by David Drake
The fisherman stood, lifting one of the nets with him. Cashel stood also, kicking his legs free of the other net now that the tension was off it. He stretched his arms, over him and out to the sides, arching his back at the same time. The mayor and his attendants watched nervously.
“If you'll give me back my staff,” Cashel said, slurring the words because of the anger that he otherwise concealed, “then I'll take myself out from under this roof.”
“Ah, Master Cashel,” said the mayor, “I think we'd best wait till you leave Soong—in the morning, I suppose?—before we give you that again. While I trust—”
“When I came out last night with the friend the woman there murdered...” Cashel said. He spoke slowly, taking a deep breath between each burst of words. “And you tied me up because you thought I'd gone crazy... . Then I didn't want to hurt anybody but her”—he nodded to Leemay, who stood impassively—“because the rest of you hadn't hurt me.”
Cashel looked around the room. Only one of the mayor's companions would meet his eyes.
“But if you don't give me my staff,” Cashel continued in a growl like thunder over the horizon, “then you're all of you no better 'n a gang of robbers. And I'll pull that—”
He pointed to the bar.
“—out of the wall and use it on you before you can stop me.”
“What?” said the mayor. He looked around at his attendants. “He couldn't do that! It's pegged top and bottom!”
Cashel stepped over to the heavy hardwood plank. Two of the attendants danced aside instead of trying to stop him.
“Give him his bloody stick!” said the fisherman. “You weren't wrestling him this morning, Jangme.”
“All right, all right...” the mayor said, letting his voice trail off as he turned away. “I just think...”
“When did you ever think about anything but how important you are?” the fisherman said.
Leemay stood for a moment, then stepped behind the bar through the open gate. She reached down and brought up the quarterstaff; it must have been lying all day where Cashel dropped it when he carried Tilphosa out of the bedroom.
He took the hickory. Leemay stroked her fingertips over the back of his right hand. She smiled at him as he jerked away.
“Come back when you decide you want my hospitality, Master Cashel,” she said. She laughed from deep in her throat, a sound more like a cat purring than anything Cashel had heard from a human before. “I'll make you very welcome.”
The mayor and his huskies were leaving the inn. Cashel had to wait for them to clear the doorway or else shove through; and it was only a lifetime of good manners that kept him from doing that second thing.
When Cashel was finally outside, he banged the double door shut after him. Leemay was still laughing, and he didn't like the sound.
He breathed deeply. It seemed like he hadn't been able to take in a real breath since Tilphosa's cries woke him up this morning. The locals hadn't tied him tight, and there wasn't anything wrong with the air of the inn; but...
Well, that was over. If he were his sister instead of himself, Leemay and the whole town would pay more than they might've believed possible in revenge. Cashel wasn't like Ilna in that way or many ways. Funny how different twins could be.
He crossed River Street to the wharfs along the bank. There were still people out, but they seemed to be hastening home. Though Soong was a big place, it pretty much shut down at nightfall the same as country villages did. In Valles the traffic didn't stop from dawn to daybreak, hooves and iron-tired wagons crashing along the cobblestone streets.
Wooden piers reached out into the sluggish river from a stone-faced embankment which ran the length of the waterside. Some of the boats had places for more oarsmen than Cashel had fingers, but most were relatively small— flat-bottomed and blunt on both ends.
A man was untangling his nets in the belly of a skiff midway down a nearby pier. Cashel walked out, keeping his feet over the stringers. Even so his weight made the structure sway and squeal.
The fellow looked up—and up—when Cashel stopped beside him; the water was a double pace below the level of the pier. “Yeah?” he said.
“Sir, I'd like to rent your boat for the night,” Cashel said. “You don't know me—”
“You've got that right!” the local man said. “And I'm not going to rent you the boat I need to put food on my family's table. Maybe—no, I don't know anybody who'd rent a boat to a stranger.”
