Shannivar (2 page)

I
T
was not much of a disguise, Zevaron thought as he followed Danar along a circuitous path through the aristocratic hill district, angling down to the river. A battered, creased, broad-brimmed straw hat from the gardener's shed shadowed his face, but his dark hair and honey-gold skin revealed him to be a foreigner, Denariyan or Meklavaran. Danar wore the clothing of a free laborer, but his pale skin and uncalloused hands could not be hidden. If they were stopped and questioned, their escape would be short-lived.

The plan was to make for the river harbor, where they would take passage to the port of Verenzza, and from there to Gelon-held Gatacinne on the shores of Isarre. Jaxar had supplied them with Isarran as well as Gelonian currency and a small pouch of fine-quality rubies that Zevaron carried in the folds of his belt, along with his mother's Arandel token. Their packs contained food of the sort that would keep a man going for a long while: nuts, compressed seed bread, dried fruit, and parched barley. Jaxar's steward had evidently been planning for this escape for some time.

As they crossed the southern border of the hill district, Zevaron began to feel more confident. They had been keeping to smaller streets, but here they must cross the main avenue, a paved expanse filled with pedestrians, wagons, and old-style carts with solid wheels, drawn by yoked oxen instead of onagers. At least, they would be less noticeable here, among the workmen and servants, many of whom carried panniers or satchels.

Zevaron nudged Danar, reminding him to slouch, as they merged into the flow of traffic. Despite the number of people, animals, and vehicles, they made good speed. They were not the only ones who wanted to get somewhere in a hurry this morning. Several times, a servant would shove past them, crying, “Make way! Make way!”

Zevaron had passed this way before, on his way to the harbor in search of men and a boat to take him and his mother out of Aidon, down the river, and then past the boundaries of Gelon. Ahead lay a plaza and the Avenue of the Gulls, a straight route south. His skin prickled the instant before he spied a disturbance in the crowd. That swirl that could only mean trouble, and it was coming toward them.

Zevaron pulled Danar into the nearest open shop doorway, not caring what it sold so long as it got them off the street. Shelves lined the inside walls, displaying small pottery idols—laughing, round-bellied men on donkeys, women slender as willows or hugely pregnant, men with bulging muscles and enlarged genitals, rabbits and frogs, other things he did not recognize. A thin layer of dust gave the merchandise a tattered, neglected air.

A moment later, a group of armed soldiers marched past, in the direction of Jaxar's compound. If they had delayed their departure for even a quarter of an hour, Zevaron thought, it might have been too late. For Jaxar, it mostly likely already was. Zevaron did not know what to say to Danar. They had not discussed what Cinath might do when his men found Danar gone. Could Jaxar, as weak and ill as he was, survive another stay in prison? Or would Cinath execute him right away?

“Good day to you, fine sirs!” A wizened little man in a clay-smeared apron bustled out from the back of the shop. His smile fell as he took in their laborers' garb. From the look of the shop, business had been poor of late, undoubtedly due to the recent surge in the popularity of Qr, the scorpion god.

“I wish to buy an offering to The Lady of Mercy,” Danar said, deliberately slurring his words. He added in a low voice to Zevaron, “She is the special protector of invalids. Surely she will watch over him.”

Zevaron said nothing. He knew that gods—or something very like them—were real. He had spoken to one such, a supernatural king of the sea, and had heard a prophecy from that god. But he did not think a statuette would protect Jaxar, any more than Tsorreh's prayers had saved her.

The shopkeeper began taking down one clay idol after another, explaining the provenance and special meaning of each.

Zevaron glanced uneasily at the street. The commotion had passed, and it was dangerous to linger so close to Jaxar's residence. “Danar, we don't have time for this.”

“Danar?” The shopkeeper's voice rose in pitch. “Danar, the son of Lord Jaxar?”

“Please, don't—” Danar began.

Zevaron did not like the sudden leap of interest in the shopkeeper's eyes. This was not the pleasure of serving a member of a royal house, it was something more, a flare of suspicion perhaps, or avarice—

“Let's go!” He grabbed Danar's arm, spun him around, and shoved him out the door. The shopkeeper barely managed to catch the idol Danar had been holding before it shattered on the floor.

