Tales From The Vulgar Unicorn tw-2

by Robert Lynn Asprin

  Tempus was older than anyone thought; he was not as world-weary old as he thought, or thought he thought.) Just now he wanted to put forth a hand and touch the much younger man. He certainly did not.

  He said, 'How do you feel about it?'

  Hanse continued to gaze assiduously at something else. How could a child of the desert with such long long lashes and that sensuous, almost pretty mouth look so grim and thin-lipped? 'I threw up.'

  'That proves you are human and is what you did. How do you feel about it?'

  Hanse looked at him directly. After a time, he shrugged.

  'Yes,' Tempus sighed, nodding. He drained his cup. Raised a right arm on high and glanced in the general direction of the tap. The new nightman nodded. Though he had not looked at the fellow, Tempus lowered his arm and looked at Hanse. 'I understand,' he said.

  'Do you. A while ago I told the prince that it is a prince's business to kill, not a thief's. Now I have killed.'

  'What a wonderful thing to say to a bit of royalty! I wish you weren't so serious right now, so I could laugh aloud. Do not expect any gentle words from me about the kills, my friend. It happens. I didn't ask for your help - or for you to be waiting for me. You won't do that again.'

  'Not that way, no.' Hanse leaned back while whatever-his-name-was (they called him 'Two-Thumb') set two newly-filled mugs between them. He did not take the other two, or wait for payment. 'I think things started when Bourne ... died, and you came to Thieves' World.'

  'Thieves' World?'

  Again that almost-embarrassed shrug. 'It's what we call Sanctuary. Some of us. Now the whole city's in a mess and a turmoil and I think you have to do with that.'

  'I believe you said that.'

  'You led me astray, "Thales". That temple or store or whatever it was. It ... collapsed? - erupted, like a volcano? Something. Next the prince-'

  'You really do respect him, don't you?'

  'I don't work for him though,' Hanse pointed out; Tempus did. 'He impounded the ... the god-weapons? - that place sold, or _ tried to. Hell Hounds paying people for things they bought - or else! Things! New wealth in the city, because some of them had been stolen and now are bought from thieves. People are laughing at dealing with the new changer: the palace!'

  Changer, Tempus knew, meant fence in this - city? 0 my God Vashanka - this? A city?!

  'Two ships sitting out there in the harbour,' Hanse went on, 'guarded up to here. I know those Things, those dark weapons of sorcery, are being loaded aboard. Then what? Out to sea and straight to the bottom?'

  'The very best place for them,' Tempus said, turning and slowly turning his glazed earthenware mug. This one was striped garishly in yellow waves.' Believe it. There is too much power in those devices.'

  'Meanwhile some "enforcers" from the mageguild have been trying to get hands on them first.'

  That Tempus also knew. Three of the toughs had been eliminated in the past twenty hours, unless another or two had been slain tonight, by local Watchmen or those special guardsmen called Hell Hounds. 'Unions will try to protect their members, yes. No matter what. A union is a mindless animal.'

  'You paid me well -fair, to fetch you the diamond wand-things that woman wears in her hair. I did, and she has them back. You gave them back.'

  Cime. Cime's diamond-rods in her fine fine wealth of hair. 'Yes. Did I?'

  'You did. And strange things are happening in Sanctuary. Those . were soreerous weapons those hawk-masks used against you and me. A poor thief tried to snatch a woman's bracelet the other night, down in - never mind the street. She shouldn't have been there. The bracelet turned into a snake and killed him. I don't know what it did to him. He's dead and they say he weighs about twice as much as he did alive.'

  'It solidified his bones. It was obtained this morning. And when didn't strange things happen in Sanctuary, my friend?'

  'That is twice you have called me that.' Hanse's words had the sound of accusation about them.

  'So I have. I must mean it, then.'

  Hanse became visibly uncomfortable: 'I am Hanse. I was ... apprentice to Cudget Swearoath. Prince Kitty-Cat had him hanged. I am Shadowspawn. I have breached the palace and because of me a Hell Hound is dead. I have no friends.'

  And you slip and call him 'Kitty-Cat' when you think of your executed mentor, do you? Not seeking a father, eh? Do you know that all men do, and that I have mine, in Vashanka? Ah Hanse how you seek to be enigmatic and so cool - and are about as transparent as a pan of water caught from the sky!

