by Dave Duncan
Young Che brought out the food. “With your permission, señor, I will go out this afternoon to hire more workers, yes?” He flashed teeth like the breakers, white and dangerous.
“No,” Wolf said. “Until we discover on what scale we shall be entertaining I cannot determine what staff we need.”
“But, señor! A porter? Women to clean, surely?”
“Not yet! Meanwhile…tell Estavan I want those cactuses dug out. You can read and write?”
Che said, “Of course, señor.”
No need for truth-sounding to know he was lying. “Then prepare for me a detailed list of everything on the property from the beds down to the smallest spoon.”
That ought to keep him busy. Wolf cut his food with a special Dark Chamber belt knife and so did Dolores. Neither blade changed color.
“The quarry is running true so far,” he said. It was too soon for poison.
She nodded, not as cheerful as usual.
“And Megan is willing to sing her solo?”
“She says she can handle all three of them at once if necessary.”
They did not expect the violence to begin yet, or they would not leave Megan alone, although even Flicker admitted Megan was no mean brawler. She bragged that she had taught him all he knew.
When they had eaten as much as they could of Gustavo’s vile cooking, Don Lope and Dona Dolores announced that they were going out to explore the town. They began by strolling along to the Alcalde’s residence, where Dona Dolores called on Dona Fortunata to present her with a spectacular pearl necklace in gratitude for all her kindness. Curiously, Fortunata was as beautifully clad and groomed as she had been the previous day—apparently he kept her like that all the time. She wept over the pearls, and they certainly looked genuine. Rojas himself was not at home, to Wolf’s relief.
They did explore the town a little, but not enough to lose their supposedly unseen followers. When they returned to the hacienda, they were admitted by Che, who seemed not quite his former joyous self.
“Something wrong?” Dolores asked innocently.
Alas, Estavan had been bitten by a tarantula and had gone in search of a herbalist.
“It is not to be tolerated!” Wolf said. “A gardener so careless? Do not admit him if he returns.”
“I was hoping it would be Gustavo,” Dolores said as they went in search of Megan. “The shock might have shaken the dirt out of his nails.”
“How long until the conjuration wears off?”
“Three days. Maybe four for a man that size.”
They found Megan where they had left her, sorting Dolores’s clothes. She seemed a little flustered, but no worse off than that.
Dolores gave her a hug. “You all right?”
“I am very well, thank you, mistress.”
“And Che?”
Megan rolled her eyes. “A hard-fought battle. He was using some sort of charm, not just eyelashes, and I swear he has more hands than the King’s stables. I had just decided I was fighting on the wrong side when we were interrupted by Estavan’s screams.” She sighed regretfully.
Dolores grinned. “And where was Estavan?”
“In the master’s dressing room.”
A strange place to dig cactus! Che had been distracting Megan while Estavan tried to open a warded chest. Estavan’s arms were now useless.
“It is hard to find good help,” Wolf said.
They had raised the stakes and it was Rojas’s turn to roll again.
7
Just after sunset that evening, Che served dinner on the patio. Nights were darker and stars closer in the Hence Lands than they were in Chivial and Wolf found the tropical air as soporific as sweet wine. There was something sublimely relaxing about the ageless rumble of the sea.
“This does beat ship life,” he remarked, unobtrusively stirring his wine with his belt knife. He peered at it. No danger.
“Except possibly for the food.” Dolores was inspecting her plate of hors d’oeuvres. “The mushrooms.”
“Odd-looking mushrooms!” Wolf cut one and held his blade near the candles. “Remind me what blue means?”
“Probably not fatal, but certainly not wholesome.”
“Right.” He scooped up all the mushrooms and put them in his pocket. “We go with Plan One. You get Megan.”
Feeling the joyous tingle that came before a fight, he strode around the house to the kitchen, which was an open-fronted shed, set apart from the main building as a fire precaution. Gustavo was stirring a pot on the stove, virtually outdoors, but Wolf’s approach from seaward cut off his best line of escape. Megan had been backed into a corner beside the larder by the glamorous Che, although she did not seem very troubled by this situation. Wolf drew sword and dagger. Che noticed him and was distracted. Before he could start thinking hostage, Megan butted him in the face and made her escape, grabbing up a knife from the table as she passed.
“Stay where you are, Che!” Wolf waved his dagger. “Join him there, Gustavo. Don’t try anything. I am an expert swordsman.”
Señor! What is the matter?” Che’s lip was bleeding.
Seeing Gustavo furtively comparing his distance from the back door to his chances of dodging around the hearth without coming within reach of Diligence, Wolf said, “Don’t even think it! I will slice you thinner than tortillas.” The only advantage to having a face like his was that people did believe his threats.
Dolores walked in carrying her sword and a coil of thin rope. He felt safer with all three of them there, but he did not relax completely until they had made the two scoundrels secure. They sat them back to back on the butcher block, binding them to both it and each other, wrapping the rope around them repeatedly.
“Now!” he said, sheathing Diligence. “Now you will answer some questions.” He emptied his pocket of mushrooms and laid them in clear view on the table. Turning to Dolores, he saw she was strung as tight as a longbow. There was a world of difference between taking lessons in how to do something—run a rapier through a man’s skull, say, or torture a confession out of him—and actually doing it or even watching it done. “Er…Megan, would you take the first hour?”
