I said, “Fuck me like a goat.”
“I’ll pass, if it means no particular offense.”
“Oh, for shit’s sake.” I managed to get my head out and pulled the tunic down. I got one of my boots and began trying to pull it on, snarling under my breath, “Should’ve just drove into town on a circus wagon with a motherfucking brass band playing ‘Send in the Clowns.’ ”
“Your pardon? My ears are less than-”
“How’d
“Ah. Well, there’s little to it, at that. We’ve met before, is the sum of the tale. I was with Lord Khlaylock, back in the day. Back in the day in question, one might say.”
“I don’t remember you.”
“I was one among several, and you were. . well, you.”
“I still am. More or less. Maybe you noticed.” I stomped my boots the rest of the way on. “All right, I’m dressed. Markham’s gone. Let’s drop the fucking games.”
“Your pardon?”
“You’re going to do me a favor.”
He wheeled on me, slowly, head back, eyes half slitted, two-thirds of a disbelieving smile crawling across his lips. “And how does one arrive at this improbable conviction?”
“You owe me, Tyrkilld. You owe me your life twice over already today.”
Those oak-knot hands went to his vast hairy hips. “Indeed?”
“At the Riverdock customs sequestry, your life was forfeit by your own Laws of Engagement.”
“Not my Laws. Khryl’s. And my gratitude for your unexpected mercy is unbounded, never doubt. But a second time? When could this have occurred?”
“About fifteen minutes ago. Call it a tenth of a watch.”
“Ah? You spared my life when I was not even present to appreciate your mercy? How virtuous.”
“If you say so.”
“And how, precisely, did you perform this extraordinary act?”
“I didn’t tell Angvasse Khlaylock that you’re an Ankhanan agent.”
The smile vanished. His head rolled forward, and his hands came off his hips, and his weight shifted and he took the beginning of a breath, and I said, “Better not.”
He stopped at full poise.
“Think about it,” I said. “She’s right upstairs. She just Invested me with the Authority of Khryl. I don’t care what magick you’ve got to fuck with her truthsense. She’ll never believe you. Never.”
He subsided into a kind of relaxation-the kind you see on lions who are trying to decide whether they’re hungry-and forced another of those disbelieving smiles onto his face. “And here we’ve arrived at another improbable conviction. Preposterous, one might even-”
“Don’t.”
“I am a Knight ordained and-”
“Yeah. A Knight ordained and whatever who’s working for Kierendal. Let’s not argue, huh?”
“It’s so entirely ridiculous-”
“Shit, Tyrkilld, what do I care? But you’re gonna do this thing for me.
Nothing serious. Just deliver a message to her.”
“To your Ankhanan elf gangster-queen?”
“Tell her I know she’s in Purthin’s Ford, and I know why. Tell her we don’t have to be enemies. We have interests in common here. We should meet, and we should talk. I’ll even let the whole ordering-you-to-beat-me-to- death thing go. As a courtesy.”
He gave me a pretty credible snort. “Uncommonly magnanimous-or might it be your habit to extend amnesty for imaginary crimes?”
I gave him back a shrug. “Kierendal and I have an unusual relationship. She gets nothing but good from me, but every so often anyway she decides to have me killed. I guess I’m used to it.”
“Custom gives ease to many a queer fashion.”
“Something like that. Unless she didn’t tell you to do anything about me at all.”
“I’m sure I couldn’t say.”
“Because that’d mean she’s decided to have
Tyrkilld looked suddenly thoughtful.
“She knows Orbek, and she knows me, and she knows I’d be here as soon as I got a hint Orbek might be in trouble. If she wanted you to live, she’d have warned you to expect me. And reminded you that I’ve killed men for a hell of a lot less than slapping my head into next fucking year.”
He shrugged. “Nor would any such warning have signified overmuch, even had your hypothetical elf-queen managed to impress upon me quite how entirely skilled you are at it.”
“Have it your way. But tell her what I said, huh? I don’t want to piss in her soup. And she won’t want to piss in mine.”
“And so, perchance-” Tyrkilld squinted past me, like he was looking for something in the darkness of the passageway down which Markham had vanished. “-were a man to unexpectedly find himself in a position to do such a service for your estimable self, whence cometh recompense, and in what manner?”
“I’ll tell you how I knew. What gave you away.”
“Oh?”
“Think about it, Tyrkilld. Khryllians aren’t as easygoing as I am. Knowing where you fucked up could save your life. Could save lots of lives. Like, say, the lives of everyone in Freedom’s Face, y’know?”
He looked down into the slow roil of bloody water around his thighs.
“I suppose. .” Even in the dead silence of the Lavidherrixium, I could barely hear him. “I suppose there would be value in that. To learn how you could be so certain.”
Dumbass. “I wasn’t. Not certain.”
His head snapped up. His mouth dropped open.
“Fucking amateur,” I said, and turned for the darkness.
From the outside, the Pens was Mid-Period Gulag: barbed wire and bright lights and guard towers posted with sharpshooters. I automatically noted shadows, fields of fire, available hard and soft cover, and shook my head silently. Somebody knew what they were doing.
Somebody Artan: the wire fencing looked galvanized, and the searchlights had a moon-greenish glow I recognized. The limelights at the Railhead in Transdeia are exactly that color.
This Faller character. . Back in the day, I used to run Earthside transit operations for the Overworld Company out of the San Francisco Studio; I knew most of the techs and OC operatives by sight, and all of them by name. How could Faller have come out of Transdeia and I didn’t know him?
Maybe tomorrow I’d pay a visit, and ask.
Tonight I had to save Orbek’s life.
Getting in to see Orbek wasn’t a problem. I didn’t even need to whip out the Holy Foreskin. With Markham to hold my hand, we walked right through the gates and nobody looked like they were even thinking about stopping us.
From the inside, the Pens looked less like a prison camp than a kennel. Banks of eight-by-five strap-iron cages sat on legs a meter off the scraped-bare stone of the escarpment. No plumbing, just eligible trusties with rakes and buckets and wheelbarrows and a vast manure pile at the cliffside fence.
The dusk clogged up with misting drizzle again. I was starting to hate the weather in this town.
Some stretches of cages stood open and empty, waiting for convicts who stood in chains of eight in the mustering pen. Some stretches of cages were full of indistinct shapes, huddled against the damp. Trusties fanned out among the rows, tossing tarpaulins over cage tops to keep out the rain. Chill white flames burned steady in some cage-irons’ lattice gaps: cold greenishyellow gaslight erasing color in cold greenish-yellow eyes.
The drizzle thickened toward rain. Head down, arms crossed over my chest, I walked behind the Lord Righteous. An icy trickle traced my spine from my plastered-flat hair to the crack of my ass. Shivers started below my ribs and rippled out into my legs and up to my neck.
At least it was rinsing off the old blood. That was some consolation.
