The Brazen Gambit Part 3

Their fate was their own d.a.m.ned fault, not his.

But Pavek cared; he ached, and the family's faces joined countless others in the tiers of his conscience. The female druid, with her smoldering eyes and torn dress was headed there, too. The orphan boy who'd gut-punched him a few nights back had already claimed his place.

Wincing under his private burden, Pavek pounded the streets between the gate and the customhouse. His size and expression cleared a path, while a small voice inside his skull warned with every stride: Forget them all. Take care of yourself. Forget them all. Forget them all. Take care of yourself. Forget them all.

He slipped through an inconspicuous door at the rear of the customhouse and wove his way past stockpiles of those commodities King Hamanu judged both essential to his city's residents and eminently taxable. The customhouse was larger than the palace, though few guessed its true dimensions because it had been carved into the limestone beneath the streets rather than rising above them. It swallowed the lives of poor, patronless templars, and Pavek, already a ten-year veteran of the templarate's bottom ranks, knew every dim and twisted corridor, every rat-hole shortcut. No one could have reached the imposing procurate tables in the entry hall faster than he did, but it was Rokka's predictability rather than Pavek's luck or skill that got him where he wanted to be before it was too late.

Rokka made everyone wait. The smarmy dwarf would make King Hamanu wait in line, even if it got him killed. Today he was making everyone wait even longer: two empty tables flanked the one where the miser had enthroned himself. A line of citizens and merchants stretched onto the sunbaked street.

Pavek glanced at the array of trade goods heaped behind Rokka's chair. There were no amphorae, neither lacquered nor resealed with loose wax plugs. None of the hot, weary faces matched the itinerants from the gate.

Pavek sighed with satisfaction and relief, then joined a pair of fellow regulators marking time in the coolest corner, near a row of ma.s.sive chests. Taking orders from Rokka was a regulator's nightmare; the two were willing to let him stand duty in their places, no questions asked. They left the customhouse on a wave of his hand.

The lone procurer was a crude man. Curling bristles sprouted from his brow. Tufts of matted hair protruded from his ears and nose. Any other self-respecting dwarf would have plucked each offensive hair out by its root, but Rokka wore his hideous hair like armor. It fueled the contempt mat oozed with every word, every gesture.

Even the proud merchant standing in front of the table when Pavek entered the hall had been reduced to a nervous pallor by the time the a.s.sessment was concluded. Rokka made a scratched entry on the tax scroll for the merchant to witness before he waved a two-fingers-extended fist in the air above his shoulder. Taking an empty pouch from a pile beside the chest, Pavek filled the pouch with two nearly level measures of salt, then-because it was Rokka sitting at the procurer's table-he let some trickle back into the chest.

The dwarf scowled when Pavek appeared at his side to put the pouch in one pan of a balance scale and two ceramic lions in the other. All eyes were on the balance beam, which swung a few times before the pans settled as close to level as mortal eye could determine.

Rokka smiled and nodded. Pavek simply smiled. With practiced efficiency he knotted the pouch thong and immersed it in a crucible of molten wax. He sealed the wax with the regulation customs stamp: a mekillot leg bone that had been carved into the form of a rampant lion. The customhouse entry-hall echoed with the resonant sound of the seal impressing the wax. The merchant made a hasty escape with his salt ration.

"What brings you up here, Regulator?" Rokka asked before the next pet.i.tioner came forward. He slid the lightweight tokens off the pan.

Pavek shrugged. He returned the bone seal to its golden stand. "The usual, great one. Pure rotted luck." There was no particular enmity between them, mostly because Pavek had been careful to avoid moments like this.

"You know the drill?"

"In my dreams, great one. In my dreams."

The procurer squinted one eye, trying to figure if Pavek and an angle and whether that angle crossed his own in any unwelcome way. Pavek transformed himself into a study of disinterest and boredom, and after a moment Rokka's face relaxed without becoming friendly. "See you stay awake. We're short-handed already-" He indicated the empty tables. "Who knows who might be waiting outside?"

