Chapter Twenty-eight
“Where is that bloody bastard?” one man asked.
“Keep it down, Mero,” the other man said. “If the watch catches us in here, we’ll bloody row our lives away in the galley. I’ve still got my cut from that last ship, and I’d rather spend tonight curled up in Stout Lei’s bed than shackled to a bank.”
The man called Mero let out a laugh. “Stout Lei still takes you in?”
The dust in the narrow crawlspace above Sammeen’s office swirled in Dag’s slow, controlled breaths, illuminated by the sunlight that filtered through the chipped plaster. He pressed an eye to the largest crack and looked down on the two men.
“Pontus’s going to have our throats cut if we don’t come back with him,” Mero said. He was lean, dark hair, a long knife in one hand.
“Well, someone got here first,” the other man said. A little wider build, a wicked short-sword at his side. This one walked like a fighter. “Look, there’s still blood on the desk.”
“Dead is dead,” Mero said. “Not going to cut in on our jobs if he’s swimming in the harbor.”
“I don’t know if Pontus will see it that way,” the other man said. “He wanted us to bring him back alive—knock him around, he said, but no killing. Says something’s going on with this guy, bigger than just the smuggling. He says it has to do with Chec and Felle.”
“Yeah?” Mero said. “Bel take the bastard turncoats.”
“Might be he’s still nearby,” the other man said. “Let’s go look in the yard.”
“Hey Peg,” Mero said, “maybe them giants took him to eat.” Another laugh.
“Shut your mouth,” Peg said. “Stout Lei isn’t going to wait all evening for me.”
“Might be she got started already,” Mero said.
This time Peg laughed.
“Come on,” he said. “Pontus’s not going to take this long even with his prized whore.”
“Call her a whore where Pontus can hear you and it’s the last thing you’ll say,” Mero warned.
They moved out of Dag’s line of sight, and a few moments later he heard them clomping down the stairs. For smugglers or pirates, the men made a surprising amount of noise when they moved. They wouldn’t have lasted half a day as assassins.
Dag slithered back toward the narrow opening between the timbers of the ceiling. He dropped down into the hallway, stifling a grunt at the shock of pain in his wounded leg. Through the window, he could see the two smugglers entering the warehouse. Good riddance to them, and the black flame burn them. Dagger and throwing knife ready, Dag made his way down the stairs and out onto the street that ran along the harbor.
The sun hung low over the western sea, turning those shifting, gray-green slabs into ripples of orange and amber flame, Ishahb’s last triumph of the day. Sailors from a dozen countries crowded the street, leaving the quays for the taverns of the Gut as, interspersed among them, the captains and merchants pushed higher up the hill toward the more reputable inns and wine-houses.
Slipping the long dagger into the hole in his trousers and the knife into his waistband, Dag pushed into the crowd, one more sailor among many. Pontus’s men looking for Sammeen, and Pontus going up the Tacline for something. Someone, Dag corrected himself. New players, and Dag did not like complications. The Tacline, though. That was where Coi would have his manor.
Dag let the swell carry him forward and up Fisher’s Lane. The great lanterns were being lit as the last of the fire died out across the waves, and the streets glowed. In the darkness, full of life and energy, the uncleaned sewers and the accumulated garbage hidden by darkness, Apsia was breathtaking.
A slender woman in one of the loose, flowing white dresses passed Dag and gave him a smile, her olive-skin glimmering in the lamplight. Dag grinned back before he realized what he was doing. Rida would strip my hide off if she saw me, he thought with a blush, and she’d be a week doing it, just to make sure I learned. Ishahb burn me, but I hate this city.
He found the Tacline easily enough, although he had not been there before. It sat at the top of the city, the marble walls of its palaces shining in the yellow light, broken only by the sharp lines of black gates and razored metal. The crowds were thinner here, and the men and women dressed in fine silks and gems moved with leisurely steps, always in small groups or pairs.
