Dangerous Gifts (45 page)

“But...”

“At the moment, your mind is your own,” Mokraine said. “I assume you would like it to remain that way?”

I stared at him. “Laney?” I said, when I found my voice. “Can you do anything? Get us there any faster?”

“No. Not if you mean mess with the weather, Babylon, and... No.”

“Babylon.” Fain took me by the shoulders. “Babylon. We are going as fast as we can. And I have people watching him, remember?”

But I could barely hear him. All I could do was clutch the railing and stare, begging the sky for the first light of Bealach portal on the horizon.

CHAPTER

TWENTY-THREE

W
HEN MY HANDS
cramped from clutching the rail, I practised with the sling, using whatever I could find for missiles, saving the stones in their leather bag for the real thing.

Mokraine came up to me as I swung and loosed, swung and loosed, his eyes following a collection of trivial objects on their journey over the water. They didn’t usually get very far before they landed.

“Mokraine,” I said.

“Babylon. Try to calm down. I can feel your anxiety all the way to the lower deck. There are probably creatures in the far depths wondering why they are becoming unaccountably anxious.”

“Sorry. Mokraine?” Load. “Why did you come to Incandress?” Loose.

“I am a weathercock, Babylon.”

Fain had used the same term. “How do you mean?” Load.

“I mean that what I did, when I created a portal all those years ago, has tied me to them in some way. And if their state is threatened with change, it pulls me in. I am at the mercy of something other than myself. I object to this, Babylon, I object to it strongly.”

“I know the feeling.” Loose.

“Yes, I know you do.”

“You... Oh.” Load.

“Beware of making openings,” Mokraine said. “And beware of widening them. One does not know” – he glanced down at the familiar – “what may come through them.”

I shuddered, hard, almost dropping the sling into the sea.

“I’m sorry, Babylon,” Mokraine said.

“I’m sorry, too. I’m sorry you couldn’t... Well.”

Mokraine shrugged. “I have not yet given up. There may be other methods.”

“Yeah.”

I wondered if there were methods of shutting the door on a god, too, once one has let them in.

But mostly, as I sent shot after shot over the empty ocean, apple cores and bits of wood and anything I could scrounge, I wondered about my crew, and about Hargur, and whether the watchdogs that Fain had set on him were keeping him safe.

I
WAS STILL
clinging to the rail and retching from the portal as we were pulling into the harbour. When I straightened up, Fain was standing beside me. He passed me a cup of water from the barrel.

“Don’t you ever bloody get sick?” I said.

“Seldom.”

“Lucky.”

“I suppose I am.”

Looking along the quay, I saw a bright red uniform, and for a moment my heart leaped. But it wasn’t the Chief. Just a Militiaman, chatting to someone, dock patrol, checking things out.

It meant nothing. If the Chief... if something had happened to Hargur, things would keep rolling, at least for a while. He had a firm hand and good lieutenants.

“Oh come
on,
why do these things take so damn long to dock!”

Finally,
finally,
we bumped the quay and I was down the gangplank almost before it hit the ground.

“Where’s this bloody silk warehouse?” I knew there were at least two hundred warehouses of various sizes around the dock.

“The harbourmaster will know,” Fain said.

The harbourmaster was a big, red-faced, slightly pig-like sort who was gabbing in rapid pidgin to several flustered people about – surprise – grain. I didn’t care about grain. Or silk. I cared about Hargur.

He flipped a dismissive hand at us. Fain went up and whispered into one of his large, pointed ears.

Some of the red left his face. He and Fain had several more whispered exchanges, and he spat out a stream of instructions. I couldn’t follow them, but Fain strode off confidently.

“What about
him?
” Laney sniffed, gesturing at Filchis.

I looked around for the Militiaman I’d seen earlier, but he’d disappeared. “Bring him, bring him. There’s no
time.
”

Bergast, grumbling, hauled Filchis along after him. Filchis moaned and fussed.

“It’s daylight. Surely robbers aren’t likely to go about their business in broad day,” Laney said.

“It’s not the robbers I’m worried about. It’s Heimarl and his Builder friends.”

Filchis glared and panted as we hurried after Fain. “I have done nothing, nothing. Once this gets to the proper authorities...”

