Mickey Zucker Reichert - Shadows Realm (12 page)

Mercifully, the mug withdrew, and a tentative male voice spoke. “Taz?”

Taziar rubbed crusted blood from his lids. He lay in a narrow alley. Overhanging ledges blocked the midday sun into spindly stripes. Eyes green as a cat’s stared back at him from a face a few years younger than his own. Other teens hung back, unwilling to meet Taziar’s gaze.

“Taz,” the youth repeated with more certainty. He lowered the mug to the street.

The boy’s features seemed familiar, but it took Taziar’s dazed mind unreasonably long to connect them with a name. He recalled a winter several years past when he had formed a team from a ragged series of street-hardened children. “Ruodger?”

The boy’s dirt-smeared cheeks flushed. “They call me ‘Rascal’ now, Taz.” He turned to address someone behind him. “I told you it was him.”

A girl crept forward and sneaked a look. Barely twelve, she already matched Taziar in height and breadth.

Dizzily, Taziar worked to a sitting position, back pressed to the wall for support. He knew the girl at once. “Hello, Ida.”

“Hi, Taz,” she returned shyly. Beyond her, four boys watched with mistrust. He recognized two, a lanky runner known as the Weasel and a portly dropman they called Bag. A child several years shy of his teens twisted a corner of his baggy, tattered shirt. The last was a sandy-haired adolescent with angry, dark eyes and a knife clearly evident at his hip.

Taziar turned his attention to the deep amber drink Rascal had forced upon him. “Did you dredge that stuff from a trough?”

“The alehouse actually.” Rascal waved his companions closer, and they obeyed with obvious reluctance. “A lot of dregs and water, but it’s the only stuff we can afford.”

Taziar wrinkled his mouth in disgust. “I think I’d rather go without.”

Ida nodded silent agreement. She shifted closer. Examining Taziar’s punished face, she made a childishly blunt noise of repugnance. Rising, she produced a mangled tankard from a cranny and filled it from a rain barrel. Tearing a rag from the hem of her shift, she soaked it with water and dabbed at Taziar’s bruised cheek.

Her touch raised a wave of pain. Taziar winced.

The armed stranger gripped Ida’s arm and pulled her from her task. “Quit babyin‘ the traitor. Stick a knife in ’im, take ’is money, and get the corpse the hell outa our alley.”

Rascal slapped the other youth’s hand away. “Put your fire out, Slasher. Taz ain’t no traitor.”

“Is too,” Slasher hollered.

“Ain’t,” Rascal insisted.

Slasher shoved Ida away with a violence that sprawled her onto Taziar. Agony sparked through Taziar’s broken ribs, and he loosed an involuntary gasp.

“Harriman says ‘e is, and ’e’ll ’ave our hearts cut out if n ’e finds us helpin’ Taziar Medakan.”

Rascal rose and stepped between Slasher and Taziar. Though slightly taller than the ruffian, he had not yet filled into his adult musculature. “I don’t care. Taz ain’t a traitor. If it weren’t for him, we wouldn’t have the group. Early on, we would’ve starved anyway if he hadn’t given us money and facts.”

Ida disentangled from Taziar, trying not to hurt him. “You say he’s a traitor.” She brushed Slasher’s arm. “You say he’s not.” She tapped Rascal’s foot with her toes. “Why not just ask him?”

The simple logic of Ida’s suggestion stopped Slasher in mid-denial. All eyes turned to Taziar, though no one voiced the question.

The Shadow Climber fought a wave of nausea. “I don’t think I betrayed anyone. Maybe you’d better tell me what I’m supposed to have done. And who’s this Harriman who would kill children for helping a friend?”

Rascal answered the last question first. “Harriman’s head of the underground, of course. Been that way more than a month since Shylar’s gone.”

Shylar’s gone!
Horror stole over Taziar. He struggled, aching, to one knee. His vision disappeared, replaced by white swirls and shadows. Weakness washed across his limbs, and he settled back against the wall, head low, until he no longer felt pressed to the edge of unconsciousness. “What do you mean gone? Where did she go?”

Slasher kicked a pebble into the air amid a shower of dirt. The stone bounced from the wall behind Taziar and dropped back to the roadway. “Taz knows, ’e’s actin’.”

“Is not.” Rascal glared. “He really doesn’t know. Does that look like the face of someone who’s lying?”

Obligingly, Slasher studied Taziar. “No,” he admitted. “It looks like a face what got kicked by an ’orse.”

Weasel and Bag snickered. The waif between them twisted his shirt tighter, stretching it farther out of shape. Ida turned Slasher a disgusted look before replying. “Shylar’s arrested.”