As Dag looked for someone to guide him to Bonacore Coi’s house, someone caught his eye. A stout woman, her hair falling halfway down her back in a tangled mat, sat at the low wall that marked the boundary of the Tacline, two dirty feet resting on a barrel turned on its side. Dag approached her and gave her his best smile, although it strained his heart.
“Evening,” he said.
“You a bloody Jaecan?” she said. She reached back and tried to run her fingers through the tangled mat. “You sound like a bloody Jaecan, Bel take you. I don’t like them.”
“Not Jaecan,” Dag said. “From Aqeur.”
She stared at him.
“You know, on the border. Big city, trading, all that.”
“I know what Aqeur is,” she said. “You don’t have to talk down to me like I’m some out-of-the-hills peasant, you know. I should be talking to you like that, that’s what, I’ve lived here my whole life, that’s why, doesn’t matter what those bastards on the hill want to say about it.”
“Why would they want to say anything about it?” Dag said.
“Because I’ve got them by the balls,” she said and gave a hoarse laugh. She kicked the barrel once with one dirty foot. “Right here, a barrel of what every one of those prancing lordlings wants to drink, and it’s sitting right under Pantale’s grimy feet, sloshing and slurshing and getting all upset.”
Dag was tired, emotionally and physically. He gave the mad woman a look and took a seat next to her. She shied away and repositioned herself, feet still on the barrel, so she could keep her eye on him.
“Don’t suppose you’d mind sparing a drop for a thirsty sailor?” Dag asked.
“Ha,” Pantale said. “Sailor. Not even by the Night Sister’s dirty teat. She’s only got one, you know.”
“Sailor?” Ishahb burn me, is this woman even speaking Apsian anymore?
“No, you bloody fool, a teat. One, that’s all, and dirtier than my feet.”
“Oh,” Dag said. “I see.”
“Course you do. You’re no sailor, and you might be Jaecan, and you’re prancing around the Tacline as if you don’t stink like Bel’s bum. That means you’re a bloody fool or something else. You working for Pontus? Or Sipir? Both them mongrels tried to take my wine but I just rolled it down the Stonewave and bounced along after it and left the two of them gaping like fish out of water. You should have seen their faces.” She gave another hoarse laugh.
“Sipir,” Dag latched onto the only part of her conversation that made sense. “I’m working for Sipir. You know where Bonacore Coi’s house is?”
She twisted up her face and spat on the ground.
“That’s for Coi,” she said. “Him and his half-breed of a house. Up the hill, on the right hand side. You can’t miss it, the way he made it stand out like the get of some Canian whore.”
“Thanks,” Dag said. The description made no sense, and he was bound to find someone else who could point out that house along the way. Ishahb burn me, a dog could give better directions. “Best wishes for dealing with them.” He nodded up the hill.
“The Day Sister smiles,” Pantale said. As he moved to stand, she said, “You really with Sipir?”
“Yeah, just recently.”
“Might want to insist you get your pay and then clear out,” she said. “Sipir’s crews have a way of winding up fish-food. He culled the best of Seaweed’s crew when he killed her, left himself the dregs. What sane man does that, I ask you? I still remember pretty little Apple, fastest fingers in the city, and Pantale found her, all twisted up with her broken back, in that alley.” Her grimy face seemed to close. “You’ve been kind to listen to a mad old lady, even if you are a
bloody Jaecan. Stay away from Sipir.”
“Thanks,” Dag said. He pulled out his last small Jaecan coins—a handful of copper puls—and gave them to the dirty old woman. “Don’t let the rich pigs get you down.”
She gave a toothless smile and pocketed the coins. Dag hurried up the hill before she could start talking again. It did not take him long to identify Coi’s house. It was composed of two different sections, clearly built at different times, that failed to complement each other. He did not recognize the second style, but he took Pantale’s word that it was Canian. What was most prominent to Dag’s eye, though, was the utter indefensibility of the place. The razored metal atop the fence was placed too wide to be effective, and no guards stood at the gate or among the carefully tended banks of flowers and trees.