“I
am
the ‘proper authorities,’” Fain said. “Oh, and I think incitement to murder is something.”

“You can’t prove it!”

“No? I think you will have a long and interesting time in prison. Where you will find yourself surrounded by those you have so often described as violent and mindless.”

“You can’t! I’m a citizen of Scalentine!”

“Citizens are required to act like citizens,” Fain said. “And they are subject to the laws that govern citizens. However. If you are willing to point out your mentor, in front of witnesses, as the man who financed the establishment of the Builders...” – he glanced at Filchis – “yes, I thought so... and as the man who sent you to Incandress, then perhaps arrangements can be made.”

“Arrangements?”

There were guards on the door of the silk warehouse, of course. “Has the Chief been here? Hargur, City Militia?” Fain said.

“Who wants to know?” one of the guards said.

I slammed him against the wall. “Me. I want to know. Now.”

“Yes! Yes, he was! Leggo!”

I was vaguely aware of Fain dealing with the other guard.

“He’s not now?” I said.

“No!”

“Then where is he?”

“His friends came for him.”

“His friends.”

“Yes, they came and he went with them!”

I struggled to get the words out. “When? And where did they go?”

“No more than a minute or so before you got here, and they went that way!” He jerked a trembling thumb to his left, towards a narrow alley between two grain warehouses. “Please...”

I let him go, and ran.

“Babylon, dammit!” I heard Fain yell.

Halfway down the passage something caught my eye. A scrap of red.

Militia red. Woollen thread, caught on the wood of a small door.

I stood and tried to calm my breathing. If I went charging in, I could get Hargur killed.

The others caught up to me.

“There?” Fain said quietly.

I pointed to the thread.

He nodded.

“Mr Filchis,” he said. “You will be absolutely quiet, until I require you to speak. You understand?”

Filchis opened his mouth, and Fain’s knife was at his throat. He shut his mouth. “Good,” Fain said. “I hope I do not have to tell anyone else? Babylon. Try not to kill anyone. We need witnesses. Excellent. Shall we?”

Mokraine had wandered off, to examine something of interest down the other end of the alley. We left him to it, and crept in like mice after the grain. There were a pair of big, trollish thugs just inside the door; Fain, despite still being one-handed, managed to take one out. Laney did that mouth-seal trick on the other that she’d used on Filchis, and I took him down. Bergast looked down at his own glowing hands, all magicked up and nowhere to go, and made a face; I saw, clear as day, his realisation that he was going to have to learn to be a damn sight faster than that.

Filchis stared down at the unconscious trolls.

Inside the warehouse was a vast, chilly, echoing place. The grain was stored in huge wooden bins, with steps running up the side of each to a small platform, and a hatch in the base for the grain to be spilled out.

It smelled of dust and chaff and slightly of mice. A cat slipped quietly in and out of the shadows. We crept among the bins. I could see a small figure standing on one of the platforms; as we got closer, I realised it was Heimarl. I heard Laney gasp, and glanced around. She was glaring and clenching her hands. Heimarl turned and looked down, but not at us. We kept to the shadows, creeping from bin to bin, until we were directly below him. I peered around and saw what he had been looking at.

Hargur. Leaning against the wall, his arms folded.

Either side of him were two cloaked figures. Insignificant, dull, irrelevant figures. My eye kept sliding off them. Deglamoured.

It didn’t stop me seeing the blades they were holding to his throat and gut.

I drew back, and exchanged looks with Laney. One wrong move, and Hargur could be dead. I tried not to think of Lobik, collapsing and dying before my eyes. I readied the sling, waiting for a chance, however slim.

“You do realise,” Hargur said, “that people know where I am.”

“It would be irresponsible for the Chief of the Militia
not
to let people know,” Heimarl said. “Of course, it was rather irresponsible for you to come alone, but then, you had a personal interest in the fate of that silk, did you not? And a dislike for anyone knowing your business. With which I sympathise.”

“What do you want?”

“Oh, Chief Bitternut, I want many things. Firstly, I want to know what you have heard from Incandress.”

“Why should I have heard anything from Incandress?”

“Don’t play the fool with me.”

“I’m not in the habit of playing the fool, Mr Heimarl. I’ll answer your question if you’ll answer mine. Why do you want me dead?”