As the man talked, Cashel tugged out the purse he wore on a neck thong. “Sir,” he said, “could you buy another boat for three silver pieces?”
“Huh?” said the fisherman. “Three Ships? You don't mean three coppers?”
“These don't have ships on them,” Cashel said, holding up the coins so they'd gleam in what wan moonlight filtered through the fog. “There's a man on a horse, I think. But they're silver, and I'll pay them to you for the use of your boat tonight.”
The fisherman clambered onto the pier like a monkey. He snatched the coins and held them close to his eyes. Cashel didn't guess the fellow could see much—in this light you couldn't even tell the coins were silver—but they were coins and metal of some kind for sure.
“A deal?” Cashel said.
The fisherman clutched the coins close to his chest. That was fine with Cashel; he didn't want the money back, and if the fellow turned and ran away with it—well, he'd leave his boat behind, wouldn't he?
“You just want the boat?” the man said. “You aren't going to take my net and tackle?”
“The boat and the oars,” Cashel said, figuring he'd better make it clear about the oars. “And I hope to give them back when I'm done, but you may have to go search where I left them.”
The fisherman nodded in excitement. He hopped into the skiff—water sloshed out to all sides, but his aim and balance were perfect—and grabbed his gear up with one hand, using his left arm as a pole to drape the net on. His left hand wasn't going to let go of the coins for any reason.
Cashel had guessed that values here were the same as back home, where twenty coppers would buy a dory fit to fish out of sight of the land. Thirty coppers—only a few people in Barca's Hamlet would have the amount in silver, even in a good year—was enough to make the owner want to close the deal fast before the buyer came to his senses.
The fisherman climbed to the pier again and started for the quay. “A good evening to you, sir,” Cashel called to his back. If the fellow replied, Cashel didn't hear it.
He stepped down into the skiff. It was small, but the way its owner jumped in and out proved it was sturdy and well designed. Cashel slipped his quarterstaff under the single thwart, laying it over where the keel would've been if the flat-bottomed vessel had one. He set the oars into rowlocks of willow root, untied the frayed painter, and shoved the skiff out into the river with his hand against a piling.
The moon gave Cashel light to row by. There were enough snags drifting down the river that he hoped he'd pass unremarked in the fog, but that was a chance he had to take.
He was going into the Temple of the Nine to find Tilphosa. He wasn't sure what he'd do then, but he knew he wasn't going to leave the girl to be fed to the fish or whatever they did in Soong. By going in by the back he hoped to avoid trouble; but he was going in.
A peasant without land of his own does a little of everything to keep body and soul together. Cashel had rowed dories in bad weather; he wouldn't call himself a good oarsman, but he could make this skiff serve his purposes easily enough.
A fish slapped the water, nearby but unseen. Apart from that, he seemed to have the river to himself. A few lamps glimmered on shore; Soong must stretch quite a way up and down the river. The lights were blurs in the fog, and an occasional bay of deep laughter was the only human sound that reached him.
Cashel deliberately went out into mid-channel before he angled the skiff back toward the island on which the temple stood. He checked over his shoulder regularly as he rowed, but the lightless
temple was completely hidden. Cashel trusted his sense of direction. He figured that if he had to, he could find the place blindfolded.
The skiff grounded sooner than expected. Cashel probed with an oarblade to be sure that he'd actually reached the island instead of colliding with a floating tree. A sheet of mud, glistening a little brighter than the river proper, stretched a long stone's throw up to a dimly glimpsed low wall.
Cashel stepped out and hauled the skiff its own length to a stump around which he wrapped the painter. The muck squelched ankle high, an unpleasant sensation but not a new one. He took his staff into his hands and started toward the wall.
Apparently the temple had an enclosed court behind it.
That might even be better for concealment... . There was a gate in an archway, but Cashel didn't bother to try it. He set his staff firmly at the base of the wall and reached up with his left hand. He could reach the top, and it was smooth stone with no spikes or sharp flints set into the coping.
