I’d never thought that nobles had particularly good manners myself, but said vaguely, ‘Anything’s possible.’
I went on to ask her where I might be able to find him at that hour of the night and she gave me the name of several bars, then asked wistfully, ‘Are you sure you can’t help with my little problem?’
When I refused, she pouted—a gesture that might have looked appealing on the face of a pretty twenty-year-old, but looked ridiculous on a sagging woman of over thirty.
I shook my head, made my excuses and left. I had a lot more to do that night.
THREE
I met up with Niamor again even sooner than I had expected. He was lounging in the shadows of one of the port’s ramshackle wooden buildings and confronted me just a hundred paces down the street from the fish-and-swillie bar. Perhaps he’d even been looking for me; it would have been a safe assumption to make that I would be out and about at night since that was the time when most of my sort of business was done. The port wasn’t so large that it would have been impossible to find an acquaintance, if you knew the kind of places they’d be frequenting.
When Niamor materialised out of the shadows I was leaning against a post so that I could scrape clean the sole of my boot with my sword blade (the woman who’d forged the weapon for me would have been appalled). I had apparently stepped on the slime trail of a sea-pony and the glue-like mucus had created a gall of sand and fish scales in my instep.
‘Evening, Blaze,’ he said. He took my hand and raised it to his lips in a gesture that had gone out of style in high society fifty years before. ‘Time for some conversation?’
I slid the sword over my shoulder and back into its scabbard. ‘Certainly.’ I looked up and down the street. The lesser moon was already up and shedding a soft light; there was no one in sight, no one to overhear us, so I added, ‘Especially if the company doesn’t mind imparting information.’
‘Information has a price in Gorthan Spit.’ He grinned at me and pulled me gently into the darkest shadows. I went willingly enough and didn’t object when he put his arms around me (so much for my intended caution), although I raised a disbelieving eyebrow when he added, ‘You are the most magnificent creature that’s come to Gorthan Spit in a year or two.’
‘Try again, Niamor. Or have you already forgotten that Cirkasian lovely we saw in The Drunken Plaice this afternoon?’
‘Milksop. I like fire, I do.’
‘People who play with fire get burnt.’
The kiss was long and thorough and very satisfying—as far as kisses alone can ever be satisfying.
‘Mmm,’ he murmured. ‘Sometimes I like to burn my fingers.’
I buttoned up the tunic buttons he had just undone. ‘This lady is in no hurry to do likewise.’
He pulled a rueful face, but didn’t protest. ‘So? I can wait. I confidently predict that you and I are destined to share more than information one day.’
He was about to say something further but someone came down the street in a swirl of blue robes. I just had time to note that the newcomer was wearing a peculiar hat and walking as if he had a pebble in his shoe, before he swept past, deliberately banging my shoulder as he went. ‘Slut,’ he said, almost spitting out his loathing.
I blinked in surprise and looked back at Niamor. ‘Who was that?’
He grinned at me. ‘There are a couple of Fellih-worshipper missionaries from Mekaté here. He’s one of them.’
That explained the strange gait and the hat. Men who worshipped the god Fellih wore top hats with a tall narrow crown and a small brim, tied under the chin with a big black bow. They thought it was a sin to venture outside their houses without covering themselves in this rather ridiculous and inconvenient headgear. In addition, they wore shoes with raised soles and heels that sometimes made them clumsy pedestrians. You probably haven’t heard of them. They were a strange sect that sprang up on Mekaté, a combination of pagan superstition and Menod ideas of a single God. They’ve largely disappeared now, swept away by mainstream Menod doctrine, and no great loss to humanity either. They were an unpleasant bunch while they lasted, and powerful too, in places.
‘Not going to go after him with that sword of yours to pay him back for the insult?’
‘Come off it, Niamor. If I stuck my sword into everyone who ever insulted me, I’d be the worst mass murderer the Isles have ever known. So tell me: Fellih-worshippers are sending missionaries here?’
‘Yep. Been trying to convert sinners to their peculiar brand of religious zealotry for the past couple of months.’