Outside, Danar started to protest. “We've got a little time. You don't have to—”

“Who's the bodyguard?” Zevaron snapped. “You or me? Down here!” He darted into a side street and broke into a run.

Danar followed, his pack slapping against his spine. “But the soldiers were going—in the opposite direction—and that's a dead end. All right, this way!”

Panting, Danar took the lead down a narrow street overhung with sagging lines of laundry. The buildings here were cramped, often a single block pierced by an occasional common entrance, very different from the spacious and private walled gardens of the hill district.

A naked child, not more than two or three years old, gawked at them while a young woman poured a jug of water over him. A couple of dogs, so thin their ribs stared from their dull coats, nosed in the piles of refuse. They scattered, tails between their hind legs, as Zevaron and Danar approached.

Out of sight from the main boulevard, they slowed to a walk. “There was no need to bolt like that,” Danar protested. “We had—a little more time. Now we'll be remembered for certain—for such suspicious behavior. We acted like fugitives.”

Zevaron bit back a retort. He'd been the one who'd blurted out Danar's name. He could not undo that mistake now. They had to keep moving, but in such a way as to not draw any more attention to themselves. “You're right about not behaving like fugitives,” he admitted. “But that shopkeeper was on the alert for you, so word has already gone out, maybe a reward offered. Our best hope is still to find a riverboat captain who has reasons of his own to avoid notice. Preferably one just pulling away from the dock, if you take my meaning.”

They went west, then south, paralleling the main thoroughfare. For a time, they made good progress. The streets were not entirely empty, but the people they passed seemed incurious, bent on their own business. It was, Zevaron realized, a district of working men, poor shops, and barely decent living quarters.

The orderly arrangement of streets and alleys gave way to unpaved lanes, haphazard and twisting. They passed street shrines, set among the open-air cook shops, stalls of clothing and battered leather shoes, women selling apples from baskets slung over their backs, and clusters of old men hunkered down on tattered rugs. A half-grown boy sold water from a cart pulled by a huge reptilian beast, its hide peeling away in scaly yellow patches. A dancer performed on one corner of the square, accompanied by a drum beaten by a blind, bald-headed Xian and her own finger-cymbals. Women in fluttering veils that barely covered their skimpy wraparound gowns called out to passing men. Danar looked embarrassed, but Zevaron turned away, the sight abhorrent to him. He'd seen courtesans aplenty in Denariya, women of culture and influence who often amassed great wealth. It seemed to him that Gelon degraded everyone who lived within its borders.

“We are safe here,” Zevaron said. “If Cinath's men approach, the market will disperse, and we with it. No one will have seen anything.”

Danar looked thoughtful. “I don't suppose everything that happens here is legal.”

Zevaron tilted his head to the half-grown boy who was expertly picking the pockets of anyone who lingered to watch the dancer. In the shadowed doorways, more was bought and sold than the favors of the women in their garish costumes: hemp resin, dreamberries, elixir of poppies, and more. Chalil, the Denariyan pirate he'd sailed with, had sometimes carried such things, small items that brought high prices in the right markets.

Zevaron's hand closed around the urchin's wrist just as the boy reached for the strap that held Danar's pack closed. “Not this time, my lad. Off you go to seek richer prey.”

The boy jerked free, flashed a defiant grin, and melted into the crowd. The dancing drew to a climax, the drumming faster and louder, like the beat of a racing heart, and the girl let out a series of ululating cries like those of the Sand Lands people.

As suddenly, Zevaron's ears filled with the clash of steel on steel and something more, like the sound made by shattering obsidian or ice, but sharper and louder. His vision fractured. He still stood in the market square, but looked out on a very different landscape.

Before him stretched a plain and from it rose a wall of white, glittering and burning like ice on fire. A fissure cracked the fuming surface in a jagged hairline. It grew rapidly wider, big enough to engulf a horse, then a dozen horses, then a ship the size of his old
Wave Dancer
. Its depths exhaled a mist that curled and eddied in strange patterns, as if it had an intelligence of its own. Something moved within that miasma, clambering up from the pit. Rising into the day, it lifted cragged, impossibly deformed hands. Its head was still hidden, and Zevaron both longed to see it and shrank away, certain that . . . that
what?
He could not remember.

