Krondor the Assassins (12 page)

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fisherfolk, net-menders, dock workers, and the other types one would expect to see near the docks, and James prayed he might catch sigh of a constable before he went too much farther.

James had just passed his last opportunity to cut across to another street. He moved quickly, then suddenly slowed his pace, listening to whoever followed him.

There were two of them, he felt certain. There were enough gaps of relative silence as they moved along that he could pick out his pursuers from amongst those who passed in the other direction.

James spied an ale-house, The Wounded Leopard. He broke into a jogging run, as if he was late meeting someone, and headed straight for the door.

Once inside, he blinked at the smoke-filled room. The chimney flue hadn’t been cleaned in a while, and several of the patrons were smoking pipes or tabac cigars. James had never developed a taste for the habit and wondered how anyone did.

He hurried to the bar and pushed himself between two sailors, who both muttered, but moved to give him room. The one on James’s right was a mole-faced fellow whose dark eyes hinted at danger, while the one on the left was a huge brute, easily as large as Knight-Marshal Gardan. James looked forward.

‘‘Ale, please!’’ he demanded of the barkeep.

The man had a face like a well-worn shoe, and the bags beneath his eyes made him look as if he was on the verge of sleeping on his feet. He nodded as he filled a stoneware mug and set it on the bar before James. James paid him and took a sip. It was too warm and too bitter, but he made a pretense of drinking it.

The door opened and James knew at least one of his pursuers was entering. He chanced a quick glimpse of two men, both 97

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dressed in common workers’ garb, as they stood blinking in the smoky air, trying to find James.

‘‘I did not,’’ James said loudly to the large sailor who stood on his left.

The man turned and looked down at James and said,

‘‘What?’’ It was obvious he was drunk and ill tempered.

‘‘I wasn’t the one who said it,’’ James replied.

‘‘Said what?’’ asked the man, now interested.

‘‘He said it.’’ James pointed toward the door. ‘‘Him and his friend.’’

‘‘Said what?’’ demanded the drunk, now irritated by a conversation he was having difficulty following.

‘‘I didn’t say you were the drunken son of a poxy Keshian whore.’’

The man grabbed James by the tunic and said, ‘‘What did you call me?’’

‘‘I didn’t call you a drunken son of a poxy Keshian whore,’’

insisted James. Pointing at the door, he said, ‘‘They did.’’

With a bellow the sailor was off, heading right at the two men who had been following James. James turned to the dangerous-looking man on his right and said, ‘‘You should have heard what they said about you.’’

The man just grinned and said, ‘‘If you want me to keep those two off your neck, squire, it’ll cost you.’’

James sighed. ‘‘You know me?’’

‘‘I’ve been around, young Jimmy the Hand.’’

‘‘How much?’’

‘‘For you, fifty golden sovereigns.’’

‘‘For that much I’d want you to take them on a long journey.

How much for ten minutes?’’

‘‘Ten.’’

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‘‘Done,’’ said James as a shout and crash came from behind.

Men were now moving away from the combatants and a chair went flying across the bar, smashing several bottles behind the barkeep.

Despite his sleepy appearance, the barman was spry enough to vault the bar with one hand, a truncheon clutched tightly in the other. ‘‘We’ll have none of that here!’’ he shouted.

James dug ten gold coins from his purse and laid them on the bar. The slight man scooped them up and pulled out a dagger, turning to face whoever might come his way.

James didn’t hesitate. He took his lead from the barkeep and vaulted the bar in the other direction. He hurried to a rear door and ducked into a storeroom. Years of living in the city provided James with a reliable map of Krondor in his head. He knew there would be no alley at the back, rather a yard with a gate opening onto the harborside.

He hurried through the storage area, past a door which opened to the kitchen, and through a door into the ale-house’s rear yard. Twenty feet away a large double gate beckoned.

James sprinted to it and lifted a large wooden bar from the two iron brackets that supported it, letting it drop near his feet. He stepped over it, pushed open the gate, and was met by a gloved fist which struck him hard across the jaw.

James’s eyes rolled up into his head as he fell to the cobblestones.

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SECRETS

m

J

AMES stirred.

His left temple throbbed—he must have struck the cobbles when he fell—as did the right side of his face. He tried to move and his head pounded.

