Dangerous Gifts (26 page)

Grey-hair nodded at me. I nodded back. “Hey. What’s the food like in this place?”

“Not so bad,” he said, “but I’d stay away from the Gudain dishes if you want to be able to taste anything else for a week. Oh, and don’t bother asking for bread, or dumplings. They don’t do ’em.”

“Grain doesn’t seem to be a big thing here,” I said. Something about that struck me as odd, but I put it aside.

“No.”

“Good travelling?” I said.

“Fair. Apart from the fever, been quiet as a virgin’s bedroom, the whole trip.”

“Fever?”

“Me and my mate got sick, they dumped us off. We were going to hang around until they came back, only...” He gave a glance around. “You been here a while?”

“Few days.”

“I think we might wait somewhere else,” he said. “It’s got that
bad times
smell, you know?”

“I do. All too well.”

“You with one of the caravans?” he said.

“No, I’m working local, but the job finishes in a couple of days, I thought I’d scout round for some guard work.So what was your cargo?” I said.

“Why’d you want to know?”

“Just curious.”

“Well, they’re two days ahead of us now, so I don’t suppose it matters,” he said, eyeing me sidelong. “Besides, if you
were
planning on robbing it, you’d need help. Never seen so many damn guards on one caravan, we were jostling each other out of the road. You stick that many guards on a load you’re pretty much yelling that it’s worth a touch, am I right?”

“Point,” I said.

“And Tesserane drivers. I
mean
.”

Tesserane. That was it. Our silk, I’d bet money on it. Of course, I already had, though not willingly. “Might as well light a beacon.”

“Well, they’ll be coming into port in Scalentine in three days, if someone doesn’t knock ’em over.” He grinned, and I did my best to grin back. I just hoped he was right. We must have been damn close to passing the load on our way into Incandress. I thought of the empty landscape we’d travelled, and peopled it with bandits behind every bush; I thought of the sea, and imagined storms, and wrecks, and the worth of the Lantern and everything in it sinking to the ocean floor, of sharks trailing scarves of Tesserane from their fins as they swam heedlessly away.

Well, there wasn’t a damn thing I could do about it now. For all I knew, the stuff was already in Scalentine.

Where warehouse fires weren’t exactly unknown, either...

Stop it, Babylon.

I bid my new friend farewell and headed out, but realised as I left that I wasn’t going to make it back up the hill without a stop. The privies were around back, and – perhaps in tribute to Gudain modesty – were actual wooden cubicles, with latches, instead of a bench and a row of buckets. The latch on the one I chose was so new the wood still bled sap, and stiff as an old woman’s knees. I spent some time ramming it into place before I could get down to business.

I was lacing up when I heard the next stall open and close. “They’re going to think we’ve come in here for a poke,” muttered someone who sounded a lot like my friend from the bar.

“Why would you care?” said a second voice.

“And it stinks.”

“Shut up complaining. That woman. You think she was law?”

“So she sounded like Scalentine. Doesn’t mean anything.”

By this time I had my ear pressed so hard against the adjoining partition I was getting splinters.

“I don’t like it. What’d you have to go and tell her about the cargo for?”

“I was checking her out, donkey-brain. She was looking for work, like she said. Look, even if she was law, what’s she going to do? It’s all sorted. Into the warehouse, out of the warehouse, neat as you like. It’s all
planned.
”

“And we’ll get our cut.”

“You bet your arse, or someone else’ll get
cut.
”

I’d heard enough. I hit the latch with the heel of my hand.

It squeaked, but wouldn’t move.

Shit.

I wrestled with the bloody thing, but they’d heard the movement; there was the sound of running feet, and by the time I got out, they were long gone.

There was no sign of them in the bar, of course.

I
WAS DUE
back on duty and couldn’t even find Fain before I had to stand guard through another excruciating formal dinner.

I had to fight to concentrate. What I’d overheard had been enough to tell me that somebody had plans for that silk when it hit the warehouse, and I didn’t think they involved legitimate trade.

What the hells was I going to do? Even if I told Fain, he couldn’t do anything from here, not in the time. And he’d want to know why I was interested, which would give him information I wasn’t comfortable with him having.

