He looked sternly at her. “Don’t get overconfident. And remember, you are still bound by our agreement to serve me as an apprentice. But I can give you time to return home and find out how things are with your brother nevertheless.”
“That is more than fair. Why are you doing this?”
He laughed. “Have you decided I am someone who never does anything fair? Goodness.”
“You are smart and manipulative, and you always think several moves ahead of those you deal with. Including me. I have seen you work. I have watched how you handle things. You did not become High Druid of Paranor by simply waiting for someone to decide it was a good idea.”
He looked at her. “That was a dark analysis of my character, Tarsha Kaynin. I don’t think I like it much. Maybe I should take back my offer.”
She said nothing, waiting. He continued staring, and then he shrugged. “Well, you are entitled to your opinion. Giving it doesn’t warrant rescinding our agreement. But I might think twice in the future. Come. Let’s get some sleep.”
And he rose and left the room, leaving her to follow when she decided she was ready. She took her time.
NINETEEN
At dawn, Drisker and Tarsha flew east out of the riverside village where they had spent the night toward Varfleet, watching as the sunrise brightened the morning skies, the day clear and cloudless. Autumn’s snap was in the cool air, and leaves were changing rapidly now from green to red and gold. To the south, the Borderlands were a mass of vibrant colors, their canopies spreading like colorful carpets in the receding shadows. To the north, the walls of the Dragon’s Teeth loomed dark and forbidding, as if warding Paranor and the entire Northland against this seasonal change.
Tarsha seemed herself again, eager to talk to him, acting as if nothing had passed between them the night before. She showed no signs of being temperamental or out of sorts, had no interest in asking further about his life or his plans for the Druids and Paranor. Instead, she rambled on about the day and the sweetness of the air and the colors in the distance and her own love of nature and its eccentricities. Drisker found himself smiling, even though he had at first wanted to be cross and abrupt, unable to resist her seemingly boundless enthusiasm. It was so easy to forget that in many ways she was still just a girl. Forgiving her for irritations she probably wasn’t even aware of seemed a small concession.
After a while, the conversation tapered off and she returned to a companionable silence. The sun was up by now, the shadows of the receding night mostly dissipated. They tracked along the right bank of the Mermidon, Drisker keeping the two-man low and steady as they flew. It was not a long flight, and there was no reason to speed things up since some of what they needed to do would likely have to wait until nightfall. Concentrating on the countryside ahead, forever watchful for things that didn’t belong, Drisker spoke to her.
“When we land, we will be in a public airfield. No one will notice us or bother with us after we pay the attendant for the space to park the vessel. After that, we go into the city and speak to someone who knows where the guilds can be found. Once we know the location of Orsis, we wait until dark to pay a visit. There is no reason to think the guild knows who either of us is by sight. Out of our element, they would have no reason to.”
“This sounds risky. You’re not exactly the type to blend in.”
“Everything about what we are doing is risky. But you have a good point. We must watch their eyes and behavior. If anyone recognizes us, we should be able to tell. We just have to be watching for it.”
“So how do we go about finding out what you want to know?”
“What we are looking for is the name of the guild leader. Once we discover his identity, we ask to speak with him.”
They went silent then, flying on a bit farther with no exchanges until Tarsha leaned forward once more and touched his arm. He glanced back at her, waiting.
“What if we are caught?” she asked. “What if we have to fight to get clear before we discover what we came for?”
One corner of his mouth quirked slightly. “Sometimes that’s what happens. If it does, we simply find another way. We can’t predict everything, no matter how hard we try. The trick is in staying safe no matter what happens.”
He gave her a smile and turned his attention back to flying. He needed her to accept that things didn’t always work out. Knowing when to turn and run and abandon a lost effort was part of being a Druid.
And who knew better than he?
An hour passed, and to the south a rain squall swept across the lower edge of the Runne. As the clouds that fueled it passed on, an unbroken rainbow arced through the sky from horizon to horizon. Drisker and Tarsha watched, awestruck.
“A good omen,” the girl offered quietly.
“Hmmm.” The Druid looked away.
They reached the juncture of the Mermidon and Runne rivers by midmorning and watched the sprawling tumble of buildings and shipyards that marked the city of Varfleet appear in the distance, their colors and shapes muted and distorted by a screen of shifting mists. The city was not pretty or in any way memorable. It was a workingman’s city, a conjoining of public and military commerce with goods carried to and from the city by the rivers and the ships that sailed them. It had been so exclusively in the past, but now freighter airships, newly designed and developed, were beginning to steal away some of the river’s business. Airfields sitting at the edges of the city offered quicker transportation south to the Federation cities, where airships controlled the bulk of the transport business because the rivers were too small and too frequently separated from one another. Coming down out of the other lands, river traffic was preferred by Elves, Trolls, and Dwarves, who liked the steady dependability of water channels and found airships highly suspect. It was a clear dichotomy of old and new, a preference based not on reason or proven success but on the familiar versus the unknown.
