by J. Hepburn
*~*~*
Never in all his youth as a messenger boy, entrusted by Melech or by merchants to carry parcels of sometimes considerable value, did Zerris move more quickly, more unpredictably, or with greater desire to avoid at all costs being followed or caught, as he does now.
He does not return to his home. It is certain that Melech will have watchers, and although Zerris knows numerous ways to evade them, he has no desire to risk Melech's wrath further by doing so. Yet if he were seen to return but not soon again leave, Melech would assume he had no desire to find Kalle; were Tiglis to be seen to leave, the same. And Orianna? There was now no way of becoming Orianna tonight. Or possibly even the next night, or the next! Even leaving by the back wall would not be safe.
He heads towards Saradakh while he gives himself time to think. He has several places he can shelter or even go to ground, most in Saradakh, some in the Merchants' Quarter.
That thought stops him. He returns to the observation that Kalle is obviously familiar with the Artisans' Quarter. He knows the square of the jewellers "rather well." Yet he has only been in Molos a week, and although he has found his way around the dice taverns, he is no merchant and has no obvious reason, beyond that of a thief, to investigate the Artisans' Quarter.
There are weaponsmiths in the quarter, but they are nowhere near the jewellers.
Zerris feels a grim sense of intent.
He heads into Saradakh but doubles back quickly, working his way around the edge of the Market Quarter towards the Artisans' Quarter.
It takes him perhaps an hour to find Rasil, who starts to edge away when he sees the hard set in Zerris's eyes.
"Where have you seen Kalle?" Zerris asks him.
Rasil flinches. "I told you..."
"All I'm asking is where you've already seen him," Zerris says. "No following, no finding anything out, just where you've already seen him. Don't tell me you haven't kept track of him and don't tell me the cubs don't get everywhere, everywhen, I taught you better than that."
Rasil squirms with none of his gang there to see him, and does not meet Zerris's eyes, but he shrugs with one shoulder. "Around Saradakh, east and west. Merchants' Quarter. Near most of the inns. Markets, of course. Artisans' Quarter. He gets everywhere, and he's always on the move. Never during the day, neither. Before dusk, maybe, but never in the morning."
"Where in the Artisans' Quarter?" Zerris demands.
Rasil licks his lips as his eyes dart around frantically, as if afraid Kalle himself might be overhearing them.
"Near the jewellers, the potters and the weavers," he says. "And that's it. Everywhere. Got that?"
Zerris throws a couple of coins at Rasil's feet. "I got that. Your health, Rasil."
Zerris finds a quiet corner before he gives himself the luxury of truly thinking through everything he knows. The weavers are on the edge of the Artisans' Quarter, the jewellers behind them. Anyone going to any of the inns might pass through the weavers if they were coming from the jewellers. The potters are closer to the Merchants' Quarter.
It is not enough, yet if Kalle knows the square of the jewellers well, he may have found lodging nearby. Perhaps among the carpenters. From the carpenters, anyone whose aim is the Merchants' Quarter may pass among the potters.
Zerris sets out with a new resolution.
He does not head straight, and does not allow himself to be followed. He has never tolerated surveillance—something Melech knows full well—but it is doubly important to avoid all followers now. None of Melech's men have the skill to escape detection by one such as Kalle, and if Kalle sees them he may arrive at the wrong idea.
He stops in a teahouse for a light lunch, not enough to sit heavy on his stomach and slow him down mentally or physically, but enough to bolster him and sustain him until dinner.
Outside the teahouse, he detects a lurking presence that attempts to follow him, identifies one of Melech's men without letting his own awareness be seen, and takes great satisfaction in losing him without being seen to do so deliberately.
Once inside the Artisans' Quarter, he behaves like a messenger, moving briskly and with an obvious goal in mind. With his head wrapped in desert fashion, he is no different from any of the boys about their tasks, and therefore not easily identifiable as Zerris.
Rasil's account gave more weight to his suspicion that Kalle is entirely a man of the night, but it is still not something he can rely upon. It is possible he will come across Kalle, and if he does, then he will attempt a polite—if perhaps short and pointed—conversation.