Although night had fallen, the street was still full of life, and Dag did not dare climb the gate with that many witnesses. He made his way to the gate, hoping to find a way to open it, and found, to his surprise, that the lock had not been shut. He slid inside and locked the gate behind him. No point in extra guests, he thought.
He walked toward the house. There was no point in hiding his approach; he had used the gate, after all, and the path was lit with more lanterns spaced among the brilliantly colored flowers. Rida would have loved the garden; among the bright blossoms that Dag did not recognize, there were roses, pale yellow, almost cream, that Dag had never seen before, and great, open lilies, the hearts of their blossoms drinking up the lamplight.
Still no guards.
The smell of blood struck Dag’s nose. A small section of one of the flowerbeds had been trampled, and dark spots stained the roses. Sipir must already be here.
Dag ran toward the house. If Sipir escaped, Dag had no recourse for tracking him down. He pushed open the doors to enter a dark hall and stumbled, almost falling. Three guards, dead, lay on the floor. The lamps had been extinguished here.
Dag hesitated, listening for a clue. He heard voices. Dag sprinted toward the back of the house. Wide double doors marked the end of the entrance hall. The voices were coming from just beyond it. Dag pressed his ear against the polished wood and listened.
“—bloody fool, Sipir,” a man said. “You’ve left a trail of bodies that the watch, and especially the Order, can’t keep quiet. The city will fly into a panic when word gets out.”
“Not my problem,” another man said. Sipir, most likely, although the words were perfect Apsian. “Get out of here, Pontus. I’m going to have to find you eventually, but killing you here would be a personal pleasure rather than a necessity of business.”
“They’ll raid the Gut,” the man called Pontus said. “Leave Coi’s family alone at least, for the Day Sister’s sake. If you kill them, they’ll burn us out and drive the rest of the people down there into the sea. It will be slaughter.”
“Fine words from someone who has two—or is it three?—of the Six Fathers hidden away somewhere.”
“No thanks to your men,” Pontus said. “You almost had us in the plaza. Too bad that you had to take him by treachery.”
“Treachery? I had no idea you were a nobleman to spout morals, Pontus. Crawl back to the Gut and maybe you can get your darling whore out of there before the Order burns the place to the ground.”
“Leave Ghille out of this,” Pontus said. “Let his family alone, and I’ll not stand in your way. You can have Coi.”
“Bloody fool,” a third voice said. “Always talking about how much you hate the nobles, and here you are pleading for their lives. I always knew working for you was a mistake.”
“Kill him,” Sipir said. “I’m done here.”
Dag couldn’t wait any longer; things had moved too quickly. He pushed open the door as three men began fighting among themselves. Across the wood-paneled hall stood a fourth man with Jaecan coloring, wearing clothes that any modestly successful merchant in Apsia could afford. A saif, its hilt wrapped in cloth-of-gold, hung at his side.
An Apsian noble with a thick fringe of gray hair lay at his feet. He was dressed in a blue silk shirt covered in gold embroidery, and with fine wool trousers that matched. Blood dripped from one corner of his mouth, and his eyes were closed, but his chest rose and fell evenly. Bonacore Coi, one of the Six Fathers, and the man who had usurped Brech’s plans. He must be. Two women, one a younger image of the other, lay on the floor as well, eyes wide, wearing nothing more than sheer silk bedrobes. Their breasts rose and fell rapidly.
The three men were still fighting. Two men—one slender and short, the other massive, almost as big as Etrar—fought with a third, whose long, dark hair falling to his shoulders. The long-haired man’s sword ripped open the massive man’s belly. The big man went down, and the two remaining men settled back, eyeing each other.
“Bel take you for this, Felle.” The man with the long, dark hair was Pontus; Dag recognized his voice. “You deserve the dragon’s mouth.”
