Shadows of Sanctuary

by Edited By Robert Asprin

  “Let’s don’t go making wagers on that. Would you say his killing of those in the blue birdmasks might be called murder, Hanse?”

  “It might if it was one of us,” Hanse said, to the gleaming top of a low table. “Surely not for him that calls us Wrigglies, though.”

  The prince failed to disguise his little start. “Strong words, Hanse of Sanctuary. And to one who does not call the Children of Ils “Wrigglies”!”

  “Yes, and I really wish I hadn’t said it. As a matter of fact I wish I wasn’t here at all. How can I share confidences here? How can I say my mind to you, when you aren’t a you, but both prince and governor?”

  “Hanse: we have been through some things together.”

  In a manner of speaking, Hanse thought. You weren’t poked with that damned terror-stick, and you didn’t spend half the night down a well and the other on a torturer’s table!

  “I might even consider myself in your debt,” Kadakithis went on.

  “I am getting awfully uncomfortable, my lord of Ranke,” Hanse said elaborately. “Will my lord Prince tell me why I am here?”

  “Damn!” Kadakithis regarded the carpet and heaved a great sigh. “I’ve an idea it would be a waste of time to offer you wine, my friend. So I—”

  “Friend!”

  “Why yes, Hanse,” Kadakithis said, all large of eye and open-looking. “I call you friend. We are even of an age.”

  Hanse erupted to his feet in a jerk that was still admirably sinuous. He paced. “Oh,” he said, and paced. “Oh gods. Prince—don’t call me friend! Don’t let anyone else hear that!”

  The prince looked very much as if he wanted to touch him, and was sure that Hanse would shrink away. “How lonely we both are, Hanse. You won’t have any friends, and I can’t! I dare trust no one, and you who could trust—you reject even an extended hand.”

  Hanse was almost stricken. Friends? He thought of Cudget, dead Cudget. Of Moonflower. Of Tempus. Was Tempus a friend? Who could trust Tempus? Who could trust anyone wearing the title “governor”?

  “Ranke and Sanctuary are not friends,” he said slowly, quietly. “You are Ranke. I am of Sanctuary, and… more. Not, uh, noble.”

  “Trusted friend of the governor? The thief Shadowspawn?”

  Hanse caught himself about to say “Thief? Who, me, Governor?” and stopped the words. Kadakithis knew. Nor was he Moonflower or that melon-pedlar Irohunda, to be taken in by Hanse’s cultivated (and seldom used) boyish act. But…friend? It was a frightening word, to Shadowspawn from Downwind and the Maze.

  “Let’s try to be bigger than Ranke and Sanctuary. Let’s try, Hanse. I am reaching out. Speaking plainly: Tempus declared war on Jubal—not on my orders—and Jubal retaliated or tried to. You were there and you didn’t run. Tempus lost a horse and gained a friend. You defended Tempus, helped him. More Hawkmasks died. Are you in danger for that, from Jubal?”

  “Probably. I’ve been trying not to think about that.”

  “And me?”

  “The Empire’s governor in Sanctuary knows to go forth armed and with guards, because he is governor,” Hanse said, not so enigmatically.

  “Diplomatic, careful words again!—And Tempus?”

  It was then that Hanse knew why he was here. “You … you think Jubal has Tempus!”

  The prince regarded him. “Hanse, some people don’t try to be particularly likeable. Tempus seems to try not to be. I cannot imagine calling him friend.” Kadakithis paused to be certain Hanse grasped his implication. “Still, I represent the Empire. I govern for Ranke, subject to the Emperor. Tempus serves and represents me, and Ranke. I do not have to love him, or like him. But! How can I tolerate anyone’s taking action against any of my people?” Kadakithis made a two-handed gesture while Hanse thought: How strange that I think more of Tempus—Thales—than the Prince-Governor he serves! “I cannot, Hanse! Nor can I use the Hell Hounds to investigate, not in a really sensitive matter such as this. Nor can I launch attack on Jubal, or even arrest him—not and govern the way I wish to do.”

  He really does want to do well, to be friends with Sanctuary! What a strange Rankan! “You could call him in for questioning.” Hanse was hopeful.

