The Face of Chaos tw-5

by Robert Lynn Asprin

  Well, the governance of Sanctuary had never been Samlor's concern. Blood and balls! How the Cirdonian caravan-master wished that he had no other concern with this cursed city either.

  The first link of the information he needed had come from an urchin for a copper piece, sold as blithely as the boy would have sold a stale bread twist from the tray balanced on his head. The name of a fortune-teller, a S'danzo whose protector was a blacksmith? Oh yes, Illyra was still in Sanctuary... and Dubro the smith, too, if the foreign master's business was with him.

  Samlor's intended business was in no way with the blacksmith, but the information was none the less good to know. Before entering the booth, the Cirdonian set his thumbs on his waist belt and tugged the broad leather a fraction, to the side. That was less obtrusive than adjusting the belt-sheathed fighting knife directly.

  'Welcome, master,' said the woman who had been reading the cards to herself on a stool. Samlor looped the sash across the doorway hangings. There were the usual paraphernalia and a table that could be slid between the S'danzo and the lower, cushioned seat for clients. The young woman's eyes were very sharp, however. The Cirdonian knew that her quick appraisal of him as he slid aside the curtain of pierced shells gave often as much information as a reading would require, when retailed back to the sitter over cards or his palms or through 'images' quivering in a dish of water.

  'You came about the luck of your return -' and Samlor would have said that his face was impassive, but it was not, not to her. 'No, not a journey but a woman. Come, sit. The cards, I think?' Her left hand fanned the deck, the brilliant, complex signs that some said reflected the universe in a subtlety equal to that of the icy stars overhead.

  'Lady,' said Samlor. He turned up his left palm and the silver in it. It was uncoined bullion, stamped each time it was assayed in a Beysib market. 'You gave a man I met true readings. I need a truth that you won't find in my face.'

  The S'danzo looked at the caravan-master again, her smile still professional, but something new behind her eyes. Samlor's boot heels were high enough to grip stirrups, low enough for walking, and worn more by flints than by pavements. He was stocky and no longer young; but his waist still made a straight line with his rib cage, with none of the bulge that time brings to easy living. Samlor's tunic was of dull red cloth, nearly the shade of his face. His skin never seemed to tan in the sun and wind that beat it daily. His only touch of ornament was a silver medallion, its face hidden until the man moved to show the bullion in his calloused palm. Then toad-faced Heqt flashed upward, goddess ofCirdon and the Spring rains - and the S'danzo gasped, 'Samlor hil Samt!'

  'No!' the man said sharply in answer to the way Illyra's eyes flicked towards the doorway, towards the ringing of hot iron heard through it. 'Only information, lady. I wish'you no harm.' And he did not touch the hilt of his belt knife, because if she remembered Samlor, she remembered the tale of his first visit to Sanctuary. No need to threaten what his reputation had already promised, wish it or not. 'I want to find a little girl, my niece. Nothing more.'

  'Sit, then,' the S'danzo said in a guarded voice. This time the visitor obeyed. He held the silver out to her between thumb and forefinger, but she opened his palm and held it for her gaze a moment before taking her payment. 'There's blood on them,' she said abruptly.

  'There's an execution in the square,' Samlor said, glancing at his cuff. But it was unmarked, and even his boot had been too dusty for overt sign where the severed fingertip had touched it. 'Oh,' he said in embarrassment. 'Oh.' He raised his eyes to the S'danzo's. 'Life can be hard, lady... and there are matters of honour. Not my honour since I went into trade -' his lip quirked in a wormwood grimace - 'but of the family, of the House ofKodrix, yes. I've found little enough that brings me pleasure. But not that, not slaughter. Life is hard, that's all.'

  Illyra released his palm. The silver clung to her fingers in what was almost a sleight of hand, professional in that, though the reading was no longer simply professional or simple at all. 'Tell me about the child,' the S'danzo said.

  'Yes,' the stocky man agreed slowly. Little enough of pleasure, and none at all in some memories. 'My sister Samlane was ...' he said, and he paused, 'not a slut, I suppose, because she didn't bed just anybody, and the decision was always hers. And not a whore, except as a lark, as little coin as there was to be had in our House ... She had a disdain for trade that did credit to the noble House of Kodrix. Our parents were proud of her, I think, as they never were of me after I found an honest way to buy their food - and replenish their wine cellar.' The grimace again, calling attention to a joke that bit the teller like a shark.

