the beauty she would one day become.
“I give you thanks, dom. And would you be telling your name to any who inquire?”
“I am Jak Jakhan. It is not important.”
Barty, wheezing alongside me, tried not to think. He eased closer and whispered. “Should we not ask them about The Ball and Chain — about Nath the Knife? They could give us useful information.”
As I say, Barty was trying to think.
“I think not.” I glared with great sorrow on the girl and her brother, doomed urchins of Drak’s City. The silver had vanished from sight somewhere inside their raggedy clothes. “Be off. Get a decent meal. And may Opaz shine upon you.”
The girl said: “My name is Ashti and my brother is Naghan and — and we give thanks. May Corg bring you fair winds.”
They ran off and in a twinkling were lost among the crowds past the ponsho flock. Barty was a Strom, which is, I suppose, as near an earthly count as anything, and a noble and he felt like a stranded whale in these rumbustious surroundings. He gawked about at the spectacle and kept his right hand down inside his blanket coat. That particular gesture was so common as to be unremarked.
“Come on,” I said. “You can’t just stand around here. Half the urchins will be queuing up for their silver sinvers and the other half of the varmints will be out to pinch the lot.”
We kept to the wall and walked along toward the tavern. Once we left the Kyro of Lost Souls the press became less thick. What to do about Barty puzzled me.
He said: “I wanted to ask what I was supposed to keep watch for, prince-”
“Jak Jakhan.”
“What?”
I did not laugh. “You have not done this sort of thing before? Not even when you succeeded to your father’s stromnate?”
“No, pri — Oh. No, Jak.”
“It is sometimes necessary. It amuses me. At the least, it is vastly different from those popinjays at court.”
“I do not believe there is any need to remind me of that.”
A sway-backed cart stood outside the tavern. Cages of ducks were being unloaded. The racket squawked away and there was no need to inquire what the specialty of the house was going to be this day.
“Look,” I said. “Do go into that tavern across the way and buy yourself some good ale and sit in a window seat. And, for the sweet sake of Opaz, don’t get into trouble. Keep yourself to yourself. And if you are invited to dice — remember you will lose everything you stake.”
“Everything?”
“They can make dice sit up and beg here, that’s certain.”
“You said you had never been into Drak’s City before.”
“No more I have. But these places have a character. There are many in the countries of Paz.”
The tavern across the way was called The Yellow Rose. Barty took a hitch to his length of rope that held in his blanket coat and started across. He was almost run down by a Quoffa cart which lumbered along, lurching from side to side, scattering chickens every which way. A thin and pimply youth had a go at his purse as he reached the tavern porch but he must have felt the feather-touch, for he swung about, shouting, and pimple-face ran off. I let out a breath. I should never have brought him. But — he was here. I put that old imbecilic look on my face, hunched over, let my body sag, and so went into The Ball and Chain.
There is a keen and, I suppose, a vindictive delight in me whenever I adopt that particular disguise. I can make myself look a right stupid cretin. There are those who say the task is not too difficult. With the old brown blanket coat clutched about me, the frayed rope threatening to burst at any moment, I shuffled across the sawdusted floor.
The room was low-ceiled, not over-filled with patrons as yet. Tables and benches stood about. A balcony ran around two sides, the doors opening off at regular intervals to the back premises. A few slave girls moved about replenishing the ale tankards. It was too early for wine. I sat near the door, with my back to the wall, and contrived to hitch myself about so the longsword at my side did not make itself too obtrusive.
Outside in the street rain started to drift down, a fine drizzle that quickly spread a shining patina across everything.
A girl brought across a jug of ale and filled a tankard for me. I gave her a copper ob. I stretched my feet out and prepared to relax and then jerked my boots back quickly. They were first-quality leather boots and someone would have them off me sharply, with or without my consent, if I advertised them so blatantly. I was a stranger. Therefore I was ripe game. I fretted about Barty. I should have run him back to the Gate of Skulls first.
This Nath the Knife, the chief assassin, had arranged to meet me here, so close to the walls of the Old City, clearly as a gesture of trust. His bolt-holes would all be deeper in Drak’s City. He ventured within a stone’s throw of the walls and this gate so as to show me he meant to talk. That, I understood. If they were going to try to assassinate me, they would not have requested this meeting. My plan, a usual one in the circumstances, misfired.
Before I could get into conversation and so ease my way in and then seek a back entrance to the upper floor, the serving wench pattered across. Already, this early in the day, she looked tired.
“Koter Laygon the Strigicaw is waiting for you upstairs, master.” She looked nervous. “The third door.”
My imbecilic expression altered. I had put on a medium-sized beard. Now I stroked it and looked at her owlishly.
“Koter Laygon is waiting, master.”
“Then he can wait until I have finished the tankard.”
“He is — he will have your skin off, master-”
“You are sure it is me he is waiting for?”
“Oh, yes. He was sure.”
“Who is he? What is he like? Tell me about him?”
I started to pull out a silver sinver. Her face went white. She drew back, trembling, terrified.
“No, no, master! No money! They are watching — they know what you are asking-”
She backed off, her hands wide, and then she ran away, her naked feet making soft shushing sounds on the sawdust. I glanced up under my eyebrows at the balcony. Up there any one of a hundred knot holes could hold a spying eyeball.
I shifted on the settle against the wall. A tiny sound, no more than the furtive sounds a woflo makes scratching in the wainscoting, made me look down.
A small slot had opened in the wall. A pair of scissors on extending tongs probed from the slot. They moved gently sideways toward me. Had I not moved, the fellow operating the tongs would have snipped away to get at my purse. As I had now vanished from his gaze the tongs drew back, the scissors vanished and the slot closed. I waited, intrigued.
Presently another slot opened close to me. The scissors probed out again, silently, ready to snip most patiently.
I picked up the half-full ale tankard.
No doubt the cramph had a whole array of tools he could fix to the tongs. A curved knife would slice away leather clothing. With all the noise of the taproom that usually created such a massive sound barrier, he could probably even use a drill to get through armor, and not be heard. With a smooth motion I swiveled and slung the ale clean through the slot. A splash, a yell of surprise, a series of choked squishing gulpings gave me a more general feeling of well-being. Petty — of course. But it was all a part of the rich tapestry of life — or, as this was Kregen, of death.
I bent to the slot and said in that fierce old biting way: “Thank Opaz it was only ale and not a length of steel.”
With that I stood up, hitched the blanket coat around me, and stalked off to the blackwood stairway. Over my left shoulder I had arranged snugly a quiver of six terchicks. The terchick, the little throwing knife of the clansmen, is often called the Deldar, and a clansman can hurl them right or left-handed from the back of a galloping zorca and hit the chunkrah’s eye. Of course, the women of the Great Plains of Segesthes use the terchick with unsurpassed
