by Tim Stead
“Boat buoys,” Taranath shouted. “Down sails.”
His scratch crew bustled about the decks in a fair imitation of real mariners and the buoys were thrown over the side, the sails lowered. The Gull wasn’t a big ship, and there were only three buoys, but the competition from the shore was as fierce as he remembered it. A dozen boats raced out from land, wet oars flashing in the sun. It was a good race, too. The boats that picked up the buoys were hard pressed, and there was much good natured bumping and impediment before the triumphant boats drew alongside to collect their ropes.
One of the boat-masters delayed pulling. He stood upright in his boat and looked over the Gull.
“Where’s the captain?” he asked.
“On the wheel deck,” one of the villagers replied. Taranath heard the exchange and noted that the boat-master gave him a suspicious look before settling down in his boat and calling for his men to row. Maybe he’d known Silman. Still, that didn’t make it his business who brought the Gull in.
The rest was routine. The boats towed the ship alongside a pier and his crew tied her up with almost professional swiftness. Taranath stepped onto the pier with a sense of relief, mingled though it was with regret.
“A good job well done.”
He turned to see a smiling Torgan beside him.
“Two lost,” he replied. “I’d hardly call it a trouble free voyage.”
“Aye, but I thought we were done for when that storm hit. Thought we’d all be breathing water.”
Taranath couldn’t deny there’d been danger. “Aye, it was a sharp blow,” he said. “Did he have family, your man that was lost?”
“There’s a mother to mourn him, but no more than that. We’ll make sure she gets his share. She’ll want for nothing.”
Except her son, Taranath thought, a thing for which he suspected she might swap any number of coins.
So the job was finished, and now he was a lawkeeper again. He took his small company to an inn close to the docks called the Captain’s Rest, though not many captains favoured it. The Rest was a cut above your usual dockside tavern. The food was better. The rooms were clean and there were usually a lot of them available.
The landlord knew him, which was always a help in fixing on a good price. His customers called him Short, or Short Measure. The reason was his diminutive height, and that when he turned sideways he could hide behind a sapling.
“Radiant Taranath,” the man said when they walked into his public room. “I haven’t seen you in a long year.”
“You’re thinner,” Taranath said. “And shorter.”
“So they tell me,” Short replied.
“Has your food got worse?”
“Aye, and I water my ale more than ever.”
They shook hands.
“You’re back on the ships, then?” Short asked, eyeing the armoured retinue that had followed Taranath into the room.
“Just for one trip, and it’s done now. I keep the law in Samara these days, and I’m here on business.”
“You chase thieves so far?”
“Murderers,” Taranath said. “To the back end of Shanakan.”
“And these?” Short pointed at the king’s men.
“An escort. We started out by road. You have rooms?”
“If a few will double up. How many days?”
Taranath shrugged. “Three? Maybe four.”
“You’ll eat here?”
“Every evening.”
“Then I’ll do you a deal. I’ve five rooms, divide them how you like, and I’ll let you have the price you had last time you stayed, times five, plus a silver a day to cover the extra food.”
Taranath did a quick sum in his head. It was a good price.
“Agreed,” he said. “Now you’ll have to feed us, and ale for everyone. We’ve earned it.”
Short nodded and bustled off.
It was already late, too late to pursue his duty. Tomorrow he would find people who knew Kent Silman, the Gull’s ill-fated former captain, and he would find out what he could about Silman’s last contract. He sat down and both Worrel and Dorcas joined him. After a brief moment Lieutenant Genardy joined them, too, which surprised Taranath. So far the king’s man had stuck with his own.
The ale arrived first and Taranath drank half his down at once, washing the salt from his mouth – that’s what sailors called it, the first drink on land. He decided that Short’s skills had not diminished one jot. The ale was excellent.
The food followed swiftly, a steaming bowl of stew clattered down before each of them, and a spoon to eat it. It was mutton, by the smell. It was always mutton in the Rest. He tasted it. The stew was thick, well flavoured with plenty of meat.
He began to eat.
One of the soldiers at another table raised his voice. “I don’t understand,” he said. “The food and the ale are fine. He said…”
The others at his table drowned out his words with laughter, and Taranath exchanged a look with Genardy. The lieutenant raised his eyes and went back to eating. Dorcas grinned and shook her head. Taranath was gratified to find the place unchanged. It had indeed been a long year since he was here, but the Captain’s Rest was still as strangely unpopular as it had always been, and he supposed it was because Short didn’t serve wine or any kind of distilled liquor. It was hard work to get drunk here. That was good because he didn’t want any of his men drunk. Darna wasn’t a good friend to foreigners.
The door opened and three men came in. One of them was small and round and the other two, the ones that followed him, were tall and broad and carried staffs that measured their own height.
The shorter man inspected the room with a superior air, as though unfamiliar with such low places. His garb, however, told a different tale. He fixed his eye on Taranath.
“You,” he said.
Taranath recognised them for what they were – city wardens. They were the equivalent to Gilan’s patrolling lawkeepers in Samara.
