Mickey Zucker Reichert - Shadows Realm (10 page)

Larson did not let up. “I don’t need to know an enemy’s life history. When we’ve got guns pointed at one another, I haven’t got time to ask his name before pulling the trigger. You can tell me Cullinsberg gangs are different until you’re blue in the face, but I know a hood is a hood. Notice how the scum grabbed the smallest guy in the group.”

Taziar sighed, cursing the time he was wasting bickering with Larson.
I have a summons to answer. And how can I hope to defend myself against a charge of betrayal when I don’t even know what I’m accused of doing?
“Look, Allerum. Cullinsberg isn’t New York. You’re just going to have to trust me that what you saw here isn’t normal. My friends are in trouble, and I stand by my friends.”

“I stand by my friends, too,” Larson started. “When punks threaten them in an alley ...”

Worried about losing time, Taziar talked over Larson. “If you continue down this alley, it’ll bring you to Cullins-berg’s inn. Get some food and take a room on the top floor. That’s the third story. See if you can rent the one on the south side. I’ll meet you there.”

“Meet us?” Astryd shifted her garnet-tipped staff from hand to hand, finally goaded to speak. “Where are you going?”

Taziar studied the side of a building. The uneven surface of stone would make an easy climb. “I have to meet with someone who can explain what’s happening.”

Astryd glanced from Larson to Silme, as if wondering why she seemed to be the only one voicing objections. “You can’t go off alone. You might get killed. Take us with you.”

Taziar edged toward the wall, amused by Astryd’s concern. “I can’t take you with me. If I brought strangers to the underground’s haven, I really would be a traitor.” The subject of safety turned his thoughts to his companions. “And if anyone asks for any reason, none of you knows me.”

“Wait.” Astryd grounded her dragonstaff. “Silme and I can handle room renting. At least let Allerum walk you part way. He can fight.”

Taziar ignored the backhanded insult to his swordsmanship. In his current mood, Larson would prove worse than a hindrance.

To Taziar’s relief. Larson took his side. “I’ll be more trouble to Shadow than I’m worth. He had that situation under control. The boy had no reason to kill him, and they both knew it. Shadow’s not threatening. I am. If someone robs Shadow, they’ll put a knife to his throat. Someone robs me and Shadow, they’ll have to frag us and go through the pieces.”

“They’ll what?” Astryd rounded on Larson, and Taziar seized the opening to steal a few steps closer to the wall.

“I won’t be any protection,” Larson clarified. “My presence will mean people have to kill us from a distance to handle us.”

Astryd stomped a foot in anger. “You’re going with him!”

“I am not going with him,” Larson hollered back. “Nobody’s going with him. He’s safer by himself.”

Taziar studied his companions and discovered that only Silme was actually looking at him. He winked conspiratorially and pressed a finger to his lips in a plea for silence.

Silme returned a smile.

“He’s not safer by himself!” Astryd challenged Larson. “You can protect him. You’re bigger and better with a sword. People are afraid of you. Nobody’s afraid of him. He’ll get himself killed.” Without looking, she gestured at the place where Taziar had been standing.

But Taziar was no longer there. He positioned his fingers and toes in cracks between the wall stones and shinnied to the rooftop. Still, Larson’s voice wafted clearly to him.

“Look, I’ll settle this. There’s one way he can be perfectly fucking safe ...”

Taziar crept silently across the tiles pausing to assess a parallel thoroughfare.

“... He can stay the hell here.” A restless pause followed, then Larson’s voice echoed through the alley. “
Where is he?
”

Harriman paced with the deadly patience of a caged lion. Floorboards creaked beneath heavy bootfalls, betraying his rage to the women in the whorehouse rooms below. Light streamed through the warped, purple glass of the window, striping the desk, and twisting Harriman’s shadow into a hulking, animallike shape. “I don’t give a damn what you say! I know those little weasels down on the north side are making more money than that. Either you or they are holding out.” Harriman stopped, gaze boring into Haiti’s lean face. He read fear in the smaller man’s features, and it pleased him. “You had
damn
well better tell me it’s them. If it’s you, they’re going to be picking the meat off your bones in the street next week!”

Cowed, Harti avoided Harriman’s dark eyes, glancing nervously at the other two men in the room. On either side of the door, Harriman’s Norse bodyguards, Halden and Skereye, awaited their master’s command.

Warped and controlled by an angered mage, Harriman knew no mercy. “So who is it? Who’s holding out, you or them?”

“Well.” Harti licked his lips with tense hesitation. “Of course, they are, lord. I—I wouldn’t hold out on you. I trust ... I wouldn’t. I would never ...”

“Well, you damn well better never!” Harriman resumed his walk. “Tomorrow, I want double what you brought me here!” He whirled suddenly, jabbing a finger at Harti. “I don’t care whether it comes from them. I don’t care whether it comes out of your pocket. I don’t care if you have to go terrorize some merchant. I don’t care what you have to do. Double!”

Harti shrank away.

“... If you can get it from them, good. That’s where it’s supposed to come from because I know they’ve got it. If they’re that much smarter than you and strong enough to hold out on you, you better find somebody else to extort. I’m getting double, or they’ll find your organs scattered through the alleys. Do you understand that?”

Harti’s skin went pale as bleached linen. “Yes, please, lord. I’ve got a wife and six children ...”