If he does not find Kalle, he will have to go to the meeting place as Zerris, and wait, and then have a conversation that may possibly be less polite and could hardly be less pointed.
He passes through the weavers and then the jewellers, stopping in the square of the jewellers to look around him searchingly, then passes on. He is seeking anywhere a small man with a thief's skill might find to sleep through the day, while the artisans themselves are busy.
There are often small, abandoned spaces in Molos, where a building has yet to be repaired or reoccupied, or even where the existence of an extra room has been forgotten entirely. Zerris has made use of such spaces himself, and knows others who have lived entire lives moving from one to another.
When someone has attuned their eyes to the existence of such spaces, they become much easier to find, and Zerris has a knack for finding them.
He spots several likely candidates, but further investigation, besides being increasingly difficult as Molos begins waking up for the afternoon, proves to be fruitless.
A worsening temper is gripping Zerris as he leaves the jewellers behind and begins moving among the carpenters. He sees more options there, but the streets are busier now and it is even harder to linger, let alone to investigate. He searches for all the signs that someone has passed over walls or through narrow cracks, but the evening is drawing near and still he is frustrated.
Gritting his teeth, he abandons his search and hunts instead, with far greater success, for a street market where he may procure some sort of early dinner to fortify him for a meeting which he is beginning to worry may not happen.
Bargaining
The first glow of dusk has come and gone, and the shadows are stretching hungrily into light that is dropping into the true darkness of night, and there has been no sign of Kalle.
Zerris crouches against a wall in the square of the jewellers, wrapped in his outer robes like a child trying to evade hard work, and tries to choose between sweating with anxiety and cursing with anger.
He has already wondered if perhaps it would have been wiser, and quicker, to attempt a transformation to Orianna for this meeting, but it would be too risky even if the confidence he had felt as Tiglis had stayed with him. He would need the right oils and pastes for his skin, he would need to alter his face, and he would need different clothes. Those resources took him—more accurately, Tiglis—a week to procure. In a few hours? Finding the right clothes would be difficult while presenting as a man, and although he might be able to secure the other materials, he would then need somewhere equipped with adequate light and a mirror, where he would not be seen either entering or leaving… No, that was not an option. Orianna was not designed to be a simple transformation, but a thorough one.
He swears silently many times as the sky darkens.
The square is not teeming with people, so Zerris can see the fountain well enough even from his low and limited vantage point. There have been many clad in honest desert black, but there have been no short men clad in popinjay black.
Zerris had forearmed himself for disappointment, knowing full well that Kalle might have (wisely) chosen to cut and run, having already cut once and proven his ability to run, but even so, he allows himself occasional torrents of bitter abuse at the man who swore he had honour to reclaim.
Fury rises in him in waves. He has to grind his teeth to stop from snarling his thoughts aloud—thoughts which constantly retread the same ground: T
hat Kalle would be best advised to leave, which means the key is lost, which means the Egg—and the payout Zerris is counting on—is as good as lost. Which means that Zerris's reputation with Melech and Sarvin both might be irreparably damaged and with it, his hope of gaining more lucrative contracts from Sarvin or anyone else.
Hidden inside the sleeves of his robe, Zerris's hands curl into fists. Blast Kalle! Where might he be hiding, if he does not mean to make this meeting? Not in any inn or tavern or public house, that is for sure, unless he truly has a death wish, or knows of places like the Scorpion... But no, that is not likely. So, not in any public place, then. Melech also knows what is happening in many places where the homeless or those hiding from the law might be, which, given there has been yet no uproar from him, rules them out. And in any case, there is no conceivable way a man like Kalle would choose to hide wherever any other man, woman, or child could see him, or even suspect his presence.
The thought occurs to Zerris, with the suddenness, impact, and unpleasant sensation of an adder's strike, that Kalle might be here already, hiding and waiting for either him or Orianna.
Zerris casts a suddenly uneasy glance at the sky, to confirm that above the great oil lanterns, dusk has given way to true dark.
