A Game of Three Hands

by Tim Stead

  “That’ll take a week at least. Why not put a bit of pressure on your so-called witness. I’m sure he’ll crack.”

  “I’m conducting this enquiry,” the man said. “You’d be advised to keep your mouth shut unless spoken to.”

  Taranath was escorted from the room and down another couple of corridors. The same warden that had brought him in from the inn was still with him, and he thought to try his luck with the man.

  “Who was that?” he asked.

  The warden paused, although considering whether he should reply. He chose to speak.

  “Deputy Master Torres,” he said.

  “Is he always so trusting?”

  The warden frowned. “He seemed anxious to find guilt where none was apparent,” he replied. “But he is a cautious man.”

  “You believed me, then?”

  “Your story has the shape of truth, and in the absence of proof I am inclined to favour you.”

  “Can you check on my Pekkish friend for me?”

  “If I hear something I may send word,” the man said. He was wisely keeping a distance from his prisoner. It was something that all lawkeepers learned. Even the most charming and affable men could be killers or thieves, and it did not do to treat a suspect as a friend.

  They came to a cell, and it was as miserable as any accommodation in any fortress in Shanakan. It measured five feet deep by seven wide, and the back wall supported a bench that would double as seat and bed. There was a single lamp placed in an alcove above the door, secured behind a grille. It could be replaced or recharged from the outside, but the grille cut its light to an almost useless minimum.

  He took a good look at the lock on the door as he was ushered into the cell. It seemed a simple, if robust piece of work. He had no doubt it could be worked open if he had a suitable tool, but his weapons had been taken from him and besides, there seemed to be a permanent presence in the space outside the cell. A pair of turnkeys watched while a third shut the door behind him and secured the lock. There were no bolts, he noticed, which was an oversight.

  Inside the cell he sat down and examined his new quarters. They could not have been more plain. The door was thick wood – oak, perhaps – and its only features were a slot at floor level through which food could be passed and an eye hole about five feet from the floor. There was not even a keyhole on the inside, so working the lock wasn’t an option after all. Apart from that there was the simple bench and the rest was featureless stone.

  He took off his jacket and folded it for use as a pillow. Lying down on the bench he closed his eyes. Patience was something that Radiant Taranath understood. He would wait. He had no choice.

  32 The Darnese Game

  Worrel was no fool. It seemed obvious to him that their quarry had somehow arranged for his officer to be detained, and he suspected that it would not be very long before other wardens came for him, too.

  It was a delaying tactic.

  He doubted very much that Taranath was in real danger. Darna could not afford to excite the wrath of Samara. Even mild displeasure could lead to a cooling of trade, and that would hurt Darna a lot more than it would hurt Samara. It seemed unlikely that the corruption here was more than skin deep.

  Even so, he decided that he must act promptly.

  As soon as Taranath and the Pekkish woman were out of the tavern Lieutenant Genardy spoke.

  “I am now the ranking officer,” he said.

  Worrel ignored this. It was irrelevant. His job remained the same. So did Genardy’s.

  “We must go to the docks at once,” he said. “Or I must. It would be better if watching eyes did not know.”

  “What are you going to do?” Genardy asked.

  “Send a letter. There are three Samaran ships in port. I will give each a paper to carry home.”

  “A good idea,” the lieutenant said.

  Worrel had paper and ink. He always carried it with him, and he sat down at once and crafted a simple letter:

  Officer Taranath detained on false charges. Investigation impeded. Request diplomatic intervention.

  This he folded up and sealed with wax. He copied it out two more times.

  “How will you get out without being seen?” the lieutenant asked.

  “Simple enough,” Worrel said. “They won’t have more than three people watching us, so I want four or five of your men to leave, wander around town for a bit, and then come back here. They’ll be followed, but the wardens are certain to run out of followers. I will leave when they are all gone.”

  “Clever,” Genardy said. “I’ll get them cloaked up so none can say who is who.”

  It didn’t take long. The king’s men understood the ruse and gladly played their part, shrouding themselves in cloaks, covering their faces with hoods, they left at two minute intervals, hurrying into the night with a deceptive sense of purpose.

  “Five,” Genardy said. “Enough?”

  “Enough.”

  Worrel tucked his letters into his belt and stepped out into the night. He, too, would be no more than a cloaked shape ducking out of the lamp-lit door – another decoy. He turned left, away from the docks heading up a poorly lit alley.

  The town was a stranger to him, but he figured if he turned left and left again he would be heading in the right direction.

  He was wrong.

  If Samara was straight lines and grid patterns then Darna was a spider’s web of curves, and he was soon adrift among the seemingly endless lanes and streets. They were poorly lit, poorly paved, and he could not find names at the junctions.

  He paused in the shadow of a house and looked about him. There was no clue as to which direction the docks lay. He had made an elementary mistake when he’d left the inn. He hadn’t looked at the sky. Taranath would never have failed to take such an obvious precaution.

  What could he do now? He could knock on a door and ask the way, but the Darnese would spot his Samaran accent at once, and they were a suspicious lot.

  He listened. In the distance he could hear the sound of laughter and singing, faintly. A tavern perhaps? He turned his head this way and that, trying to guess the direction, but it was difficult with the noise reflected off the buildings around him.