“Widow and orphans.” Harriman raised a threatening hand to strike Harti. For an instant, a flaw in Bolverkr’s thought-splicing let Harriman’s basic nature free. Thoughts jumbled through his mind, liberally sprinkled with confusion. All notions of violence fled him, replaced by guilt, and he turned the movement into a gesture toward the door. Momentarily, he had no idea where he was; then Bolverkr’s handiwork regained control. Fury flared anew, and Harriman continued as if he had never paused. “If you stop whining and use some force, maybe you can get money out of those children. Go do it now. Right now! If you don’t have that gold in my hands by sundown tomorrow, you’re going to be racing the men I’ll be paying twice as much in bounty to bring me your head.”

Struck by Harriman’s inconsistent behavior as well as his irrational anger, Harti backed to the door, caught the knob, and twisted. The portal inched open. Immediately, an anxious voice floated through the crack. “Harriman! I have something to tell you.”

Infuriated by personality lapses he could not explain and which might anger Bolverkr and weaken his command, Harriman responded more aggressively than he intended. “What!”

Halfway through the entryway, Harti froze.

Harriman waved Harti away. “You, get the hell out of here and go do what you’re supposed to do.”

Harriman waited until Harti darted down the hall, then returned to his desk and waited for the speaker to enter the room.

Almost immediately, a portly thief in clean but rumpled silk burst into Harriman’s office. Unfastened cuffs flapped at his wrists, and mouse brown hair fringed plump cheeks in harried disarray. “Taz is in town.”

Harriman went suddenly still. A long silence followed.

The thief waited, pale eyes interested.

“Who’s in town?” Harriman asked carefully, earlier anger forgotten.

“Taziar Medakan. The little worm you told us to wait for. He’s in Cullinsberg. Headed this way, too.”

Harriman suppressed a smile, holding his expression unreadable instead. Bolverkr had carefully severed from Harriman’s mind all memory of the dragon’s attack and the hostilities between them. But the Dragonmage had left Harriman’s diplomatic skills intact. “Are you sure? If you’re wrong, you’re in bigger trouble than the last idiot I was talking to.”

The thief stood his ground. Apparently more accustomed to Harriman’s brusque manner than Harti was, he remained unintimidated. “I’m certain. Absolutely reliable sources.”

Harriman needed to be sure. “Would you put your life on it?”
You realize you are, don’t you?

The thief avoided the question. “It’s him. Fits the description. Fits the characteristics. It has to be him. Can’t be anyone else.”

Harriman knew the time had come to consult Bolverkr directly. “Stand here. Don’t move. I’ll be back.” Rising, Harriman pushed past the thief and his own bodyguards, trotted down the hall to his bedroom, and sat on a hard, wooden chair beside his pallet. Head low, he put mental effort into contacting his master.
Bolverkr?

For some time, Harriman received no answer. Then a presence slid through his shattered defenses and Bolverkr’s thoughts filled the diplomat’s mauled mind.
I’m here.

Taziar’s in Cullinsberg.

Harriman felt Bolverkr’s vengeance-twisted joy as his own.
Good. I’ve got plans for him and his companions. I want him to watch his girlfriend murdered and his friends hanged. Hurt him. But keep him alive, at least until the day past tomorrow.
Bolverkr broke contact.

Fine.
Misplaced hatred sparked through the refashioned and tangled tapestry of Harriman’s thoughts, sparking ideas far beyond Bolverkr’s intentions. The sorcerer’s meddling had created more than a simple puppet. Though guided, with motivations bent to Bolverkr’s will, Harriman had not lost the ability to conspire. Awash in bitterness, he shuffled back to the workroom where the thief stood with obedient forbearance. “You’re certain it’s Taziar Medakan?”

“No question,” the thief replied.

Taziar’s no amateur. If I tell my people to abuse him, Taziar will play them like children. Besides, I’m not accountable for my lackeys’ mistakes.
Harriman met the thief’s questioning gaze with a smile, then tossed a command to Halden and Skereye. “Kill Medakan.”

The treason past, the traitor is no longer needed.

—Pedro Calderon de la Barca
Life Is a Dream

Sunlight gleamed from the crisp, new hoops of rain barrels, slivering rainbows through a nameless alley off Panogya Street onto which the rear entry to Shylar’s whorehouse opened. Crouched atop a neighboring warehouse, Taziar studied the walkway. Like most of the less well-traveled thoroughfares, it sported a packed earth floor that mired to mud with every rainstorm. The elements had hammered the black door, chipping away paint to reveal oak maintained in excellent repair.

Despite the closely-packed stonework of the warehouse and an artisan’s attention to mortaring chinks, Taziar descended effortlessly into the vacant alleyway. He ducked into the rift between a barrel and the wall, where the shadows of both converged, and hesitated before the familiar doorway. The back entry was reserved for the underground; even they used it only in dire need and with gravest caution. Summoned from a distant land and uncertain of enemies and alliances, Taziar considered his situation urgent enough; but the attack by his former friends outside the city gates made him cautious.
I have to talk to Shylar. I don’t dare trust anyone else. No matter how strong the evidence, Shylar knows me too well to consider me an enemy. At the least, she’ll give me a chance to explain. And, if there are reasons and answers, she’ll know them.