by Bill Fawcett
More than that, he was dangerous.
At last Jremm spoke. “I will find him,” he promised firmly. “If he is in Ar, I will find him.” He pointed to a grain-wagon that stood just outside the gates. “Wait for me there, Oziltor. I will return before sunrise.”
“Before sunrise?” the other shot back. “I need Reswen long before that. Can you not hurry?”
Jremm looked at him and sighed. “To find him before sunrise, I will be hurrying already. If I can do so earlier, I’ll return to you then. But I can’t promise to find him before sunrise, if at all. Ar is simply too large.”
Oziltor stood silent. Patches of gold and cream fur glittered in the moon’s soft light, the darker areas showing shadows the color of crimson. Softly he clapped the heels of his hands together and looked beyond Jremm to the plains beyond. At last he turned back to the younger mrem, nodded his head, and turned to walk away. When he reached the grain-wagon, Jremm strode back toward the gates.
“Before sunrise,” Oziltor reminded as Jremm stepped past.
“Yes,” Jremm replied, and he disappeared into the city.
ONCE THROUGH the gates, and past the inner wall, the sounds and smells of the city at night pounded him like a hammer. With the Festival of the Graingod approaching, sections of Ar that would by now normally be fast asleep were full of young mrem strolling or running through the streets. Already the tables lining the streets were filling with merchandise, goods from several days’ march away, things that most Ar-mrem could only dream of purchasing. But they were there anyway, even at night drawing crowds who came to look, and once in a while a merchant would stage a contest to attract a bigger crowd and give some small item away. When that happened, the scene at his table was bedlam.
Jremm walked slowly, because he did not want to seem conspicuous and because he was as interested as any mrem in the preparations for the Festival. He realized, too, that if Reswen were somewhere in the bustle of activity, he could be seen only if Jremm was extremely careful. Jremm had done this kind of thing before, of course, tracking one important figure after another for his report to Mithmid, but he had never tracked a dangerous one. Usually Mithmid wanted information about a noble—about whom he talked to or where he went for his midday meal—and Jremm had proven himself especially adept at finding these things out. He wondered now why Mithmid had never asked for anything more difficult. If this Doroman, who barely knew Jremm, thought well enough of him to point a total stranger in his direction, why was Mithmid so hesitant to give him an important job? He’d have to ask Mithmid this, if he ever got a chance to talk to him.
The likeliest place to find a mercenary was among the ale shops near the East Gate. The neighborhood was the oldest in Ar, and even the larger homes were run-down and divided into small sleeping rooms. Like most of Ar, the walls were made of brick, but lacked the colorful facings that covered the dun-colored brick in the more prosperous sections.
He entered the first ale shop he came to. The inside was dim and smoke-filled. A quick look assured the brickmaker the mercenary was not there. The second dingy inn was filled with drunken city guards. After a scowl from the barkeep, Jremm bought a tankard of the thick, bitter ale. After the fourth alehouse, the brickmaker stopped buying a drink in every shop. By the tenth, the thick fumes and smoke alone were making him a bit giddy. Worse yet, no one had seen Reswen for days. He would have to look elsewhere.
Only a few hours had passed since his conversation with Oziltor, but already Jremm was beginning to worry. He’d covered the most common areas of Ar’s center, the Festival sites and the most frequented inns, but he’d seen neither Reswen nor anyone else who looked even vaguely like the description he had gotten from an alekeeper. Then again, Jremm wondered if he would recognize Reswen if he did see him. He had been given a sketch of Reswen, but the warrior could have dyed his fur. Jremm hoped not. Stopping in the middle of the street, he looked around him at perhaps a hundred different faces, studying them as carefully as he could, and even then he knew he couldn’t be sure. Any one of them could be Reswen.
By this time, he had circled back near the gates. He was tired, hot, and ready to give up, but he wasn’t ready to admit any of those, especially not to Oziltor. Still, he decided to go back through the gates and talk to the tall mrem, cleverly extracting a bit more information, impressing him with his progress, and finding out if he really wanted Jremm to go through with this lengthy search. Jremm’s great hope, at this point, was that Oziltor would call it off.