In many parts of the Four Lands, airships were still an oddity. Small craft were accepted pretty much everywhere, but commercial freighters and military ships-of-the-line remained peculiar to the Southlanders. There was a sense of inevitability in their proliferation, even if the other Races continued to drag their heels for as long as they could manage without losing their commercial edge. To date, they had been successful because the Races largely preferred to remain in their own parts of the world. But as with all things, that was beginning to change, too.
Drisker studied the dockyards and piers carefully as they passed over the city toward the public airfield south. It had been awhile since he’d been back, and he felt the need to reacquaint himself with its geography. As well, it was his habit to always be searching for information that, once spied, might be useful.
On this day, he found much he remembered but nothing that gave him pause.
The docks were in heavy use, the cranes unloading supplies, equipment, and consumer goods onto large flat wagons that would take them to the airfields. Airships were not allowed to land anywhere within the city or on the docks. Varfleet understood well enough what it faced once that happened. Dockworkers swarmed the piers to guide what was being unloaded to the proper storage places or sources of transport. Along the piers, transport ships ground against their heavy bumpers, secured by lines and chains to mooring posts. At the land sides of the huge wooden docks, vendor carts and wagons and storefront businesses served the men who worked there with food and drink, clothing and boots, grappling hooks and mauls, and here and there less respectable but more desirable means for getting through the day.
Tarsha wrinkled her nose. “I could never live here.”
Drisker had to agree that the smells were appalling. But he had been born and raised in Varfleet, so they were familiar.
They navigated the air above the city with caution, a small vessel in the midst of ones much larger, a speck against boulders. Staying lower to the roofs of the buildings where the big ships could not safely go, Drisker veered among ponderous towers and decorative spires while maintaining
his course. As he did so, he pondered his plan for tracking down Orsis. He knew its reputation well enough and understood it to be something of a chameleon. What he found out in daytime would determine what he needed to be wary of later that night. There must be room left for the unexpected. There must be room for improvisation.
He would start his search at the Starving Fat Man, where he would look for One-Eye Quisk.
When they landed at the airfield, Drisker sought out the manager, found one of his many assistants, logged in a space for the two-man, and paid for a two-day stay. He paid extra, as well, for protection against natural disasters, thievery, and vandalism. It was a clear scam, but in this part of the Borderlands it was always better to be safe than sorry, and the extra credits meant nothing to the Druid compared with the reassurance that they could depend on being able to make a quick escape.
When the transaction was completed and the little craft and its contents secured, Drisker and Tarsha started into the city toward one of its rougher districts. When they reached its perimeter, the changes in the look of the buildings and their occupants were noticeable. The buildings were ramshackle and poorly maintained. The obvious inattention to upkeep indicated a lack of interest in encouraging permanent residence. The people, hanging out the windows and lounging in the doorways and streets, mirrored the buildings.
“Why does anyone live here?” Drisker heard Tarsha mutter.
“Maybe they don’t have a choice.”
“There is always a choice.”
“Maybe they don’t have the economic means.”
She glanced over. “Don’t defend them. They are capable of finding something if they’re breathing.”
He let the matter drop. She was a small-town girl who found large cities untenable. Fine. Let her say what she felt she needed to. He didn’t owe the city a defense anyway.
She went silent then, apparently finished with her assessment of Varfleet’s populace. They walked on through milling crowds down narrow streets and alleyways, past increasing numbers of carts and small wagons with vendors wailing their sales pitches as if they believed that somehow their individual voices could be heard above the clamor of so many others. The man and the girl were jostled and shoved, obstacles to be brushed aside. They endured their treatment stoically, one with greater forbearance than the other. Drisker wore his familiar black robes, his dark-bearded visage something of a deterrent to those who threatened to come too close. Tarsha, on the other hand, wearing pants and a short-waisted jacket of heavy leather, was an inviting target with her distinctive white-blond hair and violet eyes.
At one point, the two became separated. When Drisker turned to see where she was, he found her pinned against the wall by two men in similar states of inebriation. One had his hand on her arm, the other in a less acceptable place. She was looking up at them as if petrified.
Uttering a silent oath, the Druid started back immediately. He hadn’t taken two steps before Tarsha put her knee into the groin of the man who was groping her, and then seized the wrist of the other man and gave it a vicious twist that left his arm dangling. Both men collapsed into the crowd, their cries loud and painful. Tarsha gave them a quick look and moved away. In seconds, she was back beside Drisker.
“What a cesspool,” she offered as they set off again.
Drisker shrugged. “You don’t have to tell me. I grew up here.”
She looked at him in surprise. “You said nothing about that before.”
“I thought this time I should.”
She looked back once more at the men curled up on the ground as passersby walked around them without interest. “Are you still worried about me?” she asked.
“I guess I shouldn’t be.”
“Told you.”
“But I am anyway.”
No one troubled either of them again as they made their way along the narrow passageways of the district to a street lined with taverns, pleasure houses, and cheap eateries. People here were tightly packed together as they tried to maneuver, and the smells were indescribable.
“You can’t possibly feel any connection to this!” the girl snapped at one point, grabbing Drisker by the arm so she wouldn’t lose him. “This place is an abomination!”