“No.” Taziar shivered, set upon by a strange merger of grief and doubt. Shylar had lived too long among thieves and deception to be taken easily. It was common knowledge that the prostitutes would work for no one else, and the whorehouse would collapse without Shylar to run it. Yet, apparently, miraculously, it had not. “How?” Taziar shook his head, aware this gang of street orphans could not have the political knowledge needed to explain. “Where did this Harriman come from? I can think of half a dozen trustworthy men who served the underground for years. Why would anyone submit to a stranger?”

The youths exchanged uneasy glances. “Half a dozen?” Rascal repeated. “More like eight, Taz. All grabbed by the baron’s guards and tossed in the dungeons.” Rascal ran down the list with a facility that could only come from repetition. “Waldmunt and Amalric first. Then Mandel, Fridurik, Odwulf, Asril the Procurer, Adal, and Waldhram, in that order. Anyone who could serve as leader was taken even before Shylar.”

The Weasel added, “Harriman come along just ’fore the confusion. Ain’t ’fraid ta kill or terrize no one, not even guards, ’e put th’ unnerground back together.”

Taziar sat in silent awe, certain he had slipped beyond consciousness and was now mired in nightmare. He rubbed a hand across his face, felt the cold reality of lacerated skin and dried blood. Tears of grief welled in hardened, blue eyes, and he banished them with resolve. Suddenly, the plight of the beggars became clear. The arrests cut them off from Shylar’s charity and the money from members of the underground who paid them as witnesses or hired them to aid in scams and thefts.
Starvation must have killed some and driven others to prey upon one another.

An image came vividly to Taziar’s mind, the remembered visage of the dockhand in Kveldemar’s tavern, neck twisted in an illusory noose. Dread prickled the skin at the nape of his neck. “What does the baron plan to do with my friends in the dungeons?”

Eternity seemed to pass twice before Rascal responded. “Hanging. Day after tomorrow on Aga’arin’s High Holy Day.”

“Except Adal,” Ida clarified.

Rascal flinched. “Except Adal,” he confirmed, and his tone went harsh with rising anger. “A blacksmith found his beaten corpse stuffed in a rain barrel.”

Taziar lowered his head, distressed but not surprised. Until his battering at the hands of drug-inspired berserks, he had considered the baron’s dungeon guards the most cruelly savage men alive. Grief turned swiftly to rage. He clamped his hand over his sword hilt until his fingers blanched; tension incited his injuries, and he felt lightheaded. His awareness wavered, tipped dangerously toward oblivion. “How?” The word emerged as a grating whisper. “How did the baron know who to arrest?”

Strained stillness fell. Every orphan evaded Taziar’s gaze, except Rascal. A wild mixture of emotions filled the leader’s green eyes, and misery touched his words. “Clearly, some trusted member of the underground betrayed them.” He blotted his brow with a grimy sleeve. “Taz, aside from us, no criminal, guard, or beggar harbors any doubt that traitor is you.”

“Me?” Startled, Taziar found no time to construct a coherent defense. “That’s madness.”

“Is it?” Slasher’s finger traced the haft of his dagger. “Odd someone informed on ever‘ leader, ’ceptin‘ you and th’ ones what joined after you left Cullinsberg. Ever‘ guard questioned, by bribe or threat, has guv your name.”

“That’s madness,” Taziar repeated.

Before he could raise further argument, a long-legged, young woman skittered into the alleyway. “Rascal, Harriman’s coming!”

Slasher muttered a string of wicked obscenities. Rascal delegated responsibility with admirable skill. “Ragin, tell the other scouts to stay where they are. Taz, put that hood up. Keep still, and don’t say a word. The rest of you, act like normal. Slasher, don’t do anything stupid.”

Ragin trotted off to obey. The Weasel edged in front of Taziar.

“How can Slasher act normal if he’s not doing something stupid?” Ida’s quip shattered the brooding strain, and even Slasher snickered.

Moments later, Harriman and his bodyguards entered the alleyway, and the laughter died to nervous coughs. Studying the newcomers from the corner of his vision, Taziar recognized the Norsemen whose malicious pleasure had nearly resulted in his death. Skereye appeared uglier in daylight. Furrows of scar tissue marred his scalp where some sword or axe had cleaved his skull. Thin, white-blond hair veiled his head in a scraggly, nearly invisible layer. A film covered pallid eyes, as if years of the berserker drug had burned him to a soulless shell. Halden, too, appeared marked by battle. One hand sported three fingers. A swirl of flesh replaced a nose once hacked away. But his eyes remained fiercely alert.

