Tales from the vulgar unicorn- Thieves World 02 (26 page)

'Ath? Did she hurt you? Hey! You little piece of camel dropping - what did she do to you?'

At the angry, demanding sound of Hanse's voice, Athavul clutched himself. Weeping loudly, he rolled over against the wall. He left little spots of tears and slobber and a puddle from a spasming sphincter. Hanse swallowed hard. Sorcery. That damned Enos Y - no, he didn't work this way. Ath was absolutely terrified. Hanse had always thought him the consistency of sparrow's liver and chicken soup, with bird's eggs between his legs. But this - not even this strutting ass could be this hideously possessed by fear without preternatural aid. Just the sight of it was scary. Hanse felt an urge to stomp or stick Ath just to shut him up, and that was awful.

He glanced at the thirty-one strands of dangling Syrese rope (each knotted thirty-one times) that hung in the doorway of Sly's. He saw seven staring eyeballs, six fingers, and several mismatched feet. Even in the Maze, noise attracted attention ... but people had sense enough not to go running out to see what was amiss.

'BLAAAH!' Hanse shouted, making a horrid face and pouncing at the doorway. Then he rushed past the grovelling, weeping Athavul. At the corner he looked up Odours towards Straight, and he was sure he saw the vermilion cloak. Maroon now, in the distance. Yes. Across Straight, heading north now past the tanners' broad open-front sheds, almost to the intersection with the Street called Slippery. Several people were walking along Odours, just walking, heading south in Hanse's direction. The lone one carried a lanthorn.

All six walkers - three, one, and two - passed him going in the opposite direction. None saw him, though Hanse was hurrying. He heard the couple talking about the hooded blind woman with the white staff. He crossed well-lighted Straight Street when the red clay cloak was at the place called Harlot's Cross. There Tanner's Row angled in to join the Street of Odours at its mutual intersection with the broad Governor's Walk. He passed the tiny 'temple' ofTheba and several shops to stop outside the entrance of the diminutive Temple of Eshi Virginal - few believed in that -and watched the cloak turn left. Northwest. A woman, all right. Heading past the long sprawl of the farmers' market? Or one of the little dwellings that faced it?

Heading for Red Lantern Road? A woman who pretends to be blind and who put a spell of terror on Athavul like nothing I ever saw. He had to follow her. He was incapable of not following her. He was not driven only by curiosity. He wanted to know the identity of a woman with such a device, yes. There was also the possibility of obtaining such a useful wand. White, it resembled the walk-tap stick of a sightless woman. Painted though, it could be the swagger stick of ... Shadowspawn. Or of someone with a swollen purse who could put it to good use against Hanse's fellow thieves.

He looked out for himself; let them.

Hanse did not follow. He moved to intersect, and could anyone have done it as swiftly and surefootedly, it must have been a child who lived hereabouts and had no supervision.

He ran past Slippery - fading into a fig-pedlar's doorway while a pair of City Watchmen passed - then ran through two vacant lots, a common back yard full of dog droppings and the white patches of older ones, over an outhouse, around a fat tree and then two meathouses and through two hedges - one spiny, which took no note of being cursed by a shadow on silent feet - across a porch and around a rain barrel, over the top of a sleeping black cat that objected with more noise than the two dogs he had aroused - one was still importantly barking, puffed up and hating to leave off-across another porch ('Is that you, Dadisha? Where have you been?'), through someone's scraps and - long jump! - over a mulchpile, and around two lovers ('What was that, Wrenny?'), an overturned outhouse, a rain barrel, a cow tethered to a wagon he went under without even slowing down, and three more buildings.

One of the lovers and one of the dogs actually caught sight of the swift fleeting shadow. No one else. The cow might have wondered. On one knee beside a fat beanberry bush at the far end of Market Run, he looked out upon the long straight stretch of well-kept street that ran past the market on the other side. He was not winded.

The hooded cloak-with the walking stick was just reaching this end of the long, long farmers' market. Hanse crimped his cheeks in a little smile. Oh he was so clever, so speedy! He was just in time to-to see the two cloakless but hooded footpads materialize from the deep jet shadows at the building's corner. They pounced. One ran angling, to grasp her from behind, while his fellow came at her face-on with no weapons visible. Ready to snatch what she had, and run. She behaved surprisingly; she lunged to one side and prodded the attacker in front. Prodded, that Hanse saw; she did not strike or stab with the white staff.

