A wash of coldness shriveled in the heat of the day.
“Jak — our two comrades. They are lodged in a hayloft in Blue Vosk Street. Barkindrar is injured.”
I could see right through Quienyin.
One or two people at the tables were beginning to look more closely toward me. The Wizard of Loh had gone into lupu back in our camp and had thrown his astral projection to advise and warn us. How many times I had been hounded by the infernal projection of Yantong!
“Thank you, San. We will hurry. Best you-”
But Quienyin’s projection moved into the shadows by the far wall of the tavern — and vanished. His going was a matter of the supernatural; I just hoped the clients spooning up their ronalines and cream would disbelieve the evidence of their eyes and believe common sense. I started after Tyfar.
He sat down and leaned back in the wooden chair and looked around. Before the little Fristle fifi in her yellow apron could reach him I stormed up and whispered in a modulated bellow in his earhole, “Tyfar!
Our comrades are in trouble and Barkindrar is injured. You’ll have to forgo your ronalines.”
He stood up at once, quelling the flash of fury on his face.
“That Barkindrar! Let us go, then, Jak — and mayhap we can stop here on our way back. By Krun!
Ronalines and cream!”
We walked smartly off.
A Rapa slave in the gray slave breechclout stepped out of our way as we rounded the comer out of the kyro. He carried an enormous table on his back, and his beak was thrust forward. Perched on the table was a wicker basket and in the basket, wrapped in soft moss, lay two tiny Rapa babies. The Rapa lowered his eyes as he walked by.
“Rapa,” I said, “tell me where is Blue Vosk Street.”
He could only have been able to see our lower halves; but he could see the polished boots, and the sword scabbards, and the ends of the expensive cloaks.
“Masters,” he quavered. He dare not straighten up for the babies would slide off the table. “Masters. Straight along the Avenue of a Thousand Delights, and turn left — no, masters, turn right — a hundred paces along, by the river.”
I found a copper ob and pushed it into his hand.
“Thank you, Rapa.”
What he said I did not know, for I went off quickly, with Tyfar tailing along. We walked up the Avenue of a Thousand Delights, and while there might only have been nine hundred ninety-nine on display, the place warranted the trademark of a thousand. Following directions we turned a hundred paces along by the river, which here was confined by wooden stakes and a mass of overgrown foliage, and so entered Blue Vosk Street. Here, it was clear, lived the folk who catered to the customers for the thousand delights.
Tyfar put a hand to his sword hilt.
“Ignore the cutpurses,” I said, “and slit the throats of the cutthroats — first.”
“What a place! I did not know such a place could exist.”
“You mean because it is a hundred paces or so from refinement and civilization?” The stink didn’t bother me; Tyfar put a kerchief to his nose with his free hand. “No, Jak. I did not mean that.”
But I fancied I knew what he did mean. He was a prince and had not rubbed shoulders with the poor of the world. Many of the shacks were simply moldering away. Those built of the soft mud, hardened by a kiss of fire, were sloughing their footings into the mud in which they were set. People moved about their business, and three-quarters of that, I’ll warrant, was highly illegal. I drew my cloak around that splendid mesh mail. Tyfar saw the movement.
“Do you likewise, Tyfar. We are too brightly decked for this neighborhood. And keep your weather eye open.”
“Where is this pestiferous hayloft?”
A string of calsanys blundered past, their backs obscured by swaying lashings of straw. The Rapa leading them shuffled, head down, a wisp of straw sticking out from under the vulturine beak. Farther along a pair of hirvels drew a cart which lurched over the ruts, its fragile wheels appearing as if they would burst asunder at every forward plunge. Slaves were not too much in evidence. The people here were on the breadline, no doubt, and villainy kept their stomachs apart from their backbones. Khorundur was one of the countries of the Dawn Lands in which airboats were manufactured. These fliers were in nowise as splendid or efficient as those made in such secrecy by Hamal or Hyrklana; but they were functional, although small and oftentimes chancy of operation. No doubt the voller builders of Khorundur had not mastered all the secrets of the various ingredients contained in the silver boxes that uplifted and powered vollers.
Six taverns stood cheek by jowl, so that when a drunk was thrown out of the first, he could work his way along the rest without having to walk too far. Beyond them a cluster of stores displayed dusty goods, and then a hostelry lifted two stories. A beam and ropes jutted from a double door in the gabled front.
“There,” said Tyfar, and he would have pointed had I not cautioned him swiftly. “Yes, Jak, you are right. They are a cutthroat lot down here.”
“And quiet. Too quiet. Something is going on.”
He did not have the ruffianly experience of an old adventurer to give him the scent of mischief. The string of calsanys had gone, the cart vanished up a dolorous side alley. The people were taking themselves off the street. Although the surface was pockmarked with potholes and rutted, this street for these people would serve as their open-air gathering place. One would expect it to be filled with chaffering throngs, and also one would be certain that we two, our expensive cloaks betraying us even though the armor was concealed, would have been subjected to more than simple horseplay. In all probability as many attacks as there were paces would have been launched against us.
So that meant just one thing.
You have to have the nose for authority if you wish to stay alive in many of the more raffish and desperate places of Kregen.
Zair knows, I’d kicked against authority enough in my time.
“Just rest a moment in the shade of this awning, Tyfar.”
“But we must press on! Barkindrar-”
“Watch.”
He glared at me. Something in my manner showed him I did not counsel thus without reason. More probably, although it pains me to report this, something about my manner must have told him I was in no mood to be argued with. He was a prince; but he subsided and we stood in the shadows, looking keenly out onto that doleful street.
A neighborhood gets to know when trouble is on its way.
In a tightly controlled voice, Tyfar said, “We should have gone straight away to the magistrates. Or even the king. His palace may be a moth-eaten dump; but he is a king and would have received me as a prince.”
About to find a diplomatic way of reminding Tyfar of his country of origin, I closed my mouth. The tramp of iron-studded soles and the swish and clang of a party of soldiers kept us both stock still. I said in a voice that just carried, “This is the reason, Tyfar. Bide you still.”
The soldiers were paktuns, clearly enough, a mixture of races, all clad in a semblance of uniform. They were a hard-bitten lot. At their head marched their Jiktar, and I can say I did not care for him at first glance. I would not like to serve as a paktun in his pastang. He had not brought his whole pastang, a company which might be eighty strong; but only three audos, three sections of eight men each. The iron-studded boots stomped the rutted road.
The mercenaries approached from the direction we had come, and I said to Tyfar, “Quickly, now!
Around the back of the stables and in the rear window. Sharp!”
We ran between the wooden wall of the stables and the sagging mud wall of the nearest store. At the back a lumberyard showed with an adobe wall beyond. Thick trees cut off the view. At the back of the hostelry an aromatic yard piled with dung and straw and a few broken carts gave us access to the back of the building. There were a few calsanys in their stalls and a hirvel twitched his snout at us, his cup-shaped ears flicking forward, his tall round neck curving. The air hung unnaturally quiet, and the buzz of flies sounded like miniature ripsaws.
“In this window — quick and quiet!”