"Who indeed, great one? I know what's expected of me." Their gazes locked another moment, then Pavek took the empty pouch the merchant had left behind. He did know the drill and performed it flawlessly, until Rokka's smile seemed almost genuine and he began to fear that the procurer would request request his a.s.sistance in the future. his a.s.sistance in the future.

Mostly Pavek measured short-weights of salt, an especially precious commodity in the hot, arid Tablelands; but sometimes he poured volatile oils into glazed ceramic flasks, and once he filled a sack with caustic soda from the obsidian mines for the gluemaker who transformed all manner of rubbish into his sticky wares. No apothecaries came to Rokka's table for Ral's Breath packets, but around midafternoon the beautiful, brown-haired druid led her two male companions, each balancing a brace of amphorae on his shoulders, to the far side of Rokka's table.

Pavek looked the other way as soon as he spotted them, although there was little chance he'd be recognized. Ordinary folks seldom looked farther than the detested yellow robe every templar wore while on duty. Still, the woman was a druid and, therefore, not at all ordinary.

Hovering by the commodity chests with his back to the procurer's table, he finger-raked his hair until it hung in front of his eyes, then rolled up the tell-tale sleeves of his robe.

The druid woman didn't wilt in Rokka's scorn. When the dwarf tried to reject the amphorae because their seals were obviously broken, she described what had happened at the gate. Her description of him as a "dung-skulled baazrag masquerading as a human" seemed excessively insulting, but it did leave Rokka at a momentary loss for words. She issued a soft-spoken ultimatum in the silence.

"If you won't accept the trade your fellow templars tainted, then we shall be compelled to take it back with us when we leave Urik. You will understand, of course, that it will be another sixty days before we can possibly return."

Every mote of curiosity in Pavek's mind craved a glance at her face. He wanted wanted a good look at anyone who could play the procurer's game and win. Previously his only knowledge of druidry had come from such druid-written scrolls as the archive scholars had acquired over the ages. He knew they used the latent power of Adias itself in their spellcraft, which' was, in essence, identical to the priestly spellcraft the sorcerer-king permitted his templars. For that reason alone, he'd a.s.sumed they were like templars in other ways. a good look at anyone who could play the procurer's game and win. Previously his only knowledge of druidry had come from such druid-written scrolls as the archive scholars had acquired over the ages. He knew they used the latent power of Adias itself in their spellcraft, which' was, in essence, identical to the priestly spellcraft the sorcerer-king permitted his templars. For that reason alone, he'd a.s.sumed they were like templars in other ways.

He succ.u.mbed to curiosity's temptations. The druid wasn't overtly defiant or proud; the lowliest messenger could conquer defiance or pride. Her voice was meek, her eyes lowered, never challenging the dwarfs authority.

And she had Rokka rattled. The dwarf drummed on the table and squirmed in his chair. By law, Pavek should have intervened: he knew what she was. One word whispered in Rokka's ear and the druid would wish she'd been sent to the obsidian pits before the dwarf was done with her.

Templars were, however, only responsible for enforcing Urik's laws, not obeying them. Pavek stayed right where he was, listening to Rokka's threats and insinuations, while the woman's expression never changed. He thought the procurer would reach for his medallion, but incredibly, Rokka caved in. The dwarf said Urik needed what was in those amphorae, sealed or tainted; he accepted the unsealed amphorae. After the woman's companions had laid down their burdens, Rokka held up four fingers for salt, then three for the volatile oil.

Pavek considered upright measurement: he was that impressed by the woman's accomplishment, but he rejected the notion. Rokka's weights were light. Any honest efforts on his own part would only focus the procurer's frustration on his own head. And the dwarf was undoubtedly looking for someone to blame.

Keeping his eyes as carefully lowered as the druid woman had kept hers while she wrangled with Rokka, Pavek set two salt pouches on the balance pan. They were a few hairs heavy, not enough for argument. While Pavek sealed one, Rokka reached for the other, presumably to knot the thong. But the procurer was a master in his own right. Pavek, standing at his shoulder, almost missed the glint of gold as Rokka dropped three coins into the pouch before sealing it. Without thinking Pavek shot a glance at the woman. Her look said that she knew about the gold, and that she recognized him. He expected to be denounced on the spot as a dung-skull baazrag, but the moment pa.s.sed quietly, and he set amber-gla.s.s flasks in the balance pan, weighing his perceptions as he weighed the oils.