He glanced at her with interest. “I have survived worse than this,” he replied. “Remind me to tell you sometime.”
She was jostled so hard she almost went down but somehow managed to keep her feet. “I’m not sure I want to know!”
Ahead, Drisker saw the sign he had been looking for, its bold red letters carved into a board hung from chains above heavy wooden doors set into the wall of a building in which no light could possibly have penetrated due to the fact that all the windows were shuttered.
THE STARVING FAT MAN, it read.
Drisker reached back for Tarsha and pulled her after him as he exited the flow of crowd traffic and stumbled through the doors into darkness.
They stood together for a moment, letting their eyes adjust. Voices reached out to them, disembodied conversations between occupants they could barely see in the gloom. Drisker did not want to stand there too long, feeling exposed, and once he could make out shapes sufficiently to identify them, he pulled Tarsha after him and sat her down at a table. “Wait here.”
He left her there in the darkness to give her vision a chance to sharpen, and made his way over to the serving bar. The barkeeper glanced up from the far end and wandered over. “Help you?”
Drisker laid some credits on the counter. “Two ales.” He waited until the ale appeared, then pushed all the credits toward the man. “Quisk?” he asked quietly.
The server studied him a moment. “He’s not here.”
Drisker leaned close. “For me, he will be.”
The other man hesitated. “Back room, behind the stairs. Game of Old Bones in progress. Five players. Steady customers, so no trouble, right?”
“Not from me. I’m just here to talk.”
He picked up the tankards and returned to Tarsha. He sat down across from her and pushed one in her direction. She picked it up and took a swallow. Her expression said it all, but she apparently felt words were necessary, as well. “Vile,” she gasped, choking. She pushed it back at him. “What happens now?”
“We’re here to talk to someone. Me, not you. You keep quiet. His name is One-Eye Quisk. You’ll understand why when you see him, but try not to stare. He should be able to tell us what we need to know.”
He got up from the table and waited for her to follow. When they reached the door the barkeep had indicated earlier, a shadow-draped entry under the stairs, he knocked once and then, without waiting, walked in, Tarsha right behind him.
A round table was set beneath a smokeless lamp that hung from the ceiling on a chain. Five men occupied it; they were playing a game of dice. The men were rough sorts, their faces weathered and scarred. Suspicious looks appeared on their faces as they turned to see who was interrupting. No one spoke.
“Quisk,” Drisker said quietly, letting the light reveal his features.
It was the big man on the far side of the table who responded, rising slowly to face him. “Everyone out!” he snapped.
For an instant no one moved. Then one by one the other men rose and filed past the Druid and the girl and left the room. Quisk indicated the open door, and Drisker closed it. The two sat down across from each other, and when Drisker indicated the chair next to him Tarsha joined them.
“This must be important,” said Quisk, “to bring you out of your Westland bolt-hole and into the light.”
His words were edged with a hint of a challenge. He was tall and rawboned, everything looking a little bigger than it should have, from his head to his hands to his shoulders to his voice. But it was his face that drew your attention. Drisker knew the story well. Many years ago, Quisk had gotten into a knife fight with a man in an alleyway in this very same district of the city. It hadn’t gone well. The man had been with friends, and they caught hold of Quisk when his attentio
n was on the knife wielder. While they held him fast, the man with the knife cut out his eye, taking a good portion of the surrounding face with it. The resulting damage left One-Eye with a ragged, dark hollow where his eye had once been and the area surrounding it so badly scarred it could never be repaired.
The shock and the loss of blood had nearly put an end to Quisk, and it was mostly good timing and serendipity that he survived. A patrol of City Watch came by only moments after his maiming and chased off his attackers. They then managed to get Quisk to a healing center and necessary treatment before he bled out. When he was recovered from his injuries, he went looking for the men. They discovered when he did what a mistake it was to have left him alive. In a period of less than two days, he caught up to and killed all of them.
But he was left with his face ruined, and nothing could be done to change that. So he chose not to try to cover the damage with a patch but to wear it openly as if a badge of honor.
Drisker gave him a shrug. “Someone tried to put an end to me a few nights back. Twice, as it happens. I wasn’t home the first time so they burned down my house. I was there to welcome them the second.”
Quisk studied him dispassionately, his good eye fixing on Tarsha. “Who’s this girl? And don’t tell me she’s your niece.”
“She’s my student. She’s studying weaving under my guidance. Shows promise. Back to why I’m here, if you don’t mind? A few of the men who tried to kill me didn’t survive the effort. They bore the markings of Orsis Guild.”
“Didn’t quite kill you, I see. Careless of them. And unusual for Orsis. So now what? You’re here looking for them?”
“I thought I should have a talk with them, try to straighten out our differences. But I need some information before that happens.”
Quisk made a rude noise. “You might be better off chalking this one up to experience. Forget what I said earlier. Orsis has gotten bigger and meaner with the passing of time. Lots of bad men doing lots of bad things. Maybe you should let sleeping dogs lie.”