“How inconsiderate.” Pushing past her, Seregil strode into the bedchamber. Alec lay sprawled on his back in the bed, his sleeping face the picture of weary bliss.
Looks like he managed to enjoy himself after all, he thought with a mix of pride and wistfulness, glancing around at the disordered room.
Ignoring the courtesan’s simmering displeasure, Seregil leaned down and shook him by the shoulder. Alec stirred drowsily, murmuring something amorous as he reached to pull Seregil into bed. When his fingers encountered wool rather than whatever he’d been dreaming of, however, he snapped fully awake.
“What are you doing here?” he gasped, sitting up.
“Sorry.” Seregil crossed his arms, grinning. “Terrible timing, I know, but something’s come up and I may need your help.”
Alec glanced quickly from him to the girl. “A job? Now?”
“I’ll wait for you downstairs. Don’t be long.”
Alec let out an exasperated sigh. Before he could get up, however, Myrhichia dropped her robe and slipped back into bed beside him.
“Does he always barge in like that?”
“I hope not,” muttered Alec.
“Are you going to leave me now?” She nibbled teasingly down the side of his neck as her hand slipped up his thigh to more sensitive regions.
He could picture Seregil pacing impatiently downstairs, waiting for him, but Myrhichia was putting up a persuasive argument under the covers.
“Well,” he sighed, letting her push him back against the bolsters, “maybe not right this second.”
Seregil had the bones of a workable plan in mind by the time he got downstairs. Strolling into the cloak room, he found it conveniently unattended.
He soon had what he wanted; he returned to the salon with an officer’s mantle and a wineskin concealed beneath his own cloak, Alec’s sword belt and cloak over his arm.
To his surprise, Alec had still not come down. Rather annoyed, he settled in a chair near the door to wait.
It was late now. A few girls remained in the salon, playing bakshi to pass the time while they waited for whatever late-coming patrons might show up. Having seen Seregil come down, they paid little attention to him.
Minutes passed and still no Alec.
Seregil was just about to leave without him when the boy came down the staircase. His loose shirt flapped around his legs as he struggled with his coat, one sleeve of which appeared to be inside out. Getting himself more or less sorted out at last, he hurried to join Seregil.
“Delayed, were you?” Seregil inquired with a smirk, tossing him his cloak and sword.
“Myrhichia isn’t very happy with you,” Alec grumbled, flushed and out of breath. He wrapped his sword belt around his hips and fastened the buckle. “I’m not so sure I am, either. If this is just another silly lover’s token—”
Seregil tugged Alec’s collar straight, still grinning. “You think I’d ruin your fun for that? Come on, I’ll tell you about it on the way.”
Outside, he glanced around quickly, then whispered, “I think Eirual may have put us onto a spy.”
Alec brightened up at once. “That’s worth getting out of bed for.”
“Did you ride?”
“No.”
“Good, we’ll hire horses and abandon them if we have to. I’ll explain as we go.”
Leaving the warm glow of the lanterns behind, they hurried into the embracing darkness.
15
THE HUNT COMMENCES
“Where are we going?” Alec asked as Seregil headed west through the dark streets. The quickest way to the lower city was down the Harbor Way.
“I need a very special horse for this one,” Seregil explained. “There’s an ostler over by the Harvest Gate who’s likely to have what I want, and still be hiring out at this hour.”
Pausing, he opened the wineskin and took a sip, then sprinkled a more liberal libation down the front of his surcoat. Evidently satisfied with the effect, he passed it to Alec.
Grinning, he did the same. “Drunk, are we?”
“Oh, yes, and I’ll be worse off than you. You’ll be playing the sensible friend.”
“Don’t I always?” Alec took another fortifying sip and capped the skin.
A lantern was still burning in front of the ostler’s stable. Seregil fell into a loose, unsteady walk as they stepped into the circle of light.
“Ostler!” he called, striking an arrogant pose, fists on his hips. “Two gentlemen need mounts. Show yourself, man.”
“Here, sirs,” a man replied, opening a side door a crack for a wary look at the late customers.