  “I had rather not.” The young Rankan called Kitty-Kat shot to his feet with admirable use of legs alone, if not with a thief’s sinuous grace. “I had rather acknowledge his existence, can you see that?” He waved a hand in a rustle of aquamarine silk sleeve, took a pace, turned his earnest face on Hanse. “I am governor here. I am Empire. He is—”

  “Gods, Prince, I’m only a damned thief!”

  Kadakithis frowned and glanced around, ignoring Hanse’s look of horror at his blurted words. “Did you hear someone say something, just then?”

  “No.”

  “Neither did I. As I was saying, Tempus doesn’t mean that much to me and I don’t mean that much to Tempus. Tempus, I fear, serves Tempus and whatever he fancies is his destiny. I might not even miss him. Still, there are some things I dare not allow, dare not tolerate. Oh how I wish you could understand a bit of how difficult it is, being born royal, and holding this job!”

  Hanse, who had never held any job, tried. And without trying, he looked earnest and sympathetic. With a prince!

  “Now I think that you are Tempus’s friend, Hanse. Would Jubal torture him?”

  Hanse felt himself about to develop a taste for strong drink. Looking at the other very young man’s sash—an Ilsigi sash—he nodded. Abruptly he wanted to curse. Instead he felt an unwonted and unwanted prayer come cat-sidling into his mind: O Ils, god of my people and father of Shalpa my patron! It is true that Tempus-Thales serves Vashanka Tenslayer. But help us, help us both, Lord Ils, and I swear to do all I can to destroy Vashanka Sister-wifer or drive him hence, if only You will show me the way!

  And Hanse blinked, and hurled that ridiculous and unwelcome thought bodily from his mind. Prayers indeed!

  “Hanse… consider the limits to my power. I am not a man named Kadakithis; I am governor. I cannot do anything about it. I cannot.”

  Hanse looked up to meet those cerulean eyes. “Prince, if someone broke in here to kill you right now, I’d probably defend you. But I would not try to sneak into Jubal’s keep for half your fortune and all your women.”

  “Alone against Jubal? Lord, neither would I!” Kadakithis came to him then, and laid hands on a thief’s shoulders. His eyes were intense and large. “My only request of you, Hanse, is… I just wish you’d agree to try to learn where Tempus is. That’s all. Your way, Hanse, and for a lot less reward than half my fortune and the women I brought here.”

  Hanse backed from under those hands, from those staring eyes so full of sincerity. He paced to the bed, and the hooded robe of a blind beggar.

  “I wish to leave by the fourth window down. Prince. That way I can let myself on to the roof of your smokehouse. If you were to call in your sentinels for review, I’d be out of here by the time they reached your presence.”

  Kadakithis nodded. ”And?”

  “And I—I don’t want any reward but don’t dare ever tell anyone I said that, or remind me! You’ll hear from me—” he whirled and skewered the other very young man with a gaze like an accusation—‘friend’.”

  Kadakithis was wise enough to nod without smile or comment. Besides, he looked more as if he wanted to cry, or reach out.

  “I understand your reason, Hanse. But, are you sure you can manage to break out of here … the palace?”

  Hanse turned away to roll his eyes. “With your help. Prince, I may be able to do it. I’d hate to have to try to break in though!”

  Chapter 3

  IT MIGHT HAVE taken a trained investigator from Ranke a week, or a lifetime. It might have taken a Hell Hound a month or two lifetimes (a Tempus lifetime?), or a couple of days with the aid of shining ugly instruments of persuasion. It took a thief of Sanctuary less than a full day to collect the information. Had he had letters, he’d have made a list.

  Since he was unlettered
, he must reckon and account in his head, once he had talked with this one and that one and some others. Only one realized that he was actively seeking information, and that was because Hanse let her know. Now he made his list, in his head, while he sprawled on his own bed and stared at nothing in particular.

  Tempus did not get on with the other Hell Hounds.

  Tempus waged private war on Jubal. It was his own decision. (Not a good one; Jubal’s business profited Thieves’ World and Empire as well.)

  Jubal was a merchant who dealt in human merchandise. He provided some few to that scrawny Kurd fellow of whom even hardened Sanctuarites spoke susurrantly and with glances cast uncomfortably this way and that.

  In the barracks, Tempus had had serious trouble with Razkuli and that snarly growly Zalbar. (Quag had mentioned that to a certain woman under the most intimate of circumstances. A bad but common time for the imparting of confidences.)