His wrists were bound behind him, and he was blindfolded.

A deep voice said, ‘‘Ah, the lad stirs.’’

Rough hands propped him upright on the floor and the deep voice asked, ‘‘A drink?’’

James’s voice sounded oddly high-pitched in his own ears as he said, ‘‘Yes, please.’’

Someone else in the room laughed, saying, ‘‘Polite one, ain’t he?’’ and was shushed into silence.

The original speaker said, ‘‘Get him some water.’’

James waited a moment, until someone pressed a water cup against his lips. He sipped slowly, wetting his throat and buying seconds to gather his wits. The fog in James’s head slowly lifted.

‘‘Feeling better?’’ asked the deep voice.

James took a deep breath and said, ‘‘Yes, Walter. Though you could have gotten my attention in a gentler manner than smacking me in the head.’’

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The deep voice chuckled. ‘‘I told you he’d tumble to this, you twits. Let’s get the blindfold off him.’’

James blinked as his vision returned, and he saw three men standing over him in what could only be a basement. Large barrels and crates were stacked against the windowless wall, and several large piles of goods were covered with dusty canvas.

The man with the deep voice said, ‘‘How you been, Jimmy?’’

‘‘Fair enough, Walter, until about . . . what? An hour ago?’’

Walter picked James up by the shoulders and turned him.

He pulled off the ties that had restricted his hands and said,

‘‘Sorry about that, but you were getting difficult to keep up with.’’

‘‘If you wanted to talk, Walter, there are other ways.’’

The man named Walter glanced at his companions. ‘‘Things aren’t the way they once was, Jimmy. Lots of troubles in the city.’’ Walter Blont was one of the Mockers’ more effective bashers, trained by Ethan Graves. He was normally a man of even temper who went about his work in a journeyman fashion, without anger or spite. He had a plain round face, and a thatch of black hair now shot through with gray.

James took a moment and looked at Blont’s companions.

Both looked the part of Guild bashers: thick necks, heavy shoulders and legs like tree trunks. Either one would probably be able to break a man’s skull with a bare fist. Neither man looked particularly bright, but James knew looks could be deceptive.

Both men were unfamiliar to him, but he was certain that these were not the two men who were following him when he went into the ale-house. ‘‘Those weren’t your men who were tailing me?’’

‘‘No,’’ said Walter. ‘‘They were so fixed on following you, they didn’t notice
we
were following
them
.’’ He grinned, his 103

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crooked yellow teeth making him look even more menacing than when he didn’t smile. ‘‘There are all sorts of new gangs in Krondor these days. Bashers and strong-arms arrive every week by ship and caravan. Someone’s building up a serious army.’’

James sat down on a crate and said, ‘‘Start at the beginning, Walter.’’

Walter sat down on another crate and rubbed his chin, thinking. ‘‘Mostly, it started a few months ago. You heard of this bloke they call the Crawler?’’

James nodded, then wished he hadn’t as his head throbbed.

‘‘Well, we’ve been running up against his men on and off for months now. At first they were just pesky. Then things got nasty.’’

Walter glanced at his companions. ‘‘We’re about all that’s left of the bashers. A few nights ago, someone broke into Mother’s—’’

‘‘Someone got to Mother’s without being stopped?’’ interrupted James in amazement.

‘‘Took out each of the sentries as they came, hard and fast and no time for dawdling. Me and Josh and Henry here was out and about, and we got jumped in the sewers. We got the best of the four lads who tried to take us out.’’ He waved to the man on his left. ‘‘Josh got a dagger scraped across his ribs for his troubles, and Henry had to sew up my shoulder with a sailmaker’s needle and some thread. We found Mother’s in ruins and have been lying low since then.’’

The man named Henry added, ‘‘It’s a war out there, squire.

The sewers are worse than any battlefield I’ve seen.’’

‘‘Soldier?’’ asked James.

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‘‘Once,’’ said Henry. ‘‘Long time back.’’

James nodded again, and winced. ‘‘I’ve got to stop doing that.’’

‘‘Sorry about the bash, but you’re such a slippery lad, it was the only way I knew to get you here,’’ said Walter.

James grimaced. His head was going to hurt for a while.

‘‘You could have sent me a note.’’