He leaps to his feet to hurry towards the fountain, remembering for now to maintain his façade of youth and therefore having to do more dodging around other men than he is used to.
Whetted with tension though he is, the crowd does not distract Zerris from seeing Kalle as, with no attempt at concealment whatsoever, wearing his cape with the hood thrown back, that man saunters into the square from a side street that affords no hiding places whatsoever.
Zerris directs upon Kalle a look of pure fury, reining it in, but not before Kalle sees the look and returns one of measured warning and challenge.
When Zerris pulls his headdress open enough for Kalle to recognise him, he is awarded a moment of smug glee and superiority that he so convincingly fooled a man so sharp of eye.
The joy lasts as long as a puddle of water at midday.
He leads Kalle rapidly out of the square, ducking down streets until they find a small patch of privacy in a deep doorway.
"I must apologise for my tardiness," Kalle begins, "but I am glad to see you again, Zerris, although I confess my heart was hoping—"
"Kalle," Zerris hisses, "what, by the horns of the Demons, did you do?"
"I see you have heard," Kalle says, in a tone of voice such as he might use to remark upon another uneventful sunset. "I can assure you, it was not planned."
"Kalle, curse you, what happened!"
"I object to being cursed, but I waive that for the now. The simple fact is, good Zerris, that I was accosted the evening after I met Tiglis. That meeting had left me in a fine mood and I had no desire to offer anyone—particularly not Melech!—any injury, either directly or by proxy, but his men followed me without attempting to introduce themselves, then gave me threat without making proper introductions, and that I could not stand."
Zerris stares at him, goggle-eyed.
Kalle, clearly a man who enjoys telling tales as much as he enjoys spinning empty words, flourishes one hand like a wandering street performer. "I led them to a quiet place, not wishing to make our confrontation public, and when I stopped to enquire as to their health, why! They were most rude. 'A fine night, is it not?' I asked, attempting by my own habits to be courteous, and was greeted merely with 'Are you Kalle, friend?'" Kalle's voice drops to mimic the other man, becoming deep and rough of accent. Even with the most liberal of allowances, Zerris cannot recognise either Rimon or Samih in that intonation.
"Now, Zerris, I do not know if you have noticed, but in my experience in many cities across this wide and varied Kingdom, a man who uses 'friend' in introduction to a stranger very rarely is. So although I was correct, I believe, in calling the night fine, this strange man had lied to me in return. Now I ask you, Zerris, was that polite? Was that, in fact, tolerable?
"No!" Kalle continues, warming enthusiastically to his tale as Zerris stares at him, caught between wrath and despair. "It was not! I informed these two men of less than gentle mien that yes, I am Kalle, and that I was forced to the assumption they intended mischief upon my person. I told them, therefore, that I would give them one chance to change their minds. I do not believe I could have done fairer.
"And in return? 'You are coming with us,' they said! Just that! And married action to threat by grasping the hilts of their knives. I asked for an explanation, and they merely repeated themselves." Kalle shrugs expansively. "So I killed them. What else could I do? I confess I did not know their identities until after I left our meeting, Zerris, and was fortune enough to hear two men running in seeming panic. I followed them, for such may often portend entertainment, and overhead these men accost another. Their conversation led me to assume I had, it seemed, inadvertently given offence to Melech.
"So there you have it, and no moot would rightly judge me guilty, but I have no doubt Melech will."
Zerris has not heard the word "moot" before, but can understand Kalle's point well enough. He finds it necessary to bury his face in his hands, deciding that hiding his emotions that way is an easier and healthier solution than attempting to keep them off his features entirely.
"I suspected that was probably the case," he snarls when he has himself under control and faces Kalle once more. It is all he trusts himself to say.
Kalle beams. "Fantastic! I am so glad to see that you had trusted me."
"Trusted you!" Only long habit keeps Zerris's voice below a shout. "Trusted you! I trust you to cause me even more grief than you already have!"
"Caused you?" Kalle's expression is one of benign interest. "As much as I have caused myself?"
"Perhaps," Zerris snarls.
