Hastily Conan wiped his blade on Scarface's tunic and sheathed it. There were a few things worse than to be caught by the City Guard standing over a corpse. Most especially in Turan, where the Guard had a habit of following arrest with torture until the prisoner confessed. Conan grabbed the girl's arm and joined the exodus, dragging her behind him.
'You killed them,' she said incredulously. She ran as if unsure whether to drag her heels or not. 'They'd have run away, an you threatened them.'
'Mayhap I should have let them have you,' he replied. 'They would have ridden you like a post horse.
Now be silent and run!'
Down side streets he pulled her, startling drunks staggering from seafarers' taverns, down cross-alleys smelling of stale urine and rotting offal. As soon as they had put some distance between themselves and the bodies, he slowed to a walk-running people were too well noticed-but yet kept moving. He wanted a very goodly distance between himself and the Guardsmen who would be drawn to the corpses like flies.
He dodged between highwheeled pushcarts, carrying goods from harbour warehouses deeper into the city. The girl trailed reluctantly at his heels, following only because his big hand engulfed her slender wrist as securely as an iron manacle.
Finally he turned into a narrow alley, pushing the girl in ahead of him, and stopped to watch his back-path. There was no way that the Guard could have followed him, but his height and his eyes made him stand out, even in a city the size of Aghrapur.
'I thank you for your assistance,' the girl said suddenly in a tone at once haughty and cool. She moved toward the entrance of the alley. 'I must be going now.'
He put out an arm to bar her way. Her breasts pressed pleasurably against the hardness of his forearm, and she backed hastily away, blushing in confusion.
'Not just yet,' he told her.
'Please,' she said without meeting his eye. There was a quaver in her voice. 'I... I am a maiden. My father will reward you well if you return me to him in the same... condition.' The redness in her cheeks deepened.
Conan chuckled deep in his throat. 'It's not your virtue I want, girl. Just the answers to a question or three.'
To his surprise her eyes dropped. 'I suppose I should be glad,' she said bitterly, 'that even killers prefer slender, willowy women. I know I am a cow. My father has often told me I was made to bear many sons and... and to nurse all of them,' she finished weakly, colouring yet again.
Her father was a fool, Conan thought, eyeing her curves. She was a woman made for more than bearing sons, though he did not doubt that whoever she was wed to would find the task of giving them to her a pleasurable one.
'Don't be silly,' he told her gruffly. 'You'd give joy to any man.'
'I would?' she breathed wonderingly. Her liquid eyes caressed his face, innocently, he was certain.
'How,' she asked falteringly, 'is a post horse ridden?'
He had to think to remember why she asked, and then he could barely suppress a smile. 'Long and hard,' he said, 'with little time for rest, if any.'
She went scarlet to the neck of her silken robe, and he chuckled. The girl blushed easily, and prettily.
'What is your name, little one?'
'Yasbet. My father calls me Yasbet.' She looked past him to the street beyond, where pushcarts rumbled by. 'Do you think the casket, at least, would be there if we went back? It belonged to my mother, and Fatima will be furious at its loss. More furious than for the jewels, though she'll be mad enough at those.'
He shook his head. 'That casket has changed hands at least twice by now, for money or blood. And the jewels as well. Who is Fatima?'
'My amah,' she replied, then gasped and glared at him as if he had tricked her into revealing the fact.
'Your amah!' Conan brayed with laughter. 'Are you not a little old to have a nursemaid?'
'My father does not think so,' Yasbet replied in a sullen voice. 'He thinks I must have an amah until I am given to my husband. It is none of my liking. Fatima thinks I am still five years of age, and father sides with her decisions always.' Her eyes closed and her voice sank to a weary whisper. She spoke as if no longer realizing she spoke aloud. 'I shall be locked in my room for this, at the least. I shall be lucky if Fatima does not....' Her words drifted off with a wince, and her hands stole back to cover her buttocks protectively.
'You deserve it,' Conan said harshly.
Yasbet started, eyes wide and flushing furiously. 'Deserve what? What do you mean? Did I say something?'
'You deserve to have an amah, girl. After this I shouldn't be surprised if your father takes two or three of them in service.' He smiled inwardly at the relief on her face now. In truth, he thought she deserved a spanking as well, but saying so would be no way to gain satisfaction for his curiosity. 'Now tell me, Yasbet. What were you doing alone on a street like that, giving your jewels to beggars? It was madness, girl.'