Not that he really expected it, though.
Halfway through the gates he stopped. There, just outside the city, stood Oziltor, near the grain-wagon where Jremm had left him. But talking with him now was a tall, muscular mrem, who stood facing Jremm. This, he knew at once, was Reswen. Jremm sidled to his left against the wall of the outer gate, straining to hear, but he was too far away. His temptation was to stride out to the two of them and congratulate Oziltor on having found his mrem. For two reasons, though, he didn’t. In the first place he was afraid of Reswen, and in the second he wanted to find out whether this meeting had been random or planned. Working for Mithmid had taught him, more than anything else, to be thoroughly suspicious.
He edged closer, until finally he could hear brief spurts of the conversation. There was something about a female that he strained to hear, but not the usual things. Then he heard the word “kill,” and the tone of it was harsh.
The last thing he heard them say, as Reswen began to walk away, was a question about “the young mrem.” “...rid of him...” came the broken response, “...seeking you...” a bit of the rest. Jremm saw Reswen smile, and the mercenary left Oziltor’s side.
I was right, Jremm told himself. Right about listening, at least, if not about Oziltor to begin with. I wasn’t supposed to find Reswen, I was supposed to waste my time searching for him. Good thing I gave up so easily, he noted wryly to himself.
Mithmid, he knew, would find this very interesting. The older mrem’s interest in Reswen was always extremely high.
Oziltor disappeared into a group of mrem inside the city. Shortly afterward, Reswen strolled through, his face unsmiling and intense, accompanied by two other mrem, all three carrying knives and wearing swords slung from their crossbelts. Jremm watched them pass, then cautiously picked his way out of the crowd and toward the center of the city.
Stopping not at all, seldom even slowing down, Reswen and his companions marched toward Arbunda’s Rest, despite its pretentious name, one of the least reputable inns in Ar. In former times the inn had housed nobility, once even a King of Ar whose palace quarters were under renovation, but since then it had undergone a series of depredations, mostly the result of irresponsible proprietors and a location that seemed to attract the city’s worst. At night, especially, the place was to be avoided, except by mrem whose tastes ran toward the dangerous. Gambling games were played here, it was said, as was a very special slave trade. Unlike legal slavery, which sold to nobles only criminals or prisoners of war, the Rest conducted a highly specialized and illegal commerce. Its goods, or so the tales of horror went, were the sons and daughters of royalty and Dancers, their importance making them priceless. Jremm shuddered at this, but he had some trouble believing it. Where, he wondered, did the traders get so many whitefurs?
Right now, though, that wasn’t his problem. Reswen had already entered the Rest, and his two companions waited outside. Hiding in the shadow of a nearby building, Jremm watched them talking to one another and pointing away, until at last they split up and wandered away from the inn. The smaller of the two headed around the side of the inn into an alley as dark as it was long. The larger, though, captured Jremm’s attention: he was headed straight for him.
If Jremm jumped out now, he would be only a couple of paces from the other mrem, making his back an easy target for a knife-throw. Jremm was also aware he was not an especially fast runner. He could attack, of course, but he wasn
’t a great fighter, either. As a matter of fact, at this moment in his life Jremm wasn’t sure he was good at anything at all, and in his mind he was beginning to extol the many virtues of brickmaking as a lifelong trade. He was rapidly gaining a new fondness for even Errlo’s tirades.
All right then, Jremm told himself, just stand here. As quietly and as casually as you can. Sure, came another voice in his head, and then what? What if he finds you? If that happens, the other shot back, you can always talk your way out of it. Tell him you’re waiting for a friend of yours to come out because you have important things to discuss. Ridiculous! boomed the inevitable second. Why wouldn’t you go in after him? Good point—how about my family won’t let me, because of our faith. The second voice laughed. “Face it,” it insisted. “You’re going to get hit.”