  Tempus waved a hand. 'Save all that. Just tell me not to be your friend. Not to call you friend.'

  A silence fell over them like a struck banner and something naked stared out of Hanse's eyes. By the time he knew he must speak into the silence, it was too late. That same silence was Tempus's answer.

  'Yes,' Tempus said, considerately-cleverly changing the subject. 'What old whatsisname Torchholder yammers about is true. Vashanka came, and He claimed Sanctuary. His name is branded into the place, now. The very temple of Ils lies in rubble. Vashanka created the Weaponshop, from nothing, and-'

  'A pedlar-god?'

  'I didn't think much of the lactic myself,' Tempus said, hoping Vashanka heard him while noting how good the youth was at sneering. 'And the Weaponshop destroyed the mage the governor imported to combat him. Vashanka is not to be combated.'

  Hanse snapped glances this way and that. 'Say such things a time or two more in Sanctuary, my friend, and your body will be mourning the loss of its head.'

  The blond man stared at him. 'Do you believe that?'

  Hanse let that pass, while he rowed into the current of other conversations in the tavern. A current restless as a thief on a landing outside a window, and conversations just as stealthy and dark. He tuned it out again, stepping out of the flow yet flowing with it. Quietly.

  'And how many of those fell Things do you think are still loose?'

  'Too many. Two or four? You know our job is to collect them.'

  'Our?'

  'The Hell Hounds.'

  'Who's your bearded friend, Hanse?'

  The speaker stood beside the table, only a bit older than Hanse and just as cocky. Older in years only; he had not benefited from those years and would never be so much as Hanse. Self-consciously he wore self-consciously tight black. Oh, a brilliant thief! About as unobtrusive as hives.

  Hanse was staring at Tempus, who was pink and bronze of skin, gold and honey of hair, lengthy and lengthy of legs, and smoothshaven as a pair of doeskin leggings. Hanse did not take his dark-eyed gaze off the Hell Hound, while his dark hand moved out to close on the (black-bracered) wrist of the other young man.

  'What colour would you say his beard is, Athavul?'

  Athavul moved his arm and proved that his wrist would not come loose. His arrogance and mask of cocky confidence fled him faster than a street girl fled a man revealed poor. Tempus recognized Athavul's chuckle; nervousness and sham. Tempus had heard it a thousand or a million times. What was the difference? He reflected on temporality, even while this boy Athavul temporized.

  'You going blind, Shadowspawn? You think myself is, and testing he and I?' With a harsh short laugh and a slap with his other hand on his own chest, Athavul said, 'Black as this. Black as this!' He slapped his black leather pants - self consciously.

  Tempus, leaning a bit forwards, elbows on the little table, big swordsman's shoulders hunched, continued, to gaze directly at Hanse. Into Hanse's eyes. His face looked open because he made it that way. Beardless. -

  'Same's his hair?' Hanse said, and his voice sounded brittle as very old harness-leather. His eyes glittered.

  Athavul swallowed. 'Hair...' He swallowed again, looking from Hanse to Tempus to Hanse. 'Ah ... he's your, ah, friend, Hanse. Let go, will you? You twit him about his ... head if you want to, but I won't. Sorry I stopped and tried to be civil.'

  Without looking away from Hanse, Tempus said, 'It's all right, Athavul. My name is Thales and I am not sensitive. I've been this bald f
or years.'

  Hanse was staring at Tempus, blond Tempus. His hand opened. Athavul yanked his arm back so fast he hit himself in his (nearly inexistent) stomach. He made no pretence of grace; with a dark glance at Hanse, he betook himself elsewhere, sullenly silent.

  'Nicely done,' Tempus said, showing his teeth.

  'Don't smile at me, stranger. What do you look like?'

  'Exactly what you see, Hanse. Exactly.'

  'And ... what did he see?' Hanse's wave of his arm was as tight as he had become inside. 'What do they see here, talking with Hanse?'

  'He told you.'

  'Black beard, no hair.'

  Blond, beardless Tempus nodded.

  Neither had taken his gaze off the other's eyes. 'What else?'

  'Does it matter? I am in the employ of that person we both know. What you people call a Hell Hound. I would not come here in that appearance! I doubt anyone else would be in this room, if they saw me. I was here when you came in, remember? Waiting for you. You were too cool to ask the obvious.'