“Happy to do so, Don Lope. We may need some gags.”
“There’s a towel here.” He ripped it in half.
“They won’t be necessary for a little while. When they start to break…Gustavo, why did you try to poison Don Lope and Dona Dolores?”
“I do not know what you mean, bitch!”
Megan sighed like a nurse about to administer a major enema. “Notch one!” Both men gasped in surprise as their bonds tightened. “If you tell lies or do not answer, I will continue until the rope cuts you in slices. Why did you try to poison them?”
“I did not intend to harm the señor and señora,” Gustavo growled.
Apparently that was a true statement, because the women exchanged puzzled glances. “What would have happened if they had eaten the mushrooms?”
He tried to shrug. “Make them happy, see pretty things. Not worry. Put one in my mouth and I will chew it.”
“And we wouldn’t get anything more out of you tonight, would we? How long does the effect last?”
“A day? Two? It is harmless.”
“Why did Estavan try to open the baggage this afternoon?”
“This is crazy!” Che protested. “Estavan never tried to—Eeeeee!”
Megan had just called for notch two.
They resisted until she reached notch six, by which time the rope was biting deep. They were in pain, yes, but fear of what was to come troubled them much more. No doubt they were surprised, as Wolf was, to discover the fiend inside his sweet-natured foster-mother-in-law.
“Don Lope,” she said, “in the name of mercy we should adjourn for a while to let them consider.” She flickered a wink they could not see.
“I don’t see why. Keep going.”
“Their ribs will start popping soon and no blood is reaching their hands. The risk of gangrene—”
“No!” howled Pretty-Boy Che. “I will talk! I will…tell, but please give…me air, señora! I am dying!”
“Notch four,” she said, and they sighed in unison. “You weren’t dying. You can suffer much worse than that before you die. If you start lying again, I am going straight to level eight, for half an hour. Now talk. You were sent here to pretend to be servants?”
“Si, señora.”
“Truth, at last!” She sounded as relieved as Wolf felt. “Who sent you?”
“I do not know!” Che cried. “It is the truth, señora! We were not told!”
“Someone must have sent you.”
“Pablo told us a man wanted this.”
“Who is Pablo?”
“A man, another man. He pays well!” Che was almost gibbering. He was not going to incriminate Ruiz de Rojas. He could not. His trail would stop at the mysterious Pablo, and Pablo’s trail in turn would lead only one more link up a very long chain. The Alcade himself stayed out of reach. “Please, please, señora! The cramps…”
“The cramps will get worse. What were you going to do when you got the trunks open?”
“Just steal, is all. Anything we could see that we—”
“Notch eight!”
Both men screamed as the air was crushed out of their lungs. Wolf was suffering too, for Dolores had her fingernails buried in his arm.
Che managed to croak, “Tell Pablo!”
“Notch five,” said the motherly fiend, smiling sweetly. “Keep talking.”
Pablo was waiting at the third villa north. He was to be notified when all three strangers had been drugged, bound, gagged, and blindfolded—and the trunks opened. Che and Gustavo had been sternly warned not to help themselves to anything, because the contents might be dangerous, but Señor Pablo, cautious soul, would stay away until all the booby-traps had been removed.
“And if we had refused to open the chests?”
Che’s teeth started chattering. “We were to persuade you.”
Wolf felt less guilty then—torture his wife, would they? Megan asked more questions, but obtained nothing except a vague description of Pablo. They had reached the end of the road.
“I think that’s all they can tell us,” she said in Chivian. “They’re trash, expendable.”
Dolores nodded agreement.
“Then why don’t you reward them both with a nice feast of mushrooms? I’ll be right back.” Wolf strode around to the front door, which opened onto a courtyard decorated with flowering bushes and some palm trees. Theoretically it was well illuminated by the flames of seven or eight torches on poles flanking the path. Che had insisted that these were a necessary precaution in this wicked town, but Wolf had noted several places where trees blocked the view of the stockade from the house, so a limber and well-prepared intruder could shimmy over the top and approach unseen through the dense shadows of the shrubbery. He did not doubt that Don Ruiz de Rojas was aware of this.
Here the growl of the sea was fainter and the racket of Sigisa enjoying itself much louder. Wolf walked down to the gate, slid back the bolts, and opened the flap a handsbreadth. Revelers were singing their way along the road, and the grog shop directly across from him was doing an uproarious business, complete with drums and trumpets. Near his feet, a man sat on the dirt with his back against the wall, mumbling happily to himself.
A faint shadow solidified into deeper blackness, only the whites of his eyes showing.
“All well?” Flicker asked.
“Very well. And you?”
“All present.”
“No other watchers?”
“There was one.”
Wolf did not ask. “Bring them, then.”