What about this? cut in the first voice. What about telling him I’m waiting for someone who owes me something, waiting to break his fingers if he doesn’t pay? That, at least, is something this mrem might understand. The second voice paused. I like that, it said finally. That one should work. Of course, there’s always the possibility you could give him ideas, and you end up with your own fingers broken simply for being here. But if we have to choose, I’d say go with that one.
Thanks, the first voice replied. Its tone was dubious.
Reswen’s bodyguard slipped into the shadow where Jremm posed against the wall. The young mrem’s mind was beginning to argue with itself again, this time over the wisdom of calling attention to himself instead of letting the armed mrem discover him. He’d heard in tales that doing so was usually wise, because if you didn’t you would seem to be hiding, and ruffians don’t like people who hide. They also, the stories confirmed, don’t like being surprised.
He decided to try it. Tensing his leg muscles, he prepared to step gently away from the wall and ask, in as unthreatening a voice as possible, “Looking for something, my friend?” If he acted quickly, the other mrem would see him in time to react with his mouth, not with claws or knives. This, too, was part of the strategy.
“Crorantan!” a voice shouted suddenly. The armed mrem snapped his head to the right. “Now, Crorantan! I’ve found something! Hurry!”
“Not now,” Crorantan’s harsh voice yelled back. “I’ve heard something here.”
“Later!” the other ordered. “Right now I need you here!”
Jremm pressed himself back against the wall. Don’t disobey orders, Crorantan, he thought to himself. What’s over there is much more important than what’s here. But still the armed mrem refused to move. Step by small step, he narrowed the already short distance between himself and Jremm. The young mrem’s heart hammered like two rocks pounding together. He wondered that he was the only one who could hear it.
“Crorantan, I said now!” the other’s voice boomed. “In case you’ve forgotten, Reswen has put me in command, and it is a command I am now giving you. I don’t forget those who disobey me.”
Crorantan snarled, quickly scanned the alley, and turned away. Jremm breathed twice, registered the gratitude from his deprived lungs, and felt his muscles untying themselves. But he knew he had little time to spare, and he knew as well that he must somehow get into the inn. Arbunda’s Rest was hardly his favorite spot, but tonight he had no choice.
In any case, now was the time to move.
He looked above him, to the roof two stories up. Climbing the walls wouldn’t be difficult, constructed as they were of unfinished mud bricks set in an alternating step-like pattern, an older style whose popularity had declined greatly when young children had started climbing to the roofs and falling to their deaths. Much of the city’s eastern core boasted buildings of this sort, and even though they were growing increasingly dilapidated they continued to house craftsmen and merchants, who protested strongly against tearing them down. Jremm was usually quite noisy about the need to get rid of them, but tonight, with Crorantan and his fellow bodyguard around the corner and a mere twenty strides away, he decided that these once-ugly buildings had suddenly assumed an elegance all their own. Placing the toes of his right foot on the edge of the third mud brick from the ground, he hoisted himself up the building’s wall. He was silent, and he was fast, and when he reached the top he waited until he was sure that Reswen’s bodyguards had noticed nothing.
All he had to hope for now was that the roof was fairly sturdy. He had no way of telling in advance whether or not it was reinforced with songomore planks, as recent buildings were, or if it was just tightly drawn thatches. No matter which, though, the strongest part of any roof was never the peak but always where it overlapped the walls, so when he reached the roof he kept his feet where he thought the walls should be. Crouching, he stepped cautiously along.
As he had expected, this roof joined with the roof of Arbunda’s Rest. That, too, was part of the older style, before the recent prosperity made separate roofs not only possible but also common, except of course in the low-houses where roofs were thrown on the huts (even the builders didn’t call them houses) as cheaply and quickly as possible. Here the joined roof signified an older time, but it also told of a desire for added strength. Mrem valued their privacy and space, but as all the builders knew, there was something to be said for joining buildings at the roof.