Pavek had come away from Metica's chamber convinced that if Rokka wasn't skimming the zarneeka, the itinerants were: one or the other, not both in collusion. But the itinerants weren't simple nomadic traders, and Rokka was slipping gold into an already generous ration of salt. Maybe they were were working together, playing a dangerous game against Urik? working together, playing a dangerous game against Urik?

He pulled his hands back from the scale, allowing the pans to swing free.

If it was a ruse, the whole confrontation had been an elaborate ruse. Pavek didn't know if dissembling was a common skill among druids, but it wasn't among dwarves or procurers. When the brown-haired druid threatened to take her zarneeka away with her, Rokka had been mad enough to kill. Then he'd capitulated.

Urik's inhabitants needed Ral's Breath, but Rokka wouldn't give a gith's thumb for Urik or its inhabitants. Rokka Rokka needed zarneeka, and not, Pavek guessed with certainty, for Urik's sake. needed zarneeka, and not, Pavek guessed with certainty, for Urik's sake.

The pans leveled. Pavek sealed the flasks with wax, then pushed them toward the woman without meeting her eyes. He'd gotten two steps toward the lacquered clay jugs lying on the floor when Rokka called him back.

"I'll handle that, Regulator," he said, rising too quickly from his chair. "You take my place here."

It was unheard of: A regulator standing a procurer's duty, Rokka toting four heavy amphorae on his own broad shoulders.

"Never think of it, great one. It's not my place."

"Make it your place and maybe you'll keep it, Regulator. You're so good with writing-all that practice. Scribble-sc.r.a.pe. Scribble-sc.r.a.pe. What else you got to show for it? Ink stains on your fingers? Or has our Great and Mighty King promised you a place in the archives-? Scholar Pavek-sweeping bug-dung off the floor."

As dwarves went, Rokka was soft-muscled. Maybe Pavek could best him hand-to-hand, maybe he'd need a heavy stick. But the risks were unacceptable, and King Hamanu frowned on templars brawling in front of the rabble, and the king's frowns were often fatal. So, Pavek let the procurer pa.s.s. He settled himself on the chair's leather cus.h.i.+on, still warm and molded to the dwarf's differently shaped anatomy.

The druid and her companions were already out the door. Pavek called for the next in line. His script was better than Rokka's, and he was more efficient-dragging the salt-chest up to the table so he could negotiate, sign, measure, and seal, all without standing up. He simplified the negotiations, too: asking each pet.i.tioner what he or she was due, then shaping his scarred lips into an impressive snarl until the poor sod lowered the request.

The city's tax-paying rabble was clever. By the fifth pet.i.tioner, the transaction had been completely ritualized and the line moved at unprecedented speed. Every time Pavek spun around to reach into the salt chest, he expected to see Rokka's bandy legs and wrinkled robe, but the procurer was taking his time.

In fact, Rokka took the whole afternoon.

The last pet.i.tioner was a dark silhouette against a sunset ruddy sky as he departed the customhouse. Pavek blew out the flame beneath the crucible. He waited until the sky was a lurid purple before locking all the chests and dragging them to the nearest wardroom.

Rokka still hadn't returned when the night guards a.s.sumed their posts. They shot a few sidelong glances his way, and he returned the favor. Templars were suspicious of each other and any deviation from routine.

They were also inclined to let those suspicions fester. Casual questions were unthinkable.

Pavek considered reporting directly to Metica. He knew her billet in the templar, quarter and he thought he knew enough about the zarneeka trade. If he got lucky, he'd discharge his debt, catch a midnight meal at Joat's, and spend his Todek's Day off in the archives as he'd planned.

And if he wasn't lucky? If he hadn't learned enough? He could see the administrator's arched eyebrows pull together like a kank's mandibles when he mentioned those gold coins-if he mentioned those gold coins.

And if he didn't...?