'It was not madness,' she protested. 'I wanted to do something significant, something on my own. You have no idea what my life is like. Every moment waking or sleeping is ruled and watched by Fatima. I am allowed to make not the smallest decision governing my own life. I had to climb over the garden wall to leave without Fatima's permission.'
'But giving jewels to beggars and strumpets?'
'The... the women were not part of my plan. I wanted to help the poor, and who can be poorer than beggars?' Her face firmed angrily. 'My father will know I am no longer a child. I do not regret giving up the pretties he believes mean so much to me. It is noble to help the poor.'
'Perhaps he'll hire six amahs,' Conan muttered. 'Girl, did it never occur to you that you might be hurt? If you had to help someone, why not ask among your own servants? Surely they know of people in need?
Then you could have sold a few of your jewels for money to help.'
Yasbet snorted. 'Even if all the servants were not in league with Fatima, where would I find a dealer in gems who would give me true value? More likely he would simply pretend to deal with me while he sent for my father! And he would no doubt send Fatima to bring me home. That humiliation I can do without, thank you.'
'Gem dealers would recognise you,' he said incredulously, 'and know who your father is? Who is he?
King Yildiz?'
Suddenly wary, she eyed him like a fawn on the edge of flight. 'You will not take me back to him, will you?'
'And why should I not? You are not fit to walk the streets without a keeper, girl.'
'But then I'll never keep him from discovering what happened today,' She shuddered. 'Or Fatima.'
Wetting her lips with the tip of her tongue, she moved closer. 'Just listen to me for a moment. Please? I-'
Abruptly she darted past him into the street.
'Come back here, you fool girl,' he roared, racing after her.
She dashed almost under the wheels of a heavy, crate-filled cart, and was immediately hidden from view.
Two more carts pressed close behind. There was no room to squeeze between them. He ran to get ahead of the carts and to the other side of the street. When he got there, Yasbet was nowhere in sight. A potter's apprentice was setting out his master's crockery before their shop. A rug dealer unrolled his wares before his. Sailors and harlots strolled in and out of a tavern. But of the girl there was no sign.
'Fool girl,' he muttered.
Just then the tavern sign, painted crudely, creaked in the breeze and caught his eye. The Blue Bull. All that had happened, and he had come right to it. Aghrapur was going to be a lucky city. Giving his swordbelt a hitch and settling his cloak about his broad shoulders, he sauntered into the stone-fronted inn.
II
The interior of the Blue Bull was poorly lit by guttering rush torches stuck in crude black iron sconces on the stone walls. A dozen men, hunched over their mugs, sat scattered among the tables that dotted the slate floor, which was swept surprisingly clean for a tavern of that class. Three sailors took turns flinging their daggers at a heart crudely painted on a slab of wood and hung
on a wall. The rough stones around the slab were pocked from ten thousand near misses. A pair of strumpets, one with multi-hued beads braided in her hair, the other wearing a tall wig in a bright shade of red, circulated among the patrons quietly hawking the wares they displayed in diaphanous silk. Serving girls, their muslin covering little more than the harlots' garb, scurried about with pitchers and mugs. An odor of sour wine and stale ale, common to all such places, competed with the stench of the street.
When he saw the innkeeper, a stout, bald man scrubbing the bar with a bit of rag, Conan understood the cleanliness of the floors. He knew the man, Ferian by name. This Ferian had a passion for cleanliness uncommon among men of his profession. It was said he had fled from Belverus, in Nemedia, after killing a man who vomited on the floor of his tavern. But as a source of information he had always been unsurpassed. Unless he had changed his ways he would know all the news in Aghrapur, not only the gossip of the streets.
Ferian smiled as Conan leaned an elbow on the bar, though his small black eyes remained watchful, and he did not cease his wiping. 'Hannuman's Stones, Cimmerian,' he said quietly. 'They say all roads lead to Aghrapur-at least, they say it in Aghrapur-and seeing you walk in here, I believe it. A year more, and all of Shadizar will be here.'
'Who else from Shadizar is in the city?' Conan asked.