  Stulwig Northborn had spent a shining coin bearing the Emperor’s likeness. Such coinage was not all that common here, although it was welcome. People of the governor’s staff occasionally spent such coins. Likely then someone had bought something off Stulwig; someone from the palace. Stulwig dealt in potions and drugs and worse.

  Harmocohl Dripnose had most recently seen two men conveying a sizeable burden to the lovely gardened home of Kurd. Harmocohl’s impression was that the two were hood-cloaked Hell Hounds.

  Hell Hounds were elite Imperial guardsmen and did not deal with such as Stulwig or Kurd. Indeed, at least one of them hated Kurd. Hardly likely that Hell Hounds would deliver a human package to him. Unless there was someone they hated more than the dark experimenter.

  Tempus was missing.

  The word was out that Jubal heroically sold no more human merchandise to Kurd the vivisectionist… a man with a Rankan accent.

  Why would such as Jubal cut off such a source of revenue? For moral reasons, because Kurd did evil things to people? Hardly. Because Jubal had made a deal with other enemies of Tempus? Zalbar and Razkuli, perhaps? Because Tempus was now in the mysterious experimenter’s foul and reeking hands, perhaps?

  In an ugly dark stenchy room Hanse learned more of Kurd and his business. Kurd claimed to be dedicated to the god Science. Medicine. That required experimentation. But Kurd was not content to experiment with the wounded and victims of accidents. The pallid fellow created his own. And, Hanse thought with rather more than distaste, Kurd could occupy himself for a life time with one whose wounds—Hanse suspected and thought he knew—healed with inhuman speed and completeness. Make that superhuman, or preternatural. Tempus call-me-Thales was a man of war who had participated in many battles. Yet there were no scars on the man. Not one.

  Tempus/Thales.

  “You, I own, can call me anytime,” he had told Hanse, and “my friend”, he had called Hanse, and “Just tell me not to call you friend”, he had dared Hanse. And Hanse had not been able to tell him that, thus revealing and silently replying that he was close on to desperate for friends, a friend; for someone to care about him. For someone to care about.

  Hanse sprawled supine on his bed in an upstairs room in the heart of the Maze, and he pondered what he had learned. He rose to pace and chew his full lower lip and ponder, with his soul and heart and longing all naked in his eyes so that it was good no one was there to see, for Hanse wanted others to see only what he deliberately projected.

  All I need do is report all this to Kitt—to Kadakithis, he thought. The Prince Governor who had begun his term here by announcing that there would be law and order and safety for citizens and had hanged, among others, one Cudget Swearoath, mentor (and father image?) to Hanse. The P-G did not like Tempus (and father image?) to Hanse.

  It was all Hanse need do. Just report what he had learned and now suspected. Then it was up to Kadakithis. He had the power and the resources. The men and the swords. The savankh.

  Surely that was as far as Hanse’s responsibility extended, to Kadakithis and to Tempus. If he had any responsibility to that krff-snorting bully.

  And… suppose H.R.H. Kadakithis, P-G, did nothing? Or if his Hell Hounds, the charming Razkuli and Zalbar, received their orders but only pretended to act? Did not Rankans protect their own? Did not soldiers obey authority? Was there not honour among those thieving over-Lords?

  If not, then Hanse’s world would be a-teeter. Despite his pretences there had to be trust and some sort of order, didn’t there, and trustworthiness? Hanse frowned and looked about almost wildly. An animal in a cage it feared but could not escape, yet also feared what lay beyond the bars. Even the spawn of shadows did not want to live in a world that was askew and a teeter. If it existed, if the world was truly a thing of Chance and Chaos, he preferred not to know. Fighting it, he had learned to trust Tempus. He had been forced to trust Kadakithis, because he was down a well up at Eaglenest. Later, disbelieving and resisting, he had learned that he could trust the Rankan. That disturbed his haven of cynicism and was hard to admit. But was not cynicism merely a mask on an idealist seeking more, seeking perfection, seeking disproof of his cynical assumptions?

  Far better just to report what I know and leave it at that and go on about my business. That would be enough. Tempus already owed him a debt, anyhow, and had promised him a service.