And if she found out he hadn't...?

Ignoring the elven guards who were ignoring him, Pavek opened a minor door and descended into the catacombs. The only lighted lamps hung in the stairways, those in the corridors had been extinguished to save precious oil. Bone torches were stacked at every landing. He selected one that was st.u.r.dy enough to double as a club, then lit the pitched straw wrapping, acutely aware that a torch was a better target than light source.

Humans were at a distinct disadvantage in the dark. The other Athasian races saw heat as well as light and had far keener night vision. If it had been simply a matter of getting to a specific location within the catacombs, he would have foregone the torch. Magic locks sealing the more valuable commodities in their storerooms shed enough eerie light for a cautious man. But Pavek didn't know where Rokka or the zarneeka had gone; he needed light to find them.

Light, that simplest of all spells, was still a gift from the sorcerer-king and not worth requesting.

He started down the long corridor, stabbing his torch into every shadow. He rehea.r.s.ed his excuses: Rokka had seemed unwell. Rokka had left him, a mere regulator, in charge of the procurer's table. Rokka had not returned from the storerooms, and he, a dutiful regulator, had not dared leave the customhouse until he'd gotten the procurer's countersignature on the tax scroll.

Only a complete fool would believe he was actually looking for the dwarf, but in the strained society where templars dwelt, plausibility was more important than either belief or truth.

Pavek saw things he would be careful not to remember. He interrupted a small number of storeroom trysts. High-rank templars married and raised families, but low-rank templars, living their lives in barracks and competing ruthlessly for such crumbs of patronage as slipped through the cracks, made do with empty storerooms and empty affairs. He'd never know the number or names of his children, if he had any. A woman of similar rank could not raise an infant. Her children wound up in the templarate orphanage or on the streets.

He muttered apologies and kept going.

Midway through the third tier, he found what he was looking for: a warding that shed more light than his torch, and a glimpse of lacquered amphorae through the door grate. With his fingers folded thoughtfully over his mouth, Pavek studied the warding from a safe distance. Rokka had sufficient rank to ask for such potent spellcraft, but unless the dwarf had been spending all his spare hours in the archive, like Pavek, he shouldn't have known how to cast it. Even templars' borrowed spells were more than invocations. Complex spells, such as warding, were as individual as signatures or fingerprints. The warding on the amphorae storeroom was subtle and, therefore, not Rokka's style.

A High Templar would have both the rank and requirement to protect his private chambers with such an intricate warding. Here in the customhouse catacombs, it was going to raise a lot of eyebrows come daylight.

If it hadn't been dispelled before then.

Pavek spotted a likely hiding place amid a cl.u.s.ter of empty barrels. He extinguished his torch in a sand-bucket, but kept it with him as a weapon. Too bad there was no meat left on the bone. Excluding the zarneeka, he hadn't eaten anything since breakfast, and his churning stomach was noisier than the catacombs vermin. Digging into the belt-pouch beneath his robe, he found several sticks of stale chord sausage. The spicy, salted meat quieted his gut, and left him half-mad with thirst.

Cursing himself, Rokka, the sorcerer-king, and everything else in Urik, Pavek hunkered down. A length of coa.r.s.e-woven canvas spilled out of one barrel. He draped the musty cloth over his bright robe and settled in for an uncomfortable night's spying.

His mind went as blank as any overworked slave's, and stayed that way until footsteps and torchlight roused him. At least four individuals were trooping down the stairs. They weren't talking, but from the sounds, two of them were leather-shod and another was heavy enough to be a half-giant. Pavek had figured the worst would be a face-to-face encounter with Rokka, or Rokka's contact; he hadn't figured on a quartet, especially a quartet with a half-giant. He wished he were anywhere else.

Wis.h.i.+ng didn't help. After confirming that he was still covered by the canvas, thereby obscuring his visual shape and his heat signature from the dwarf's inhuman vision, Pavek eased forward for a better look. Rokka led with the torch. Behind him was a tall figure whose ident.i.ty was concealed by a grotesque mask.

His heart skipped a beat when he saw the mask.

