Shallows of Night - 02 (14 page)

Then from somewhere he thought he heard a coughing, low and questioning. An animal presence. Perhaps a voice, so distant that he heard but the echo, said,
Find him.
Soft pad of paws, a scratching as gentle as the rustling of autumn foliage.
You must find him.
Echoes echoing. Away.

He looked dreamily about him. The chanting came again, pellucid, peaceful, scenting the air. Shafts of tawny light fell obliquely through the high narrow windows, lacquering the store floor and the reed mats. He was alone.

He thought of the bronze urn and the man who sat so still beside it.

He was there when Ronin returned to the exquisite garden. Eyes closed. A statue. The fish swam lazily. The water gurgled throatily. The bells were silent.

He approached the stone wall, went through the wooden door, and as he closed it behind him the discordant noises of the city, frantic and desperate, descended upon him like a horde of locusts in the heat of summer.

He walked randomly, still half dazed, until he realized by the waning light that the day was almost done. He asked a corpulent merchant lolling indolently in the doorway to his store, waiting impatiently for customers, gap-toothed and sweaty, for directions back to the rikkagin’s quarters. The man looked at him, his clothes, the sword at his hip, the bag of coins on his belt.

“You go to dinner, gentleman?” His breath was foul.

“Yes, but—”

“A goose perhaps. Or a fine fresh-slaughtered pig for your host.” His voice took on a wheedling tone. “A magnificent gift, very generous and at a most modest price. Twenty coppers only.”

“Please tell me where—”

The merchant’s brow wrinkled. “If you are thinking of Farrah’s, his meat is not one tenth as fine as mine.” He clasped his fat hands as if in anguish. “And the prices he charges! I should inform the Greens.”

“Double Bass Street, is it near here?”

“I would, you know, but I am not a vengeful person, ask anyone on Brown Bear Road. An honest businessman only. I mind my own affairs. Do not ask me, as many do, what goes on around the corner or”—he rolled his eyes—“upstairs. If I told you—”

“Please,” said Ronin. “Double Bass Street. How far?”

“If they want to do those vile things, well, who am I to say—”

Ronin left him, walking blindly down the street.

“Go to Farrah’s then, as you planned all along,” the fat merchant called after him in his high whine. “You deserve each other!”

He passed up a carpet shop along Three Peaks Street. It was crowded with customers and an army of clerks who all looked as if they were related. Next door was an apothecary, its huge stone jar hanging above the doorway on ancient creaking chains, a dusty window filled with small colored packets, phials of gritty-looking powders, liquids in tall tubular jars. In the center of this display was a lidded clear glass bowl filled with a slightly yellowish liquid suspended in which was a root in the singular shape of a man. It was dusky orange-brown and had many threadlike tendrils. The thing stirred his curiosity and he went inside the shop.

It was long and narrow, dusty and tired-looking. A high wood and glass case ran the length of the shop’s right wall. Within it lay neat piles of containered liquids and stacks of cartoned powders, a hundred and one items, he supposed, for headaches and stomach pains, muscle pulls and swollen feet. The proprietor stood behind a counter along the back wall.

He was small and old and stooped as if he carried his years about with him as a tangible burden. He was a sad man, with almond eyes and yellow skin as thin as rice paper, almost translucent. Long strands of hair hung down from the point of his chin, otherwise he was hairless. He was measuring out portions of a sapphire powder upon clean white squares of rice paper.

He looked up as Ronin approached.

“Yes?”

“Am I near Double Bass Street?”

“Well now, that depends.” The gnarled yellow hands continued their work.

“On what?”

“On which way you go, naturally.” He stoppered the container of powder, put it carefully away on one of a series of shelves behind him that ran all the way to the ceiling. He turned back. “If you cut through the alley there to Blue Mountain Road, well then, you are but five minutes away.” He began to pour each mound of powder into blue glass phials. “However, if you were to walk farther down Three Peaks Street until you reached the Nanking it would be infinitely safer.” He had two of them filled now. “Longer but safer.” His head nodded. “Yet”—he looked up at Ronin—“you did not come in here merely to ask me the way to Double Bass Street.” He pointed with one crooked finger. “Anyone out there could have told you just as well. No, I believe you came in to inquire after the root.”