I was incredulous. I had been to Mekaté. I’d heard the Fellih-worshippers preach: they muddled justice and judgement, sex and sin, vaginas and vice—the end result was the mix of ignorance, bigotry and fear of death that they called their religion. They didn’t impose the same rigid dress code on their women as they did on the men, but the moral code was similar for both sexes. Then, with odd logic, most of what was banned to their followers on earth was promised to them in heaven as a reward for their abstinence, which seemed ridiculous to me, but I had little patience with religious philosophy at the best of times.
I thought of Fellih-worshippers trying to preach salvation and their brand of puritanical morality to the people of Gorthan Spit and started to laugh. Niamor evidently didn’t need to be told what was so funny, because he said, ‘I’d love to see them take on the whores down along Bonesetters Street.’
‘I’d like to see them telling the brothel owners on the dockside to close shop.’
‘Can you imagine what would happen if they castigated Irma Goldwood for having dyed hair?’ We both giggled like a couple of kids. Irma I remembered; she had tried to recruit me as one of her girls once. She was the rather large and foul-mouthed madam of the largest brothel, a formidable lady as unstoppable as a great white shark, and almost as scary.
Niamor was still smiling as he leant forward, ran a thumb over my bottom lip in a gesture of intimacy and, lowering his voice, asked, ‘Just what is your interest in a Cirkasian slave, Blaze?’
I sobered up. Careful, Blaze. He’s no fool, and you could like him far too much. ‘I have a mandate to buy one. It’s that simple. But you can tell me something much more interesting: just what is going on here, Niamor?’
‘You came in from Cirkase on a fishing boat this morning, right? And you already know that there’s something going on? Who the hell are you, my lovely one?’
Laughter forgotten, we were sniffing one another out like a couple of cautious dogs and that could have gone on all night, with neither of us actually saying anything. One of us had to break the deadlock. I grinned. ‘Someone very like you, I think. I’m doing this for money, which I am very much in need of. Most of all I want to keep my skin intact. I don’t like treading on toes, Niamor, especially toes that belong to people who are a lot bigger—figuratively—than I am. I would very much like to know where not to tread.’
He nodded as if he accepted that much as truth. ‘Then we do have a lot in common. I thought I recognised a kindred spirit. Blaze, take my advice and leave. For all that you’re a halfbreed and, I’ll wager, a citizenless one too,’ he reached up to brush curls away from my left ear confirming that my lobe was indeed unmarked, ‘and therefore unwelcome just about everywhere else; for all that, you’d be better off looking for your slave on some other island. It’d be safer.’
‘Come on, Niamor, where else am I going to find a Cirkasian slave woman, especially one that’s young and pretty? Most islands have banned the slave traffic, if not the slavery of criminals; you know that. The Keepers won’t have it any other way. That ship from Cirkase is calling their cargo “indentured servants”, would you believe.’
‘You should have taken up my offer to get you that woman at the inn. It’d be much simpler. She doesn’t have a hope of leaving Gorthan Spit in one piece anyway, not her.’ He sounded cheerfully unconcerned about her fate.
I said, ‘Whoever tangles with that blue-eyed charmer will find her about
as easy to deal with as a handful of lugworms in a rainstorm.’
That interested him, but he didn’t press the matter. He probably sensed I wasn’t going to tell him any more. He reverted to my original question instead. ‘Blaze, I don’t know what’s going on. And that’s a terrible admission for someone like me to make. Up until now, I’ve survived and prospered here because I knew what was happening. I knew the people. Not any more. I’m seriously thinking of emptying Gorthan Spit’s fish scales out of my shoes for good, and I advise you to do the same. Half of Gorthan Docks is scared hairless, and no one’s talking. They’re too frightened.’
I caught his faint uncertainty. He was still none too sure whether he could trust me, any more than I was sure if I could trust him. I didn’t think he had been the source of the dunmagic, but there was no way I could be positive. No smell of it clung to him now. I cursed the unexpected limitations of my Awareness. I had only my instincts… I took a gamble. ‘Dunmagic?’ I asked.
He gave me a sharp look with those dark eyes of his and lowered his voice even more. ‘I don’t know. I don’t have Awareness.’