Questioners sometimes hid behind masks; necromancers always did. Pavek told himself the mask might be a low-ranked templar's clever disguise. He didn't convince himself.

Between flickering torchlight and the billowing robes, Pavek couldn't get a clear glimpse of the third member of the quartet, but the fourth was, unmistakably, a half-giant, bent and cramped within the ten-foot corridors and lugging two barrels virtually identical to the one behind which Pavek was hiding. He crouched lower, hoping against hope that the quartet was headed somewhere else, but they stopped between his hiding place and the storeroom. He smelled the bitter essence of arnica as someone, most likely the masked templar, dispelled the lock.

"Hit me again with that d.a.m.ned barrel and you'll finish your life in the mines!"

Pavek gasped. Hamanu's infinitesimal mercy-he'd hoped never to hear Dovanne's voice at close range again. There was history between him and her: history back to their shared childhood days in the orphanage, when the customhouse had been their playground. Once they'd been more than friends, now they were much, much less.

He'd sworn the disaster hadn't been his fault: they'd both been set up. Following her instructions, sent in a signed message, he'd waited alone for hours on a dark, deserted rooftop. But Dovanne, following different instructions bearing his his signature, had gone to a catacombs storeroom where she discovered, to her lasting horror and rage, that she wasn't at all alone. signature, had gone to a catacombs storeroom where she discovered, to her lasting horror and rage, that she wasn't at all alone.

He'd tracked down the ringleader: the one and only time he'd had killed with his bare hands. He'd brought proof to Dovanne in a basket, but she never believed him, never forgave him.

So they learned to steer around each other. Pavek had heard she'd found a patron and hauled herself up a few ranks. Now, he didn't know which was worse: the thought of her hooked up with Rokka or with a dead-heart. Dire curiosity lured his eyes above the barrel rim a second time.

Lord yes, it was Dovanne: bronzed skin, human features, hair cropped short and bleached by the sun, eyes the color of amber and twice as hard. Metallic thread glinted in her left sleeve (a procurer, just like Rokka; the masked templar her patron), the right one was torn off at the shoulder.

Tattooed and coiled serpents spiraled up her exposed arm. Pavek recalled Dovanne's first visit to the skin-dyer: She swore she wasn't afraid of the leering goat, or his sharp quills, and he pretended to believe her while she clutched his hand in a frigid death-grip.

It had taken every coin they both possessed to buy a single, slender, monochrome, serpent to circle her right wrist.

Dovanne's serpents were lush and multi-colored now. She'd done all right for herself. Better than she'd have done if she'd stayed loyal to him. Pavek wanted to be glad for her, but injustice blocked the way.

"We are not alone." A surprisingly commonplace voice came from the mask that spoke to Dovanne, not Rokka. "A friend of yours, perhaps. Or perhaps not. This place holds memories for you?"

She shrugged. The serpents writhed. "Nothing worth holding, great one."

"Then it was a thought-"

Pavek trembled. Necromancers dealt with all manner of death, but only mind-benders plucked thoughts out of the air.

Who was beneath the mask? A necromancer or a mind-bender? Or a master of both arts? An interrogator.

Basic mind-bending defense was instinctive in humans, like closing one's eyes when an object came too close. Pavek thought himself small while he considered the stranger. Measured against Dovanne, the masked templar would stand eye-to-eye with Pavek, but he was much leaner. His hands were obscured by supple learner gloves and lengthened with talons that continued the enameled patterns of the mask. Even so, the fingers seemed long and narrow for human hands. And though Pavek had encountered runty elves, his best guess was half-elf. Before he could recall the names of any half-elf necromancers, Rokka ended the mystery.

"Is there a spy, Lord Elabon?"

Lord was a courtesy t.i.tle. There were no n.o.bles in Urik's templarate, but Elabon Escrissar was an aristocrat in every other sense. The child, grandchild and great-grandchild of High Templars, for all that he was of a mixed and outcast breed, he had a flair for cruelty that, according to rumor, entertained Urik's ancient, jaded king. Metica wasn't going to be happy when she heard her regulator say that not only was Escrissar involved in the zarneeka trade, he was a mind-bender as well.