He swung himself up, his right arm thrusting against the staff and his left lifting by the wall itself. On top he paused, listening intently. Something plopped in the river behind him, but he heard nothing from the garden. The temple beyond was completely dark. Moonlight showed a tall, narrow door, but there were no windows.
The garden was planted with unfamiliar broad-spreading shrubs, though Cashel couldn't tell a lot in the foggy darkness. A path meandered through them, going from the gate in the wall to the temple's back door.
Cashel swung his staff around, butted it inside the wall, and let himself down by reversing the motion that took him atop the wall. He thought he heard something from the river again, but it didn't matter now.
The ground inside the courtyard was much firmer than the mudflats. Cashel started for the temple, following the path as it wove between the trees. Nuts hung in clusters at the tips of the spiky branches. If Cashel had gone straight ahead, he'd have had to hunch, but the path followed living arches that would have let someone even taller walk upright.
He smiled; well, of course. The Nine were much taller than he was.
In the center of the garden was a large, mossy clearing. The path led to it and then away toward the temple on the other side. He stopped, stretching out his right foot to touch the moss with his big toe. The surface beneath quivered like jelly; it was neither soil nor water.
Cashel grinned. Things had been too easy thus far. He couldn't believe he was the first man to wonder what really went on in the temple, nor that the Nine were so innocent that they had nothing to hide. If he hadn't found a trap, it just meant that the trap was still waiting for him.
As another trap might be, of course.
Cashel backed two steps, then sprang forward. He slammed his staff into the firm ground at the edge of the bog and vaulted with seven feet of hickory as his pivot. He bent over as he came down on the other side so that he wouldn't tumble back. He'd cleared the trap by more than arm's length.
Still smiling but still careful, Cashel made his way to the temple's high, narrow door. It was bronze but had only a simple latch rather than a lock of some kind.
Thinking it might be barred on the other side, Cashel lifted the latch gently, then pulled the door ajar. A pale greenish radiance marked the crack between the panel and its stone jamb; if there were sounds from within, they were lost in the river's faint gurgle.
Cashel opened the door the rest of the way and stepped inside, his shoulders brushing both jambs. He didn't close it behind him.
He was in a shallow room which ran the full width of the temple. It was for storage, he'd have guessed, except that nothing was stored here.
He looked up. Bars crossed the room the short way, spaced along the width. They were thick bronze, polished in the center by wear. Dark robes hung from hooks on the inside wall, one beneath each bar.
Cashel counted them: all the fingers of one hand, and the other hand except for the thumb. Nine.
There was a passage a little longer than a man is tall in the center of the room. Carefully, walking left side forward with his staff slanted across his chest ready to strike, Cashel moved down it toward a light, just bright enough to have color.
There were faint sounds from the room beyond. It wasn't people talking, more like the clicks and slurps of dogs at the carcase of a—
“Duzi!” Cashel shouted. He leaped out of the passage, his quarterstaff raised. The chamber beyond was large and the height of the temple's peaked roof. The ceiling glowed the hue of pond scum in the summer.
The Nine looked up from the corpse they were devouring. Without their robes Cashel couldn't imagine he'd ever thought they were human. Their chitinous bodies had no color but that of the squamous light, and their beaked jaws were toothless.
Cashel stepped forward, spinning the staff. He wasn't sure how this was going to turn out, but he was going to try. The Nine didn't have weapons, and their spindly limbs would shatter under iron-shod hickory.
The Nine curled their abdomens forward beneath the two pairs of legs on which they stood. From their tails squirted sticky fluid that hardened as it splashed over Cashel's head and torso.
Cashel strode forward, willing the staff to spin but feeling the thick hickory bend under the pressure of his arms. The ferrules were glued to his body; the staff couldn't move.
Three of the creatures sprayed Cashel's legs. He tried to take another step. Like swimming through molasses ... and then not even that. Cashel toppled to the stone floor, as helpless as a trussed hen.
