Dagger (9 page)

but it

was just a matter of time before that gave way as well.

Each thrust of the handle now was against increased resistance. Samlor's shoulders were more than equal to the job, but the palm of his right hand felt as if it might be starting to bruise under the strain. The calluses were no help in this.

The second bar, driven by the broken end of the first, bent ahead of the jack's thrust until it touched the third. Samlor continued to crank. Cement pattered down from the transom in bits ranging as large as fingernails. The bars were crushing their setting under a sidethrust which they had not been designed to resist.

The bar which had broken initially pulled free. Only luck and Samlor's reflexive grab kept it from dropping to the ground with enough inertia to crush any skull it met in its path.

"Heqt," the Cirdonian muttered as he found himself with a firm grip on the length of iron. "Heqt be praised." Before he resumed work, he pulled the silver medallion and its thong outside his tunic, so that the embossed face of the toad goddess could watch his eiforts.

After a moment's consideration, he slid the bar inside Setios' house instead of trying to pass it on to Khamwas. The clunk-cling! it made on the hard flooring within was less noticeable than the squeal inevitable as the screw jack forced its way onward.

The grill was beginning to collapse. The bars were set in a trough in the hard limestone of the sill and transom. Any attempt to hammer the iron inward would be resisted by three inches of rock. The daubs of cement which held the bars apart within the trough were not nearly as strong.

Only the integrity of the whole construct preserved its strength. That ended when the jack inexorably tore out the first bar.

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For the next few minutes, Samlor's major problem was to avoid dropping a bar or, worse, the jack itself. When the fifth bar came out, he gripped the next with his left hand instead of advancing the screw again. The bar quivered, then toie loose to his mighty tug.

The caravan master's whole body was under strain from the position it had been holding. Some of his large muscles were beginning to tremble. He responded with a burst of nervous energy, dropping the jack within the house to get it out of the way while his hand ripped away the remaining bars on the right side of the window.

If one of them had remained firm, Samlor would have had to pause for an hour or more, shuddering on the ground while his muscles purged themselves of fatigue poisons. There was no need. The cement bonding had been cracked already by asymmetric compression. Bar after bar came away until there were no more in the right half of the window. Metal rang as the caravan master dropped them, but he could no longer hear any sound except the hammer of blood in his temples. He couldn't stop now, and he certainly couldn't take the time to reconnoiter the room he had just opened. There wasn't a damned thing to see—

the room was as dark

as the sky above—

and the caravan master knew he'd be really lucky if he still had the strength to throw himself directly into Setios' house.

"Heqt help and sustain me in this enterprise which 1 undertook for my daughter Star," Samlor prayed, though the only sound that came from his mouth was the wheeze of his breath. He gripped the sash with his left hand and a bar with his right, then drew himself into the opening with the clumsy certainty of a toad hopping.

The Cirdonian's hobnails slipped an instant after his shoulders curved away from the adjacent wall, but his torso was already half inside the building. He wriggled, trying to pull himself the rest of the way through the narrow opening. His boots clashed on the wall which had supported his shoulders—

and pushed him

inside with no trouble at all.

If he'd been thinking straighter, he'd've planned it that way. 58

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A boobytrap—

a spring-driven blade or a nest of spikes—

would have gone off

during Samlor's previous activities, but there was still the chance that someone—

human or not—

waited in the darkness to spear the intruder as he

sprawled totally helpless. The Cirdonian was so played out by the sudden release of strain that he couldn't have moved for the next few seconds if he'd known he'd be slaughtered instead of just fearing it.

"Praised be Heqt in whom the world lives," murmured Samlor as his senses returned him to the world beyond his own effort and necessities. The marble floor beneath him was cold and slick with water. The glazed windows had not been closed the last time it rained; and that, from idle chatter overheard at the caravansary, had been more than a week ago.