  The woman was quiet, as cool as the shells that whispered in the door curtain.

  'But she was very - experimental. So we shouldn't have been surprised,' Samlor continued, 'that she'd whelped a bastard before her marriage, while she still lived in Cirdon. Samlane's personal effects were sent back after she, she died ' Six inches of steel, her brother's boot knife, were buried in her womb, and vision as clear in Samlor's mind as the edge of the knife with which he had replaced that one. 'I think Regli wanted to pretend she'd never been born. Alum won't hide stretch marks, but she'd passed for a virgin with Regli. I guess Rankan nobles are even stupider than I'd thought. The tramp! Gods! The worthless tramp!'

  'Go on,' Illyra said with unexpected gentleness, as if she heard the pain and tortured love beneath the curses.

  'The story was there in a diary, enough of it,' Samlor continued. He was deliberately opening his hands, which had clenched in fury at nothing material. 'The child was a girl, fostered with a maid of Samlane's, Reia. I probably saw her myself -' he swallowed '-playing in the halls with the other servants' brats. You could get lost in the house, a whole wing could crumble over you and you'd never be found.' The hands clenched again. 'My parents tell me they never knew about the child, about Samlane, in that big house. Pray god I never learn otherwise, or I'll have their hearts out though they are my parents.'

  The S'danzo touched his hands, relaxing them again. He continued, 'She's four years old by now. She has a birthmark on the front of her scalp, so the hair is streaked white on the black curls. They called her Star, my sister did and the maid. And I came back to Sanctuary -' Samlor raised his eyes and his voice, neither angry but as hard and certain as a sword's edge'- to this hell-hole, to find my niece. Reia had married here, a guardsman, and she'd stayed after the after what happened when my sister died. And she'd kept Star like one of her own, she told me, until a month ago, and the child disappeared, no one to say where.

  'That's how late I was, lady,' the Cirdonian went on in a wondering voice. 'Just a month. But I will find Star. And I'll find any one or any thing that's harmed the child before then.'

  'You've brought something of the girl's for me to touch, then?' said Illyra. Professional calm had reasserted itself in her voice as she approached her task. This was the crystalline core on which all the mummery, all the 'dark strangers' and 'far journeys' were based.

  'Yes,' said Samlor, calm again himself. With his right hand, his knife hand, he held out a medallion like the one around his own neck. 'It's a custom with us in Cirdon, the birth-token consecrating the newborn to Heqt's bounty. This was Star's. It was found in the mews of the barracks where she lived. Another child picked it up, a friend, so she brought it to Reia instead of keeping it herself.'

  Illyra's hand cupped the grinning face of Heqt, but her eyes glanced over the ends of the thong that had suspended the medallion. The surface of the leather was dark with years of sweat and body oils, but its core at the ends was a clear yellow. 'Yes,' Samlor said, 'it had been cut off her, not stretched and broken. Help me find Star, lady.'

  The S'danzo nodded. Her eyes had slipped .off into a waking trance already.

  Illyra's gaze stayed empty for seconds that seemed minutes. Her • fingers were brown and capable and heavy with rings. They worked the surface of the medallion they held, reporting the sensations not to the woman's mind but to her soul
.

  Then, like a castaway flailing herself up from the sea, the S'danzo spluttered again to conscious alertness. Her thin lips formed a brief rictus, not a smile, at the memory of things she had just seen. Samlor had let his own breath out in a rush that reminded him that he had not breathed since Illyra entered her trance.

  'I wish,' said the woman softly, 'that I had better news for you, or at least more. No -' for Samlor's face had stiffened to the preternatural calmness of a grave stele'- not dead. And I can't tell you who, master -' the honorific professional as habit reasserted itself'- or even where. But I think I have seen why.'

  With one hand Illyra returned the medal as carefully as if it were the child herself. With the fingers of the other hand, she touched her own kerchief-bound hair. 'The mark that you call the "star" is the "porta" to some of the Beysib. A sea-beast with tentacles ... a god, to some of them.'