Ronin did not hide his surprise. “How could you have known?”

All the phials were filled now. One by one, he stoppered them.

“You are not the first, by any means. It is not there for decoration, though many passers-by think so.”

Ronin was fed up.

“Will you tell me?”

“The root,” he said, lining the phials up on a shelf, “is ancient. And as with all things ancient, it has a history. Oh yes! Not a very pleasant one I am afraid.” His nostrils dilated and he shifted several times. “Come closer.” He nodded. “Yes. It was you, then, who was at the temple.” He closed his eyes for just a moment. “There is a lingering trace of incense.”

“But what—?”

“I heard the horn sounding, after all.”

“The horn?”

“‘A visitor,’ it said. ‘A visitor.’”

“What foolishness. It was merely a Sha’angh’sei temple.”

The old man smiled oddly and Ronin saw that his teeth were lacquered black, shiny and square-cut. He thought of the simian-faced woman in the tavern: what mysteries had she been selling, and for what price?

“Ah no.” The old man shook his head. “The temple was here long before Sha’angh’sei came into being. The city grew up around it. It is the temple of another folk, being gone from this continent before the beginnings of man.” He shrugged deferentially. “Some say so, at least.”

“But there was a man in the garden of the temple.”

The smile was released again, oblique and inferential.

“Then perhaps what they say is not the truth. You know people often tell you only what they wish you to know.” The old man put a hand to his head as if it pained him. “Such as the house on Double Bass Street.”

Ronin stared at him. “What?”

“Take the Nanking.”

“But that is the longer way, so you said.”

“It does not matter. There is no use in your going there.” A crawling along the back of his neck. “Why not?”

“Because,” said the old man flatly, “there is no one inside.”

Ronin went out the door fast without bothering to close it, weaving through the throngs of bodies, his eyes searching ahead for the alley leading to Blue Mountain Road. He almost overran it, so narrow and dark it was. The braziers and lanterns of the city were just being lit, luminescing the deep purple haze that seemed to cover Sha’angh’sei each evening.

Three Peaks Street was still dusky with the lingering dregs of afternoon so that he did not have to pause in the gloom of the alley for his night vision to become effective.

The darkness deepened and he knew at once there was trouble. There should have been at least a glow from the lanterns of Blue Mountain Road, even from around this turning just before him. He slipped his sword free. Silent and deadly now, he advanced along one dank wall, went around the bend.

The smell of raw fish, putrefying; human excrement. There were hard, scraping noises. Panting. A grunt. He froze and listened intently. More than one person; more than two. That was as exact a determination as he could make. But that was all right because the adrenaline was pumping through him; his sword had been sheathed far too long. Now he ached for battle. He did not care how many men awaited him. He advanced.

Whites of eyes peered up at him as he approached at a run and he counted quickly and precisely because he knew there was little time and he had to prepare his entire body. The battle lust would not impede him because his training automatically took care of the organism. Six.

A man lay on the ground, the six over him. Brief glint of a curved blade, heavy, twisting, then the image was gone from his sight, lost in the night. But something lingered and he reviewed it because it might be important. The glint was not silvered, but black on white, wet-looking. Red is black in dim light. Blood.

He heard the faint whirring and let that guide him because he knew now what it was and they would not expect that.

Speed.

He thrust in a blur and there was a piercing scream. A chink on the stone as the ax hit the paving. He had deliberately aimed low, to open the soft viscera of the stomach and intestines to make a mess. He lifted the blade as he withdrew, flicking it, so that a fountain of black blood and wet organs spewed forth as the man collapsed.

He was already moving forward with a two-handed thrust as the second man leapt for him and the blade whistled in the air as it clove the man from shoulder to belly. The corpse danced drunkenly, dead before it hit the ground, twitching still.

The fever mounted and it seemed as if everything around him slowed as his own speed increased. He saw the ax peripherally and knew that he could not get the sword up in time because of the angle, so he let it fall and allowed the crescent blade to come at him, gleaming, whispering scythelike. At the last instant his gauntleted hand came up, closed over the blade. The hide of the Makkon absorbed the force of the blow. There was a gasp and he saw the whites of his opponent’s eyes all the way around as they opened in fear and surprise.