  Shadowspawn began collecting his materials for a night of stealth, of breaking and entering. It was a thief’s business and these were the tools. Yet he knew that he was not preparing for theft.

  You are a fool, Hanse, he told himself with a curse in Shalpa’s name, and he agreed. And he continued with what he was doing.

  At the door he stopped, blinking. He looked back with a frown. Only now did he remember the look Mignureal had given him just two hours ago, and her strange words. They meant nothing and connected to nothing. “Oh, Hanse,” she had said with a strange intensity on her girlish face. “Hanse—take the crossed brown pot with you.”

  “With me where?”

  But she had to flee, for her glowering mother was calling.

  Now Hanse stared at the brown crock with the etched pair of X s. Mignureal did not know about it. She could not. Mignureal had mentioned it specifically! She was Moonflower’s daughter … Name of the Shadowed One, she must have some of the power too!

  Hanse turned back to pick up that well-stoppered container, a fired pot a bit larger than a soldier’s canteen. Why, Mignureal? Why, Lord Ils?

  He had acquired it months ago, easily and quickly, without knowing what it contained. Mignureal had never seen it and could not know about this container of quicklime. She could not know where he was going this night for he had only just decided (and that without quite admitting it to himself); she was Moonflower’s daughter…

  Stupid, cumbersome, senseless, he thought while he slipped the crock into a good oilskin bag he had lifted in the Bazaar. He secured it to his belt so that it rested on one buttock. And he touched the sandal of Thufir tacked above the door, and went forth.

  The white blaze of the sun had hours since become yellow in its daily waning, and then orange. Now it squatted low and seemed to spray streamers of crimson across the darkening sky. It did not look at all like blood, Hanse told himself. Besides, soon it would be dark and his friends would be everywhere, in black and indigo and charcoal. The shadows.

  ****

  I COULD USE a good sword, the shadow thought, blending into another shadow. An eerie feeling still lay on him, from that business with Mignureal. Surely not even Kurd deserved quicklime! This long “knife” from the Ilbarsi Hills is a good tool, he thought, to keep his mind on sensible, practical matters. But it’s time I had a good sword.

  I’ll have to try and steal one.

  “Thou shalt have a sword,” a voice said sonorously inside his head, a lion within the shadowed corridors of his mind, “if thou free’st my valued and loyal ally. Aye, and a fine sheath for it, as well. In silver!”

  Hanse stopped. He was still and dark as the shadow of a tree or a wall of stone. He was good at
it; six minutes ago four cautious people had passed close enough to touch him, and never knew he was there.

  I want nothing of you, incestuous god of Ranke, he thought, almost speaking while a thousand ants seemed at play along his spine. Tempus serves you. I do not and will not.

  Yet you do this night, seeking him, that silent voice that was surely the god Vashanka’s said. And a cloud ate the moon.

  No! I serve—I mean… I do not… No!… Tempus is my… my… I go to aid a fr—man who might help me! Leave me and go to him, jealous god of Ranke! Leave Sanctuary to my patron Shalpa the Swift, and Our Lord Ils. Ils, Ils, O Lord of a Thousand Eyes, why is it not You who speaks to me?

  There was no reply. Clouds rolled and they seemed dark men astride dark horses that loped with manes and long tails aflow. Hanse felt a sudden chill absence of that presence in his mind. In a few seconds he was praying not to gods but cursing himself for giving heed to the delusions of a dark night, a night badly ruled by a moon pale as a Rankan concubine and now covered like the whore she was. The Swift-footed One ruled this night.

  And Hanse went on, not in shadows now for there were no shadows; all the land was one vast shadow. Out of Sanctuary. Past lovers who neither saw nor heard this son of Shalpa the Shadowed One. On, to the beautifully tended gardens surrounding the house of a pasty-faced walking skeleton called Kurd and worse. The little crescent of moon pretended to return. It was only a ghost struggling weakly against clouds like restless shadows blotting the sky.

  The well-tended, scented gardens provided a pleasant if un-needed cover. A gliding anthropomorphic shadow amid herbaceous shapes like looming shadows. Hanse went right up to the house. It too was dark.

  No one wants to visit Kurd. No one considers trying to steal from Kurd. Why should it not be easy, then? Kurd must think he needs no precautions or defenders!