by Timothy Zahn
“You don’t think a woman like her could possibly want anything to do with someone like me?” I demanded.
“She’s not in your class, Frank,” Bayta said. “If there’s really something there . . .” Her throat worked. “Danger and tension can bring people together. I know that. People who otherwise might not ever even look at each other—”
“Is there a reason we’re having this conversation right now?” I cut her off. “Because if not, we need to get out there and find Stafford.”
“That is the reason,” Bayta said. “I’m wondering if you really want to find Mr. Stafford. Or at least, whether you want to find him alive.”
Once, years ago, a criminal kingpin I’d just nailed had offered me a bribe to let him go. This felt exactly the same way. “If you really believe that, you don’t know me at all,” I said stiffly. “Come on. We have a job to do.”
Turning my back on her, I continued down the curved corridor, walking as fast as I could without breaking into a jog. I didn’t know if Bayta was having any trouble keeping up with me. For the moment, I didn’t care.
The area we’d come to was somewhat better lit than the tunnel had been, and certainly better populated. Small booths lined the walls, most with the appearance of art dealerships, most of them deserted and closed. As the toughs had suggested, a few of the booths with food and drink products still had people working them. The less artsy types, the ones selling flatcake, soups, and Tra’hok vegetable twists, were doing a fairly brisk business.
The general atmosphere of the place was more or less as expected. Most of the beings wandering through the gloom had a generally disheveled appearance, with ratty hair, feathers, or fur and old or at least rumpled clothing. Many had cobbled together outfits and adornments that were bizarre blends of their particular culture’s class indicators. There were Juriani with the unpolished scales of commoners, yet wearing the tiered—though badly faded—clothing of midlevel royalty; Cimmaheem with their yarnlike hair braided, upper-class style, but only on one side; and Pirks who had preen-glossed feathers but wore no status headdresses. Either they were trying to hang on to the status they’d once had, or else were hoping an odd look would make them stand out of the crowd when the paying customers came around.
One of the artsy booths still had a lone Nemut on duty. He was polishing some jewelry, his gaze drifting across the collection of colorful characters as he worked, his truncated-cone mouth orifice making little silent motions as if he was humming to himself. His rainbow-slashed eyes passed across us, paused, and came back again.
Someone who could distinguish between Human faces well enough to recognize we didn’t belong there. That would be a good place to start. Changing direction, I headed toward his booth.
“Fine evening to you, Humans,” he said in better than passable English as we reached him. His angled shoulder muscles flexed briefly in traditional Nemuti greeting. “Have you come to shop for fine artistry?”
“Perhaps later,” I said, glancing over the necklaces, rings, and ear cuffs in his display case, most of them composed of nested strips of copper, gold, and silver. It wasn’t a style I’d seen before, but I found it rather attractive. “First, we have to locate a friend.”
The Nemut gave a long, sibilant sniffle. “Few here have friends,” he said. “Has your friend a name?”
“He’s a Human,” I said. “I understand he goes by the name Artist.”
The other tossed his head, his tight middle-class curls glinting in the faint light. “Ah,” he said, his tone changing subtly. “Artist. Yes, I know the one.”
“I take it you don’t like him?” I asked.
“We are all artists,” the Nemut said scornfully. “But this Human almost doesn’t deserve such a title. All he does is play with his claywork and pester those of us who are Nemuti with questions about ancient sculptures.”
“Yes, that sounds like our friend,” I agreed. “Do you know where we might find him?”
He nodded his head back over his shoulder. “His dwelling is in the courtyard,” he said. “A small gray tent with green edges.”
“Thank you,” I said, eyeing the jewelry again. “How late will you be open?”
“Another hour at least,” he said, his eyes reflecting cautious hope. “Longer for anyone truly interested in my work.”
“We’ll be back,” I promised. Glancing around, I located Bayta, standing a couple of steps behind me with smoldering fire in her eyes, then headed toward the nearest corridor angling inward. Two corridors later we stepped out again into the cold night rain onto a landing about five meters above the old amphitheater’s performance ground.
It was like a scene from an apocalyptic dit rec drama. The yard stretched out in front of us, dark and wet and gloomy, a combination tent city and tenement with a bit of macabre street fair thrown in. The open ground was crowded with tents and small pavilions of random sizes and shapes, their surfaces glistening in the rain. Wedged into some of the unoccupied areas were small furnaces, probably pottery kilns, with tendrils of steam rising wherever the rain hit. Hooded figures hunched around them, their faces red in the glow of the small fires.
In the center of the courtyard was a much bigger fire pit, maybe thirty meters across, with a fading bonfire in the center. The pit was surrounded by a shin-high wall built of stone, with numerous long indented pathways leading to within three, four, or five meters of the blaze. All the indentations were occupied, some by glass blowers, others by blacksmiths working bits of metal. There was a painter halfway down one of the indentations as well, working briskly at an easel hooded against the rain. Either the smoke of the burning wood was an integral part of his painting, or else he was just looking for free heat.
