The Palace Job

by Patrick Weekes

  "This is the former warden?" asked Ambassador Bi'ul suddenly. He had approached silently, carving out a circle of emptiness as the workers moved aside for him. His voice was light and twangy, as if it were not a real voice but a clever reconstruction. "The one who lost the prisoners?"

  "Indeed." Silestin clapped Orris on the shoulder. "He was rounding them back up. How's that going, Orris?"

  Orris shook his head. "Well, to be honest, sir, Pyvic is causing all kinds of trouble. Getting in my way, keeping me from doing my job."

  "Wait. You don't have them?" Silestin looked from Orris to Bi'ul in evident confusion. The crowd was moving around Naria now, leaving Silestin, Orris, and Bi'ul alone.

  "If he doesn't have his prisoners," Bi'ul said, his head cocked curiously, "why has he returned?"

  Orris fidgeted. "Well, Silestin, you have to know how it was." Silestin frowned. "I really wanted you down there as part of the effort."

  "I, I, that is, I delegated it, Archvoyant."

  "Sure, delegated, that's good." Silestin cupped his jaw. "Hard to explain to the politicians, though."

  "They will assume that the warden was incompetent again," Bi'ul agreed.

  "No!" Orris was starting to sweat again. "I'll go back down, sir, if that's—"

  "Can't go back down now, Orris." Silestin cut him off with an impatient slash of the arm. "Can't look indecisive. You're up, and you'll stay up." He glanced at the crowd. "We'll have to play it different, that's all. You'll be there when the ship docks." He turned back to Orris and smiled, and his voice warmed. "Now, if you'll excuse me, I've got to greet the rest of these people."

  With that, Silestin moved back to the common people, shaking hands and leaving Orris behind.

  They hit Ros-Oanki a few days later. It was a slow afternoon, and the locals looked up curiously at the sight of two Urujar, an Imperial, a wizard, three women and a kid coming through the gates.

  "We've got eyes," Kail murmured as they entered the market square nearest the gates, heels clicking on the freshly laid flagstones. Ros-Oanki had profited from its status as a port town for the Spire, raking in enough tax money to have bronze fountains and large marble arches with patriotic mosaics done on the sides. "Right, two pair."

  "Over or under?" Loch turned to a stall where a vendor was selling clothes and, in a louder voice, said, "Let's make nice, everyone. Meet up where and when we agreed." The others went their separate ways, with Dairy being wrenched in two directions simultaneously by Hessler and Ululenia until the wizard finally proved victorious.

  "Under," Kail said as Loch picked through several hats. "Oooh, I like the red one with the floppy brim. Very neo-Uru."

  "I do try to keep up with the times." Loch paid for the floppy red hat, then moved to a stall selling weapons. "Still with us?" "Oh yeah. Moving in now, by the produce wagon."

  "The white wagon with the Imperial vendor, or the unpainted one with the apples?" A pair of knives caught her eye, and she smiled at the merchant. "Are these balanced for throwing?"

  "Ten, fifteen paces." The merchant shrugged. "Cost too much to throw them away, though. Twenty apiece."

  "The one with the apples," Kail said. "You want me to go mention their mothers?"

  "Thirty-five for the pair, and they'd better be good from fifteen," Loch said to the merchant, and then to Kail, "Let's not play your only card just yet."

  The merchant grunted. "No credit. You miss at fifteen, it's on you, not them."

  Loch put several coins on the merchant's table. "Just a moment." She picked up the knives, hefted them carefully, then spun and threw.

  The marketplace erupted into screams, mothers grabbed their children, and merchants began slamming their cases shut. Loch crossed the square toward the produce wagon, where two scruffy-looking men were tugging frantically at their shirtsleeves, which had been neatly pinned to the wagon. She drew her sword, adjusted the brim of her floppy red hat, and hollered, "Everyone take a look! You tell everyone you know that Loch is in town, and Byn-kodar himself is with her!" Then she leveled her sword at the two men. "I'm taking down Jyelle. You run and let her know, or you have no use to me."

  The two men finally tore their ragged sleeves free and bolted without another look, and Loch sheathed her blade, stalked to the wagon, and pulled out her knives. She nodded to the apple merchant, an old woman in a faded blue dress, then tossed a coin. "Ma'am. For the damage to your wagon." The old woman sniffed in disdain, but she also neatly caught the coin.