'Rufo, the Kothian coiner. Old Sharak, the astrologer. And Emilio, too.'
'Emilio!' Conan exclaimed. Emilio the Corinthian had been the best thief in Zamora, next to Conan. 'He always swore he'd never leave Shadizar.'
Ferian chuckled, a dry sound to come from one so plump. 'And before that he swore he would never leave Corinthia, but he left both for the same reason-he was found in the wrong woman's bed. Her husband was after him, but her mother wanted him even more. Seems he'd been bedding her as well, and lifting bits of her jewellery. The older wench hired a bevy of knifemen to see that Emilio would have nothing to offer another woman. I hear he left the city disguised as an old woman and did not stop sweating for half a year. Ask him about it, an you want to see a man turn seven colours at once, the while swallowing his tongue. He's upstairs with one of the girls now, though likely too drunk to do either of them any good.'
'Then they'll be there till the morrow,' Conan laughed, 'for he'll never admit to failure.' He laid two coppers on the bar. 'Have you any Khorajan ale? My throat is dusty.'
'Do I have Khorajan ale?' Ferian said, rummaging under the bar. 'I have wines and ales you have never heard of. Why, I have wines and ales I have never heard of.' He drew out a dusty clay crock, filled a leathern jack, and made the coppers disappear as he pushed the mug in front of Conan. 'Khorajan ale.
How stand affairs in the Gilded Bitch of the Vilayet? You had to leave in a hurry, did you?'
Conan covered his surprise by drinking deeply on the dark, bitter ale, and wiped white froth from his mouth with the back of his hand before he spoke. 'How knew you I have been in Sultanapur? And why think you I left hurriedly?'
'You were seen there these ten days gone,' Ferian smirked, 'by Zefran the Slaver, who came through here on his way back to Khawarism.' It was the tavernkeeper's major fault that he liked to let men know how much he knew of what they had been about. One day it would gain him a knife between his ribs.
'As for the rest, I know naught save that you stand there with the dust of hard riding on you, and you were never the one to travel for pleasure. Now, what can you tell me?'
Conan drank again, pretending to think on what he could tell. The fat man was known to trade knowledge for knowledge, and Conan had one piece of it he knew was not yet in Aghrapur, unless someone had grown wings to fly it there ahead of him.
'The smuggling is much abated in Sultanapur,' the Cimmerian said finally. 'The Brotherhood of the Coast is in disarray. They sweat in the shadows, and stir not from their dwellings. 'Twill be months before so much as a bale of silk passes through that city without the customs paid.'
Ferian grunted noncommittally, but his eyes lit. Before the sun next rose, men who would try to fill the void in Sultanapur would pay him well.
'And what can you tell me of Aghrapur?'
'Nothing,' Ferian replied flatly.
Conan stared. It was not the tapster's way to give less than value. His scrupulousness was part and parcel of his reputation. 'Do you doubt the worth of what I've told you?'
''Tis not that, Cimmerian.' The tavernkeeper sounded faintly embarrassed. 'Oh, I can tell you what you can learn for yourself in a day's listening in the street. Yildiz casts his eyes beyond the border, and builds the army accordingly. The Cult of Doom gains new members every day. The-'
'The Cult of Doom!' Conan exclaimed. 'What in Mitra's name is that?'
Ferian grimaced. 'A foolishness, is what it is. They're all over the streets, in their saffron robes, the men with shaven heads.'
'I saw some dressed so,' Conan said, 'chanting to a tambourine.'
''Twas them. But there's naught to them, despite the name. They preach that all men are doomed, and building up earthly treasures is futile.' He snorted and scrubbed at his piggish nose with a fat hand. 'As for earthly treasure, the cult itself has built up quite a store. All who join give whatever they possess to the Cult. Some young sons and daughters of wealthy merchants, and even of nobles, have given quite a bit.
Not to mention an army of rich widows. There've been petitions to the throne about it, from relatives and such, but the cult pays its taxes on time, which is more than can be said of the temples. And it gives generous gifts to the proper officials, though that is not well known.' He brightened. 'They have a compound, almost a small city, some small distance north, on the coast. Could I find where within their treasures are kept... well, you are skilful enough to make your fortune in a single night.'