Khamwas called from the alley, his words blurred but the worry in them clear. Samlor rolled onto his right side. There was a sharp pain in his left thigh where the unsheathed dagger had prodded him during his contortions. He didn't think it had drawn blood through the double tunics.

"It's all right," the caravan master said, then realized that he wasn't sure he could understand the croaked words himself. He gripped the window ledge, brushing the scattered bars into muted chiming around his knees.

"It's all right," he repeated, leaning back through the opening by which he had entered. "Just a minute and I'll find—

" his hand brushed fabric, curtains or

tapestries, beside the window "—

yeah, just a second and I'll have something for

you t' climb by."

The Napatan might have been able to mount the way Samlor had, but Star was too small to fill the gap as comfortably as either of the adult males. It was risky to bring her into a magician's house, but a worse risk to leave her in a Sanctuary alley.

Life was, after all, a series of gambles which every creature lost on the final throw.

A fastening gave way; cloth tumbled down beside the Cirdonian. It was embroidered, partly with metallic threads that made it stiff to the touch. Something about the feel of

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the fabric suggested to Samlor that he didn't want to see the design. He slipped an end of the tapestry out between the remaining bars instead of tossing it directly through the opening he had torn. He no longer felt lightheaded, but he didn't trust his muscles to anchor his companions against a straight pull.

"Come on up," the caravan master directed, speaking through the window. "Star first." The tapestry, belayed around the grill, wasn't going to pull out of his hands.

The window was scarcely visible as a rectangle, and the still air smelt of storm.

There was a discussion below. Star came up the tapestry, flailing her legs angrily behind her. There was a pout in her voice as she demanded, "What is this old place? I don't like it."

Maybe she felt something about the house—

and maybe she was an overtired

seven-year-old and therefore cranky.

There wasn't time to worry about it. The caravan master gripped the child beneath the shoulders with his left arm and lifted her into the room. Star yelped as her head brushed the transom, but she should've had sense enough to duck.

"My staff, Master Samlor," said Khamwas.

The Cirdonian leaned forward and caught the vague motion that proved to be the end of an ordinary wooden staff when his fingers enclosed it. Behind him, the room lighted vaguely with blue pastel.

Star shouldn't have done it without asking; but they needed light, and a child wasn't a responsible adult. Samlor slid the staff behind him with his left hand while supporting the tapestry with his right hand and using his full weight to pin the end to the floor.

The Napatan scholar mounted gracefully and used Samlor's arm like the bar of a trapeze to swing himself over the lintel. Only then did the caravan master turn to see where they were and what his niece was doing.

Star had set swimming through the air a trio of miniature octopuses made of light. A blue creature drifted beneath the ceiling frescoed with scenes of anthropomorphic deities, a

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yellow one prowled beneath the legs of a writing table sumptuous with mother-of-pearl inlays.

The third miniature octopus was of an indigo so pale that it barely showed up against the carven door against which it bobbed feebly.

"Where's—

' Samlor said as he looked narrowly at Khamwas. "You know, your little friend?"

Tjainufi reappeared on the Napatan's right shoulder. The manikin moved with the silent suddenness of an image in an angled mirror, now here and now not as the tilt changes. "The waip does not stray far from the woof," he said in cheerful satisfaction.

"Khamwas," the Cirdonian added as he looked around them, "if you can locate what we're after, then get to it. I really don't want t' spend any longer here than I need to."

"Look, Uncle," Star squealed as she pranced over to the writing desk. "Mommie's box\"

Samlor's speed and reflexes were in proper form after his exertions, but his judgment was off. He attempted to spring for the desk before Star got there, and his boots skidded out from under him on the wet marble. Because he'd swept the long dagger from his belt as part of the same unthinking maneuver, he had only his left palm to break his fall. The shock made the back of his hand tingle and the palm burn.

Khamwas had retrieved his staff. He stopped muttering to it when the Cirdonian slapped the floor hard enough to make the loose bars roll and jingle among themselves. "Are you . . . ?" he began, offering a hand to the sprawling bigger man.

