I m coming with you, Archeth. You know I am. I ll build your ships for you, I ll sail them up around Gergis and beyond. I ll draw the charts and plot the routes, I ll put in what money you need. I ll even sit quiet in council with idiots like Shendanak and Tand. He shook his head, still smiling, perhaps at this recklessness, at his age.
But I m telling you. You re going to need more than the likes of Noyal Rakan to wield the whip and keep this lot in line.
Which was of course when, staring down into the hubbub on the wharf, she spotted the gaunt, black- wrapped figure forcing its way through the crowd.
And for just that moment like sudden sickness, like krinzanz coming on it was as if she could feel the vast, ancient machinery of the universe as it turned. As if, through some ragged tear in the tawdry fairground paneling and painted cloth of the seeming world, the oiled mechanisms of fate now stood revealed in all their cog-toothed, malevolent intent.
And for just that moment, she was afraid.
CHAPTER 29
Ringil Eskiath came down the gangplank of the Famous Victory None Foresaw and joined the bright, brawling chaos on the wharf. Sunlight shattered across the water, slammed glints into his narrowed eyes. The Black Folk Span held the sky to the south like a massive slice of shadow dropped across the estuary. It was better than a mile upriver from where he d disembarked, but you could sense the cool of its shade from here, beckoning you on.
Yhelteth.
They d given him a medal here, once.
Rooms, my lord, rooms! Swan-down beds and views to the great Kiriath wonders of the city! Step this way!
Pig s heart skewers! Piping hot! A Yhelteth delicacy, fresh from the coals!
Baths, my lord! Hot baths. Waters perfumed with all the scents of the Great City!
He wondered, shouldering his way through the press, if that included the reek of hot tar and effluent that crept up from the pilings along the wharf.
Wanna get fucked, soldier?
Wanna get fucked up? The purest flandrijn in town, sire, the finest pipes. A Yhelteth tradition awaits you.
For a moment, he was tempted, by the latter offer at least. He d been in some good pipe houses in his time, and doubted the grubby, hollow-eyed individual at his elbow was going to take him to one of anything like the same rank. But he also doubted the tout and any friends he had would be stupid enough to try to roll a man with a blade-scarred face and the tilted crux of a broadsword hilt at his shoulder. Flandrijn they offered, flandrijn in all probability they would have, and a cool, dark place to smoke it in.
Or maybe they would try to roll him.
In the sunny, quick-pulse rush of the morning, he found he didn t much mind the thought of that, either. He had a full belly from breakfast aboard the Famous Victory, he had a full purse under his cloak the Lady Quilien had bluntly refused any compensation at their parting, Let us say only that you will owe me a favor, Ringil Eskiath, she told him instead and he had back his full strength of limb and lung. He was awake in ways he hadn t been for months.
A flandrijn pipe or a back-alley brawl he had appetite to spare for either.
But by then, in those moments of idle reflection, he d already drifted on, and the tout stayed put somewhere in his wake, still crying his wares to the crowd. Ringil kept moving, vaguely aware that he was heading for the Span s shadow and, as he recalled, a low-rent mercenary watering hole built there. The Good Luck Pony, or something it had always been a favorite of Egar s, though Ringil had never been able to see the appeal himself. Scabby fittings, no decent wine to speak of, and a clientele of obnoxious young men all looking to prove their mettle at the slop of a spilled pint. A fistfight a night, a stabbing a week, all pretty much guaranteed.
Still, it wouldn t hurt to swing by. It was a little early in the day for drunken chest-beating; the place would likely be quiet. He might glean some useful gossip on what was going down in the city these days, whether there was much work for freebooters, who to talk to about it. At a minimum, he could get something to eat.
At some point after that, he d see if he could remember the way to Archeth s place.
Ringil Eskiath! Hey, hero!
For a moment, the voice seemed almost familiar certainly, he thought he would know its owner as he turned. But the grinning gray-toothed girl who lounged there against the curve of a donkey-sized wine tun left on the wharf was familiar only in type. He d seen her in a dozen different cities before, her soiled, tight-laced bodice and shredded redrag skirt practically a uniform. Painted nails chewed down to the quick, tanned arms laden with bangles at the wrists, clinking bracelets at the ankles, bare feet clotted with dust and streaked with melted tar. She caught his eye and flexed herself at him, elbows propped back on the tun s curving surface. Slid one hand down into the rags of the skirt, and shifted it aside on a length of pallid thigh. A wood shard toothpick shifted from one side of the rotted smile to the other, lifted on a darting tongue. She was all of fourteen years old.
You know me? he asked warily.
Who would not, honored sire? Victor at Gallows Gap, savior of the northern cities, slayer of dragons at Demlarashan. The debt we all owe you is without tally.
It was just the one dragon.
She ignored the interjection, as if her words were lines she must recite and he a poor companion player on the stage, forgetful of his part.
I have a message for you, Dragonbane, she said.
He looked her up and down. That doesn t seem likely.
You are awaited at the Temple of Red Joy. Do not delay. All things will become clear.
I m afraid I
And your friend awaits you above. She gestured upward past his shoulder.
It was such a tried-and-tested old trick, the standby of pickpockets and footpads everywhere, that he already had his sleeve tilted for the dragon-tooth dagger as he glanced the way she pointed. He felt himself loosening for the fight. Was looking forward to the girl s accomplice and his pitiful street-urchin moves, whatever they might turn out to b
Ringil! Ringil!
Archeth s voice.
In the hubbub and gull shriek along the wharf, he might not have heard her if his gaze hadn t been directed toward the cry. He shielded his eyes against the sun-glint and spotted her, leaning on the uppermost deck of some absurd floating bordello built in stacked layers like the world s largest Padrow s Day cake. Fussy finish on everything, actual glass in most of the lower deck windows, some of it stained nine different shades of fucking expensive. Natty little gangplank at dock level, complete with ornately carved handrails, a style ill suited to the hired soldiery standing about it with halberds. He counted four, solid and grizzled, giving passersby the odd brutal shove when they lurched too close. They looked handy enough to avoid tangling with.
Hey, okay, Ringil, look. Archeth, waving hastily.
Just stay there, I ll come down.
She disappeared as if yanked off the rail by the scruff of the neck. He found himself grinning, pure pleasure of a sort he hadn t felt tickle his guts for what seemed like ever. He turned about to thank the wharf whore, digging under his shirt for a coin.
The worn oak curve on the wine tun, gleaming back at him. No gray-toothed grinning girl to lean on it. He stood and frowned at the space where she d been, until a harried-looking freight agent suddenly materialized out of the crowd.
Ah! You are the owner, my lord? Tailen March? From the Scourge of the Maraghan?
Ringil shook his head, put a boot against the tun to see if it rocked, if it might be hollow for a bolt-hole. It didn t, it wasn t.