A half-step behind the bodyguards, Taziar recognized Harriman as the man who had called his beating to a halt. In Shylar’s whorehouse, the new leader of the underground had seemed out of his element. In a rogue-filled alleyway, he appeared even more the piece that jarred. He carried his swarthy frame with a nobleman’s dignity, and his trust-inspiring features seemed more suited to a merchant. Only a dangerously fierce gleam in his eyes marred the picture. His gaze traveled over every member of the gang to rest, briefly, on Taziar.

Taziar stiffened. Aware the children’s lives would be at stake if Harriman noticed him, Taziar hunched deeper within the folds and hoped the nobleman would not recognize his cloak.

A thin smile etched Harriman’s lips and quickly disappeared. Otherwise, he paid Taziar no regard. Brushing aside the towering Norsemen, Harriman approached Rascal. “Only six coppers?”

Rascal swallowed hard. “The rest was food. We had a bad day.”

Harriman pressed. “You have more.”

Rascal moved his head stiltedly from side to side. Taziar read fear in the youth’s demeanor, but his voice remained steady. “I’m sorry, Harriman. Ragin gave you all of it.”

Harriman stood unmoving, leaving the children in a silence etched with threat. The unremitting quiet grew nearly unbearable. Suddenly, Harriman whirled to his guards. “Search them.
All
of them.”

Taziar jerked backward as if struck. Horror crossed every orphan’s face, and Ida hissed in terror. Taziar groped through the creases of his cloak for his sword hilt. He knew he would not last long against the Norsemen; he had barely regained enough strength to stand. But he hoped his interference might give the children a chance to run.

Before Taziar could move, Slasher stepped between Skereye and the remainder of the street gang. “Karana damn you ta hell! Rascal’s told you we ain’t got more.”

Without warning, Skereye jabbed a punch. Slasher threw up an arm in protection. The Norseman’s huge fist knocked the youth’s guard aside and crashed into the side of his head. Slasher sank to one knee in agony, then scrambled backward to forestall another blow.

Arm cocked, Skereye took a menacing shuffle-step forward. But Harriman caught his wrist. “Enough. Don’t hurt the children. They’re family.”

Harriman’s voice and manner revealed genuine concern, but Taziar watched Harriman’s eyes and the fleeting upward twitch at one corner of his mouth. By these signs, Taziar recognized a masterful performance. No doubt, Harriman savored the children’s discomfort every bit as much as his guards. Abruptly, Taziar realized Harriman had met his gaze. The nobleman gave no indication of recognition, yet the icy lack of reaction failed to soothe. Identified or not, Taziar expected no clues from Harriman. Cursing his helplessness, the Shadow Climber turned his face toward the wall, clasped his hands to his knees, and waited.

“Fine.” Harriman used a voice devoid of emotion. “Tomorrow, you’ll make up for today. I’ll expect a full gold. Whatever you have to do, get it.”

Taziar sneaked a peek from beneath his hood. Rascal returned Harriman’s stare with no trembling or uncertainty. For a moment, Taziar thought the youth would protest; a full gold would require an extraordinary stroke of luck in addition to the best efforts of every gang member. But Rascal responded with the bland good sense that explained why he, not the tougher but more impulsive Slasher, served as leader. “You’ll have it,” he said simply.

The matter settled, Harriman nodded. “One thing more. The traitor, Taziar Medakan, is back in town. If you see him, turn him in to me and it’ll be worth twenty gold ducats, free and clear.” Harriman’s gaze roved beyond Rascal to settle, unnervingly, on Taziar. “It’s another twenty if you give me the names of anyone who aids him.” His voice went soft and dangerous as a serpent’s hiss. “Because anyone caught helping him will die.” Without another word, he spun on his heel and walked back the way he had come, the Norsemen at his heels. In the ensuing silence their receding footsteps thundered through the alleyway.

Taziar clambered to his feet, glad to find he could stand without reeling; his mind remained clear.

Rascal seized Taziar’s arm with such sudden violence, he nearly knocked the little Climber back to the ground. Though eighteen, three years younger than Taziar, he stood a forearm’s length taller. “What’s going on here? Harriman recognized you.”

“He did not,” Ida chimed in to defend Taziar. “If he did, he would have taken Taz.”

For once, Slasher remained silent, rubbing his aching cheek.

Taziar winced in sympathy, familiar with the Norsemen’s power. “I don’t know whether he knew me or not. But if he wanted me, he already had me.” Reaching into the pocket of his britches, he emerged with his depleted purse. He dumped the contents into his hand, counting seven gold coins and as many coppers and silvers. He offered the money to Rascal. “Buy horses and traveling rations. All of you, leave town. You’re not safe here.”