He laughed then, and it boomed through the close corridor of the alley, echoing menacingly off the wood and brick walls, dank and covered with slime.

The sound of running feet, the breathless air fanned, muttered voices, cursing, and the lights of Blue Mountain Road at last glowed at the far end of the alley. Ronin rubbed the scales of the gauntlet as he retrieved his sword, sheathing it.

He turned then to the man who lay twisted on the ground. He bent on one knee, searching for the pulse at his throat.

The man coughed. He was dark-haired with almond eyes but there was a strange cast to his face that, even in this dim and uncertain light, looked vaguely familiar to Ronin. He was clad in a tight-fitting suit of dull black cloth.

“Uk—uk—uk.”

Blood came out of his mouth, black and wet in the night. His hand reached up convulsively and clutched at his neck. He coughed once more, blood and something more. Then he died.

Ronin stood up, then impulsively he bent again and opened the man’s clenched hand. A slender silver necklace with something on it. He took it from the dead man for no reason at all and slipped it into his boot. Then he went down the alley and out into the confusion and flaring light of Blue Mountain Road.

Silence.

The night still and calm.

The old man had been right. There was no one at Rikkagin T’ien’s quarters, not T’ien, not Tuolin, not a soldier, not a porter.

Ronin turned on the step and surveyed the street. He was absolutely alone. They had all gone. To Kamado, he assumed. Early. Not a good sign. Perhaps the situation to the north had deteriorated. If they had told him the truth; and he was not at all sure now that they had.

Abruptly, he remembered the strange root. In his haste to get here, he had not had the time to hear its history. He shrugged. Well, it was too late now, the shop would be closed. He could stop by tomorrow before he went up the mountain to the walled city to see the Council. And in any event he was hungry. He had not eaten since the morning and then only rice and tea. He went down the steps of Rikkagin T’ien’s house and along the street in search of a tavern.

“Someone will come for you.”

“But—”

“No instructions.”

“All right. And the payment?”

“Now. In taels of silver.”

“Just a moment—”

“You wish to be there? You wish to see it?”

“Yes, but—”

“Than you will do as I say.”

The simian-faced woman was wrapped in a green cloak. A hairless man sat by her side tonight, narrow-skulled, flat-faced, a bright ring through his nose. He smoked a pipe with a long stem, curved downward slightly, and a small bowl. The simian-faced woman was speaking to a man with russet hair and light eyes. His skin was milk white and he sat in a peculiar position as if he could not bend one leg.

“It is too much,” said the man with the russet hair. The other man was impassive, pulling on his pipe.

The woman leaned forward and Ronin could see the sheen of her black lacquered teeth. “Think of what the silver will buy you. The Seercus is not an everyday occurrence.” She laughed tautly. “And I need not remind you of the restrictions. Consider yourself fortunate.” The odd head nodded, up, down. “Most fortunate.”

They were sitting at a corner table, near enough to Ronin so that he had no difficulty in hearing their conversation over the steamy noise of the tavern.

It was a large, smoky room off the Nanking, one of Sha’angh’sei’s main roads. Low wooden beams crossed the ceiling; the air was thick with wax and grease. It was, in short, like every tavern in the city.

Ronin pushed away his rice bowl, lifted his sticks, and put a last morsel of broiled meat into his mouth. He reached for the rice wine.

“Perhaps I can get a better price elsewhere,” said the man with russet hair, but there was little conviction in his voice.

The simian-faced woman laughed, a soft silvery tinkle, surprising in its delicacy. “Oh yes, by all means. And the Greens will—”

“No, no,” said the man quickly. “You misunderstand. Here.” He reached out a leather pouch from beneath his cloak, counted out forty silver pieces.

The woman stared at him solemnly, did not look down at the taels. The hairless man swept them off the table, his yellow hand a blur in the light for only a moment.

“And ten more,” said the woman evenly.

The man with the russet hair started.

“Ten—but you gave me a price—”

“For this ten, I will not inform the Greens.”