The Sarantine Mosaic (22 page)

‘
BE READY
,'
Crispin said inwardly,
‘I believe we have landed our fish.'

‘How very nautical of you,'
Linon replied sardonically.
‘Do we eat him in salt or sauce?'

‘No wit, please. I need you.'

‘Witless?'

Crispin ignored this.
‘I'm sending the girl up now.'
‘Kitten!' he called out, his voice slurred, too loud.

‘Kitten!'

The girl who had called herself Kasia came over quickly, blue eyes anxious, wiping her hands on the sides of her tunic. Crispin gave her a brief, very direct look, then tilted sideways, spilling some more of his wine, as he pulled the room key from his belt.

He'd had, truly, no idea who might fall for the baits he was offering … the unlocked door, the garrulous drunkenness, crude hints dropped over dinner and wine. Indeed, it had been entirely possible no one would succumb. He had no fall-back plan. No brilliant constellations of tesserae. A door left foolishly open,
careless words about a purse upstairs … all he'd been able to devise.

But it seemed someone
had
risen to his lure. Crispin refused to let himself ponder the ethics of what he was doing when the sullen nephew he'd been watching gave him a too-naked glance and excused himself.

He squinted owlishly up at the girl and pointed an unsteady finger at Erytus of Megarium. ‘Thish
very
good friend of mine wants to see my Permit. Gesius's Seal. S'in the leather purse. On the bed. You know the room, 'bove the kitchen. Go get it. And Kitten …' He paused, waggled a finger at her. ‘I know
'xactly
how much money's in the purse, Kitten.'

The Megarian merchant was protesting faintly, but Crispin winked at him and squeezed the girl's rump as she took the key. ‘Room's not too far for
young
legs,' he laughed. ‘Might let her wrap 'em round me, later, too.' One of the merchant's sons let out an alarming giggle before blushing ferociously under his father's swift gaze.

A Karchite at a table across the room laughed loudly, waving his beer at them. Crispin had thought, when he'd first entered the common room, that one of that group might slip away and up. He'd spoken loudly enough for them to hear … but they'd been drinking steadily since mid-afternoon, it seemed, and two of them were fast asleep, heads on the table among the food. The others weren't moving anywhere quickly.

Erytus's bored, angry nephew with the thin mouth and long, fidgety hands had said he was going to the latrine. He wasn't. Crispin was sure of it. He was the fish, and hooked.

If he goes into a room intending to steal, he told himself, he deserves whatever happens. Crispin was utterly sober, however—having spilled, or shared, almost all of his wine—and he didn't really convince himself. It occurred to him, suddenly, before he could push the
thought away, that it was possible that a mother, somewhere, loved that young man.

‘He's here,'
Linon said, from the room upstairs.

SHE WENT UP THE
stairs again, moving quickly this time past the wall torches, her passage making them waver, leaving a casting of uneven brightness behind and below her. She carried a key. Her heart was pounding, but in a different way this time. This time there was hope, however faint. Where there has been uttermost blackness a candle changes the world. There was nothing to be seen through the windows. She could hear the wind.

She reached the top, went straight on back to the last room over the kitchen. The door was ajar. He had said it might be. He hadn't explained why. Only that if she saw anyone in there when he sent her up, anyone at all, she was to do exactly as he told her.

She entered the room. Stood in the doorway. Saw the outline of a startled, turning figure in the blackness. Heard him swear. Couldn't tell who it was, at all.

Screamed, as she had been told.

THE GIRL
'
S FIERCE CRY
ripped through the inn. They heard it clearly, even in the noisy common room. In the sudden rigid silence that ensued, her next frantic shout rang clearly: ‘There is a thief!
Help
me!
Help!
'

‘Jad rot his eyes!' roared the red-bearded fellow, first to react, leaping to his feet. Morax rushed out of the kitchen in the next moment, hurrying for the stairs. But the artisan, ahead of him to the archway, went the other way, inexplicably. Seizing a stout stick from by the front door, he stormed out into the black night.

