“Because we’re already here.”
Kreelan started, and the hand holding the sphere wavered visibly. The guard tensed.
The scarred man’s voice was brittle as fine crystal. “How did you come here tonight?”
“Ask your friend.” Sirc’al made a minute nod toward Spielt, who smirked at his former comrade.
Kreelan’s voice rose to an outraged shriek. “You? You bastard! You planned to betray me all along.”
“No more than you were planning for me,” Spielt snarled. “You’d sell your mother for a handful of copper pieces if the opportunity came along. But now the tables have turned, thank Umberlee.”
Spielt’s mercenary companion had recovered his aplomb and managed to give the impression of shrugging his shoulders without actually doing so. “Well, well. Perhaps I would have. I’ve always admired initiative, Spielt. Possibly you have a bit more than I was willing to give you credit for, though any would be more than that. And now you’re caught in your own trap, tightly as a Tharkaran lobster.”
“Ah, but what about you?” Spielt’s voice was poisoned with hatred. “How are you going to get out of here, pray tell?”
Kreelan rolled his eyes. “I don’t know. At present the situation’s a bit of a standoff.”
“And a remarkably entertaining one, I might add,” observed Avarilous, stepping out of the shadows.
Kreelan’s hand jerked, and the sphere nearly slipped from his fingers, bringing forth an anguished cry from Sirc’al. The other watchman’s fingers whitened on his sword hilt.
Kreelan was the first of the group to recover fully. “By all the foul beings of the Abyss, who are you, and what are you doing here?”
For the merest instant, Spielt’s eyes flicked toward Avarilous. “I know him. I thought there was something odd about him from the moment he sat down at our table.” His hysterical giggle pierced the damp air. “I knew we should have taken care of him earlier.”
Avarilous smiled agreeably, taking care to keep his hands in plain sight and make no sudden movements. “Gentlemen, a word from an impartial observer seems as if it would not come amiss just now.” He picked up his ale from the window ledge where he had set it.
Kreelan spoke before the others. “Perhaps it would, but I don’t know exactly what game you’re playing. Are you an agent of one of the other cities?”
Avarilous permitted himself a small shrug. “My concerns in this affair are my own. For all you know, I could be an innocent bystander. But I know enough of what’s occurring in the Five Kingdoms these days to understand something about who you’re all working for.”
Spielt sneered openly, the veins in his neck turning purple. The watchman’s sword rested closely against the largest of these, and Avarilous could see the tip of the blade denting the dirty skin. “If you know so much about it, Whoeveryouare, tell us about it.” The blond mercenary glared at Kreelan. “I’d love to know who this tanar’rispawned bastard is working for.”
Avarilous cleared his throat perfunctorily and, righting a chair, sat down. “Well, then. To begin, the political situation between the Five Kingdoms is, as usual, at a stalemate. But some people would like to change that, and here’s where things get interesting. Who gains if the trade pact is signed between Konigheim and Doegan?”
There was a minute stir, as if both Kreelan and Spielt had shifted positions slightly. Spielt’s hands, held stiffly up to his chest, caught a thread from his robe and began to twist it back and forth. Sirc’al shrugged. “They both gain. That’s why they want to sign it.”
“Correction.” Avarilous picked up an unbroken plate from the table nearest him and, placing the center on his forefinger, spun it. “The two kingdoms want to negotiate about it. Neither wants to sign anything.”
Spielt wet his lips. “That’s ridiculous.”
Avarilous’s eyes followed the spinning plate. “The Konigheim slave lords see negotiations over the pact as a chance to gain breathing space for their accumulation of naval resources, preparatory to an invasion of Doegan. The mage-king, on the other hand, sees an opportunity for a small step toward his eventual goal of unifying the Five Kingdoms under his rule. I suspect he planned to use the period of negotiation about the pact to infiltrate more spies and agents into Konigheim to undermine the council’s power.”