  Kail joined her as she strode from the square. "Picked up the sheaths, Captain. I assumed you'd want them."

  "No, Kail, I planned to hold a knife in each hand for the next few weeks."

  "With you, Captain, I never know."

  Pyvic reached Ros-Oanki in the early afternoon and asked around the market, hoping for some sign of Loch.

  He was in luck.

  "Enormous woman!" declared a hat vendor. "She blotted out the sun, muscles like melons!"

  "Tiny, barely more than a girl," said a weapons merchant. "Fast like an adder and twice as poisonous!"

  "I honestly didn't get a good look at her," said an old crone selling vegetables. "Just the red hat and the sword."

  Pyvic blinked. "The sword?"

  The old woman nodded. "Single-edge, brass hand guard, contoured mahogany grip, and some name etched into the blade."

  Pyvic came away from it without much more than he'd started with. An Urujar woman with Warden Orris's prized saber... and a big red hat.

  He filed it away and started investigating the taverns and kahva-houses.

  It seemed that Loch was a feather, not a rock. If you wanted to catch a rock somebody had thrown, you grabbed fast and hard to make sure you got hold of it. But with a feather, you watched carefully, spread your hands, and waited.

  The first few taverns yielded only garbled accounts of the incident in the market. The kahva-houses yielded even less, until he walked into a warmly lit place with green leaves hanging from the doorway and cinnamon wafting through the air. Before he could even start the speech about people helping the Republic by answering questions, something was whipping through the air toward him with a glint of metal.

  He sidestepped and caught it by reflex. A coin.

  "For your kahva, Justicar," came a strong alto voice with laughter just beneath its velvet surface. "You are in a kahvahouse, after all."

  Pyvic looked at her as the chuckles fluttered across the room. She was an Urujar, skin the color of burnished leather or fine whiskey. Her silky black hair hung carelessly over her shoulders, and her loose shirt and breeches could have been the outfit of a trader, a crafter, or an off-duty guard. There were tiny laugh-lines crinkled around her deep eyes, but as she stared up at him, he couldn't quite say that she was mocking him. There was something too intense in the look, and Pyvic found himself flushing.

  Then, because he was damned if he was going to let some woman in a kahva-house show him up, he went to the counter and ordered a drink. The vendor handed him a cheap waxed-paper cup filled with steaming dark liquid, and he made his way to the table where the woman sat alone, her rough hands cradling a chipped ceramic mug.

  It was too easy. Prisoner Loch wouldn't have advertised herself to him like this. But then, nobody else would have done so, either.

  He let a few coins clink on the table as he sat down across from her. "Here's your change."

  She raised an eyebrow, and those deep dark eyes cut right through him with a glance. "I usually tip the server. It's polite." "Did you learn your manners at home, or in prison?"

  "Assuming all Urujar are convicts?" she asked, raising an eyebrow. "What charming behavior."

  "What do you do, then?"

  She pursed her lips, tiny dimples appearing on her cheeks as she stifled a smile. "I'm a bookseller."

  "You don't have any books on you."

  The smile grew. "You don't have a dozen thugs with truncheons, but you're a justicar nonetheless."

  "Not all justicars work that
way," Pyvic said with a hard smile. "And how did you know I was one?"

  She sipped her kahva. It was the same color as her skin, and the sight of her closing her eyes and touching the drink to her lips shot little sparks through Pyvic's gut. "You're in military uniform. If you were in active service, you'd be in a tavern with your men. Also, you've got an officer's insignia but a standard-issue sword at your waist." She half-closed her eyes. "And only a justicar walks into a kahva-house, lets a single woman buy him a drink, and then asks if she's been in prison."

  "Why did a single woman buy me a drink?" Pyvic asked a little hoarsely. The woman was making him sweat, and he doubted hot kahva would help matters.

  She shrugged. "Has to be hard, walking and asking questions all day. I'm sure they don't pay you enough."

  "The travel's not so bad. I imagine you travel a lot yourself as a bookbinder."