‘
MICE AND BLOOD
!'
Linon had gasped.
‘We're jumping!'
The inner words came right on the heels of the girl's cry.

‘Where?'
Crispin demanded as he scrambled to his feet downstairs and snarled a curse for the benefit of the others in the room.

‘Where do you think, imbecile? Courtyard out the window. Hurry!'

THE WRETCHED GIRL
'
S SCREAM
had frightened him almost out of his head, that was the trouble. It was too loud, too … piercingly terrified. There was something raw in it that went far beyond spotting a thief in an upstairs room. But Thelon had no time at all to sort out why; only to know, almost immediately after he did the wrong thing, that what he
ought
to have done was turn calmly to her and, laughing, order her to bring a light so he could more easily fetch the Imperial Permit for the Rhodian to show his uncle, as promised. He'd have so easily been able to talk his way through an explanation of how, on an impulse, a desire to be of assistance, he had come up to the room. He was a respectable man, travelling with a distinguished mercantile party. What
else
did anyone imagine he was doing?

He ought to have done that.

Instead, panicked, stomach churning, knowing she couldn't see him clearly in the dark and seizing that saving thought, he'd grabbed the leather satchel lying on the bed, with papers, money, and what felt like an ornament sticking out halfway, and darted for the window. He'd banged the wooden shutter open hard, swung his feet out and jumped.

It took courage in the darkness of night. He'd no idea what lay below in the courtyard. He might have broken his leg on a barrel or his neck when he landed. He didn't, though the blind fall drove him staggering to his knees in the muck. He kept hold of the satchel, was up quickly, stumbling across the muddy yard towards the barn. His
mind was racing. If he dropped the satchel in the straw there, he could double back to the front of the inn and lead the chase out onto the road in pursuit of a thief he'd glimpsed on his way back from the latrine after the girl screamed. Then he could reclaim the satchel—or the worthwhile parts of it—before they left.

It was a
good
strategy, born of swift thinking and urgent cunning.

Had he not been felled by a blow that knocked him senseless and nearly killed him as he angled across towards the shadow of the barn under scudding clouds and a few faint, emergent stars, it might even have worked.

‘
IMBECILE
! You could have hit me!'

‘Learn to duck,'
Crispin snapped. He was breathing hard.
‘I'm sorry. Couldn't see clearly enough.'
There was only a faint spill of light from the shuttered windows of the common room.

He shouted, ‘Over here! I've got him! A light, rot you all! Light, in Jad's name!'

Men calling, a confusion of voices, accents, languages, someone rasping something in an unknown dialect. A torch appeared overhead, at the open shutter of his own room. He heard footsteps approaching, the loud voices nearing as men from the common room and the servants from the other side streamed out the front door and rushed over. Some excitement on a wet autumn night.

Crispin said no more, looking down in the light of the single overhead torch, and then in the gradually brightening orange glow as a ring of men surrounded him, some with light in their hands.

The merchant's nephew lay at his feet, a black flow that would be blood seeping from his temple into the mud. The strap of Crispin's satchel was still looped through one of his hands.

‘Holy Jad preserve us!' Morax the innkeeper said, wheezing with exertion. He'd raced upstairs and then back down. Robbery in an inn would hardly be unknown, but this was a little different. This was no servant or slave. Crispin, dealing with complex emotions, and aware that they were only at the beginning of what had to be done here, turned and saw the innkeeper's frightened gaze shift quickly from his own face to that of the merchant, Erytus, who was now standing over the body of his nephew, expressionless.

‘Is he dead?' Erytus asked finally. He didn't kneel to check for himself, Crispin noted.

‘What is happening? I can't see! He shoved me inside!'

‘Listen, then. Little to see. But be quiet. I need to be careful, now.'

‘Now, you need to be careful? After I'm almost broken in pieces?'

‘Please, my dear.'

It occurred to Crispin that he'd never said anything like that to the bird before. It might have occurred to Linon, too. She fell silent.