Seregil shook his purse at him. The ring of coins had the desired effect; the ostler swung the stable doors wide and held the lantern while they inspected the half-dozen horses inside.
Alec quickly found a decent mare and the man saddled her for him.
Seregil was longer at it. After much pacing and muttering, he finally settled on a rawboned grey.
“I’m not one to tell a lord his business, but he’s made a poor choice with that one,” the worried ostler whispered to Alec. “Old Cloudy there has been off his feed for days and has a cough. If you’d speak to your friend for me, I’ll see to it he has the best of my stable.”
Alec gave him a reassuring wink and counted out a generous stack of silver. “Don’t concern yourself. We’re going to play a joke on a friend and your grey is just what we need. We’ll take good care of him, and have them both back before dawn.”
They set off at a trot, but before they’d gone a quarter of a mile Seregil’s cob stumbled to a halt, nearly throwing him over its head. Jerking its head down, it let out a hollow, braying cough.
“Poor old fellow.” Seregil patted the animal’s neck. “You’re better than I could have hoped for. We’ll have to send a drysian to look at him.”
“What do you think this spy of yours is up to?” Alec asked as they continued at a walk.
Seregil shrugged. “Hard to say yet. Eirual thinks this fellow Rythel has some documents that he shouldn’t. I want to see if she’s right.”
“Do you think he’s a Plenimaran?”
“Too soon to say. At times like this it’s best to keep an open mind until you have hard facts. Otherwise, you just run around trying to prove your own theory and overlooking important details that may turn up in the process. It could be there’s nothing to it at all, but it’s more interesting than anything else we’ve seen in the last few weeks.”
Well-dressed, slightly intoxicated lords heading down to the lower city for a roister were of little concern to the guards at the Sea Gate. The sergeant-at-arms waved them through with a bored look and returned to the watch fire.
At the bottom of the Harbor Way they rode east along the waterfront past the custom houses and quays into a moderately respectable street lined with tenements.
A few lights showed behind shuttered windows, but most of the neighborhood was asleep. A dog howled mournfully somewhere nearby, the sound carrying eerily through the streets. Seregil’s horse twitched its ears nervously, then let out another rattling cough in a jingle of harness.
“Here’s Sailmaker Street,” said Seregil, reining in at the mouth of an unmarked lane. Unclasping his mantle, he threw it to Alec and shook out the mantle he’d brought from Eirual’s. It belonged to a captain of the White Hawk Infantry and bore a large, distinctive device.
“Who’d you steal that from?” Alec asked, watching him put it on.
“Borrowed, dear boy, borrowed,” Seregil corrected primly.
Alec peered up and down the poorly lit street. “That must be the house there,” he said, pointing to one at the end of the lane. “It’s the only one with a striped lintel.”
“Yes. You hang back and be ready for trouble. If it comes to any sort of a chase, I’d better ride double with you. I don’t think poor old Cloudy has much run left in him.”
Seregil emptied the last of the wine over his mount’s withers, bunched the mantle awkwardly o
ver one shoulder, and pulled one foot loose from the stirrup. Settling into a loose, drunken slouch, he nudged the horse into a walk. Riding up to the door, he kicked loudly at it.
“You! In the house!” he bawled, swaying precariously in the saddle. “I want the leech, damn him. By Sakor, send out the bastard son of a pig!”
A shutter slammed back just above his head and an old woman popped her head out, glaring down indignantly.
“Leave off with that or I’ll have the Watch down on you,” she screeched, swinging a stick at his head. “This is an honest house.”
“I’ll leave off when I’ve got his throat in my hand,” Seregil yelled, kicking the door again.
“You’re drunk. I can smell you from here!” the old woman said scornfully. “Who is it you’re after?”
Just then, the grey jerked its head down in another racking cough.
“There, you hear that?” Seregil roared. “How in the name of Bilairy am I supposed to explain this to my commander, eh? Your leech has ruined the beast. Gave him a dose of salts and half killed him. I’ll run my sword up his arse, that pus-faced clod of shit! You send out the leech Rythel or I’ll come in after him.”