  "Bookseller, Justicar," the woman corrected. "And the travel isn't so bad. You go where you have to in order to get what you want."

  Pyvic leaned forward, pushing his kahva aside. "I'm looking for an Urujar woman who fits your description. What if I arrested you right here, just to be safe?"

  "I'd never buy a justicar a drink again," the woman deadpanned, "and that would be truly tragic. Brooding men in uniform, shoulders broad from swordplay, legs firm from riding... I'd hate to lose that."

  Pyvic coughed. "What can you tell me about the escaped prisoners?"

  "They're in town, but then, everyone heard that." The woman sipped her kahva again, then grinned crookedly, the dimples flashing. "Word has it that she's got a problem with some big thief in the area. If I were you, I'd have your ears out for fighting in the streets. Better chance of finding her there than in a nice kahva-house like this."

  "I'll bear that in mind," Pyvic murmured. "Have you seen her? Can you tell me what she looks like?"

  The woman took one last sip of her kahva, then set the mug aside and stood. "Oh, you know how it is, Justicar," she said, brushing her hair back over her shoulders. "Those Urujar women all look alike." Then she turned and walked out of the kahva-house, her hips swaying as though exciting music were playing just out of earshot.

  "I wouldn't say that at all," Pyvic said, and sat back to sip his kahva for awhile.

  "Hook's baited," Loch said to Kail a few blocks from the kahva-house at the fountain where they'd agreed to meet. "He'll be there." The fountain was bronze, a tall figure holding a walking staff in one hand and a merchant's scales in the other. Gedesar the Wanderer, god of merchants, travelers, and fortune-seekers. And thieves, too, although somehow that hadn't made it into the display. Loch tugged her hair back into its normal ponytail.

  "You're sure? Here's your stupid hat." Kail passed her the sword-belt as well. "Last time we got to the Spire, we got out of the crates to see a bunch of guards grinning at us. If we do all this and see the same guards giving us the same grin... well, I'm going to be disappointed, Captain."

  "You know, I really like this hat," Loch confessed, slapping it back on. "Any word on your end?"

  "I asked a few questions around the market. It appears Warden Orris is no longer working groundside." Kail grinned. "One less thing to worry about, anyway."

  "I talked to a fence while parting with the last of the trinkets from my vault job," said Desidora as she came out of an alley, Ghylspwr at her side. Her hair was darker than its normal auburn, and her green robe was more of an olive color. "Jyelle spread the word. She wants a meeting. Ninth bell at a fountain in Tratter Square." She smiled, her skin pale even in the bright afternoon light. "The air is thick with their fear."

  Loch thought a moment, lips pursed. "Trap?"

  "Kutesosh gajair'is,"Ghylspwr said grimly.

  "Of course," Desidora said coldly, then seemed to catch herself. She shut her eyes, and some of the color came back into her cheeks.

  "Tratter Square?" Loch glanced at Kail.

  "Haven't seen it, Captain. Didn't want to tip anything."

  "There were watchers," said Icy as he joined them, "but none were watching the spire of Esa-jolar's nearby temple, which affords an excellent view."

  "A pure white dove circling gently through cerulean skies went similarly unobserved," Ululenia agreed, stepping past them to touch her hands to the water of the fountain.

  "Well, hell, I was just invisible," Hessler grunted as he and Dairy joined them, and then glared at the fountain. "What are you... are those lily-pads?"

  "Excellent," said Loch. "How does it look?"

  "It is located in the poor quarter," Icy said, frowning slightly. "The ground appears muddy and uneven, and the exits are more alleys than roads. The fountain itself is dry and its statue gone. One may still access the pipe system through which the water once flowed, however."

  "Ululenia?"

  "'Tis a sad place," she said softly, her ash-white hair falling into her face as she stared down into the fountain. "I sense unshed tears in earth long paved with stone and brick and tears and blood."

  "That's... slightly less helpful, but thank you for trying. Hessler?"

  "Great place for a trap," he said sourly. "It's the kind of forgotten maze where she can hide dozens of her gang."

  "Noted. So... the invitation's on the table." Loch grinned. "We can spring the trap or back out."

  "Kutesosh gajair'is!"

  "Ghylspwr favors springing the trap," Desidora translated, smiling faintly. "As do I." Her hair was back to red now.

