The Face of Chaos tw-5

by Robert Lynn Asprin

  It had been three hours to sundown when Samlor left the Vulgar Unicorn, but it took him most of the remaining daylight to shop for what he would require during the interview. Nothing illicit, but the city was unfamiliar; and the major purchase was uncommon enough to take some searching. He found what he needed at last at an apothecary's.

  The streets of Sanctuary had a different smell after dark, a serpent-cage miasma that was more of the psychic atmosphere than the physical. Under the circumstances, Samlor did not feel it would be politic to carry his dagger free in his hand as he might otherwise have done. He kept a careful watch, however, for the casual footpads who might waylay him for his purse, or even for the wine bottle whose neck projected from his scrip.

  The chapel of Ils had once had a gate. It had been stolen for the weight of its wrought iron. There was nothing pertaining to the cult in the sanctuary except a niche in which the deity was painted. There might at one time have been a statue in the niche instead; but if so, it had gone the way of the gate. Samlor slipped through unobtrusively, though he was by no means sure that the drunk asleep in the corner was only what he seemed.

  The alley behind the chapel was black as a politician's soul, but by now the Cirdonian was close enough to operate by feel. A set of rickety stairs against the left wall. A second staircase. The things that squelched and crunched underfoot did not matter. There were other, stealthy sounds; but the guards Samlor expected would not attack without orders, and they would fend away less organized criminals as the Watch could not dream of doing.

  A ladder was pinned against the wall. It had ten rungs, straight up into a trap door in the overhanging story. Samlor climbed two rungs up and rapped on the door. He was well aware of how extended his body was if he had misjudged the guard's instructions.

  'Yes?' grunted a voice from above.

  'Tarragon,' Samlor whispered. If the password had been changed, the next sound would be steel grating through his ribs.

  The door flopped open. A pair of men reached down and heaved Samlor inside with scant ceremony. Both of them were masked, as was the third man in the room. The third was the obvious leader, seated behind the oil lamp and the account books on a desk. The men who held Samlor were bravos; more perhaps than their muscles alone, but certainly there for their muscles in part. The leader was a black. The mask obscuring his face was battered from age and neglect, but the eyes that glittered behind it were as bright as those of the hawk it counterfeited.

  The black watched during the silent, expert search. Samlor held himself relaxed in the double grip as the guards' free hands twitched away his knife, his purse, his scrip; snatched off his boots, the sheath in the left one empty already but noted; ran along his arms. his torso, his groin. The only weapon Samlor carried this night was the openly sheathed dagger. To leave it behind as well would in this city have been more suspicious than the weapon.

  When the guards were finished, they stepped back a pace to either side. Samlor's gear lay in a pile at his feet, save for the dagger, slipped now through the belt of one of the burly men who watched him.

  Unconcerned, the Cirdonian knelt and pulled on his left boot. The man behind the desk waited for the stranger to speak. Then. as Samlor reached for his other boot, the masked leader snarled, 'Well? You're from Balustrus, aren't you? What's his answer?'

  'No, I'm not from Balustrus,' Samlor said. He straightened up. holding the wine bottle. He pulled the cork with his teeth and spat it on to the floor before he went on. 'I came to buy information from you,' Samlor said, and he slurped a mouthful from the bottle.

  The mask did not move. An index finger lifted minusculely for the chopping motion that would have ended the interview. Samlor spat the fluid in his mouth across the desk, splattering the topmost ledger and the lap of the seated man.

  The hawk-masked leader lunged upward, then froze as his motion made the lamp flame gutter. There was a dagger aimed at Samlor's ribs from one side and a long-bladed razor an inch from his throat on the other; but the Cirdonian knew, and the guards knew ... and the man across the desk most certainly knew that, dying or not, Samlor could not be prevented from hurling the bottle into the lamp past which he had spat so nearly.

  'That's right,' said Samlor with the bottle poised. 'Naphtha. And all I want to do is talk to you nicely, sir, so send your men away.'

  While the leader hesitated, Samlor hawked and spat. It would take days to clear the petroleum foulness from his mouth, and the fumes rising into his sinuses were already giving him a headache.

  'All right,' said the leader at last. 'You can wait below, boys.' He settled himself carefully back on his stool, well aware of the stain on his tunic and the way the ink ran where the clear fluid splashed his ledgers.