‘I do.’ The admission was enough to kill me if he was a dunmaster. ‘There’s dunmagic in the air, Niamor. I’ve been smelling it ever since I arrived.’
‘Shit.’ He looked at me with new respect. ‘You’ve taken a risk in telling me. I suppose you’d know if I was a dunmagicker, but what if I worked for one?’
I shrugged. ‘Then I’m as good as dead. Life’s full of risks. What if I’m the one who’s lying?’
He gave a reluctant chuckle. ‘Life’s shit, isn’t it? Hell, Blaze, you and I ought to team up. We could go a long way together, we could.’
‘I’m a loner, Niamor. Always have been. However, if you can find me a Cirkasian slave, I’ll pay the percentage. And I’ll owe you a favour. In the meantime, have you no idea who’s behind this dunmagic?’
‘Well—no. Until now I wasn’t even certain there was dunmagic, although there have been a helluva lot of strange deaths lately. And most of them very nasty as well. There’s been talk of people tortured to death or just rotting away, that sort of thing. And there’s a village up the coast that’s become a very bad place to visit. In fact, those who go there don’t seem to come back. Creed, it’s called. I used to bed a girl who lived in Creed, and she hasn’t turned up in the Docks for weeks.
‘I don’t know who’s behind it all,’ he added.
‘But—?’
‘But I can have a good guess as to who his chief henchmen are.’
‘You interest me. Go on.’
‘There’re four of them. Four bastards known for their unpleasant habits. A big red-headed Breth Islander called Mord—a killer, Mord is. Got to be with a name like that: doesn’t it mean death in Brethian crim argot? He’s an ex slave-handler. Then there’s his brother, Teffel. You’ll recognise him by his nose: it’s the size of a large sea-potato and about as attractive. He’s just a cliché; all muscle, no brain, is Teffel. Then there’s a small wiry halfbreed called Sickle, a torturer by profession until torture was outlawed just about everywhere. Didn’t stop the likes of him, though, or the kind that employ his like—just made them more circumspect. He hangs around The Drunken Plaice a lot. Rumour has it he likes one of the backroom girls there, poor bint. The fourth one’s the most dangerous of the lot: a Fen Islander with a chip on his shoulder about his short stature. His name’s Domino and he’s the one with the brains.’
‘But you don’t think any of these attractive fellows meddles with dunmagic? Were any of them in The Drunken Plaice at lunch today?’
‘Sickle the torturer was. But I’ve known all four of them for years, including Sickle. I’ve had business with them all, at one time or another. If any of them practises dunmagic, then I’m a lot more dense than I thought. No, this dunmagic business—if that’s what it is that’s got everyone so scared—started only about four months back.’
‘Then maybe you could give a thought to remembering who arrived on Gorthan Spit about four months back. Someone who has contact with at least one of those four. And who was in The Drunken Plaice at lunch.’
He gave me an uneasy glance. ‘Offhand I can’t think of anyone, but I’ll give it some thought. Why?’
‘Because someone cast a dunspell.’
‘At lunch? In front of everyone?’
‘Yes. Not aimed at either of us, though, don’t worry. But it was too powerful for me to say who was responsible.
‘A dunmaster, then. That’s a dangerous brew to stir, Blaze.’
‘If I know what’s in the brew, then I know how to avoid agitating those ingredients that would give me trouble. I don’t want trouble, Niamor. And neither do you.’
‘How to avoid it—that’s the problem. There’s just too much happening. And I haven’t told you the half of it. For example, I haven’t told you about all the people who have become interested in Gorthan Spit in the past few months. We even had a Keeper ship in here—Keepers! They’ve never concerned themselves with the Spit before. And there’s a ghemph in town. Why would one of those thumb-fumbling web-foots come here? In addition, I’ve seen more patriarchs of the Menod in the last couple of months than I’ve seen in thirty years of sinful living.’ He shook his head in bewilderment. At a guess, Niamor had never had much to do with the Men of God patriarchs, or any other priest for that matter.
A ghemph, however, now that interested me. I fingered my empty earlobe instinctively. Ghemphs were citizenship tattooists. Niamor’s remark about thumb-fumbling was a gross calumny; ghemphs were skilled artisans. But they weren’t human. ‘The ghemph: is it still around?’ I asked casually.