“You whoreson drunken mullet!” The old woman took another swing at him with her cudgel. “It’s Rythel the smith that rooms here, not Rythel the leech.”
“Smith?” Seregil goggled up at her. “What in the name of Sakor’s Fire is he doing dosing my horse if he’s a smith?”
Lurking in the shadows at the mouth of the street, Alec shook with silent laughter. It was as good a performance as any he’d seen at the theater.
“Half the men on the coast are called Rythel, you fool. You’ve got the wrong man,” the old landlady sputtered. “Smith Rythel is an honest man, which is more than can be said for you, I’m sure.”
“Honest man, my ass!”
“He is. He works for Master Quarin in the upper city.”
She disappeared and Seregil, no doubt with knowledge born of long experience, reined his horse out of the way just as she emptied a chamber pot over the sill at him.
Seregil made her an ungainly bow from the saddle. “My humblest apologies for disturbing your rest, old mother.”
“You’d best sleep on your belly tonight,” the old woman cackled after him as he rode unsteadily away.
“That wasn’t exactly subtle,” Alec observed, still laughing as they headed back to the Harbor Way.
“A drunken soldier making a ruckus at the wrong house in the middle of the night on Sailmaker Street?” Seregil asked, looking pleased with himself. “What could be subtler than that? And successful, too. Now we know that this Rythel is a journeyman smith of some sort. Which leaves us still asking what he’s doing with gold enough for the Street of Lights and a lord’s papers in his pocket.”
“And why he had that much gold on him with the papers still in his pocket.”
“Exactly. And what does that suggest?”
“That he’s been up to whatever he’s doing for a while already,” replied Alec, looking back toward the waterfront. “We’ll have to get into his rooms, and we’d better find out who Master Quarin is.”
“We’ll start tomorrow. Hold up a minute.”
Seregil’s grey was wheezing dejectedly now. Reining in by a lantern at the foot of the Harbor Way, he dismounted and took the animal’s head between his hands. “I’d better ride double with you, Alec. This poor old fellow’s at the end of his strength. I’d better change cloaks, too.”
Alec kicked a foot out of the stirrup and held his hand down. Grasping it, Seregil climbed up behind him and wrapped an arm around his waist.
Alec felt another unexpected twinge of sensuality at his touch, faint as a bat’s whisper, but unmistakable. There was certainly nothing seductive in the way Seregil gripped a handful of his tunic to keep his balance, yet suddenly he had an image of that same hand stroking the head of the young man at Azarin’s brothel, and later embracing dark-eyed Eirual.
Seregil had touched him before, but never with anything more than brotherly affection. Alec had seen tonight what sort of companions his friend chose—Wythrin and Eirual, both of them exotic, beautiful, and undoubtedly skilled beyond anything Alec could conceive of.
What’s happening to me? he wondered dejectedly. Maker’s Mercy, he could still smell Myrhichia’s lush scent rising from his skin. From some neglected corner of his heart, a small voice seemed to answer silently, You’re waking up at last.
“Anything wrong?” asked Seregil.
“Thought I heard something.” Alec nudged the horse into a walk.
Seregil bunched the stolen cloak out of sight beneath his own. “I suppose we really should return this. I don’t want any of Eirual’s women getting into trouble on my account. I don’t suppose you’d mind going back there twice in one night?”
Alec couldn’t see his friend’s face, but he could tell by his voice that he was grinning.
“Me? Where will you be?” asked Alec.
“Oh, not too far away.”
Alec shifted uncomfortably in the saddle. “You’re going back to Azarin’s.”
He heard a throaty chuckle behind him. “Fowl never tastes as savory when you’re hungry for venison.”
At least you know what you want, Alec thought grudgingly.
16
SMITHS AND BEGGARS
Cilla was just stirring up the fire when Seregil returned to the Cockerel the next morning.
“Is Alec back?” he asked.
“I haven’t seen him since yesterday afternoon. You haven’t gone and lost him, have you?”
“Let’s hope not.” Grabbing a few apples from a basket, he headed for the back stairway.