  'The knife,' said Samlor when the guard who had disarmed him started to follow his fellow through the trap. An exchange of eyes behind masks; a nod from the leader; and the weapon dropped on the floor before the guard slipped into the alley. When the door closed above the men, Samlor set the potential firebomb in a corner where it was not likely to be bumped.

  'Sorry,' said the caravan-master with a nod towards the leader and the blotted page. 'I needed to talk to you, and there wasn't much choice. My niece was stolen last month, not by you, but by Beysibs. Some screwball cult of them fishermen.'

  'Who told you where I was?' asked the black man in a voice whose mildness would not have deceived a child.

  'A fellow in Ranke, one eye, limps,' Samlor lied with a shrug. 'He'd worked for you but ran when the roof fell in.'

  The leader's fists clenched. 'The password - he didn't tell you that!'

  'I just mumbled my name. Your boys heard what they expected.' Samlor deliberately turned his back on the outlaw to end the line of discussion. 'You won't have contacts with their religious loonies, not directly. But you'll know their thieves, and a thief wili've heard something, know something. Sell me a Beysib thief, leader. Sell me a thief from the Setmur clan.'

  The other man laughed. 'Sell? What are you offering to pay?'

  Samlor turned, shrugging. 'The price of a four year old girl? That'd run to about four coronations in Ranke, but you know the local market better. Or the profit on the thief you give me. Figure what he'll bring you in a lifetime ... Name a figure, leader. I don't expect you to realize what this giri means to n", but - name a figure.'

  'I won't give you a thief,' said the masked man. He paused deliberately and raised a restraining finger, though the Cirdonian had not moved. 'And I won't charge you a copper. I'll give you a name: Hort.'

  Samlor frowned. 'A Beysib?'

  The mask trembled negation. 'Local boy. A fisherman's son. He and his father got picked up by Beysib patrols at sea before the invasion. He speaks their language pretty well - better than any of them I know speaks ours. And I think he'll help you if he can.' The mask hid the speaker's face, but the smile was in his voice as well as he added, 'You needn't tell him who sent you. He's not one of mine, you see.'

  Samlor bowed. 'I couldn't tell him,' he said. 'I don't know who you are.' He reached for the latch of the trap door. 'I thank you. sir.'

  'Wait a minute,' called the man behind the desk. Samlor straightened and met the hooded eyes. 'Why are you so sure I won't call down to have you spitted the moment you're through this door?'

  The Cirdonian shrugged again. 'Business reasons,' he said. 'I'm a businessman too. I understand risks. You'll be out of this place-' he waved at the dingy room - 'before I'm clear of the alley. No need to kill me to save a bolt-hole that you've written off already. And there's not one chance in a thousand that I could get past what you have waiting below, but -' calloused palm up, another shrug- 'in the dark ... You have people looking for you, sir, that's obvious. But none of them so far would be willing to burn this city down block by block to flush you, if he had to.'

  Samlor reached again for the latch, paused again. 'Sir,' he said earnestly, 'you may think I've lied to you tonight... and perhaps I have. But I'm not lying to you now. On the honou
r of my House.' He clenched his fist over the medallion of Heqt on his breast.

  The mask nodded. As Samlor dropped through the trap into darkness, the harsh voice called from above, 'Let him go! Let him go, this time!'

  There was nothing ugly about the harbour water with the noon sun on it. The froth was pearly, the fish-guts iridescent; and the water itself, whatever its admixture of sewage, was faceted into diamond and topaz across its surface. Samlor sipped his ale in the dockside cantina as he had done at noon on the past three days. As before, he was waiting for Hort to return with information or the certain lack of it. The Cirdonian wondered what Star saw when she looked around her; and whether she found beauty in it.

  There was commotion on one of the quays, easily visible through the cantina's open front. A trio of Beysib had been stepping a new mast into a trawler. As they worked, a squad of cavalry - Beysib also, but richly caparisoned in metals and brocades - had clattered along the quay. The squad halted alongside the boat. The men on the trawler had seemed as surprised as other onlookers when the troopers dismounted and leaped aboard, waggling their long swords in visual emphasis of the orders they shouted.