There were figures moving all through the area, some of them hooded, many of them not. Their conversation formed a low rumble punctuated by the rhythmic clinking from the metalworkers and an occasional shout or barked laugh that rose above the general background.
“Here we are,” I said, waving a hand over the scene.
“Wonderful,” Bayta said with an edge of sarcasm. “Now all we have to do is find a single Human in all of this.”
A movement a quarter of the way around the courtyard caught my eye. It was the five toughs from the entry tunnel, spread out in a search line and working their way through the mass of tents and artists. “No problem,” I said, nodding toward them, feeling a surge of wounded vindication. I’d been right about this one, anyway. “Our bird dogs have arrived.”
“And?” Bayta prompted, gesturing toward the stairs leading down from our landing to the main yard.
“Patience,” I said. “Once we head down into the courtyard we’ll lose sight of them. I want at least a general idea of where they’re going first.”
We didn’t have long to wait. Midway through the grounds they converged on a small tent. “Is that the tent the jeweler described?” Bayta asked.
“Hard to tell in this light,” I said, forcing myself not to charge immediately to the rescue. If Stafford wasn’t home and the toughs headed somewhere else, we wouldn’t have a hope of finding them again in that maze.
Sure enough, the leader pulled open the flap, glanced inside, and let it drop again. He held a brief consultation with his friends, and then the whole group continued their inward path.
“The bonfire,” Bayta said suddenly. “The jeweler said he did claywork.”
“And he needs a fire to bake it with,” I agreed. Automatically, I started to take her arm, remembered at the last second she was mad at me, and let my hand fall back to my side. “Let’s go.”
The main ground was every bit as densely packed as it had looked from the higher vantage point. Most of the residents were milling around slowly, not in any hurry to get wherever they were going. I was, and I must have winged at least half a dozen of them on my way through.
The toughs had reached the low wall and were working their way around it in our direction when we came within sight of them again. I caugh
t Bayta’s arm as she started around the last tent between us and the fire pit, pulling her back into partial concealment. “Easy,” I murmured. “Don’t want to spook them until they’ve finished doing the legwork for us.”
They had made it past three of the indentations when the one who had reacted to the Artist name suddenly pointed into the next pathway ahead.
I squinted through the blaze of the fire. A lone figure was crouched at the far end of the indentation, wearing a metalworker’s protective face shield, full-torso apron, and gauntlets. He was fiddling with something on the stone barrier in front of him.
What with the glare and the garb, I couldn’t imagine how the Tra’ho could recognize anyone. But the leader apparently had no doubts. He glanced furtively around, tapped one of his gang on the shoulder, and headed in. Three of the toughs followed, the one he’d touched staying behind and planting himself in the center of the indentation’s entrance, his hand resting casually on his knife hilt.
“That’s our cue,” I told Bayta, and headed around the tent.
The Tra’ho spotted us as we came around the last curve of the wall. Like an idiot, he decided to try a bluff first. [We are seeking your friend,] he said as we came up to him. [We think he might be—]
He broke off in midsentence as I kept coming, finally drawing his knife from its sheath. Too late. I swung my left arm down, catching his wrist with mine and deflecting his thrust to the side. As I did so, I jabbed downward with my right fist, catching the nerve center at the top of his hip.
He went down in a flailing tangle of limbs as his leg collapsed beneath him. I caught him with a cross-punch to the top of his right shoulder as he fell, paralyzing that arm as well and sending the knife clattering against the fire pit wall. Scooping up the weapon, I pitched it over the wall into the ashes and took his place in the center of the pathway.
By now the other four Tra’ho’seej had collected their victim and were heading back toward me. One of the toughs was on either side of the man, gripping his apron straps, his knife hand pressed against the victim’s sides. The other two strode along in front of them, their own knives pressed into partial concealment against their sides. I couldn’t see any of their expressions with the glare of the fire behind them, but I could imagine they weren’t looking very pleased to see me standing in their way.
Six paces away, the leader motioned for the rear group to stop. He and the other front man took another pace forward and also stopped. [Out of the way,] he ordered me, tapping his knife against his leg for emphasis.
I folded my arms across my chest. “Make me,” I invited.
EIGHTEEN
For a moment he just stood there, probably wondering what kind of suicidal moron faced down two knives without any weapon of his own.
Then I saw his eyes flick down to their friend, moaning quietly on the ground where I’d left him. That was apparently all the answer he needed. He and his buddy started toward me again, leaving their companions and their prisoner still hanging back out of danger.
I let them get two more steps, then held out a hand like a cop directing traffic. “Let’s all calm down,” I advised. “You really don’t want to do this.”
The pair took one more step before coming to a somewhat leisurely halt, putting them almost within knife-thrust range of my stomach. [You think not?] the leader asked.
“I’m sure not,” I assured him. “All that blood and pain. Yuck.”
[Then move from our path and live,] he said.
“You misunderstand,” I said. “I wasn’t talking about my blood.” I inclined my head to my left.
For a moment he just stared at me. Then, cautiously, he turned his head.
And froze. Fayr was standing in the next indentation over, halfway in toward the fire where he had a perfect view of all four toughs’ backs. His poncho was draped up and over his Rontra 772 as he held it shoulder-slung at his side, only the tip of the muzzle coyly peeking out.