I watched the servants come and go. The main dish this time was some kind of yellow vegetable so powerfully spiced that my eyes watered, surrounded with a flotilla of tiny dishes of this, that and t’other; colours of cinnabar and jade, sunsets and seascapes. I wondered if the spices did that, or whether they just liked their food exotically coloured.

I leaned close to Enthemmerlee’s ear. “Jug?” I whispered.

She nodded, and gave a small sigh, as she spooned a fragment of the first dish into the jug as surreptitiously as she could.

Selinecree scattered bright, pleasant chatter like sequins, Fain made himself pleasant without being remotely flirtatious. Enthemmerlee was gracious. Lobik and Bergast talked about magic and ritual. Rikkinnet had declined dinner, saying she needed to sleep. The room hummed with all that wasn’t being said.

I forgot my own troubles long enough to tense when the seneschal came in with the wine, as did everyone else. He walked around the table, serving people one by one, until he came to Lobik. He stopped. He looked at Enboryay.

Enboryay glared. Then he flicked his hand.

The seneschal poured.

So many held breaths were released it was a wonder the lamps didn’t get blown out.

The dinner seemed to take several million years. I kept my eyes open and half an ear to the conversations; Lobik mentioned that he had recently seen a disti race, which engaged Enboryay’s enthusiastic attention. Discussing pace, stride, and ground, he seemed to forget he was talking to an Ikinchli. But then all his stablehands were Ikinchli, so this sort of conversation probably felt quite natural. Selinecree quizzed Bergast about magic. “So fascinating. You probably know, we don’t have much here; you have a great deal more on Scalentine.”

“Only so much. Lethal magics are damped.”

“Really? How intriguing! How does that happen?”

“Well,” Bergast said, knowingly, “it’s terribly complicated.”

I caught Fain’s look; it was no more than the most fractionally lifted of brows, but still, I had a hard time not grinning. Bergast, in magical terms, was just out of the egg. The damping effect of Scalentine still baffled the greatest of warlocks.

The lengths a man will go to to impress a woman, even one he hasn’t the slightest hope of bedding, often amuse me.

Then I remembered about the silk, and my mood dropped right through my boots.

I glanced at Fain again, but he had turned to talk to Malleay.

I couldn’t tell him.

But... The thought snuck into my mind, like a finger tapping on a window. Maybe he could be of use. Or at least, his device could.

My stomach clenched, but it was probably hunger; I hadn’t eaten since the morning, and I was ravenous.

How could I keep him away from his room long enough to use it?

Probably by making no obvious effort to do so. He was a suspicious beggar, and if I tried too hard to engage his attention elsewhere, he’d know something was up.

My stomach clanged harder. Damn, I was hungry.

The family withdrew to the main hall, another ill-proportioned, gloomy room with dark, clumsy furniture. It was, like the dining room, like the whole house, far too big for the people it contained.

I shuffled and twitched until Rikkinnet appeared, and handed over to her with barely a word. She gave me a narrow look as I hurried off, but I ignored it. Now the thought of using the device was in my mind I couldn’t get it out.

Fain hadn’t locked his room, but then, he hadn’t brought much with him to be stolen. I hesitated with my hand still on the door. What if he’d kept the device on him? It wasn’t that big... Well, there was no harm in looking.

What are you doing, Babylon? What is Fain going to think if he comes back and finds you here, or catches you using the device? Never mind
think,
what’s he going to
do
? He’s not a man to cross, you know this, and you’ve already caused him trouble...
But these thoughts fled when a glimmer of blue-purple light showed me that the device was indeed there, sitting on the ornately carved dresser.

I opened the door the rest of the way and slipped inside, shutting the door behind me. If Fain turned up, I’d just pretend I’d arrived with seduction on my mind. Surely he’d believe that?

My stomach ground out a protest.
Shut up, I’ll feed you later.

I took hold of the device, trying to remember what Fain had done. A movement of
this
little copper wheel... that tiny lever down, the smallest fraction... and...
there.

I remembered, just, to look away when the wavering shape of liquid-shuddering light formed between the wires, and turned hard and bright.