  Kail squinted. "But isn't that the same thing he said when—"

  "There are a lot of subtle tonal differences, Kail. You really have to listen for it."

  "I don't like it," Hessler said, "but then, I'm not the one who'll be walking into it."

  "Good team spirit, Magister. Icy?"

  "Fortune favors the bold, though statistics favor the cautious."

  "I have not journeyed so far to retreat to safer pastures now," Ululenia said firmly.

  "I don't know, Loch," Kail said. "We've got surprises available, but she really hates you. What she did to Alms..."

  "Sorry I'm late," Tern called out breathlessly as she dashed out from an alley.

  "Pursuit?" Loch asked sharply.

  "No," the mousy woman said cheerily. "Just lost track of time. The locals seem pretty riled up about an Urujar woman in a red hat. Any thoughts?"

  "Just one." Loch smiled. "We spring the trap."

  The fountain in Trailer Square had been torn down years ago.

  When the Voyants of Heaven's Spire had chosen Ros-Oanki as one of the few lucky cities it would visit in the course of its migration across the Republic, the city had been a minor trading hub with a small but thriving artistic community and an exotic multicultural presence. Becoming the capitol city of the province had brought in hordes of commerce.

  It had also brought in a sizeable military presence, a ton of government contracts, and a seething mass of farmers, crafters, merchants, and servants to keep everyone fed, clothed, trendy, and sexually sated.

  Tratter Square was a victim of the city's expansion. Once part of a residential neighborhood where the smells of exotic Imperial-spiced meals would fill the air along with sounds of folksongs from the old country, shouted banter in Urujar, and the distinct but universal cries of young couples in love, the square had long ago had its apartments gutted and converted into warehouses. The square itself served as the back lot for four separate warehouse clusters, and the roads leading to the square were clogged with leftover crates, packing materials, damaged merchandise, and junk.

  The ground of the square, untouched for years, was now a very small marsh as a result of the spring rains. Where the fountain had once been, there was now only a grimy, leaf-strewn crater with a wide rusted pipe jutting from the ground in the middle.

  It was dark and moonless that night, and the lights of the city left the sky a sooty orange-gray but did little to illuminate Tratter Square itself.

  As the ninth bell tolled through the city, Loch carefully eased through the
wall of crates and entered the square, blinking and squinting in the darkness. Her hat was cocked jauntily on her head, and her sword was still at her waist.

  Jyelle stood on the small raised rim of the old fountain. In the darkness, Loch had no idea whether the years had been kind to her, but it was undoubtedly the woman Loch had trained, trusted, and then left in the woods back during the war. She was mixed race, like Loch, but lighter—able to pass for white if she tried, with hair that had the tight Urujar curls but the old-country color and skin the color of old paper. She wore simple, loose clothes, and held only a quarterstaff.

  "Hello, Captain." Jyelle saluted with an elaborate twirl of the quarterstaff. "Get my note?" Her voice was dry, light, mocking.

  "How long did you rehearse that?" Loch asked, still moving forward. She drew her sword. "Have you had that one in mind for awhile, or did you come up with it while trying to talk the cold sweats away earlier tonight?"

  "You think I'm scared of you?" Jyelle laughed. "I've killed better warriors than you two at a time, Captain. I've walked away from bloodbaths that made our little scouting skirmishes look like children playing with sticks."

  "Which is why you're now holding one." Loch wondered if she should hop up onto the fountain's edge or stab from below. "Did you train those sailors who came after me? I didn't even draw my sword against them." She decided to stay below. "All I want is to come through, Jyelle. What do you want?"

  Jyelle laughed. "I spent a long time thinking that I wanted to kill you, Loch." She began spinning her quarterstaff. "But then I realized that that wasn't it. I wanted to beat you. That's why I'm holding this little stick. I'm going to break your arms, and your knees, and—"

  "That's more detail than I wanted," Loch said, and ran Jyelle through.

  Her sword passed clean through the staff, and then clean through the woman's body, with no resistance whatsoever.

  The image of Jyelle smiled down at Loch. "Surprise." Then it exploded with a blazing flash of light that ripped into Loch's face like the blinding radiance of the desert sun.