‘‘Hardly; and besides, we’re not traveling too much by the usual routes, what with the cut-throats and assassins haunting the sewers.’’

‘‘Assassins?’’ asked James. ‘‘Nighthawks?’’

‘‘Maybe. Didn’t see no black outfits like they was wearing before,’’ said Walter, ‘‘but these boys was mean and didn’t play at killing.’’

‘‘They’s very serious on the subject,’’ said Henry.

Walter nodded. ‘‘We’ve dodged them because almost no one knows of this place. It was a bit of a gamble going up after you, but one of the beggar lads who’s been smuggling us food saw you out and about today and said you were coming this way, so we took a chance. Time was you could have traveled the entire city and have no one catch sight of you.’’

James grinned ruefully, ‘‘I still can, but these days I have little reason to hide. I work for the Prince, remember?’’

‘‘That’s to the heart of it, then. We need help.’’

‘‘Who, the Mockers?’’

‘‘What’s left of them,’’ Walter said grimly.

‘‘What’s the Upright Man propose?’’ James knew that Walter would never presume to speak for the Mockers without the leader’s permission. Walter must be his messenger of last resort.

The three men exchanged glances, and Walter said, ‘‘You haven’t heard, then?’’

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‘‘Heard what?’’

‘‘Rumor is the Upright Man is dead.’’

James sat back and let out a slow breath. ‘‘That puts paid to a lot of things, doesn’t it?’’

Walter shrugged. ‘‘You don’t get where he did without making lots of enemies. Someone’s hoisting a tankard in celebration if it’s true, that’s a fact.’’

‘‘Who’s running the Mockers?’’

‘‘No one,’’ said Walter. ‘‘We’re probably all that’s left of the bashers. Maybe there are one or two other lads lying low like us. Most of them died when Mother’s was hit. They killed everyone, Jimmy. They killed the pickpockets and the beggars, the whores and the street boys.’’

‘‘They murdered the street boys?’’ James said in disbelief.

‘‘I think I saw young Limm and two or three others dodging down a culvert later that night but I can’t be sure it was them.

I didn’t investigate because they was on the run from half a dozen men. Maybe they got away, but anyone who wasn’t fast enough to dodge out of there, or lucky enough to have been somewhere else when they hit, was killed. Word spread fast and those that could got out of the city or went to ground.’’

Henry added, ‘‘These weren’t dock-brawlers did this, squire, or even bashers like us. These were killers, who didn’t even give you a moment to think or speak or ask what was what.

They were cutting throats and dropping everyone—men, women, children—on one side of the building before those on the other side even knew there was a fight. It’s been a fair couple of nights of hunt or be hunted in the sewers, I can tell you. We’ve been hiding here since then.’’

James glanced around. ‘‘This is the smugglers’ hideout?’’

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‘‘You’ve been here before?’’ asked Walter.

‘‘A couple of times, when we were working with Trevor Hull and his gang. Back when Bas-Tyra was regent.’’

‘‘I remember,’’ said Walter. ‘‘Even most of the Mockers don’t know how to find it, and since the spot above where the old mill burned down’s been paved over with that new road, it’s impossible to find from above.’’

‘‘Anything in those crates to eat?’’

‘‘If there is, it’s long since turned,’’ answered the man named Josh.

‘‘This place hasn’t been used since Hull turned Prince’s man and started sailing for the Crown.’’

James looked around. ‘‘How many others do you think know of this place?’’

Walter shrugged. ‘‘Not many. Assuming any of them lived after the raid. Hull’s men did most of the slippin’ in and out, and just a few of us in the bashers.’’

‘‘Then let’s keep this our little secret.’’ James stood and his knees wobbled. Putting his hand on the wall, he steadied himself and said, ‘‘What of the clock?’’

‘‘An hour after sundown, or thereabouts,’’ answered Henry.

‘‘Damn,’’ said James. ‘‘I have to get back to the palace, and you’ve put me twice the distance I was when I started.’’

‘‘Best get up to the watch station two streets over, and get some guards to go back with you to the palace.’’

‘‘That will take too long,’’ said James. ‘‘Besides, I know a way that will get me within a block of the palace without anyone seeing me.’’

Walter smiled, for the first time. ‘‘Well, there was always that about you, wasn’t there? You could find ways around no 107