Shadows scuttled up the walls. Something somewhere was shrieking; some night-hunting bird, perhaps.

I leaned in close.
“A swift rabbit isn’t a hare but still leaps the moon,”
I said.

Silence, with things in it that hissed and crawled.

I had a moment’s fear that they might have changed the passwords, but the voice came back: “
The moon under water snares the unwary fox.
Mr Fain?” The same female voice I’d heard before.

“No. It’s Babylon Steel. I need to get a message to the Lantern.”

“I can’t do that, without the express order of a member of the Section. Where is Mr Fain?”

“Elsewhere. Charming his hostess, probably. Dammit! All right, can you get one to the Militia?”

“Not without...”

“Look, it’s a legal matter! A robbery, or about to be. There’s a cargo of silk coming in, and I overheard plans to get to it at the warehouse.” I thought furiously. “If it’s taken, the Section will lose the tax revenue on it.”

Silence. The silence went on too long; it was too full of whispers that seemed on the verge of becoming articulate.

“I need more detail.”

“A cargo of Tesserane silk, coming in via Scalentine, due in about two days.”

“And the nature of the crime?”

“Robbery! I told you!”

“Look,” the voice said, suddenly friendlier, perhaps because my desperation had been audible. “I can’t do this officially, but I can get one of the clerks to drop a word in someone’s ear. I’ll send Suli over to the barracks, all right? It’s as much as I can do. And if anyone asks, I didn’t.”

“Thank you! Tell them it’s me, they’ll know I wouldn’t waste their time.”

“I will.”

The quality of the silence changed, and I realised she had turned off her end of the device.
Suli,
I thought. I’d heard that name before, somewhere. A client? A...

“Babylon. Oh, Babylon, that is very unwise.”

I jerked backwards away from the machine, and Mokraine reached past me, and flicked at the base of the device.

The light died, and the shadows on the wall collapsed in the warm, sane glow of the lantern in Mokraine’s hand.

“These are not toys for the unlearned to play with,” he said.

What had I been doing? My arms were pebbled with goosebumps. My stomach roiled and rolled. It wasn’t hunger, it was my gut. It had been shrieking at me, and I had ignored it. Why in the name of the All had I used that thing?

Mokraine leaned forward, holding up the lantern and peering at me.

“What is it?” I said.

“I do not know. Perhaps nothing. Come away.”

“Gladly.”

I stumbled after him, feeling doped and utterly confused. “Mokraine? What were you doing there?”

“I felt something. Something in the structure...” He stared into the flame of the lantern for a moment. “I know I am mad,” he said. “But also I know that I feel the portals, now. I feel the tug and pull, the net of thought that laces the All. The gates and passages through which things pass. I think that is why I am here. And that device is part of it. But... I do not know. In any event, you should not use it again.”

“I don’t plan to! I don’t know why I did. Except I was desperate.”

“Yes.”

“But I hated the thing. When Fain first showed it to me I didn’t trust it. I can’t believe I did that.”

“Perhaps something wanted you to,” Mokraine said.

That was a thought I could have lived without.

CHAPTER

FIFTEEN

I
TRIED TO
shake it off. I had done something foolish, but I felt perfectly fine, now. Nothing had happened. And I’d sent a message. Hargur would send some guards, at least.

Fain had to chant. You didn’t. And he had to fidget with the thing for minutes, you found the right position for all those little wheels and levers without even thinking...

Perhaps something wanted you to...

“Oh shut up,” I muttered. “Nothing
happened.
” Nonetheless, I wouldn’t be using the Section’s little toy again.

My gut, possibly still annoyed at being ignored earlier, pointed out that it hadn’t had supper and would like some, now, please.

It’s a bit much when your own bloody insides take against you. I made my way towards the barracks to get some food.

And while I was there, or rather, after I’d eaten, I’d see what I could make of the captain. At least that would take my mind off my own idiocy.

Yelling at him, I knew, would only make him even more resentful, and this wasn’t a case for seduction, except of a very specialised sort. I was going to try telling him a story, based on something I remembered, from long ago. Storytelling is part of my job, one way and another. Usually specifically for erotic effect, but I’ve used it to rally soldiery, too.