“It’s nothing personal. I simply prefer a Chief I can work with. We could still come to an arrangement.”

“An arrangement? Like the one
we
had?” Filchis said, his fury overcoming his fear of Fain’s knife. Fain, grimacing, slid back into the shadows before Heimarl’s gaze could find him, leaving Filchis to stagger out into view, his hands still tied.

“Filchis?”
Heimarl said.

“Why did you send me to Incandress?” Filchis said, looking up.

I couldn’t see Heimarl’s face, but I could hear the warm, entirely false smile he had plastered on. “Why, Angrifon! Because I trusted you. Tell me, how do you come to be here?”

“You mean, how do I come to not be dead?” Filchis jerked his head at the troll lying by the door. “A brute. In your employ! You liedto me. You
lied
to me. You told me you believed in our cause, but you didn’t, did you? You sent me to Incandress to die. For
this.
” Filchis kicked out at the hatch at the bottom of the bin. It couldn’t have been very firmly fastened; the hinges creaked, and the door fell open. Grain began to pour out in a whispering rush.

It was enough to distract one of the figures guarding Hargur. I managed, more by luck than accuracy, to catch his shoulder with a slingstone, and his blade spun away. Hargur dropped and rolled; I saw the flash of a blade, dulled suddenly with blood.
His
blood.
Hargur.

I drew steel. The first man went for his dropped sword, but a flicker of pink around his feet made him stumble to his knees. Laney
,
good girl
.
I slammed my hilt against his head as I went past and faced up to the next. He was slight, but damn fast; I felt a sting across my leg.

Fighting a deglamoured opponent is nasty. It messes with your concentration. I missed a couple of easy hits and got another blow to the shoulder before the deglamour suddenly lifted, and I found myself facing a pasty sort with hair of an unnatural red and a shorter reach than I’d thought; I got under it, caught his blade with mine, and punched him in the gut with my other hand.

He folded.

I whipped his blade away and kicked him in the head, just to be sure. ‘Disable anyone you’re going to turn your back on’ is a good rule.

I spun round. Hargur was on the floor, breathing hard, Laney next to him.

Running footsteps. More of Heimarl’s men, appearing around the bins. Ten or so, some human, some not.

“I really wouldn’t advise that,” Fain said.

“No, I don’t suppose you would,” Heimarl said. “Kill them.”

“Boss...” His men looked at each other. Then they looked at Laney. She was concentrating on Hargur, but she glanced up and glared. Those nearest her backed off.

Bergast raised his hands. “Come on then!” he said, blue-green light flickering around his fingers. More of the men backed away.

“Magic can’t kill you here, you fools!” Heimarl said.

“I can, though,” I said. “Over here, boys.”

Two more ran for it, out the door we’d come in.

The rest took the challenge. I found myself back to back with Fain. I tried to concentrate, not to glance over at Hargur. Downstroke opened one across the chest, sent him staggering back against the one behind him. Bergast behind me; a green flare and one of the men squealed and stumbled, briefly blinded. Got him with a straight kick, and he went down wheezing and gurgling.

Filchis, trying to run, hands still tied, skidding on the loose grain, going down hard.

Heimarl, looking down, exasperated, turning to come down the steps.

We were on the docks. If he got away, he could go anywhere.

“Fain, cover me!”

The smooth weight of the stone in my hand, slipping it in the cup, aim. Loose.

It clipped his shoulder. I heard the crack, and he yelled, and slipped, overbalancing the low rim of the bin, and disappeared.

Dammit. Well, it would take him a minute to scramble out.

The rest gone or down.

“Hargur.” I dropped beside him. He was pale and panting. Laney had her hands pressed to his side, pink glimmer around her fingers, her cloak trailing in his blood.

“Scratch,” he panted. “Get Heimarl.”

“I’ve got him,” Laney said. “Go catch my
yrrkennish
client.”

“Your...? Never mind.”

I ran up the stairs alongside the grain bin.

The dust of the corn filled my nose and mouth; the grains had dipped in the middle as they ran out through the hatch, and there he was, Thasado Heimarl, only his head and arms still visible. His expensively-cut hair oddly blond with dust and spiked with grains, his face and desperately reaching hands dusted yellow, grains stuck to the sweat. “Help... me...” he wheezed. The weight of it was crushing the breath out of him.