  Nine of the horsemen were involved either in trussing the startled fishermen or acting as horseholders for the rest. The tenth man watched coldly as the others worked. He wore a helmet, gilded or gold, with a feather-tipped triple crest. When he turned as if in disdain for the proceedings, Samlor saw and recognized his profile. The man was Lord Tudhaliya, the swordsman who had been demonstrating his skill on an Ilsig animal the other day.

  The fishermen continued to babble until ropes with slip knots were dropped over their throats. Then they needed all their breath

  to scramble after the cavalrymen. The troopers remounted with a burst of chirruping cross-chat which sounded undisciplined to the caravan-master, but which detracted nothing from the efficiency of the process. Three of the men tied off the nooses to their saddle pommels. Tudhaliya gave a sharp order and the squad rode at a canter back the way it had come. Citizens with business on the quay dodged hooves as best they might. The fishermen blubbered in terror as they tried to run with the horses. They knew that a misstep meant death, unless the rider to whom they were tethered reined up in time. Nothing Samlor had seen of Lord Tudhaliya suggested his lordship would permit such mercy.

  There were half a dozen regulars in the bar, fishermen and fish-merchants. When Samlor looked away from the spectacle, he found the local men staring at him. He gave a scowl of surprise when he noticed them; but even as the locals retreated into their mugs in confusion, Samlor understood why they had looked at him the way they had. The Cirdonian had nothing to do with the arrests on the docks just now; but he had nothing to do with this tavern, either. He had sat here during three noons and drunk ale ... and on the third day, the Beysibs made an arrest on the dock below. To the vulnerable, no coincidence is chance. These fishermen were unusually vulnerable to all the powers of the physical world as well as those of the political one. No wonder the Beysib counterparts of these men had turned to a god their overlords would not recognize; a personification, perhaps, of mystery and of the typhoons that could sweep the ocean clear of small boats and simple sailors.

  Hort slipped into the cantina. He was dressed a little on the gaudy side. Still, he wore his clothes with the self-assurance of a young man instead of a boy's nervous gibing at the world. He raised a finger. The bartender chalked the slate above him and began drawing a mug of ale for the newcomer.

  'I'm not sure you want to be seen with me,' Hort muttered to Samlor as he took his ale. 'The fellows they just carried off -' he nodded, as he slurped the brew, towards the trawler bobbing high on its lines with the mast still swinging above it from the sheer legs. 'Kummanni, Anbarbi, Arnuwanda. I talked to them just last night. About what you needed to know.'

  'That's why they were arrested?' the caravan-master asked. He tried to keep his voice as calm as if he were asking which tailor had sewn the younger man's jerkin.

  'I would to god I knew,' Hort said with feeling. 'It could be anything. Tudhaliya is - Minister of Security, I suppose. But he likes to stay close to things. To keep his hand in.'

  'And his swords,' Samlor agreed softly. His eyes traced the path the horsemen had taken as they rode off, towards the palace and the dungeons beneath it. 'Would enough money to let you travel be a help?'

  Hort shrugged, shuddered. 'I don't know.' He drained his mug and slid it to the bartender for a refill.

  'I'm not afraid to be seen with you,' Samlor said. 'But I'm not sure you want to tell me about the - cult - with so many other people around.' He smiled about the cantina. The men there had just furnished him with a tactful way to prod the frightened youth into his story.

  Hort drank and shuddered again. He said, 'Oh, I was raised with everyone here. Omat's my godfather. They won't tell tales to the Beysib.'

  It wasn't the time for Samlor to comment. He assumed it was obvious anyway. Anyone will talk if the questions are put with sufficient forcefulness. But Hort must have known that too. The local man was not a coward, and he was not the worse for never having asked questions the way Lord Tudhaliya would. The way Samlor hil Samt had done, when need arose, might Heqt wash him . with mercy when she gathered him in ...

  'There's a boat went out last month at the new moon,' Hort said beneath a moustache of beer foam. 'A trawler, but not fishing. Do you know what Death's Harbour is?'

  'No.' Samlor had poled a skiff as a boy, when he hunted ducks in the marshes south ofCirdon. He knew little of the sea, however, and nothing at all of the seas around Sanctury.