“How can I help you, warden?” he asked.
“You came in on the Laughing Gull this evening,” he said. It was a statement, not a question.
“What of it?”
“You and all your men are bound for questioning on charges of murder and piracy.”
29 The Assassin’s Path
Sam sat in his drawing room alone. It was too warm for a fire and all he had for company was a bottle of wine and a half full glass. Soon the glass would be empty and he would fill it again. The house around him was quiet, but not silent. In his old rooms there had been tavern noise and street noise. Here there was none of that, and instead the house whispered to him.
It was unnerving in a way. He didn’t doubt that all houses made such noises, the creaking of boards, the noise of dried leaves moving in the wind beyond the windows, and the unexplained cracks, thumps and moans that made him jump. It was just that in the old place it was all overwhelmed by the noise of life in the street outside. Here it was like the temple auditorium when some famous musician played – a respectful silence while the performance went on.
He sipped his wine.
He could go out, of course. He had been out the three previous nights, but he had found coming home to his new house even more unsettling when he was drunk. The building seemed to disapprove.
A brisk knocking on his front door made him jump, and he spilled wine on his hand, cursed, and wiped it off on the arm of his chair. He went to the door and pulled it open to find Ishara standing there in the darkness, but she was not alone. A woman in somewhat poorer dress stood beside her.
“You should light the porch light of an evening,” she said. “Then I wouldn’t have to stand here in the dark.”
“Aye,” he said, looking at the stranger. She was younger than Sam, but not much. “And who’s this?”
Ishara made a disapproving noise. “Aren’t you going to invite me in?” she asked.
“Of course. Please come in.”
They stepped into his dim hallway, lit by three candles
that guttered in the wind that blew in from the street. Sam closed the door.
“Come through,” he said, leading them into his drawing room.
Ishara clicked her tongue again. He’d taken them into the wrong room, he realised. It should have been the receiving room, but he was damned if he was going to change now. He sat in his chair.
Ishara sat opposite. The other woman remained standing.
“So,” he said.
Ishara pulled a fat purse from beneath her cloak and tossed it onto the table. It made a heavy, dull sound. “Your first share of our profits,” she said.
Sam picked up the purse and upended it, spilling a small cascade of gold coins onto the table. It was a lot of money.
“All this?” he asked. There must be twenty five gold on the table. Sam’s deal was for one fifth of her profits. She had been trading for a month.
“This is just the beginning,” she said. “I am negotiating the purchase of a second ship, and I have made arrangements to have one built to my own design. In a year your money will be earning you a hundred a month.”
It was a fortune. It would place him among the wealthiest citizens of Samara. He wondered how much money men like Tarlyn Saine made if Ishara could make this much in so short a time.
“And who are you?” he asked, turning to the woman Ishara had brought with her.
“She is Giselle,” Ishara spoke for the woman it seemed. “I have hired her to be your servant.”
“Servant?”
“You can’t live in a house like this on your own, Sam.”
“What do I need a servant for?”
“To cook your meals, to light your lamps and fires.” She ran a finger through the dust on the table top. “To clean?”
Sam shrugged. He supposed it would be good to have a servant to do those things.
“What should I pay you?” he asked her.
Again Ishara answered for the woman. “What do you think is fair?” she asked.
“I pay lawkeepers one gold a week,” he said.
“Too much,” Ishara admonished. “If you pay them…”
“No.” Sam sat back and refilled his wine glass. “If she’s good enough I’ll pay her that.” He poked a finger at the coins piled on the table. “I can afford it,” he said. He turned to Giselle. “Are you good enough?”
She bowed a little bow, almost too nervous to take her eyes off him. “I’ll try to be, my lord,” she said.
“And there are no lords in this house,” he said. He picked a gold coin off the table and tossed it to her. Giselle caught it and held it as if it was a hot coal. “That’s your first week. I like bacon, bread and fruit for breakfast. Keep an account of what you spend. Now go and have a look round the house. Ishara and I have business to discuss.”
“As you wish, Aki,” she said, bobbing again. She left and closed the door quietly behind her.
Ishara raised an eyebrow. “I doubt the Saines pay their cook a gold a week,” she said.
“Are you serious?” Sam asked. “Have you eaten there?”
She shook her head. “Well, perhaps they do,” she conceded.
Sam offered her a glass of wine, which she accepted, polishing the glass with a cuff before Sam filled it.
“This place doesn’t agree with me,” he said. “It’s too big, too empty, to quiet.”
“It’s not the house,” she said. “It’s you.”
“There’s nothing wrong with me,” he protested.
She smiled. “No, there isn’t, but you need to get married, have children, fill the house. It’s not meant for one man.”
“It was you that told me to buy it,” he said. “You said I needed a better house.”
“Did I? Perhaps I was being selfish.”
“Besides, who’d have me? I’m well past my prime, if I ever had one. I can’t even walk properly with this leg.”
