They found themselves face to face with a beautiful young woman posed seductively on a broad table, a harp in her arms, her dress pulled down to show her shoulders and tucked up to expose her knees.
Li simply stopped, still crouched low, startled more than stunned. Tycho, down beside him, froze and made a strangled noise. Behind them both, Mard froze as well. For a heartbeat, they all just stared at the young woman. She stared back in shock.
Mard Dantakain let out a window-rattling roar, grabbed Li's head with his left hand, Tycho's with his right, and cracked them hard together.
CHAPTER 4
Tycho had been thrown in jail-briefly-many times during his life. He had seen the inside of Spandeli-yon's dockside guard station fairly frequently during his later childhood. After Veseene had taken him as her apprentice, he had seen the inside of many similar jails, from east to west around the Sea of Fallen Stars. It was something of a hazard of the itinerant lifestyle. He had seen jails that were kept fastidiously clean. He had seen jails that made stables look pleasant. He had seen jails that were run with efficient cruelty and those run with casual disorder. In Tantras, he had passed a night in a jail that put each prisoner into their own bare little cell, almost like monks in a monastery. In Raven's Bluff, just down the coast, he had been flung into a prison that was little more than a vast building with one lock on the outer door and prisoners swarming loose within; he had been forgotten there for almost a tenday before Veseene managed to find him.
He had never before, however, been thrown into a jail cell normally reserved for traitors, assassins, and other dangerous, desperate types. Spandeliyon's middle town guard station had precisely one very highly secured cell. Among the folk of dockside-and even the middle town-it was a thing of rumor and speculation, mockingly referred to as 'the King's Chamber.' If Tycho had been in a better mood, he might have taken greater note of the place, maybe with an eye to embellishing on its rather ordinary appearance and using the experience to earn himself a few extra pennies at the Wench's Ease.
But he wasn't and he didn't.
'— acting like a horse that's been turned into an ore and made even more stupid', Tycho ranted for the seventh or eighth time. The words came out slurred. His lower lip was split and swollen where Li Chien had hit him. He rattled the manacles that chained him to the wall of the cell and held his arms suspended like a marionette. 'Locked up for what? Because you apparently don't have the sense to be civil. Idiot!'
He glared across the cell, a matter of only about ten feet, at Li Chien. The King's Chamber was solid stone, with no features to it other than a heavy, steel-bound door and an assortment of chains hammered into the stark walls with stout pins. It was dark, the only light coming from a lantern on the other side of a small, barred window in the door. There was nothing between Tycho's behind and the winter-cold floor except the fabric of his breeches. Li Chien was in no better situation. Somehow, though, he managed to look as if imprisonment bothered him not a bit. His smooth face was calm, his posture relaxed. He said nothing. His eyes were even closed. Tycho might almost have thought that he was asleep except that every so often his ears twitched slightly at a particularly vile insult.
It was the most reaction Tycho had managed to get out of him since they had been bundled out of the Dantakain house, bags over their heads and their arms bound, and marched through the snow. Tycho had caught the sound of Laera pleading and screaming with her father and of Jac-erryl trying to argue with Mard. The only words to escape the captain of the guard's lips, however, had been a few terse commands for the captives to be searched and for Tycho's strilling and other effects to be collected and sent to the guard station. Unseen hands had taken everything from him-even the tube of beljurils. He had struggled at that, but Jacerryl's voice had been in his ear. 'Don't worry. Mard might be furious, but he sticks to the law like honey. They'll be safe.'
The trip through the snowbound streets had been remarkably short. They had been in the King's Chamber before the daze of having his head cracked against Li Chien's had even worn off.
His anger at Li Chien, however, had yet to fade. 'I mean, going up to hightown in clothes that smell like beer and fish guts, walking right up to Mard Dantakain's house, and demanding to see him-just what did you think, that he was going to welcome you with open arms?' Through the shadows, Tycho caught a tightening of the muscles along Li Chien's jaw. He growled. 'I know you can hear me, Li Chien.' He switched to Shou. 'Maybe you've just been having trouble understanding me-I said that you've got the brains of a horse, the grace of an ore, and the gratitude of a rabid weasel!'