The Nine bent over him, chittering among themselves. One of them reached up delicately with a pincered fore-limb and pushed a fragment of flesh back into its beak.
Sharina sucked in her stomach as the dory lifted over the crest of an incoming wave. Unatis, the boatman, feathered his left oar and pulled hard with the right one. The rowlock squealed like a rabbit in a hawk's talons.
“Sister take it!” said Carus, sitting in the bow. “You'll wake Lerdoc in his tent with a racket like that!”
“We will not,” said Unatis calmly, leaning into both oars now that he had the dory straightened to his satisfaction. “But if the lady would take the tallow block from the basket under my thwart and grease the pin with it, that would quiet the oars.”
He grinned at Sharina, facing him from the stern. Unatis was an old waterman from Carcosa harbor; it took more than an angry prince to worry him.
Sharina found the container easily, but in the bad light it took her a moment to open the lid; it was pegged on through loops in the wicker. The tallow was in a wooden block; a screw base drove the column of grease up as it was used. It was a clever device, and a bit of a surprise to find here in a waterman's kit.
Carus laughed. “Aye,” he said, “I'm worrying about silly dangers I could change instead of the big ones that I cannot. That's always the way while I'm sitting with nothing to do but wait.”
“We'll be to where you told me soon,” Unatis said calmly, spacing his speech between strokes of his oars. “A mile off the shore where the Blaise fleet is anchored. After that you'll have no waiting, unless you change your mind and have me take you back to dry land to sleep in a warm bed.”
Carus snorted. “That's the last thing I want to think about," he said. “When we've settled this matter, though, I'll sleep for a week.”
Sharina had tallowed the port thole pin. She twisted the screw and leaned to her right to daub the other too; if one squealed, the other might soon.
The dory lifted onto another swell. Unatis put the bow into it, then brought them back to the previous heading as they started down the trough.
“There's a westerly current tonight,” he said. “Not strong, but a knot or two. If the prince doesn't mind taking a waterman's advice, you'd best start from here unless you plan on swimming to Cordin.”
He glanced over his shoulder. “Or I could take you and the lady closer inshore,” he said. “A mile is a long swim for a lady.”
“I'll tell that to the next lady I meet
,” said Sharina. She'd already loosed her sash; now she ducked to pull off the tunic she'd worn for the long pull seaward from the royal encampment. “I'm from Barca's Hamlet, where the only Lady is the one we pray to.”
Which I'll be doing tonight, that She may preserve me for the kingdom's sake and my friends' sakes, she thought with a wry smile.
Sharina lifted the oilcloth bundle holding the clothes she'd change into when they reached shore. Wrapped in the center of the silk tunics and embroidered cape was her Pewle knife. In part she'd brought it as a talisman, but the big knife was used to hard strokes and so was the woman who carried it now.
“Ready?” she said to Carus.
The boatman shipped his oars. His bushy moustache fluttered for a moment as he took in Sharina's slim, moonlit body; then he averted his eyes as if from an unexpected horror.
“Aye,” said the king, raising his own much larger bundle. He'd stripped off his tunic also, but around his waist was a fabric belt and a dagger enclosed in sheath of leather boiled in wax and lanolin. “Now?”
Sharina slipped over the side, holding her bundle out in front of her. She'd picked her time well, with the dory sliding sideways into a trough that carried it away when she thrust for the shore.
Stretching her body out behind the bundle, Sharina kicked like a frog. Her legs alone would do the work. She could use the clothing to buoy her up if she needed to rest, but unless the current changed unexpectedly, she doubted that would be necessary.
Unatis had been right about the current—of course. The pressure of the water on Sharina's right side was worrying, but her conscious mind knew that it was taking her to where she wanted to be. The awareness she was in the grip of a power greater than her own still made her uncomfortable.
She giggled, snorted seawater, and giggled again.
“Is everything all right, girl?” Carus called. The king was on her left side; she couldn't see him so with her head cocked to the right to breathe, but he sounded close.