  Samlor turned his eyes towards the curtain that hid the execution, as within him his heart turned to murder. 'That one?' Nodding, his voice as neutral as if all the fury at Lord Tudhaliya were not foaming over his mind as he spoke.

  'No, not the rulers,' Illyra said positively. 'Not the Burek clan at all, the horsemen. But the fisher-folk and boatwrights who brought the Burek here, the Setmur - and not all of them.' The woman smiled at the trace of a memory so grim that its fullness wiped her face with loathing an instant later. 'There was,' she explained, looking away from the caravan-master, 'a cult of Dyareela in Sanctuary in the - recent past. The Porta cult is like that. Only a few, and those hidden because it's sacrilege and treason to worship other than the Imperial gods.'

  'The Beysib have closed the temples here?' Samlor asked. Her last statement had jarred him into the interjection.

  'Only to human beings,' Illyra said. 'And the Setmur are human, even to the Burek.' She smiled again and this time held the expression. 'We S'danzo are accustomed to being animals, master. Even in cities Ranke conquered as long ago as she did Cirdon.'

  'Go on,' said Samlor evenly. 'Do these Beysib think to sacrifice Star to their ' he shrugged '- octopus, their squid?'

  The S'danzo woman laughed. 'Master - Samlor,' she demanded, 'is Heqt a giant toad that you might find near the right pond?' The man touched his medallion, and his eyes narrowed at the blasphemy. Illyra went on, 'Porta is a god, or an idea - if there's a difference. A fisher-folk idea. Some of them have always had images, little carvings on stone or shells, hidden deep in their ships where the nobles never venture for the stink ... And now they have something else to bring them closer to their god. They have -' and she looked from the child's medal, which had told her much, to the Cirdonian's eyes, which in this had told her even more '- the girl you call your niece.'

  Samlor hil Samt stood with the controlled power of a derrick shifting a cargo of swords. The booth was suddenly very cold. 'Lady,' he said as he paused in the doorway. 'I thank you for your service. But one thing. I know that the Rankans say their storm-god bedded his sister. But we don't talk about that in Cirdon. We don't even think about it!'

  Except when we 're drunk, the stocky man's mind whispered as his hand flung down the sash. His legs thrust him through the pattering curtain and again into the square. Except when we're very drunk, but not incapable ... may Samlane burn in the Hell she earned so richly!

  Amazingly, the execution was still going on. Lord Tudhaliya's breechclout was black with sweat. His body gleamed as it moved through its intricate dance. His swords shone as they spun, and the air was jewelled with garnet drops of blood.

  The victim's forearm was gone. Tudhaliya's blades were sharp, but they were too light to shear with a single blow the thick bone of a human upper arm. Right sword, left sword - placing cuts only, notching ... Tudhaliya pivoted, his back to his victim, and the blades lashed out behind him, perfectly directed. The stump of the victim's elbow bounded away from the block. She moaned, a bestial sound... but she had never been human to Tudhaliya, had she? The Beysib entourage gave well-bred applause to the pass. Their left fingertips pattered on their right palms.

  Samlor strode out of the Bazaar. He was thinking about a child. And he was thinking that murder might not always be without pleasure, even for him.

  In the years since Samlor's first visit to Sanctuary, the tavern's sign had been refurbished. The unicorn's horn had been gilded, and his engorged penis was picked out with red paint, lest any passerby miss the joke. The common room stank as before, though it was too early to add the smoky reek of lamp flames. There were a few soldiers present, throwing knucklebones and wrangling over who owed for the next round. There were also two women who would have looked slatternly even by worse light than what now streamed through the grimy windows; and, by the wall, a man who watched them, and watched the soldiers, and - very sharply - watched" Samlor as he entered the tavern.

  No one was paying any attention to the fellow in the corner with the sword, the lute, and a sneer of disgust at the empty tankard before him. 'Ho, friend,' Samlor called to the slope-shouldered bartender. 'Wine for me, and whatever my friend with the lute is drinking.' The instrument had inlays of ivory and mother-of-pearl, but Samlor had noticed the empty sockets, which must recently have been garnished with gems.

