His first heartbeat in their presence told him otherwise.
The cowled man, the sorcerer, turned to him, but only far enough to reveal a temple and jawline as white and as smooth as boiled bone. Obdurate black shrouded his eyes. The small, silver-haired man graced him with a nimble, shining look and a smile that seemed to welcome the derision to come. But the square-bearded one, the man Haubrezer had identified as the Captain, continued staring into his wine-bowl as before. Achamian understood instantly he was the kind of man who begrudged others everything.
'Are you the Ainoni they call Kosoter?' he asked. 'Ironsoul. The Captain of the Skin Eaters?'
A moment of silence, far too thick to connote shock or surprise.
The Captain took a deliberate drink, then fixed him with his narrow brown eyes. It was a look Achamian recognized from the massacres and privations of the First Holy War. A look that saw only dead things.
'I know you,' was all he said in a voice with a hint of a papyrus rasp.
'You will address the Captain as 'Veteran,'' the silver-haired man exclaimed. He was diminutive but with wrists thick enough to promise an iron grip. And he was old, at least as old as Achamian, but it seemed the years had stripped only the fat of weakness from him, leaving spry fire in the leather that remained. He was a man who had been shrivelled strong. 'After all,' he continued with a slit-eyed laugh, 'it's the Law.'
Achamian ignored him.
'You know me?' he said to the Captain, who had resumed his study of his inscrutable drink. 'From the First Hol-'
'Sir,' the small man interrupted. 'Please. Allow me to introduce myself. I am Sarl-'
'I need to contract your company,' Achamian continued, staring intently at the Captain. Definitely Ainoni. He looked archaic, like something risen from a burial mound.
'Sir,' Sarl pressed, this time with a cut-throat gleam in his eye. 'Please…'
Achamian turned to him, frowning but attentive.
His grin hooked the ruts of his face into innumerable lines. 'I have, shall we say, a certain facility for sums and figures, as well as the finer details of argument. My illustrious Captain, well, let us just say, he has little patience for the perversities of speech.'
'So you make the decisions?'
The man burst into a beet-faced cackle, revealing the arc of his gums. 'No,' he gasped, as though astounded that anyone could ask a question so uproariously thick. 'No-no-no! I do the singing. But I assure you, it is the Captain who inks the verse.' Sarl bowed to the Ainoni in embellished deference-who now watched Achamian with something poised between curiosity and malice. When Sarl turned back to Achamian, his lips were pursed into a see-I-told-you-so line.
Achamian snorted dismissively. This was one thing he didn't miss about the civilized world: the addiction to all things indirect.
'I need to contract your Captain's company.'
'Such a strange request!' Sarl exclaimed, as though waiting to say as much all along. 'And daring, very daring. There are no more wars, my friend, save the two that are holy. The one that our Aspect-Emperor wages against wicked Golgotterath, and the more tawdry one we wage against the Sranc. There are no more mercenaries, friend.'
Achamian found himself glancing back and forth between the two men. The effect was unnerving, as though the division of attention amounted to a kind of partial blindness.
For all he knew, this was the whole point of this ludicrous exercise.
'It isn't mercenaries I need, it's scalpers. And it isn't war that I intend, it's a journey.'
'Ahhh, very interesting,' Sarl drawled. His eyes collapsed into fluttering slits every time he smiled, as if blinking at some kind of comical grit. 'A journey requiring scalpers is a journey into the wastes, no?'
Achamian paused, disconcerted by the ease of the man's penetration. This Sarl was every bit as nimble as he looked.
'Yes.'
'As I thought! Very, very interesting! So tell me, just where in the North do you need to go?'
Achamian had feared this question, as inevitable as it was. Who was he fooling?
'Far…' He swallowed. 'To the ruins of Sauglish.'
Another spittle-flecked spasm of laughter, this one carving every vein, every web of wrinkles in succinct shades of purple and red. He even yanked his wrists together as though bound, shook up and down, fingers flicking. He looked to the cowled man as though seeking confirmation. 'Sauglish!' he howled, rolling his face back. 'Oh ho, my friend, my poor, poor lunatic friend!' He reclined back in his chair, sucking air. 'May the Gods'-he shook his head in a kind of astonished dismissal-'keep your bowls warm and full and whatever.'
Something in his look and tone said, Leave while you still can…
Achamian's fists balled of their own volition. It was all he could do to keep from burning the pissant to cinders. Arrogant monkey-of-a-man! Only the Captain's Chorae and the indigo Mark of his cowled companion stayed his tongue.
A hard moment of fading smiles.
Sarl scratched the pad of his thumb with the nail of his index finger.
Then the Captain said, 'What lies in Sauglish?'
The words fairly knocked the blood out of Sarl's ruddy face. Perhaps there were consequences for misreading the Captain's interest. Perhaps the man had simply wandered too far out on a drunken limb. For some reason, Achamian had the impression that Lord Kosoter's voice always had this effect.
'What do you know of it?' Achamian asked. He immediately realized this was a grievous mistake, answering a question with a question when discoursing with the Captain. Nevertheless, he felt the need to match, flint for flint, the man's unearthly look, to communicate his own ability to see the atrocity at the heart of all things.
He stared into Lord Kosoter's shining eyes. He could hear Sarl breath, a shallow-chested sound, like a dog dreaming. He found himself wondering if the cowled man had moved. A ringing sidled into the room, high-pitched and hazy, and with it came a premonition of lethality, a wheedling apprehension. The stakes of this contest, part of him realized, involved far more than dominance or respect or even identity, but the very possibility of being…
I am the end of you, the eyes in his eyes whispered. And they seemed a thousand years old.
Achamian could feel himself wilt. Wild-limbed imaginings flickered through his soul, hot with screams and blood. He could feel tremors knock through his knees.
'Go easy now, friend,' Sarl murmured in what seemed genuine conciliation. 'The Captain here can piss halfway cross the world, if need be. Just answer his question.'
Achamian swallowed, blinked. 'The Coffers,' some traitor with his voice said. Glancing at Sarl seemed like breaking the surface of a drowning.
'Coffers,' Sarl repeated strangely. 'Perhaps'-a quick glance at Lord Kosoter-'you should tell the Captain what you meant by the Coffers.'
Achamian could see the man's implacable eyes, like Scrutiny incarnate, leaning against his periphery. He found himself glancing at the cowled figure, then looking away, down to the accursed floor.
It wasn't supposed to be like this!
'No,' he said, breathing deep, then glaring at all three in turn. The way to deal with the Captain, he realized, was to make him one of a number. 'I shall try my luck elsewhere.' He made to leave, feeling faint and sweaty and more than a little nauseous.
'You're the Wizard,' Lord Kosoter called out in a growl.
The word hooked Achamian like a wire garrote.
'I remember you,' the grave face continued as he turned. 'I remember you from the Holy War.' He slid his wine-bowl to one side, leaned forward over the table. 'You taught him. The Aspect-Emperor.'
'What does it matter?' Achamian said, not caring whether he sounded bitter.
The almost black-on-black eyes blinked for what seemed the first time.
'It matters because it means you were a Mandate Schoolman… once.' His Sheyic was impeccable, bent more to some inner dialect of anger than to the lilting cadences of his native Ainoni tongue. 'Which means you really do know where to find the Coffers.'
'So much the worse for you,' Achamian said. But all he could think was how… How could a scalper, any scalper, know about the Sohonc Coffers? He found himself glancing at the leather-cowled man to the Captain's left…