One of the cousins did kneel, head bent to the prone man. ‘He's alive,' he said, looking up at his father. Crispin closed his eyes briefly; he had swung hard, but not as hard as he could. He was still holding the staff.

It was cold in the courtyard. A north wind blowing. None of them had had time for cloaks or mantles. Crispin felt mud oozing beneath his sandalled feet. It wasn't raining now, though there was a feel of rain in the wind. Neither moon was visible, and only a changing handful of stars where the racing clouds parted to the south towards the unseen mountains.

Crispin drew a breath. It was time to move this forward and he needed an audience. He looked directly at the innkeeper and said, in his most frigid
voice—the one that terrified the apprentices at home—‘I wish to know, 'keeper, if this thief, indeed his entire party are in possession of Permits that allow them to stay at an Imperial Posting Inn. I wish to know it now.'

There was an abrupt, shuffling silence in the courtyard. Morax actually staggered. This was
not
what he had expected. He opened his mouth. No words came out.

New voices now. Others approaching, out of the dark towards the circle of torches. Crispin glanced over and saw the girl, Kasia, being hustled over, two of the inn's servants on either side of her, hands gripping her elbows. They weren't being gentle. She stumbled and they dragged her forward.

‘What is happening? I can't see!'

‘The girl's here.'

‘Make her the hero.'

‘Of course. Why do you think I sent her up?'

‘Ah! You were thinking, this afternoon.'

‘Alarming, I know.'

‘Let her go, rot you!' he said aloud to the men jostling her. ‘I owe this girl my Permit and my purse.' They released her quickly. Crispin saw that she was barefoot. Most of the servants were.

He turned deliberately back to Morax. ‘I haven't had an answer to my question, 'keeper.' Morax gestured helplessly, then clasped his hands together pleadingly. Crispin saw the man's wife behind him. Her eyes were burning: a rage without immediate direction, but deep.

‘I will answer that. We have no Permit, Martinian.' It was Erytus, the uncle. His narrow face was pale in the ring of torches. ‘It is autumn. Morax has been kind enough to allow us his hearth and rooms on occasions when the inn is less busy.'

‘The inn is full, merchant. And I assume Morax's kindness has a price and the price is of no benefit to the Imperial Post. Was I to pay a surcharge to your nephew?'

‘Oh, well done! A bowshot at both of them!'

‘Linon! Hush!'

The satchel strap remained in the nephew's hand. No one had dared touch it. Lying on his back in the mud, Thelon of Megarium had not moved since Crispin felled him. He was breathing evenly, though. Crispin saw it with relief. Killing the man had not been part of his plans, though he was unavoidably aware that someone else might.
In the north, a thief is hanged on the god's tree.
He was moving quickly here, little time to assess, and less to sort out why he was doing it.

Erytus swallowed, said nothing. Morax cleared his throat, glanced at the merchant, then back at Crispin. His wife was right behind him and he knew it. His shoulders were hunched forward. He looked like a hunted man.

Crispin, no longer a fisherman with a lure but a hunter with a bow, said icily, ‘It becomes clear that this contemptible thief was staying here illicitly with the sanction of the authorized 'keeper of an Imperial Posting Inn. How much are they paying you, Morax? Gesius might want to know. Or Faustinus, the Master of Offices.'

‘My lord! You will
tell
them?' Morax's voice actually squeaked and then broke. It might have been comical, in another setting.

‘You wretched man!' It wasn't hard for Crispin to summon a tone of fury. ‘My Permit and purse are stolen by someone who is here
only
because of your greed—and you ask if I will complain? You haven't even said a word about punishment yet, and all I've seen so far is a manhandling of the girl who stopped this! He would have got away if not for her! What do they do to caught thieves here in
Sauradia, Morax? I know what they do in the City to Imperial 'keepers who breach their trust for private gain. You imbecile!'

‘Hah! But be careful. He could kill you. His livelihood is at risk in this.'