“Trust me, he can take out both of your friends before either has a chance to do anything,” I said. “The knives go away now, right?”
All four Tra’ho’seej were staring at Fayr now. They were still staring when their prisoner abruptly twisted his arms out of his captors’ grips and dropped flat on his stomach onto the ground.
I tensed, as I’m sure the toughs did, waiting for Fayr to take advantage of the newly cleared field of fire to mow them down. But Fayr was cooler than that. More to the point, he also knew we needed to keep a low profile. “The knives go away now, right?” I repeated.
The leader muttered something under his breath, and the knives disappeared back into their sheaths. I gestured, and the two toughs in back moved up to join their friends. “Have a seat,” I invited, waving at the low fire pit wall, and headed in to get their newly freed prisoner.
He had gotten back to his feet by the time I reached him. “Good evening,” I greeted him. “Mr. Da—?”
“What the hell was that?” he cut me off tartly, his voice muffled by his face shield. “I gave you a perfect opening against those killers, and you just stood there.”
“It’s called restraint,” I said, frowning. People rescued from kidnapping and robbery were usually a little more civil toward their rescuers. “You have something personal against those kids?”
“You mean aside from the fact one of them could have stuck his knife in me while I was lying on the ground?” he retorted.
“But they didn’t, did they?” I reminded him patiently. “It’s also called not drawing extra attention to yourself. I assumed you were as interested in that as we are.”
“Well, yes,” he said, less truculently. “Sorry. I guess I should be more grateful for the rescue, shouldn’t I? Thank you.”
“You’re welcome,” I said. “And I think you may be overreacting a little. All they were after were your cash sticks.”
I couldn’t see his expression with the face shield still in place, but I could nevertheless sense his surprise. “My cash sticks?” he echoed. “Why in the world would they think I even had any?”
“Because I told them,” I said.
“You what?”
“We needed to find you quickly,” I explained. “That seemed the easiest way to do it.”
“I see,” he said. The growing annoyance in his voice had vanished, replaced by a cautious anticipation. “Is this about the item?”
“Yes, but not in the way you’re thinking,” I said, looking over his shoulder. With the rain still falling the bonfire was starting to die down, but it was still quite warm where I was standing. “Is there a private place where we can go to talk?”
“That depends on what you have to say,” he said, some of the wariness coming back. “Do you have the item I’m looking for?”
“I’m afraid the item you’re looking for no longer exists,” I said. “But the item you already have is still greatly in demand, Mr. Stafford.” I raised my eyebrows. “Or should I say, Mr. Künstler?”
His shoulders went rigid. “Who are you?” he demanded.
“My name’s Frank Compton.” I hesitated, but there was no good way to say this. “I was with your father when he died.”
For a long moment he stood rigid. Then, carefully, he pulled off his gauntlets and removed his mask.
It was Daniel Stafford, all right. But the face before me was a far cry from the neat, clean-cut professional college student in Morse’s dossier photo. This version had wild and ragged hair, several weeks’ worth of beard, and was sheened with sweat and grime. “My name is Stafford,” he said quietly but firmly. “Rafael Künstler was my uncle.”
“Ah,” I said. So even now his true parentage was to be kept secret. That was fine with me. “My mistake.”
His eyes searched my face. “So you’re Frank Compton,” he went on. “Uncle Rafael sent me a couple of messages about you.”
“Anything interesting?”
“Only that you came with a high recommendation as a man who could be trusted.” His lip twitche
d. “I also heard the news report of his death. What happened?”
“We can go into that later, if you don’t mind,” I said, looking over my shoulder. The four toughs were still sitting on the fire pit wall, with Fayr facing them from a couple of meters away with his gun still mostly hidden. So far the milling populace didn’t seem to have noticed or gotten curious about any of it, but that wouldn’t last forever. “Right now, we’ve got more pressing matters to deal with. Specifically, we need to grab the Lynx and get out of here.”
“And I’m just supposed to hand it over to you?” Stafford asked. “Just like that?”
“Unless you want to join the rest of the bodies littering the trail of these damn sculptures, yes,” I said tartly. “The people who’ve been creating that trail are already on Ghonsilya looking for you.”
His throat tightened. “How do I know you’re not one of them? You said you were with Uncle Rafael when he died. Maybe you’re his killer.”
“You said he gave me a vote of confidence.”
“He gave someone named Frank Compton a vote of confidence,” he countered. “I only have your word that you’re the same person. And don’t bother showing me any ID,” he added as I reached for my wallet. “I’ve got lots of ID, too.”
“So I gather,” I growled. We didn’t have time for this. “Let me lay it out for you. You have three choices. Only three. Option one: you give the Lynx to the people who killed your uncle.”
His eyes flashed. “No,” he bit out.
“Good for you,” I said. “Option two is you trust me and let me get you and the Lynx out of here.”
“And option three?”
I looked him squarely in the eye. “You reject my help, they track you down and kill you, and they get the Lynx anyway.”