Dimly, he felt his own body take a step, one hand raised to shield his eyes, and tasted the sudden rush of acid in his mouth.

“Zevaron! Zev! Are you all right?” Danar grasped his arm, peering urgently into his face.

Zevaron's vision leapt into focus. Before him lay the market, the dancer now bowing to her admirers, the old men on their carpets, the sellers and buyers in the shadows. He was sweating and shivering at the same time.

“I'm all right,” he lied. “Let's go.”

* * *

As they drew closer to the river, the air changed and a fitful breeze sprang up. Zevaron tasted moisture, not the clean salt tang of the ocean but a dank, weedy smell. Slow broad barges, like the one that had brought him upriver to Aidon, were moored beside fleeter vessels, passenger craft and fishing boats. With Danar at his heels, Zevaron strolled from one drinking stall to the next, looking bored but in truth searching for the men he had spoken to before.

A thought hovered at the edge of his senses, a keening wail:
I meant to take Tsorreh to safety in just this way.
He thrust it from him, lest his grief overwhelm him.

He must have had a touch of sun-poisoning or bad food, for waves of queasiness spread outward from his belly. That would explain the vision he'd seen in the dancer's square. Something sat like a lump of lead below his diaphragm, so that he could not quite catch his breath. Could a broken heart, broken hopes, hurt this much? Despite his efforts at concentration, at not thinking about Tsorreh, it was getting harder to keep his mind on what he was doing. They needed to get indoors, someplace dark and quiet where he could sit down.

“How about that place?” Danar pointed to a tavern on a corner. Colored streamers fluttered from its eaves.

“Ah, this looks more like it.” Zevaron indicated a ramshackle, weathered building.

Danar stared at the unpainted walls and the banner hanging in tatters above the warped door. “Here?”

Zevaron pushed the door open. He'd never been in this particular tavern before, but it felt as familiar as the
Wave Dancer
's
deck. In a blink or two, his eyes adapted to the dimmer light. He studied the shelves of pottery jugs and wooden kegs, and the men standing over their drinks or lounging around the collection of much-mended tables. At the counter, a barrel-chested riverman, one side of his mouth twisted by whitened, criss-crossing scars, took out a curved knife and laid it on the surface.

“Zev, are you sure this is a good idea?”

“Keep close and keep quiet, like a lamb in a den of jackals.”

Zevaron sauntered to the far corner, where he had recognized one of the Denariyan pirates he'd spoken to before. He slid onto the single free chair, leaving Danar to stand behind him.

After a few preliminary remarks and the offer of a round of ale, accepted with a grunt and a nod, the Denariyan looked pointedly at Danar, “Thought it was a woman you wanted passage for.”

Zevaron shrugged. “Things change.”

“Not my business.”

“Right. It's not.”

The barkeep set a pitcher with a cracked lip down on the table. The Denariyan refilled his tankard, lifted it in salute, and for a time, there was little conversation. With a sigh, the pirate lowered his cup. “You drinking?”

Zevaron's mouth had watered at the smell of the ale, rough and sour though it would be. But his head had still not stopped spinning, and he dared not unsettle his stomach any further. “No, just buying.”

“In the market for a boat?”

“Passage. For two.”

The Denariyan's eyebrows lifted, and he glanced from Zevaron to Danar and back again. “Special rates?”

Zevaron nodded. Chalil had used a similar phrase to indicate that discretion and speed were an essential part of the deal. They haggled a little over the price, and Zevaron paid him a third, with the second portion to come with the finding of the boat and the last, once they were safely aboard.

After the Denariyan slid out of the bar, Zevaron ordered another round of ale and pretended to drink, huddled over his dented tin cup. After a sip, Danar did the same.

Time passed. Men drifted through the bar, drank, carried on conversations in hushed tones, glanced incuriously at Zevaron and Danar, and walked away. The barkeep came over, looked into the pitcher, found it still half-full, and asked if they wanted to eat. Zevaron wasn't hungry, but Danar looked too nervous to be sitting with only a mug of untouched ale. The barkeep brought wooden bowls of barley and fish, still wrapped in the leaves it had been steamed in.