“Always so bloody self-righteous,” Felle said. “Thinking you’re so bloody noble, that somehow your hatred for the rich makes you better than the rest of us. Time was I should have left you months ago.”
“You’ll leave through the harbor now,” Pontus said.
Dag kept to the doorway and watched. Pontus darted forward, his sword scoring a long, red line across Felle’s chest. Pontus batted aside the shorter man’s counter-thrust. The long-haired man had the greater reach. He toyed with Felle, inflicting minor wounds and dancing back as the short man’s anger spurred him to more and more reckless moves.
When it came, the opening was as obvious to Dag as it was to Pontus. Felle’s frenzied thrust carried him slightly off balance, and Pontus’s sword slid across his throat. Blood flooded from the wound. Pontus kicked him to the ground and stepped past him. He glanced at Dag.
“He one of yours?” Pontus said to Sipir.
“I’m not sure. He looks the part,” Sipir said. He seemed unconcerned by Pontus’s survival. “Who are you?”
“Dag,” he answered. “Brech sent me.”
“Of course he did,” Sipir said. “There’s always something extra in that man’s plans.” He switched to Jaecan and added, “Kill him for me and take care of the women. I need to get this man out of here.”
Pontus grinned and turned toward Dag and winked.
“Time to play, my new friend,” Pontus said.
Pontus sprinted toward him, sword held low, a long dagger springing into one hand. Dag drew out his throwing knife and tossed it. The blade flew true, straight for the man’s chest. Somehow Pontus twisted at the last moment. The knife slid past him, missing by less than finger’s breadth, and struck the wood panel of the opposite wall.
Pontus was on him, sword stabbing up as the dagger thrust forward. Dag caught the sword with his own dagger and fell back. Pontus’s second blade struck only air. Dag brought his foot up, but Pontus danced back and avoided him.
Dag had seen the man fight moments before, but even so he had not realized how fast Pontus was. The man moved like a snake, sword and dagger flashing out, sometimes individually, often together, so that within a short time shallow cuts covered Dag's arms. He let out a growl as Pontus’s dagger slid across the back of his hand. Dag jerked back before the blade could cause serious damage, but it still hurt. He knew the move, had seen it coming, but he had been unable to stop it. That only made him angrier.
Ishahb burn me for coming with two bloody knives, Dag thought. The rest of his weapons were back at the new inn he had chosen, a quiet place near the eastern wall. Two burning knives it is, though. Dag was an assassin, not a fighter, and he wanted to end the fight as quickly as possible. Sipir had already disappeared with Coi, leaving the two women on the ground.
Still parrying as best he could, occasionally thrusting or slashing to ward off Pontus, Dag made a wide circle. With every step, he came closer to the throwing knife that hung from the wood panel of the wall.
Step, parry, step. Dag ducked a lightning-fast swipe of the sword and thrust, only t
o have his dagger turned aside again. He stepped back, hand whipping out, and caught the hilt of the throwing knife. He pulled on it.
It stuck.
Dag pulled again. Pontus stood just a few feet away, sword at the ready.
Pontus turned and ran for the door. He glanced back to watch Dag over one shoulder. The knife came free, but Dag just held it as Pontus disappeared into the hall beyond. Chasing the man would be a waste of time at this point; Dag needed to find Sipir and get some answers. It seemed, though, that Dag was not the only one still interested in seeing Brech’s plans move forward.
The two women still lay there, their eyes locked on him. Sipir wanted them dead. Not a bad idea, really, Dag thought. The women were the elite of Apsia, the shining copper roofs atop the dunghill of humanity that, in its frenzy for wealth, turned people into commodities to be used and cast away. These were the women whose perfumes and silks and gems spawned the Driptangle. Sipir was right; dead, they would be of more use to their fellow-men than alive. Their deaths would spark the flames that would scour the city. Dag was not a religious man, but if anyplace needed Ishahb’s cleansing fire, it was Apsia. He knelt down, dagger at the ready. He could be merciful, he had learned that long ago. A quick cut across the throats, and they would be dead in heartbeats. The dagger moved, almost of its own accord, to their smooth, white throats.