  He walked to the end of the street and peered into the lanes that led away from the junctions. None of them looked promising, but it seemed that the noise came a little more brightly from one of them, so he took that.

  Half way down the alley a door opened a few houses in front of him and he shrank back against the wall, listened to arguing voices, a man and a woman. He waited until it closed again.

  He was afraid. It was different in the inn with the others. He could be bold and decisive there, but out here in the cold, dark streets it was quite different.

  He reached the end of this stretch of alley and looked out again. This was a more promising junction. A trio of lamps burned brightly at the point where the roads met, and he could clearly hear the tavern noise. It was no more than a street or two away.

  “You!”

  Worrel jumped. The voice was loud and close behind him. He turned to see a man in a cloak holding an iron shod stave – a warden. He was bigger than Worrel.

  “Just going about my business, Warden,” he said, surprised by the steadiness of his own voice.

  “You’re one of those Samarans off the boat,” the warden said. “You’ll come with me.”

  Worrel regretted that he was carrying only one knife. Had he been properly armed he might have fended off the man, but a knife against a stave? No chance. Taranath had insisted.

  “I have business to complete,” he said.

  The warden twirled his stave. He twitched the end and caught Worrel a sharp blow on the upper arm.

  “You’ll come with me,” he said. “Or I’ll drag what’s left of you to the Hall of Trials.”

  “No need for that,” Worrel said. There was no point in getting beaten, but he’d have to lose the letters so that they wouldn’t know what he had been att
empting. The warden smiled an unpleasant smile.

  “No need? You Samarans need to be taught a lesson. This isn’t your city…”

  The warden grunted and toppled forwards. Worrel had to jump clear as the man crashed into the ground and lay there. He saw a cloaked figure standing just behind where the warden had stood.

  “Lucky I was here,” the figure said. He pulled back his hood to reveal the face of one of the king’s men. He was holding a sword. “Don’t fear,” he said. “I used the flat of the blade, but he’ll have a sore head when he wakes.”

  “Sergeant Pikket?”

  “The same. Glad to be of service.” He executed a polite bow and grinned. “Perhaps we should stick together. I confess I’m lost.”

  “A predicament we share,” Worrel said. “I was looking for a tavern where I might ask the way.”

  “Aye, I hear it,” the sergeant said.

  They left the warden sprawled in the street and walked to the next junction. Worrel was delighted to see not only a lively tavern, thronged with the accents and dress of other cities, but beyond it the darkness of the sea. He could smell it, the salt and the tar.

  “And you said you were lost,” the sergeant said.

  “Don’t mistake good fortune for wits,” Worrel said. He led the way past the tavern and along the shore to the piers where the ships lay. The Gull was there, lamps lit so that she blazed with light. Worrel could see figures standing on the deck, each leaning on a stave and watching the shore. Wardens.

  He passed by that particular pier quickly and came to another. The first Samaran ship was still there, a two masted vessel twice the capacity of the Gull. She was tied up close to shore and a few steps on the pier took him to a gangplank.

  “You aboard!” he called.

  There was a stirring on deck and a bleary eyed man stumbled across the deck to face them.

  “What do you want?” he demanded.

  “Sorry to disturb your rest, sailor, but I have a message that needs to be carried to Samara.”

  “A message?” The man stared at him. “Come back in the morning. Talk to the captain.”

  “Is he aboard?”

  The sailor was awake now. He stood, legs braced, blocking the gangplank. “Come back in the morning,” he said.

  Worrel glanced across at the Gull. It seemed that they hadn’t caught anyone’s attention yet.

  “I am a Samaran lawkeeper,” Worrel said, slipping his badge from under his cloak and holding it so the man could see it. “The message is important, vital to the safety of the princess. If your captain is aboard I will see him now.”

  The sailor hesitated for a moment. “Wait here,” he said.

  Worrel listened to him clattering down the companionway. Silence descended, and a glance over his shoulder told him that one of the wardens on the Gull was looking their way. He tried to stand easy, to look as though he didn’t have a worry in the world.

  It wasn’t long before the sailor was back, this time in the company of an older man who had every appearance of having just been roused from his bed.

  “You’re a lawkeeper?” the captain demanded.

  “Aye,” Worrel showed his badge. “And this is Sergeant Pikket of the King’s Own.”

  “My man says you want me to carry a letter.”

  “I do. It’s addressed to the Chief Lawkeeper, and we’d all be obliged if you could deliver it as soon as you can, for we may be in some trouble here.”

  “Trouble? What kind of trouble?”

  “I’d rather not say – only that we strive to do our duty to Samara, and that there may be some danger to the royal family if we fail.”

  “I will take your word and your letter, lawkeeper,” the captain said. “And we sail for Samara with the dawn tide, so your friends will have your news in a few days.”

  “Thank you, captain.” Worrel handed over the first of his three letters. “Now we must be elsewhere. If anyone asks what we were doing here say that we sought passage to Samara, but that you could not carry us.”

  “As you wish.”

  The left the pier and walked on towards the next. There was another Samaran ship moored there, but it was at the seaward end.