  'Two currents meet,' Hort explained. 'Any flotsam in the sea gets swept into the eye of it. Wrecks, sometimes. And sometimes men on rafts, until the sun dries their skin to parchment shrouding their bones.' He laughed. 'Sorry,' he said. 'I forget what sort of story I meant to tell you.' The smile faded. 'Nobody fishes in Death's Harbour. The bottom is deeper than anyone here ever set a line. Scooped out by the currents, I suppose. The fish won't shoal there, so it's no use to us. But a Beysib trawler went there last month, and it's coming back now slower than there's any reason for. Except that it's going to arrive tonight, and the moon is new again tonight.'

  'Star's aboard her, then?' Samlor asked and sipped more ale. The brew was bitter, but less bitter than the gall that flooded his mouth at the thought of Star in Beysib hands.

  'I think so,' Hort agreed. 'Anbarbi didn't approve. Of any of it, I think, though none of them said what was really going on. We'd seen the boat at sea, my father, all of us from Sanctuary that go to sea ourselves. That's what we talked about, though they didn't much want to talk. But from what Anbarbi let drop, I think there was a child on the trawler. At least when it put out.'

  'And it'll dock here this evening?' the Cirdonian said. He had set down his mug and was flexing his hands, open and shut, as if to work the stiffness out of them.

  'Oh -' said Hort. He was embarrassed not to be telling his story more in the fashion of an intelligence summary than of an entertainment with the discursions which added body to the tale and coin to the teller's purse. 'No, not here. There's a cove west a league of Downwind. Smugglers used it until the Beysib came. There are ruins there, older than anybody's sure. A temple, some other buildings. Nobody much uses them now, though the Smugglers'11 be back when things settle down, I suppose. But the boat from Death's Harbour will put in there at midnight. I think, sir. I tell stories for a living, and I've learned to sew them together from this word and that word I hear. But it doesn't usually matter if my pattern is the same one that the gods wove to begin with.'

  'Well,' Samlor said after consideration, 'I don't think my first look at this place had better be after dark. There'll be a watchman or the like, I suppose ... but we'll deal with that when we find it. I -' he paused and looked straight at the younger man instead of continuing to eye the harbour. 'We agreed that your pay would be the full story when I had it to tell ... and you'll have that. But it may be I won't be talki
ng much after tonight, so take this,' his clenched hand brushed Hort's flexed to empty into the other's palm, 'and take my friendship. You've - acted as a man in this thing, and you have neither blood nor honour to drive you to it.'

  'One thing more,' said the youth. 'The Beysib - the Setmur clan, I mean - are real sailors, and they know their fishing, too ... But there are things they don't know about the harbourages here, around Sanctuary. I don't think they know that there's a tunnel through the east headland of the cove they've chosen for whatever they're going to do.' Hort managed a tight smile. Sweat beaded on his forehead. The risk he was taking by getting involved with the stranger was very real, though most of the specific dangers were more nebulous to him than they were to Samlor. 'One end of the tunnel opens under the corniche of the headland. You can row right into it at high tide. And when you lift the slab at the other end, you're in the temple itself.'

  Hort's coda had drawn from his listener all the awed pleasure that a story well told could bring. The local man stood up, strengthened by the respect of a strong man. 'May your gods lead you well, sir,' Hort said, squeezing the Cirdonian's hand in leave-taking. 'I look forward to hearing your story.'

  The youth strode out of the cantina with a flourish and a nod to the other patrons. Samlor shook his head. In a world that seemed filled with sharks and stonefish, Hort's bright courage was as admirable as it was rare.

  To say that Samlor felt like an idiot was to understate matters. It was the only choice he could come up with at short notice, however, and which did not involve others. At this juncture, the Cirdonian was not willing to involve others.

  He had rented a mule cart. It had provided a less noticeable method of scouting the cove than a horse would have done. The cart had also transported the punt he had bought to the nearest launching place to the headland that he could find. The roadstead on which Sanctuary was built was edged mostly by swamps, but the less-sheltered shore to the west had been carved away by storms. The limestone corniche rose ten to fifty feet above the sea, either sheer or with an outward batter. A lookout on the upper rim could often not see a vessel inshore but beneath him. That was to Samlor's advantage; but the punt, the only craft the Cirdonian felt competent to navigate, was utterly unsuited to the ocean.