‘Yeah, as far as I know. But don’t get your hopes up, Blaze. It’s not doing any unlawful business.’
I changed the subject. ‘Do you know anything about a Straggler citizen called Tor Ryder? Or about a good-looking young man who calls himself Noviss?’
He shook his head. ‘I know the two you mean, but God only knows where they fit in. Neither of them are in the common line of visitor, any more than the Cirkasian beauty is. And I don’t know where you fit in either. I wish you’d tell me more—’
‘I’ve nothing to do with any of this. My only interest is in the purchase of a slave.’ At least, that was what I’d thought when I arrived; I was no longer quite so sure.
He looked at me doubtfully. ‘Ah—you’re probably right not to trust me too far. I have a reputation for keeping secrets, for being reliable—but faced with dunmagic, I’d sell my soul to the Devil, my mother to a brothel, and my friends into slavery, you along with them.’ He shrugged. ‘Niamor always comes first with Niamor.’
I believed him. ‘Wise man.’
‘Look out, there’s someone coming.’ He bent down to kiss me again, shielding me with his body so that whoever it was wouldn’t be able to see me. I would have laughed if I’d been in a position to do so; he was obviously very anxious not to be seen consorting with a halfbreed who might later be recognised as one of the Awarefolk.
A couple of drunken sailors walked by. When we surfaced for air some time later, he said, ‘Lord, Blaze, you’re almost enough to make a man think of settling down—’
‘Almost,’ I repeated dryly, and he had the grace to laugh.
‘Be careful, firebrand,’ he said. ‘I’d hate something to happen to you, I would.’ He smiled a farewell and disappeared into the darkness.
The rest of that night I spent in a succession of bars and shabby holes where the swillie was barely drinkable, the company barely tolerable, and the information non-existent. No one knew where I could buy a Cirkasian slave. The slavers themselves, usually so very eager to make a sale, simply shrugged and said they had no such merchandise. When I tracked down a few more of the seamen from the slaver ship that had come in from Cirkase the day before, hoping they would open up now that they were away from the ship’s officers, not one of them admitted to having had a Cirkasian female on board, alive or otherwise. I tried bribery, I tried m
aking them drunk, I tried tricking them into saying what they didn’t want to say—and got nowhere. Maybe they were too scared to talk. Maybe they’d had a dunmagic seal on the subject placed on their lips. Probably the latter; around every single one of them I caught the sickening whiff of the red magic…
I set off for The Drunken Plaice before dawn, and almost didn’t get there at all. Of course, having made it quite clear that I had enough money to pay for a prime quality slave (a lie), I suppose I must have looked like a plump sea-trout for the gutting. Few men expected a woman to be able to fight, and fewer still expected anyone at all to be able to stave off six armed thugs.
However, I didn’t carry a sword for nothing. I was well-trained, and nothing if not experienced, in the art of street skirmishing, and I had the advantage of carrying a Calmenter blade.
A Calmenter sword is at least a hand-span longer than an ordinary sword and you have to be tall to be able I wear it, let alone fight with it. Even someone as tall as I was had to wear it in a harness on the back and reach for it across the shoulder. If it had been forged from ordinary steel, it would have been too heavy to wield properly, but Calmenter steel was actually a secret alloy as light and as sharp as the double-edged shaft of a horned-marlin, and even more deadly. I could make it sing when I put my mind to it.
And being attacked by six men on a darkened street put my mind to it.
They came at me out of a side alley with their swords already drawn, all six of them together, which was their first mistake. I could see from the clumsy way they crowded themselves that they lacked training. I half turned as if to run, which enticed the nearest of them into a lunging attack. Then, instead of fleeing as he expected, I side-stepped his thrusting blade and brought the heel of my left hand up into his nose—hard. Before the others had time to react, I had my sword in my right hand and was driving it past the body of this first assailant and into the chest of the second. With his view blocked by his friend, the second man never saw it coming and died on the spot. I hadn’t really expected to kill him, as the thrust had been more or less blind, but he was undoubtedly dead.
The Aware (The Isles of Glory Book 1) Page 4