Li Chien's eyes popped open and he sucked in air. His entire body seemed to clench at once 'And you,' he seethed in an explosion of rage, 'are a liar with all the morals of a rutting goat! You were sleeping with the man's daughter!'
The venom in his voice was wasted. 'I never even kissed Laera!' Tycho shot back.
'It looked like she was ready for more than a kiss.'
'That wasn't my doing! If I'd gone into that library on my own, I wouldn't have let anything happen.' A tiny whisper of doubt tickled Tycho's mind but he thrust it away. He would have rebuffed Laera's advances. 'This is your fault,' he said. 'You attacked me, remember?'
'You lied to Mard Dantakain!' spat Li Chien. 'You knew I was telling the truth and you lied. All you had to do was tell him what happened last night and-'
Tycho leaned forward sharply. If the chains hadn't held him back, he might have lunged at Li Chien. 'What happened last night? You mean how you insulted me, ignored every attempt I made at warning you, and then, when I saved your life, how you snuck away like a thief without even saying 'thank you'?' He wrenched fruitlessly on his chains. 'You're right, I should have supported you-О Emissary of Imperial Shou Lung! You want to talk about lies, how about that one? If you're an ambassador, I'm the Witch-Queen of Aglarond!'
Li Chien started to snap a reply but stopped. His face fell and he looked away. 'That lie is between Mard Dantakain and me,' he said stubbornly. 'But for walking away from you this morning-' He glanced up again and Tycho was startled to see that anger was actually fading from his face and a look of shame taking its place. '-I apologize. What I did was no way to repay your kindness. I'm very sorry. You are right to be angry.'
For the first time in a very long while, Tycho found his mouth opening and closing in speechless astonishment. 'Well,' he managed finally. 'All right then;'
He sat back against the cold wall and just looked at Li Chien. The Shou looked back. Neither of them said anything. Uncomfortable silence hung in the air-until Li Chien's stomach broke it with a loud, hollow growl that echoed off the stone walls. He flushed. 'Excuse me. I haven't eaten.'
'It might be a while before you do. I don't know if they'll bring us anything before dinner.' He turned his gaze up to the ceiling of the cell, almost lost in the darkness. It was hard to tell what time it was. His own stomach was empty, though. He'd guess that it was at least well into the afternoon now. 'Are you an ambassador, Li Chien?' he asked.
'Just Li, Tycho. Li Chien is what my mother calls me.' The Shou sighed. 'I'm no ambassador. I'm just a clerk in the imperial bureaucracy.'
Tycho raised his eyebrows. 'You fight well for just a clerk.'
'You healed me, didn't you? Are you just a singer?'
'True enough.' Tycho shifted and his chains rattled again. 'So what brings an imperial clerk all the way from Shou Lung to Altumbel?' Li said nothing. Tycho looked at him. The Shou had his head down and was staring at the floor between his knees. 'Not the sort of thing you can talk about?' Tycho shrugged. Li shook his head. 'That's fair.'
'Tycho,' said Li without looking up, 'tell me about Brin. Is there anyone in Spandeliyon who isn't afraid of him?'
'Mard Dantakain. Crazy old Riverhand the Sage out on the edge of town. A few people in the middle and high-towns who haven't actually heard of him, maybe. Anyone with any sense is afraid of Brin. He came to Spandeliyon just about a year ago and set himself up by finding the biggest gang boss in dockside and burning his house down. With him inside. Then he just moved in and took over. He's slick. When he doesn't want to be linked to something, he'll trick someone into doing his dirty business, but when he wants to make a point, he makes it in a very big way. A lot of people in dockside and middle town who cross him have problems with knives. Or pigs.'