A few moments later, he stepped aside to admit Serpent-night, Heron-jade, Blood-mirror-walks, Pulse-obsidian, Duff, Hick, Peterkin, and Will. The last four were sailors he had bought away from Glorious. Flicker followed and shot the bolts behind him. All nine had enjoyed a night and a day ashore at Dark Chamber expense and brought a strong smell of rum with them, but Flicker would have kept them operational. Duff had been the man in the gutter. Heron-jade carried a limp form draped over his shoulder.
“Do we need to tie him up?” Wolf whispered as the eagle warrior slid his load to the grass.
“Maybe next week,” Flicker replied, just as quietly. “Seems it’s a point of honor to hit once and only once. Killing is regarded as shoddy work.”
“Come then.” Wolf led his troops into the house, avoiding the kitchen. Che and Gustavo might hear voices, if they were still capable of hearing anything, but they must not be allowed to see faces.
First in Chivian, then Tlixilian, he explained what had happened so far.
“And now what?” asked Blood-mirror-walks, ever the leader.
Dolores came in and smiled at everybody, but she still looked wan.
“How are they?” Wolf asked.
“Che is giggling happily,” she said, coming close to him. “Gustavo is worried by the alligators. We gagged them both, just to be on the safe side.”
He nodded and turned his attention back to the Tlixilians. “What next, you ask? The enemy will meet violence with violence. If we do nothing, then they’ll wait until tomorrow night…probably. Unless someone panics and acts without waiting for the leader’s say-so.” He repeated that in Chivian for the sailors. “But since we now know where Pablo is, it would be easier just to go and deal with them there. What do you all think?” Again he translated.
The men’s smiles were enough answer. Peterkin and Will were natural fighters, almost on a par with the Tlixilians for ferocity. Hick and Duff were less aggressive but enjoying the skulduggery so far.
“Wolf!” Dolores said. “No! Defending yourself against intruders is one thing. Storming somebody else’s house is a crime. There may be innocent people there, too, Wolf! It will be murder.”
He conceded the point reluctantly, for he had his dander up. “I cannot seriously believe that our friend Pablo is merely spending a quiet evening visiting friends, waiting for Che’s message. But I suppose it’s possible. There may be innocent people in Sigisa. Let us see if we can provoke the others into doing something stupid.”
8
A band of revelers reeling along a street was a common enough sight in Sigisa. In this case one was so drunk that he was being carried by another, a very large man. When they had progressed three gates from their starting point, Wolf ran a golden key over the timbers and heard bolts click. He peered inside. The courtyard was dark, but candles glimmered in windows, and he thought he heard a rumble of male voices, although he could not be sure.
He stepped back and Heron-jade went in just far enough to unload his burden, who was starting to move and make noises. Che and Gustavo were allowed to proceed on their own, weaving and groping into the dark yard. Wolf closed and locked the gate.
“Let’s hope they enjoy the party.” He led his army home.
They were gambling that the unknown Pablo would panic. This was the second time he had failed and the hour was late to go crawling to his superiors for fresh instructions. He must be under pressure to learn what the insolent visitors kept in their well-guarded chests before they had time to hide it or spend it. Now they had annulled four of his men and made him look stupid. Working for an unscrupulous gang boss, he ought to be panicking.
Back at the hacienda, Wolf opened the weapons chest and handed out swords. The jaguar warriors accepted eagerly, but Heron-jade refused, scowling and holding up a cudgel he had acquired from somewhere. Why argue with results?
“Kill or take prisoners?” Blood-mirror-walks asked, trying a few swings.
“Take prisoners if you can.”
“We can. You will claim their precious jewels?”
Wolf suppressed thoughts of the butcher block in the kitchen. “Not unless you can explain how it is done.”
“Only acolytes know
such things.” The warrior’s eyes were dark pools of distrust, and Wolf wondered if he had just failed a test.
“I’d better explain these,” he said, pulling out a roll of tangle mats.
“They have been blessed?” Blood-mirror-walks demanded, but he put the question to Heron-jade.
The big man nodded, squinting at them suspiciously. “Spider webs.”
“That’s a fair description,” Wolf admitted.
“Put them away!” Blood-mirror-walks said contemptuously. “You have warriors here. You do not need such trash.”
“Very well. Then let’s inspect our perimeter. Flicker, Duff, will you keep an eye on the front while the rest of us take a look at the ocean side?” Wolf led the way out to the veranda. There was no light there except the stars, but a faint golden haze on the horizon showed where the moon would soon rise. He waited a moment for his eyes to adjust. “I took a look at the stockade earlier, and I didn’t see any weak places where—”
“I can see five already,” Blood-mirror-walks said at his shoulder.
“No, I meant places where a man or a boy could—”
“I know what you mean, Wild-dog-by-the-spring. You see the footprints beside that bush?” He pointed at an inky patch halfway between the house and the beach.
“No.” Wolf could barely see the bush.
“I do. Yours and a bigger man in sandals. Leave this fight to your jaguars. Serpent-night, inspect the fence. Pulse-obsidian, the bushes.” His tone softened as he looked up at the eagle warrior. “Taker of Four Captives, to have you as lookout would honor us all.”
“The honor will be mine, terror of the dark.”
“What signal will you give us?”
“If they come by the street—” Heron-jade cheeped like a small bird. “Along the beach—” Two cheeps.