"See, Uncle Samlor?" said the child, returning to the caravan master with an ivory box in her hands. "It's got mommie's mark on it."

"No, go on with your business," said Samlor calmly to the Napatan. He felt the prickly warmth of embarrassment painting his skin, but he wouldn't have survived this long if he lashed out in anger every time he'd made a public fool of himself. "Find the stele you're after, and then we'll see what Star's got here." He took the box from the child as quickly as he could

without letting it slip from his numbed fingers. Even if it were just what it seemed—

a casket of Samlane's big enough to hold a pair of armlets—

it could be

extremely dangerous.

Much of what Samlor's sister had owned, and had known, fell into that category, one way or another.

Khamwas' face showed the concern which any sane man would feel under the circumstances, but he resumed his meditation on—

or prayers to—

his staff.

Star's palm-sized creatures of light continued their slow patrol of the room. The caravan master seemed to have broken into a large study. There was a couch to one side of the door and on the other the writing desk with matching chair. The chair lay on its back, as if its last occupant had jumped up hastily. Most of the interior wall space was taken up by cedarwood cabinets for books and scrolls. Even the palely drifting smears of light showed that the works ranged widely in age and quality of binding, but the varied types were intermixed within individual cabinets. Samlor did not doubt that the library was arrayed in a rigid order; but he was willing to bet that he would not be able to discover that order if he spent a year among the shelves.

His instinct about the tapestry he had dropped through the bars had been correct. Its counterpart still hung on the wall. The design worked into it in gorgeous color was religious . . . depending on one's definition of the term. The border was formed of curlicues, interrupted at regular intervals by nodes. The indigo octopus pulled itself along the border, illuminating the pattern beneath the groping tentacles. The embroidered nodes were humans contorted with pain. The curlicues were intestines, pulled an anatomically reasonable distance from gaping bellies.

Setios appeared to be exactly the sort of man that Samlane could be expected to meet. "Open it, Uncle!" Star demanded. Samlor still had the coffin-hilted dagger in his hand. His glance around the room had been a professional assessment of the situation, not daydreaming. The child had her own

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agenda, though, and this casket was—

might,be—

the thing that had brought them to

Sanctuary to begin with.

Khamwas still murmured over his staff. The caravan master got up with caution born of experience and walked over to the writing desk. A triple-wicked oil lamp hung from a crane attached to the desktop. It promised real illumination when Samlor lit it with the brass fire-piston in his wallet.

"There's no oil, Uncle Samlor," said Star with the satisfaction of a child who knows more than adult. She cupped her hand again and turned it up with a saffron glow in the palm. The creatures of light still drifting about the room dimmed by comparison. "See?"

The bowl of the lamp was empty except for a sheen in its center, oil beyond the touch of the wicks. Only one of the three wicks had been lighted at the lamp's last use. When the flame had consumed all the oil, it reduced the twist of cotton to ash. The other wicks were sharply divided into black and white, ready to function if the fuel supply were renewed.

Setios had really left in a hurry.

"Fine, hold the light where it is, darling," Samlor said to his niece as calmly as if he were asking her to pass the bread at table. The casket wasn't anything which the Cirdonian remembered from his youth, but the family crest—

the rampant

wy vern of the House of Kodrix—

was enameled on the lid. Beneath it was carven in

Cirdonian script the motto An Eagle Does Not Snatch Flies. Samlor's parents had never forgiven him for running high risk, high profit caravans like a commoner instead of vegetating in noble poverty. But they'd lived well—

drunk well, at least—

on the flies he snatched for them, and the money

Samlor provided had bought his sister a marriage with a Rankan noble. Which couldn't save Samlane from herself, but was the best effort possible for a brother who didn't claim to be a god.

The light hanging beneath Star's hand did not have clearly defined tentacles like those of the creatures still wandering the room, but there were whorls of greater and