“Hang on, I’ve got something for you,” Cilla called after him. She pulled a small, sealed packet from behind the salt box on the mantel and gave it to him. “Runcer sent this over from Wheel Street. A regimental courier from the Queen’s Horse delivered it there.”
Pocketing the apples, he examined the packet as he continued upstairs. The folded parchment was sealed with candle drippings and covered in smudged finger marks. Directions to Lord Seregil’s house were written across the front in Beka Cavish’s impatient, upright hand.
Opening it, he read the brief letter inside.
Dear S. & A.
27 Dostin—Have reached Isil. Tomorrow we move into Mycenian territory. One of the other turmae lost a rider at bridge over the Canal at Cirna when his horse bolted and threw him over the edge. Horrible.
The weather is foul. It’s still very much winter up here. The worst enemy we’ve faced so far is boredom. Capt. Myrhini and some of the other officers break the monotony with their war stories. Some of the best come from the sergeants, however.
Billeted tonight in stables of Baron of Isil’s estate. The glory of a soldier’s life, eh, Seregil?
—B. Cavish
Reaching their rooms, he found Alec asleep on his narrow cot, clothes dropped in a careless heap on the floor. Seregil sat down on the clothes chest at the end of the bed and tapped him on the foot.
“Good morning. We’ve got news from Beka.”
Alec growled something into the pillow, then rolled over. He blinked sleepily at the morning light streaming in at the windows, then at Seregil. “You just getting in?”
Seregil tossed him an apple. “Yes. Tirien asked after you, by the way, and sends his regards.”
Alec shrugged noncommittally and bit into his apple. “What’s Beka say?”
Seregil read him the letter.
“Maker’s Mercy!” Alec muttered, hearing of the man lost off the Canal bridge. He disliked heights and Seregil had to coax him across the bridge the first time he’d traveled over it.
“Let’s see,” said Seregil when he’d finished, “if they were in Wyvern Dug two weeks ago and headed southeast from there, they could be across the Folcwine River by now.”
“Sounds like she’s doing well with it all.”
“I wouldn’t expect a
nything else of her. Beka’s as good with people as she is with horses and swordplay. I’ll bet you a sester she’s wearing a captain’s gorget the next time we see her.”
If we see her again, skittered at the back of his mind as he said this, but he pushed the doubt away. He thought he saw a shadow of the same thought cross Alec’s face, and the same quick denial.
“Where do we start today?” Alec asked, pushing a handful of tousled hair back from his eyes.
Seregil went to the hearth and stirred up the remains of last night’s fire. “I’d like to find this Master Smith Quarin first. Unfortunately we don’t know what kind of a smith he is, do we? Goldsmith, silversmith, swordsmith, blacksmith—”
Alec chewed thoughtfully, watching him. After a moment he said, “How about an ironsmith?”
Seregil glanced down at the poker in his hand, then saw that Alec was looking at it, too.
“You said Lord Zymanis is in charge of the lower city defenses, so he’s more likely to need an ironsmith than a goldsmith, right? And Eirual said he had rough hands.”
“You’ve got a clearer head than I do this morning,” Seregil said, chagrined not to have thought of it himself.
“I imagine I got more sleep.”
Seregil glanced over at him in surprise, fancying he heard an edge of disapproval in Alec’s tone. After last night’s evident success with Myrhichia, he’d assumed the boy was cured of any undue scruples. Evidently he still retained his Dalnan attitude toward establishments like Azarin’s. Well, that’s just too damned bad for him.
“There are ironsmiths scattered all around the city but they all belong to the same guild,” he said aloud, letting the moment pass. “I’ll have Thryis send one of the scullions over to ask after Quarin. In the meantime, I think I’ll have a bit of a rest.”
By midday they’d learned that Master Quarin’s shop lay in Ironmonger Row near the Sea Market Gate. They set off soon after, dressed as ragged cripples.
Alec’s face was half-obscured by a dirty bandage. Seregil wore an old wreck of a hat tied on with a scarf so that the brim curved down to his chin on either side. Their disguises had the desired effect. As they crossed the back court Rhiri saw them and shook a rake threateningly in their direction.
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