Jremm crawled onto the roof of the Rest. Now that he was here, of course, he still had to get inside, but this wouldn’t be hard. Like most buildings, the Rest was ventilated by opening portions of its roof, and even now Jremm could see inside. The trick was not how to enter, but to enter in the right place.
Reaching the first opening, he looked down into an empty bedroom. The bed had a sheet thrown hastily across it, and a pair of boots lay on the floor. How easy it would be, he suddenly realized, to be a thief here; the mrem’s belongings were almost begging to be taken.
The second opening showed another bedroom, but this one was occupied. Occupied, in fact, by two people, neither of whom seemed greatly concerned with the prospect of sleep. For a moment Jremm considered dropping spit on them and then hiding to watch their reaction, but he managed to tear his eyes away and move further along the roof.
Here was the opening he wanted. High above the inn’s main room, the opening allowed access to the wooden beams that held up the Rest’s roof. He suspected a similar opening at the other side of the building, but he couldn’t imagine it offering a better position. He could crawl inside here and lie on the thickest beam, and unless someone looked directly at him he would never be noticed. Even if they did, the smoke from the lanterns would probably hide him.
Carefully he made his way through the opening. It was small, and he went through feet first, his legs immediately touching the beam. Almost through now, he raised his arms over his head and prepared to slide the remainder of the way.
Suddenly he heard a noise, not from the inn but from the street below. Feet ran heavily, and a sword whished from its sheath. “Who’s there?” came a husky shout. Jremm froze.
“I said, who’s there?” another shout echoed. “Answer, or I attack.”
Jremm held his breath. If he answered, everyone in the inn would hear him. But if he didn’t, and he had to fight, they would hear him anyway. Suppressing an audible sigh, he flexed his leg muscles to slide himself back outside.
But then he stopped. A high, timid voice sounded from below. “It’s me,” it said, and it began to sob.
“Rennilan?” the male voice asked. “Is it you?”
“Yes,” the young female whispered. “Me. Oh, please don’t tell. Please don’t tell.”
For a moment there was silence. Jremm knew he should use this chance to disappear inside, but this was Rennilan, and he couldn’t stop listening.
“What were you doing in the Rest?” The mrem’s voice was stern but not threatening.
“What do you think? What does everybody do in the Rest, every young female at least?” Her voice trembled.
“You were upstairs, in the friendship room?” Silence, then, “Why, Rennilan? You can have any young mrem you want, whenever you want. Why come here?”
“It doesn’t matter,” she answered. “I’m just here.”
“You’re wrong,” the husky voice answered. “It does matter. Nobody minds who you’re with, and you know that. What they mind is if you come here. When your mother...”
“Don’t you dare tell my father,” Rennilan shrieked. “He has no reason to know.”
A long silence followed. At last the mrem sighed and said, “Come with me. You will have to be questioned. It may be that nothing more will be said.” Two pairs of footsteps disappeared into the street.
My god, Jremm thought. Rennilan? Here? And in the friendship room? And then it dawned on him, suddenly and hatefully, that it was the friendship room he had seen moments before. Is this what Rennilan did when she refused to see him? Come here? To Arbunda’s Rest, of all godforsaken places? Why, when she could have mrem over to her parents’ house if she wanted? Why the Rest, the city’s most degrading place for male and female mrem alike?
Then it struck him. The bodyguard had known Rennilan. Recognized her immediately. Why? What had she been doing while he had courted her so hesitantly?
His stomach almost heaving with that thought, Jremm slid the rest of the way onto the beam. He lay face down along it, keeping still for a moment in case in his entry he had knocked loose some dirt. Should someone look up, he didn’t want them to notice anything. He had to force himself to concentrate on his mission, not Rennilan.
At last his vision adjusted enough for him to look down. His eyes burned as he stared through the smoky haze, but after a short while he was able to make out faces in the crowd. As always, especially at Festival time, the Rest was filled to capacity with mrem of all ages and descriptions drinking, lounging, gambling, or yelling conversation to one another. What drew mrem to this place was entirely beyond his comprehension.