"Take a look around," the mask said. "See that we're alone."

Unless Metica already knew. She'd said High Bureau dead-hearts had performed the interrogation. She and I Elabon were both half-elves. Half-elves weren't as clannish as full-blooded elves, but Pavek was ready to wager his last ceramic bit that Escrissar bad gone to Metica after the interrogation and she had sold him to save herself.

Rokka searched the corridor where nothing could be hiding; Dovanne came straight at the barrels. Pavek's chances were slim, nil, and none; but he couldn't surrender without a fight. Abandoning the bone torch, he leapt straight up. Both hands grasped an overhead beam, and he swung his heels forward, into Dovanne's face. She collapsed with a growl. Pavek landed within arm's reach of Escrissar, and, with nothing to lose, chopped the black-wrapped neck with the callused edge of his hand. Escrissar went down like a market-place puppet.

The half-giant blocked the stairway up, so Pavek dived past Rokka. The dwarf, reasonably expecting Elabon to end the chase with spellcraft, flattened against the wall. He shared Rokka's expectation, but had to keep going until a spell dropped him in his tracks. But that didn't happen. Vaulting over a stair-rail, he made his escape into the depths of the catacombs.

He ran around the next corner, careened down another flight of stairs, and ran along a lock-lit corridor. Rokka was a coward at heart, but Dovanne had surely recognized his face. She'd track him to the end of time, with or without her patron's permission. Sound was Pavek's greatest enemy: he sank into each stride to minimize the noise, thinking that if he could get behind Dovanne, he'd have a chance at climbing one of the other stairways to the street level.

And then what? Trust himself to Metica?

Throw himself before King Hamanu's mercy? King Hamanu's infinitesimal infinitesimal mercy? mercy?

Fear tightened his chest and he stumbled to a halt in the near-darkness. Gasping for air, he swore he wouldn't worry about the future until he reached the street. His ribs relaxed. He spared a heartbeat to listen for Dovanne's footsteps. There was only silence, and he started off at a fast, quiet, walk.

There was method in the catacombs. Corridors crossed at predictable places. Pavek approached each one with caution, working his way across the man-made cavern, far below the room where the zarneeka powder was stored. He allowed himself to believe that he'd gotten behind Dovanne and to hope mat her hunger for revenge would lead her back to the places they had explored years ago while he headed for a stairway that hadn't been built until after the Tyrian raid.

Pavek climbed the steps soundlessly on the b.a.l.l.s of his feet. The street door was bolted from the inside, which he judged a good omen. With his weight against the wood, he withdrew the bolt from its slot. It squeaked loud enough to wake the dead. He hid in the shadows, counted to fifty, then pushed the door outward. A band of moonlight widened into a rectangle through which he discerned no movement.

The door b.u.mped once against the outer wall, then was still and silent Pavek counted to fifty again and crossed the threshold.

Arms as thick as a man's thighs dropped around his shoulders before he'd taken his third step. Half-giants were ma.s.sive and strong, but their bodies were put together the same as any human's. Pavek crashed a boot-heel into his captor's knee and dug his fingertips into sensitive gaps in the half-giant's huge wrists. A pained bellow shattered the night as the brute's muscles spasmed. A second good crack into the half-giant's kneecap might have produced both freedom and a head start down the alley, but a well-thrown punch hit his jaw before he got his foot up.

"d.a.m.n you. d.a.m.n you to life everlasting," Dovanne hissed as she clouted him again.

Pavek's neck snapped against the half-giant's hard chest. He was stunned: unable to feel anything, but clear-headed enough to wonder what she had concealed in her fist. Then the pain started, and he was grateful for the next weighted blow.

Thought you'd sneak away again, didn't you?"

Another punch, square in his undefended gut. He lost strength in his legs and would have fallen if the half-giant hadn't held him up. Between blows, Dovanne asked more questions Pavek didn't try to answer. He didn't notice that she'd stopped pounding him until he hit the cobblestones.

"Get up," Dovanne demanded, jabbing her boot into his flank. "He "He wants to talk to you." wants to talk to you."