  “Why don’t you?” asked the sergeant.

  “Why don’t I what?”

  “Take passage to Samara. What better way to carry your message?”

  It was a tempting thought, but the notion of leaving Taranath here with no lawkeeper to keep his side was repellent. It would be like running away from a fight.

  “I won’t leave him,” Worrel said.

  “Loyalty is good,” the sergeant said. “But you have to get the job done.”

  “The job is here,” Worrel countered. “The information that the chief needs is here, and I have to find it.”

  “Fair enough,” the sergeant said.

  “But you could go.” The thought struck him suddenly. Why not? Sergeant Pikket would be an ideal messenger. In truth he wasn’t really needed here, and he could be sure to get the message to Hekman as quickly as possible.

  “No,” the sergeant said. “Same reason. My orders are to protect you lawkeepers. Until that changes, I’m staying.”

  Worrel could have pointed out that he was the only remaining lawkeeper on the streets of Darna, and that he hardly needed ten men to protect him, but he could see that there was no point in arguing. The sergeant seemed a competently stubborn man.

  They found the other two ships and went through similar exchanges, handing over the letters to either the captain or mate – whoever was aboard, and with that job done Worrel knew they had to get back to the Captain’s Rest. The problem was that he had no idea how to find it.

  The tavern on the shore was an obvious answer.

  He wandered back along the waterfront, carefully casual, and stopped by the tavern. He ordered a couple of ales and stood on the outside of a lively throng with the sergeant.

  “Just relax,” he said. “We haven’t a worry in the world.”

  It was no good really. Pikket sipped his ale like a sentry on duty, scanning the drinkers and the shoreline with suspicion eyes, taking small mouthfuls, holding his mug close to his body. The quicker this was over the better.

  Worrel turned to a man beside him.

  “Do you know how I can find the Captain’s Rest?” he asked. “I promised to meet someone there.”

  The man shrugged and went back to his friends. Worrel tried again.

  “You should stay here,” his next attempt told him. “Beer’s cheaper, and not so far back to the ship.”

  It occurred to Worrel that none of them actually knew where the Rest was. This crowd was mostly ship folk and traders from other cities, and while that was good in one way it was bad in another.

  Someone tapped him on the shoulder.

  “You’re trying to find the Captain’s Rest?”

  Worrel studied the man. He was dressed like a sailor, an explosion of coloured cloth casually tied and buttoned around him, but his accent was Darnese.

  “Aye,” Worrel said. “Can you help?”

  “That street,” the man pointed. “First, second, second, third, first.”

  Worrel stared at him.

  “I don’t understand,” he said.

  The man grinned. “No problem,” he said. “Each junction, starting on the left you take the first road, then at the next junction the second, and so on. First, second, second, third, first.”

  “First, second, third, first – is that how you find your way?”

  The man laughed. “It’s not that big a city. Live here a while and you’ll not need street names or a map.” He drained his cup. “I tell you what, I’ll walk you there – make sure you don’t get lost.”

  Worrel could see no malice in the man, and a guide would be useful.

  “That would be a great help. I’d hate to get lost again.”

  “And it’s about time you were moving on,” he said, inclining his head towards the docks. Worrel looked, and was alar
med to see a group of four wardens walking towards them. They were still some way off, so he tugged the sergeant’s sleeve and set off after their guide at a brisk walk.

  Worrel said nothing until they had passed the first junction, but once out of sight of the tavern he stopped.

  “Why?” he asked.

  “Why am I helping you when those wardens so obviously wanted to have words with you?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’re a lawkeeper, aren’t you, from Samara?”

  “I am, but…”

  “I’ve seen your face at the lawhouse. You’re one of Arla’s.”

  Things clicked into place in Worrel’s mind.

  “You’re Malin,” he said.

  “At your service,” he bowed comically. “Arla would never forgive me if I let them round you up. What’s going on?”

  “We’ve been backtracking Silman’s trail from Samara,” Worrel said.

  “Ah. I wondered who’d brought the Gull in.”

  “Taranath sailed her, but they’ve locked him up. Piracy and murder.”

  Malin looked annoyed. “Well, I can put them straight on that. I identified the body in Samara.”

  “I don’t think they’d want to hear it,” Worrel said.

  “Someone’s paid them to do this then? I wonder how high it goes.”

  “All the way to the top.”

  “I doubt it. You couldn’t buy the Regent, and why bother? There are plenty of lesser officials who could make this happen.”

  “Hardly a comfort,” Worrel said.

  “It’s the same everywhere,” Malin said. “There’s plenty you can buy with a handful of gold in Samara.”

  “Aye,” Worrel admitted. “We haven’t caught them all yet.”

  Malin stopped. “It’s at the end of the next street,” he said.

  Worrel peered around the corner and there it was, a pair of lamps illuminating the calligraphy of the inn sign, the Captain’s Rest. The street was empty. He’d almost expected to see wardens waiting in the street, but he guessed if they were waiting they’d be inside. Perhaps he’d imagined it all, except for the man that Pikket had brained.

  “We’d best leave you here, then,” he said.

  “Are you sure? I could find you somewhere to stay that the wardens don’t know about.”