Abruptly he tossed the plate from his finger and caught it skillfully. “Edenvale, the Northrnen, and the Free Cities of Parsanic opposed the pact to different degrees. From their point of view, it’s essential to maintain the balance.”
Sirc’al spoke. “I see. So these two were working as agents of one of the other three kingdoms to sabotage negotiations and prevent the pact.”
Avarilous smiled tolerantly. “Not quite. It’s a bit more involved.” His eyes moved slowly from Ereelan to Spielt to the watch commander. “I’ve developed something of a nose for sniffing out treachery. And there’s a good deal of it here tonight.”
The Watch commander gave a short bark of laughter. “Yes, by Tempus, I should say so. These two soldiers of fortune were willing to cut each others’ throats simply in order to earn their pay.”
Avarilous shook his head. “Not quite. It’s true they were prepared to trade each others’ lives, but the motive was stronger than mere money. In fact, neither intended the other should leave the tavern alive.”
“Explain!” Sirc’al’s voice was sharp.
“Well, our friend Kreelan here, judging by his clothing, has passed himself off as a native of Tharkar. But if you look just where his neck meets his robe, you’ll see something else.
The Watch commander craned his head and stared in the flickering lamplight. “Gods be damned! Gills!”
“Yes, gills. The man’s from Doegan. On the other hand, looking at Spielt, we find something else a bit curious.”
With both hands raised, he stepped closer to the blond man. Then, with extreme delicacy, he plucked the scarf from the mercenary’s head. Light gleamed on a complex array of tattooed lines and swirls, surrounding a perfectly formed, lidless, golden eye set in the middle of the man’s forehead. It stared angrily at the rest of the room.
There was an audible gasp from the others. Sirc’al was the first to recover and gave vent to a burst of foul oaths invoking Umberlee and the blackest inhabitants of the deep. “A Konigheimer, by all the fiends!”
Avarilous smiled and mopped the sweat from his brow, using the scarf he had wrenched away from the disguised slaver.
The watch commander’s eyebrows were wrinkled in thought. “But wait a minute! Why in the name of the gods would Komgheim and Doegan want to break up the pact. They were the ones signing it.”
“Not signing it,” patiently corrected Avarilous. “Negotiating about signing it.” He sighed. “As long as discussions dragged on, both the Konigheim Council and the mageking benefited. Meanwhile both secretly planned to sabotage negotiations at the last minute. Each planned a murder of a member of its own delegation in a public place on neutral ground, so the other could be accused not only of murdering an innocent delegate, but so that the Free Cities could be drawn into the conflict on the side of whichever party’s delegate was killed.
“For that reason I’m quite sure Kreelan, as an agent of the mage-king, had orders to murder a Doegan delegate. Spielt, working for the Konigheim Council, was supposed to kill one of their representatives.” He sighed again. “It seems a bit ironic, really.”
He paused and the stillness seemed to grow thicker in the heavy night air. The landlord, long forgotten where he lay against the wall, stirred and bumped against a metal cup, knocking it over. The dull metal thump sounded loud.
Sirc’al, looking thoroughly confused, broke the silence. “So who was murdered? A Doeganer, or a Konigheimer?”
Avarilous turned and regarded the corpse with a touch of regret. “Well, now, that’s the odd thing. Neither.”
“Neither?” The overwrought commander was practically screaming. “How can you possibly say that? Both these scum provoked the fight in order to gain cover for their planned assassinations-I can work that out, thank you very much! One of them was successful before the other, both prepared to flee. Now you say neither completed his mission?”
Avarilous walked over to the fountain. Setting down his tankard, he reached in and, with an expression of distaste, grasped the corpse by the scruff of its jerkin. With a sudden heave he brought it out, dripping, onto the flag-stones. He cautiously turned it over with his foot so they could all see the face. Water ran from the fat seams, from the mouth and nose, and merged with the smeared blood on his cut throat. From the inside of his sodden