Kalle winks at him. It takes Zerris a stunned second to assure himself that the wink had, in truth, been there.
"Well, then perhaps we have a little something extra in common!" Kalle says, a note of cheer in his voice.
Melech had described Kalle as "cheerful enough, but makes people uneasy." That assessment was far from doing Kalle justice. Unease is the least of Zerris's reactions now.
Kalle is making him feel unbalanced. He has a great urge to step backwards and prepare for a fight. He has no idea whether Kalle will hug him, lunge at him with murderous intent, or break into dance.
Yet when talking to Tiglis, and even when holding a knife to Orianna's throat, Kalle had been courtesy itself. It might have been wiser, it occurs to Zerris, to have attempted the transformation to Orianna after all, no matter how great the danger. He forces that thought down. Dwelling on the past serves no tea in the present.
"Something else?" Zerris asks, hardening his voice.
"Beyond our mutual acquaintances," Kalle replies. "Speaking of whom, I must ask, is Orianna—"
"Orianna is keeping herself well out of harm's way," Zerris snaps. "It is not safe for me to meet with her while Melech's suspicion falls upon me, as well as on you." These lines, at least, he has rehearsed. If a meeting may yet be possible, he needs Kalle to realise it will be not be a simple matter to arrange.
"Falls upon you? Why, whatever have you done?"
"Done?" A spasm of fury once more forces Zerris to pause while he regains control of himself. "Done? I asked after you, after Orianna first gave me your name! I was seen to meet with you in public! You killed two of Melech's men, and now I am guilty by association! Kalle, Melech may not trust me again unless I give him your head, so we have a night and a day, and perhaps another night, but no more than that, to conclude any business we have. After that, you need to leave Molos before I have no choice but to put the serpents upon you!"
Kalle spreads his arms solicitously. "Zerris! Zerris! I am sorry from the bottom of my heart. Truly, I never wished to cause such grief for anyone, least of all any brother of such a fine woman as Tiglis, nor any colleague of so fine a woman as Orianna, nor anyone I should be treating as
my own brother. You are right: We have plotting to do. It seems I will not be staying in Molos, but such is the path of life, which plays us as cats play with mice, and with similar ultimate effect. We will work through this together, I swear it. Embrace me and declare us comrades."
The only thing that then prevents a rapid, evasive backwards movement from Zerris is the stone behind his back. He takes instead a sharp step sideways, a movement he can at least pass off as being another spasm of anger.
He realises of a sudden one thing that bothers him so much about Kalle. It is not merely the unpredictability or the wildness of his emotions; Kalle stands not like a mere fighter, but like a killer.
Molos is full of violence, but it is full of forgiveness as well. The men of Molos, city and desert both, are quick to anger but also quick to friendship. Even those robbers known in other cities as cutthroats prefer to strike unseen and leave their victims unconscious but alive. More murder happens in Molos at the hands of outsiders than natives. Only the desert tribes with ancient feuds seek to kill, and they keep their business outside city walls.
Zerris has been in fights all his life, but has killed rarely even though his considerable size, weight, and reach disadvantages usually make a quick kill his safest option. Before the previous evening, Tiglis had only killed three men, all of them strangers to Molos who had been unwise in their intentions. In all of Molos, violent death is not uncommon, but intended death is rare. It is a city where hot heads mean injuries are everyday, and many die from their wounds, but once scores are settled, that is the end of it.
Kalle seems to be a man who will kill as the first option.
The man Kalle caught cheating at dice might still be alive, but Zerris suspects that is merely because Kalle knows the risks of a deliberate killing in public. That, Zerris realises, seems to be the key to understanding Kalle: Underneath his bluster, cheer, and flamboyance, he studies every situation and calculates its risks. Zerris can appreciate that. Zerris does the same thing. But Zerris uses guile to stay out of trouble, and deception to escape danger. Where Zerris will negotiate his way out of arguments, Kalle seems to have no compunctions about killing any man who threatens him. He does not kill for pleasure; he kills because he sees no reason not to. There is considerable honesty there, but not an honesty Zerris has ever met before.