  The women were already in motion, lurching from their stools - remoras thrashing towards the shark they hoped would find their next meal. It was to the pimp against the wall that Samlor turned with a bright smile, however. 'And for you, sir -' he said. His thumb spun a coin through the air. Its arc would have dropped it in the pimp's lap if the fellow had not snatched it in with fingers like eagle's talons. The coin was silver, minted in Ranke, a day's wage for a man and as much as these blowsy whores together could expect for a night. 'If you keep them away from me. Otherwise, I take back the coin, even if you've swallowed it.' Samlor wore a smile again, but it was not the same smile. The women were backing off even before the pimp snarled at them.

  The minstrel had risen to take the cup Samlor handed him from the bar. It was wine, though poverty had drunk ale on the previous round. 'I thank you, good sir,' the man said as he took the cup. 'And how may Cappen Varra serve you?'

  Samlor passed his left hand over the sound box of the lute. The coin he dropped sang on the strings as it passed. 'A copper for a song from home,' he said. He knew, and from the sound the minstrel knew also, that the coin had not been copper or even silver. 'And another like it if you'll sing to me out on the bench, where the air has less - sawdust in it.'

  Cappen Varra followed with a careful expression. He gave the lute a gentle toss in his hand, just enough to make the gold whisper again in the sound chamber. 'So, what sort of a song did you have in mind, good sir?' he asked as he seated himself facing Samlor. The minstrel had set his wine cup down. His left leg was cocked under him on the bench; and his right hand, on the lute's belly, was not far from the serviceable hilt of his dagger.

  'A little girl's missing,' said Samlor. 'I need a name, or the name of someone who might know a name.'

  'And how little a girl?' asked Varra, even more guarded. He set down the lute, ostensibly to take the cup in his left hand. 'Sixteen, would she be?'

  'Four,' said Samlor.

  Cappen Varra spat out the wine as he stood. 'It shouldn't offend me, good sir,' said the minstrel as he up-ended the lute, 'there's folk enough in this city who traffic in such goods. But I do not, and I'll leave your "copper" here in the gutter with your suggestion!'

  'Friend,' said Samlor. His hand shot out and caught the falling coin in the air before the sun winked on the metal. 'Not you, but the name of a name. For the child's sake. Please.'

  Cappen Varra took a deep breath and seated himself again. 'Your pardon,' he said simply. 'One lives in Sanctuary, and one assumes that everyone takes one for a thief and worse ... because everyone else is a thief and worse, I sometimes fear. So. You want the name of someone who might buy and sell young children? Not a short list in this city, sir.'

  'That's not quite what I want,' the Cirdonian explained. 'There is -
reason to think that she was taken by the Beysib.'

  The minstrel blinked. 'Then I really can't help you, much as I'd like to, good sir. My songs give me no entree to those folk.'

  Samlor nodded. 'Yes,' he agreed. 'But it might be that you knew who in the local community - fenced goods for Beysib thieves. Somebody must, they can't deal among themselves, a closed group like theirs.'

  'Oh,' said Cappen Varra. 'Oh,' and his right hand drummed a nervous riff on the belly of his instrument. When he looked up again, his face was troubled. 'This could be very dangerous,' he said. 'For you, and for anyone who sent you to this man, if he took it amiss.'

  'I was serious about the payment,' Samlor said. He thumbed a second crown of Rankan gold from his left hand into the right to join the piece already there.

  'No, not that,' said the minstrel, 'not for this. But... I'll give you directions. Go after dark. And if I thought you might mention my name, I wouldn't tell you a thing. Even for a child.'

  Samlor smiled wanly. 'It's possible,' the caravan-master said, 'that there are two honourable men in Sanctuary this day. Though I wouldn't expect anyone to believe it, even the two of us.'

  Cappen Varra began fingering an intricate sequence of chords from his lute. 'There's a temple of Ils in the Mercer's Quarter,' he began in a rhythmic delivery. It would have suited the love lyrics his face was miming. 'Just a neighbourhood chapel. Go through it and turn right in the alley behind ...'