  'They call me spawn of the shadows,' Hanse said quietly, slowly, in a low tone. He was leaning back as if to get a few more centimetres between him and the tall man. 'You're just a damned shadow!'

  'It's fitting. I need your help, Shadowspawn.'

  Hanse said, enunciating distinctly, 'Shit.' And rising he added, 'Sing for it. Dance in the streets for it.' And he turned away, then back to add, 'You're paying of course, Baldy,' and then he betook himself elsewhere.

  Outside, he glanced up and down the vermiform 'street' called Serpentine, turned right to walk a few paces north. Automatically, he stepped over the broken plank in the boardwalk. He glanced into the tucked-in courtyard that was too broad and shallow to be dangerous for several hours yet. Denizens of the Maze called it variously the Outhouse, Tick's Vomitory., or, less seriously. Safe-haven. From the pointed tail of the shortcloak on the man back within that three-sided box, Hanse recognized Poker the Cadite. From the wet sounds, he made an assumption as to Poker's activity. The man with the piebald beard glanced around.

  'Come on in, Shadowspawn. Not much room left.'

  'Looking for Athavul. Said he was carrying and said I could join him.' Lying was more than easy to Shadowspawn; it was almost instinctive.

  'You're not mad at him?' Poker dropped his tunic's hem and turned from the stained rearmost wall.

  'No no, nothing like that.'

  'He went south. Turned into Slick Walk.'

  'Thanks, Poker. There's a big-bearded man in the Unicorn with no hair on top. Get him to buy you a cup. Tell him I said.'

  'Ah. Enemy of yours, Hansey?'

  'Right.'

  Hanse turned and walked a few paces north towards Straight, his back to Slick Walk (which led into the two-block L whose real name no one remembered. Nary a door opened onto it and it stayed dark as a sorcerer's heart. It smelled perpetually sour and was referred to as Vomit Boulevard). When Poker said the weather was sunny, turn up your cloak's hood against rain. When Poker said right, head left.

  Hanse cut left through Odd Birt's Dodge, angling around the corner of the tenement owned by Furtwan the dealer in snails for dye - who lived way over on the east side, hardly in tenement conditions. Instantly Hanse vanished into the embrace of his true friend and home. The shadows.

  Because he had kept his eyes slitted while he was in the light filtering down from Straight Street, he was able to see. The darkness deepened with each of his gliding westward steps.

  He heard the odd tapping sound as he passed Wrong Way Park. What in all the - a blind man? Hanse smiled - keeping his mouth closed against the possible flash of teeth. This was a wonderful place for the blind! They could 'see' more in three quarters of the Maze than anyone with working eyes. He eased along towards the short streetlet called Tanner, hearing the noises from Sly's Place. Then he heard Athavul's voice, out in the open.

  'Your pardon, dear lady, but if you don't hand myself your necklace and your wallet I'll put this crossbow bolt through your left gourd.'

  Hanse eased closer, getting himself nearer the triple 'corner' where Tanner sort of intersected with Odd Birt's Dodge and touched the north-south wriggle of the Serpentine as well. Streets ; in the Maze, it has been said, had been laid out by two love-struck snakes, both soaring on krrf. Hanse heard the reply of Ath's intended prey: 'You don't have a crossbow, slime lizard, but see what I have!' The scream, in a voice barely recognizable as Athavul's, raised the hairs on the back of Hanse's neck and sent a chill running all the way down his coccyx. He considered freezing in place. He I considered the sensible course of turning and running. Curiosity urged him to edge two steps farther and peek around the building housing Sly's. Curiosity won.

  By the time he looked, Athavul was whimpering and gibbering. Someone in a long cloak the colour of red clay, hood up, stepped around him and Hanse thought he heard a giggle. Cowering, pleading, gibbering in horribly obvious fear - of what? - Athavul ^ fell to his knees. The cloak swept on along Tanner towards the i Street of Odours, and Hanse swallowed with a little effort. A knife had got itself into his hand; he didn't throw if. He edged down a few more steps to see which way the cloak turned. Right. Hanse caught a glimpse of the walking stick. It was white. The way the person in that cloak was moving, though, she was not blind. Nor was she any big woman.

  Hanse put up his knife and started towards Athavul. 'No! Please plehehehease!' On his knees, Ath clasped his hands ; and pleaded. His eyes were wide and glassy with fear. Sweat and [ tears ran down his face in such profusion that he must soon have i salt spots on his black jerkin. His shaking was wind-blown wash on the line and his face was the colour of a priming coat of whitewash.