'I'm a thief no more,' Conan said. Ferian's face fell. 'What else can you tell me of the city?'
The fat man sighed heavily. 'These days I know less than the harlots, whose customers sometimes talk in their sleep. In these three months past, two thirds of those who have given me bits and pieces, servants of nobles and of those high in the Merchant's Guild, have been murdered. What you have told me is the best piece of intelligence I have had in a month. I owe you,' he added reluctantly. He was not one to enjoy indebtedness. 'The first thing I hear that you might use to advantage, I will place in your hands.'
'And I will hear it before anyone else? Let us say two days before?'
'Two days! As well as a year. Knowledge spoils faster than milk under a hot sun.'
'Two days,' Conan said firmly.
'Two days, then,' the other man muttered.
Conan smiled. Breaking his word was not among Ferian's faults. But this matter of the murders, now....
'It seems beyond mere chance that so many of your informants should die in so short a time.'
'No, friend Conan.' To the Cimmerian's surprise, Ferian refilled his mug without asking payment. That was not like him. Perhaps he hoped to pay off his debt in free drink, Conan thought. 'Many more have died than those who had a connection to me. There is a plague of murder on Aghrapur. More killings in these three months than in the whole year before. Were it not for the sorts who die, I might think some plot was afoot, but who would plot against servants and Palace Guards and the like? 'Tis the hand of chance playing fickle tricks, no more.'
'Conan!' came a shout from the stairs at the rear of the common room. The big Cimmerian looked around.
Emilio stood on the bottom step with his arm around a slender girl in gauds of brass and carnelian and a long, narrow strip of red silk wound about her in such a way as almost to conceal her breasts and hips.
She half supported him as he swayed drunkenly, which was no easy task. He was a big man, as tall as Conan, though not so heavily muscled. He was handsome of face, with eyes almost too large for a man.
His eyes and his profile, he would tell anyone who would listen, drew women as honey drew flies.
'Greetings, Emilio,' Conan called b
ack. 'No longer dressing as an old woman, I see.' To Ferian he added, 'We'll talk later.' Taking his mug, he strolled to the staircase.
Emilio sent the girl on her way with a swat across her pert rump, and eyed Conan woozily. 'Who told you that tale? Ferian, I'll wager. Fat old sack of offal. Not true, I tell you. Not true. I simply left Zamora to seek rich-' he paused to belch '-richer pastures. You're just the man I want to see, Cimmerian.'
Conan could sense an offer of cooperation coming. 'We no longer follow the same trade, Emilio,' he said.
Emilio did not seem to hear. He grabbed the arm of a passing serving girl, ogling her generous breasts as he did. 'Wine, girl. You hear?' She nodded and sped off, deftly avoiding his attempted pinch; he tottered and nearly fell. Still staggering, he managed to fall onto a stool at an empty table and gestured drunkenly toward another. 'Sit, Conan. Sit, man. Wine'll be here before you know it.'
'Never before have I seen you so drunk,' Conan said as he took the stool. 'Are you celebrating, or drowning sorrows?'
The other man's eyes had drifted half shut. 'Do you know,' he said dreamily, 'that a blonde is worth her weight in rubies here? These Turanian men will kill to have a fair-haired mistress. Does she have blue eyes, they'll kill their mothers for her.'
'Have you turned to slaving, then, Emilio? I thought better of you.'
Instead of answering, the other man rambled on.
'They have more heat in them than other women. I think it's the hair. Gods put colour in a woman's hair, they must have to take some of her heat to do it. Stands to reason. Davinia, now, she's hotter than forge-fire. That fat general can't take care of her. Too much army business.' Emilio's snicker was at once besotted and lascivious. Conan decided to let him run out of wind. 'So I take care of her. But she wants things. I tell her she doesn't need any necklace, beautiful as she is, but she says a sorcerer laid a spell on it for a queen. Centuries gone this happened, she claims. Woman wears it, and she's irresistible. Thirteen rubies, she says, each as big as the first joint of a man's thumb, each set on a moonstone-crusted seashell in gold. Now that's worth stealing.' He snickered and leaned toward Conan, leering. 'Thought she'd pay me for it with her body. Set her straight on that. I already have her body. Hundred gold pieces, I told her.
The Conan Chronology Page 124