raised and he held a heavy wooden staff tilted forward, with a clear glass globe on the top. His free hand was extended, and his long, pale fingers wiggled in the air as he finished his utterance.

The globe flared with a white light that dazzled Zeb’s eyes and the start it gave him sent him stumbling forward, overturning the barrow. He managed, somehow or another, to actually leverage himself over the top of it in a flailing summersault that deposited him hard on his back among spilling luggage.

The samurai Uriako Shikashe had a much more fluid reaction. He vaulted over Zeb and the barrow while drawing the longer of his two swords, its blade flashing bright white as though reflecting the light from the mage’s staff. Shikashe took the glass globe off its hardwood mount with a two-handed stroke and no more effort than it would have taken to cut the head off a flower. The still-shining sphere flipped through the air and Shikashe’s backstroke was returning for the mage’s head when both Amatesu and Nesha-tari shouted at him.

Shikashe altered his swing, drawing back the blade even as he lunged forward with outstretched arms, clubbing the mage across the face with both gauntleted hands on the hilt of his sword. The man spun like a top and collapsed in a heap just as the tumbling globe struck the ground and shattered, the white light extinguishing as if it had only been a flash of lightning.

“
That is going to be a problem,” Zeb said from among the spilled baggage.

Rain struck the naked blade of Uriako Shikashe’s sword, and fell to the pavement as drops of ice.

Chapter Sixteen

It all happened so fast that Phin’s life had not even had time to flash in front of his eyes. He was still a toddler playing on the shore of Loch Hwloor with his sisters, when his head exploded and he saw only cobblestones rushing up to greet him. He wondered for a moment if his head was still attached to the rest of him or if it was tumbling through the air on its own. Then there was a meaty sound of impact and he wondered no more for a goodly while.

Phin awoke in agony, little pleased to find that he still seemed to be alive. His jaw and head throbbed and his body was curled up with weights pressing him down. He tried to move his limbs more to see if they were still there than with any thought of rising.

Muffled voices were faintly audible and the whole world shook jarringly, knocking Phin’s shoulder and aching head against hard wood. A particularly rough blow made him groan and he realized there was a leather strap across his mouth, and rough cloth against his face. Phin was reasonably sure he had not in fact been decapitated, but the sense that his head was in a burlap sack was not reassuring.

The bumping became worse for a few moments before it thankfully stopped. There was a babble of voices and the weights started to come off of Phin bit by bit. He found at least he could breath better but then lost the ability as hands seized his shoulders and hauled him up. He fell forward in darkness with his head swimming, then crashed to damp ground. Not a stone street, but what felt like short, wet grass. His hands were bound tightly in front of him.

“
Phinneas Phoarty,” a voice said. “Give us a groan if you have your wits about you.”

Phin was on all fours with a leather strap in his mouth and a burlap sack that smelled faintly of cheese over his head. It took little effort to produce the requested sound.

“
He is conscious,” the voice said. There was something vaguely familiar about it but Phin’s present circumstances were not conducive to concentration. Other voices spoke but Phin could not follow the words as they were not in Codian, Tholish, nor of course in the Old Tullish language of instruction at Abverwar. Someone put a hand on Phin’s shoulder and he flinched.

“
Phinneas,” the first voice said. “I am going to uncover your face. It is very important that you make no move that could be mistaken for the beginning of a spell. Understand?”

With his head throbbing Phin doubted he could manage a spell even if he wanted to do so. Besides that all he had memorized were some low-grade scrying dweomers. He nodded his head and the sack was removed with a shake and a jerk.

Phin blinked in gray light, the sky above a jumble of dark clouds that looked ready to resume raining at any time. He was in a grassy field beside the raised surface of the Imperial Post Road, somewhere in the countryside by the look of it. He was next to a cart or wheelbarrow out of which he had obviously just been hauled, and a goblin stood in front of him with its needle-teeth bared in a grin. Phin looked into the creature’s gleaming bronze eyes and recognized it as the same one that he had paid a couple coppers to carry his bags and row him across the harbor to the Circle Wizard compound on Again Island, on the day more than five months ago when he had first arrived in Souterm.

“
Th-Thideways?” Phin managed against the strap across his mouth.

“
Edgewise,” the goblin muttered, tossing aside the sack it had pulled from Phin’s head. It pushed the knobby pads of two long fingers against the side of Phin’s skull and he recoiled, more from the rubbery texture than from pain.

“
It is not so bad,” Edgewise said to someone behind Phin. “Just a bruised jaw and a goose egg on the temple. He’ll be fine.”

“
Shall I tend his wounds?” a female voice asked from behind Phin, speaking Codian with an accent he could not place. He made no move to turn around. There had been four people in the courtyard when Phin had activated the staff and for all he knew they were all standing back there, including the big fellow with the shining white sword. Phin maintained a baleful stare at the goblin as it shook its head.

“
Not necessary,” it answered the woman, kneeling in the wet grass so that its eyes were on a level with Phin’s. It smiled even wider, showing more and more teeth.

“
Mr. Phoarty,” Edgewise said in something closer to the simpering tone it had used months ago. “Please accept my sincerest apologies for your rough treatment, and for your removal from Souterm.”

Phin sputtered into his gag and heard a quick
snikt!
behind him, like a sword coming smoothly out of its scabbard. He had a pretty good idea of just what sword and scabbard had produced the sound, and he felt a chill. He also shut up.

“
For the love of…” Edgewise’s bronze eyes flicked up over Phin’s shoulder. “Can you not put a leash on him or something?”

“
Don’t look at me,” another voice said behind Phin, this one belonging to a man with a flatter accent, vaguely Exlandic. “I can’t even talk to him. Just to her.”

This started a flurry of conversation, at least three voices in as many languages. Phin waited as he had no other options until at last the goblin waved for silence and pasted the leer back on its rubbery face.

“
As I was saying, I am sorry. My…friend, here, thought that you were attacking us. He only acted to defend himself against what he thought was a threat.”

Phin had not even seen a goblin with the four people who had walked past him in the rain, to whom it now seemed he probably should have called out before he had activated the magic of the scrying staff. Phin had not done so only because he had spent a thoroughly miserable night at his station getting soaked to the bone and he did not feel like blathering with any travelers if he could just wave them through. He had in no way expected the staff to blaze into life like a star. That had startled Phin as badly as it had the people in front of him. Not that he had tried to cut off anybody’s head over it.

Phin continued to glare at Edgewise mostly because there was nothing else he could do. The goblin seemed to take it as an act of hostility.

“
Look, I’ve no quarrel with the Circle Wizards and this was all just an accident. I should not even have come out here but I heard the commotion and did not want it to turn into anything worse. Understand?”

Phin made an affirmative noise against the gag. He had no idea what the goblin was talking about but he did not want to seem stupid.

“
Excellent,” Edgewise said, and reached behind Phin’s bowed head to undo the leather cord holding the gag. Phin spat the chewed strap on the ground in front of him and when he opened his mouth fully his jaw throbbed even worse. Two teeth felt loose when he pressed his tongue against them, but at least they were all there.