The younger woman’s hair caught his eyes, red strands among the brown, as beautiful as the burning copper roofs of the city. As beautiful as Rida has been when he met her, all those years ago, though her hair was dark and thin. Young, a life full of promise. But on the other side of his heart stood Fawda, broken, sitting in that chair day after day, with wounds that did not heal. Dag’s hand trembled; he could taste hate on his tongue, and it was bitter and deep as the sea. The women did not deserve to live; no Apsian deserved to live.
Did he?
Dag cut their ropes. It was like cutting off his own arm.
They sat up slowly, untying their gags, their faces a mix of surprise and relief.
“Thank you,” the older woman said. “He was . . . I was sure . . .”
The younger woman started crying then, small, hiccupping sobs that shook her body so that her breasts jumped. The older woman took her in her arms and whispered something in her ear. Dag looked away and tried to think of Rida. The girl was pretty. He had saved her life. That red-brown hair he only saw in Apsians. She owed him something, her people owed him something. You’re married, you old fool, he thought, but it sounded like Rida’s voice. She’s half your age, if that, and an Apsian beside. She’d be just as like to slit your throat as kiss you.
“Not a problem,” Dag said into the noise of her tears. He had to say something. “Any idea where he took your husband?”
“Not a clue. Good riddance to the man,” the older woman said. “The bastard dragged us into this; if he’d listened to me, even once, we wouldn’t be in this mess. Sending the household guards away like that, doesn’t matter if all our bloody warehouses catch fire, it’s a Bel-blessed idiot’s move, and I told him that. But no, all he can think about are the people down there looting, and so he sent the guards prancing down, as though they’ll do anything but find the closest tavern and then moan that they got there too late.”
The younger woman had recovered by then, and she pushed herself away from her mother. Both women seemed to realize their state of dress at the same time, and identical blushes rose in their cheeks. The color in the young woman’s face sent Dag’s blood pumping. He couldn’t take his eyes from her hair, the curve of her breasts under the diaphanous robe.
“You’re wounded, sir,” the older woman said, pulling her sheer bedrobe closed with one hand. “Allow me and my daughter to dress ourselves, and we’ll send for an herb-hand to see to your wounds.”
The words took Dag by surprise, and he tore his gaze from the pretty girl to look at her mother. There was an edge there, in the set of her mouth—she was not oblivious to his attention to her daughter, it seemed—but something more. In her eyes. Gratitude, maybe, or sorrow. Something tender that, in its unexpectedness, opened a hole in Dag’s defenses.
His heart hammered in his chest, his mouth tasted foul, like a shut-up sickroom. One final wave of hate washed over him as that canker on his soul, lanced by her look, emptied. For a moment his hands trembled with rage. And then he was calm, numb, empty of the hate that had carried him forward to this place. Under the numbness lurked the old pain, the loss, but the hate was gone. The girl was like Rida, he realized, but she could grow up and have a different life, a happy life.
But not if Brech’s plan went forward. It would be war, no matter what the man said, and it would drag out—oh, perhaps less quickly without the Kestrel, with the Six Father’s incapacitated, but Bonacore’s own plan showed how quick the Apsians were to adapt. The war would drag on; many lives lost, many more ruined. He thought of Fawda and of the men and boys who had never returned home while trying to capture a few more miles of Apsian land. Dag felt a new hatred start to burn. A hatred for the people who used others as tools.
“I can’t stay,” Dag said. “I have someone I need to find.”
He ignored the older woman’s protest and hurried out into the street. First, find Sipir. Kill him. Then go home. Rida would understand why he had changed his mind. Would Fawda?