Ishara’s smile broadened. “You have no idea, have you? Let me see, a rich man with a big house and no idea how to spend his money? If you advertised you’d have penniless pretty girls lined up down the street.”
“I couldn’t wed someone who just wanted my money,” he said.
“Well, you’ll just have to marry someone rich then,” she replied. “You’ll have to rely on your other qualities.”
“My short stature? My ugly face?”
“I was thinking more of decisive, kind, honest, generous…”
“Hardly exceptional qualities.”
“More than you’d think among the wealthy. Most don’t become rich relying on them. You also happen to be one of the most powerful men in Samara.”
“Besides,” he said, ignoring what she’d said, “I’ve been married. My wife was killed.”
She stared at him. “I didn’t know. Were there children?”
“No,” he said.
The conversation seemed to have died. Ishara sat in silence, and Sam didn’t know what to say. In the background he could hear noises from the kitchen – Giselle he assumed. Ishara sipped her wine and looked at the floor. He could tell that she was thinking.
“You’re like an onion, Sam,” she said eventually. “The moment I think I understand you another layer peels off and you become someone else.”
Sam shook his head. “I’m always me,” he said. But as he spoke a spark lit up inside his head. He stood up.
“Sam?”
“No. Wait.” He paced across the room and back again. People are what they are, but they were also, in part, what they did. The assassin, the man that had killed three men in Samara to hide his secret – he hadn’t really hidden it at all. There had been no attempt to conceal the murders or hide the identity of the victims. The killer was a clever man, and he had to know that they would trace the sailors back to the Laughing Gull, that if the ship had been to Cabarissa they would discover it, and if this Shan trick with poisons, this game of three hands, was what Jud thought it was, then that, too, would eventually be uncovered.
He had no notion where the idea had come from, but it gripped him with certainty. The whole point of a Shannish trick like that was that it was undetectable. But now they knew about it, so it was pointless. And yet…
There were other motives here. The assassination was not the point, or not entirely the point. For some reason the assassin wanted the trick to be seen, to be known, but still the killings would go ahead.
There were pieces still missing, but Sam could see the shadow of a shape, a very ugly shape, a very dark shadow, gathering over all of Shanakan.
30 A Name
It was just after dawn when they sighted Samara. Arla was on deck, standing close to the bow with the wind blowing steady out of the rising sun and the sails snapping in the wind above her. The land rose out of the darkness with the burgeoning light, the pale stone of the buildings speckling the land, the cliffs becoming a sharp, black line as the sun picked out the land above them, casting Morningside into shadow and illuminating the untidiness that was Gulltown.
“Land north!” the boy at the masthead cried, and the crew sprang to, getting everything ready for port. The mate came forwards and stood beside Arla.
“An eventful journey,” he said.
“It was,” Arla agreed. She watched the sharp spire of the temple catch and scatter the sunlight. She never tired of the look of it. The building had quickly become a much loved feature of the city.
“What will you do with the cook?” the mate asked.
Arla shook her head. “Question him. Let him go, I expect. I don’t think there’s much more he can tell us, and he’s suffered enough.”
“So you saved him for nothing.”
“I didn’t think he deserved to be beaten to death,” she said.
The mate nodded. Arla looked at him sidelong. His eyes were on the city, his lips pressed hard together.
“It was you, wasn’t it?” she asked.
“Me?”
“The second man, the one the blind man was waiting for on the docks.”
He tu
rned and looked at her. “Yes,” he said. He sounded resigned. “How did you know?”
“It makes sense,” Arla said. “The cook was obvious, but if I was trying to slow a ship I’d want an officer, and the captain… well, he’s a stubborn man set in his ways. I thought it might be him for a while, but you looked scared when they whipped the cook.”
“Will you tell the captain?”
“That depends.”
“On what?”
Arla glanced back along the deck. There was nobody close enough to hear. “Come to the law house when you have leave. Tell us everything you know. Everything he said to you. Everything about him.”
“There’s not much. What the cook told you – it’s pretty much the same story.”
“Doesn’t matter,” Arla said. “It’s the small details, the things you don’t think are important. We need everything.”
“I’ll come as soon as I’m ashore,” the mate said. He sounded grateful that she was willing to keep his secret.
“You didn’t try anything after they caught the cook,” Arla said.
“Captain would have killed me if he knew I loosened the planks. I was too scared to try again, after the cook.”
She understood. He’d thought it was extra money for a bit of a lark and no harm done. He hadn’t thought it through. He could have lost his life, or failing that his job, his career, everything. At least he’d learned something.
She waited patiently while they were towed into the dock and tied up. At the first scraping against the pier Corin and Otway appeared on deck with Seer Jud. The Shan should have been safe as soon as they left Cabarissa and his part in the adventure complete, but you could never tell.
“Home at last,” Corin said.
“Home,” Arla repeated. She was scanning the piers to see if Malin’s ship was among those docked, but she couldn’t see it. He must still be at sea. “We have to report at once,” she said. “The Chief will want to know everything.”