  Hanse stood still. He stared. 'What's the matter with you, Ath? I'm not menacing you, you fugitive from a dung-fuelled stove! Athavul! What's the matter'th you?' 'Oh please pleoaplease no no oh ohh ohohohono-o-o...' Athavul fell on his knees and his still-clasped hands, bony rump in the air. His shaking had increased to that of a whipped, starved dog.

  Such an animal would have moved Hanse to pity. Athavul was just ridiculous. Hanse wanted to kick him. He was also aware that two or three people were peering out of the dump still called Sly's Place though Sly had taken dropsy and died two years back.

  'Ath? Did she hurt you? Hey! You little piece of camel dropping - what did she do to you?'

  At the angry, demanding sound of Hanse's voice, Athavul clutched himself. Weeping loudly, he rolled over against the wall. He left little spots of tears and slobber and a puddle from a spasming sphincter. Hanse swallowed hard. Sorcery. That damned Enos Y - no, he didn't work this way. Ath was absolutely terrified. Hanse had always thought him the consistency of sparrow's liver and chicken soup, with bird's eggs between his legs. But this - not even this strutting ass could be this hideously possessed by fear without preternatural aid. Just the sight of it was scary. Hanse felt an urge to stomp or stick Ath just to shut him up, and that was awful.

  He glanced at the thirty-one strands of dangling Syrese rope (each knotted thirty-one times) that hung in the doorway of Sly's. He saw seven staring eyeballs, six fingers, and several mismatched feet. Even in the Maze, noise attracted attention ... but people had sense enough not to go running out to see what was amiss.

  'BLAAAH!' Hanse shouted, making a horrid face and pouncing at the doorway. Then he rushed past the grovelling, weeping Athavul. At the corner he looked up Odours towards Straight, and he was sure he saw the vermilion cloak. Maroon now, in the distance. Yes. Across Straight, heading north now past the tanners' broad open-front sheds, almost to the intersection with the Street called Slippery.

  Several people were walking along Odours, just walking, heading south in Hanse's direction. The lone one carried a lanthorn.

  All six walkers - three, one, and two - passed him going in the opposite direction. None saw him, though Hanse was hurrying. He heard the couple talking about the hooded blind woman with the white staff. He crossed well-lighted Straight Street when the red clay clo
ak was at the place called Harlot's Cross. There Tanner's Row angled in to join the Street of Odours at its mutual intersection with the broad Governor's Walk. He passed the tiny 'temple' ofTheba and several shops to stop outside the entrance of the diminutive Temple of Eshi Virginal - few believed in that -and watched the cloak turn left. Northwest. A woman, all right. Heading past the long sprawl of the farmers' market? Or one of the little dwellings that faced it?

  Heading for Red Lantern Road? A woman who pretends to be blind and who put a spell of terror on Athavul like nothing I ever saw.

  He had to follow her. He was incapable of not following her.

  He was not driven only by curiosity. He wanted to know the identity of a woman with such a device, yes. There was also the possibility of obtaining such a useful wand. White, it resembled the walk-tap stick of a sightless woman. Painted though, it could be the swagger stick of ... Shadowspawn. Or of someone with a swollen purse who could put it to good use against Hanse's fellow thieves.

  He looked out for himself; let them.

  Hanse did not follow. He moved to intersect, and could anyone have done it as swiftly and surefootedly, it must have been a child who lived hereabouts and had no supervision.

  He ran past Slippery - fading into a fig-pedlar's doorway while a pair of City Watchmen passed - then ran through two vacant lots, a common back yard full of dog droppings and the white patches of older ones, over an outhouse, around a fat tree and then two meathouses and through two hedges - one spiny, which took no note of being cursed by a shadow on silent feet - across a porch and around a rain barrel, over the top of a sleeping black cat that objected with more noise than the two dogs he had aroused - one was still importantly barking, puffed up and hating to leave off- across another porch ('Is that you, Dadisha? Where have you been?'), through someone's scraps and - long jump! - over a mulchpile, and around two lovers ('What was that, Wrenny?'), an overturned outhouse, a rain barrel, a cow tethered to a wagon he went under without even slowing down, and three more buildings.

  One of the lovers and one of the dogs actually caught sight of the swift fleeting shadow. No one else. The cow might have wondered.