Instantly the man went to his knees. He was gibbering, pleading, quaking. A butterfly clinging to a twig in a windstorm. Or ... Athavul. Swiftly - not professionally fast, but swiftly for her, a civilian, Hanse saw (he was moving) - she turned to the one coming up behind her. He also adjusted rapidly. He went low. The staff whirred over his head while his partner babbled and pleaded in the most abject fear. The footpad had not stopped moving. (Neither had Hanse.) Up came the hooded man from his crouch and his right hand snapped out edge-on to strike her wrist while his other fist leaped to her stomach. That fist glittered in the moonlight, or something glittered in it. That silvery something went into her - and she made a puking gagging throaty noise and while she fell the white stick slid from her reflexively opening fingers. He grabbed it.

That was surely ill-advised, but his hand closed on the staffs handle without apparent effect on him. He kicked her viciously, angrily - maybe she felt it, gutted, and maybe she did not - and he railed at his comrade. The latter, on his knees, behaved as Athavul had when Hanse shouted at him. He fell over and rolled away, assuming the foetal posture while he wept and pled. The killer spat several expletives and whirled back to his victim. She was twitching, dying. Yanking open the vermilion cloak, he jerked off her necklace, ripped a twisted silver loop out of each ear, and yanked at the scantling purse on her girdle. It refused to come free. He sliced it with the swift single movement of a practised expert. Straightening, he glanced in every direction, said something to his partner - who rolled foetally, sobbing.

'Theba take you, then,' the thief said, and ran. Back into the shadows of the market building's west corner he fled, and one of the shadows tripped him. As he fell, an elbow thumped the back of his neck.

'I want what you've got, you murdering bastard,' a shadow-voice said from the shadows, while the footpad twisted to roll over. 'Your kind gives thieves a bad name.'

'Take it then!' The fallen man rammed the white staff into the shadow's thigh as it started to bend over him.

Instantly fear seized Hanse. Viced him; encompassed him; possessed him. Sickening, stomach-fluttering fear. His armpits flooded and his sphincter fluttered.

Unlike the stick's victims he had seen, he was in darkness, and he was Shadowspawn. He did not fall to his knees.

He fled, desperately afraid, snivelling, clutching his gut, babbling. Tears flowed to blind him, but he was in darkness anyhow. Staggering, weeping, horribly and obscenely afraid and even more horribly knowing all the while that he had no reason to be afraid, that this was sorcery; the most demeaning spell that could be laid on a man. He heard the killer laugh, and Hanse tried to run faster. Hoping the man did not pursue to confront him. Accost him, Snarl mean things at him. He could not stand that.

It did not happen that way. The thief who had slain without intending to kill laughed, but he too was scared, and disconcerted. He fled, slinking, in another direction. Hanse stumbled-staggered-snivelled on, on. Instinct was not gone but was heightened; he clung to the shadows as a frightened child to its mother. But he made noise, noise.

Attracted at the same time as she was repulsed by that whining fearful gibbering, Mignureal came upon him. 'What - it's Han -what are you doing?'

He was seriously considering ending the terror by ending himself with the knife in his fist. Anything to stop this enveloping, consuming agony of fear. At her voice he dropped the knife and fell weeping to his knees.

'Hanse ~ stop that!'

He did not. He could not. He could assume the foetal. He did. Uncomprehending, the garishly-dressed girl acted instinctively to save him. Her mother liked him and to Mignureal he was attractive, a figure of romance. In his state, saving him was easy, even for a thirteen-year-old. Though his hysterical sobbing pleas brought tears to her eyes, for him, Mignureal tied his wrists behind him. The while, she breathed prayers known only to the S'danzo.

'You come along now,' she said firmly, leaking tears and gulping. 'Come along with me!'

Hanse obeyed.

She went straight along the well-lit Governor's Walk and turned down Shadow Lane, conducting her bound, snivelling captive. At the corner of Shadow and Slippery, a couple of uniformed men accosted her.

'Why it's Moonflower's darter. Whafve you got there, Mineral?'

'Mignureal,' she corrected. 'Someone put a spell on him - over on the Processional,' she said, choosing an area far from where she had found him. 'My mother can help. Go with Eshi.'

'Hmm. A spell of fear, huh? That damned Anus Yorl, I'll wager a cup! Who is it, snivelling under your shawl that way?'

Mignureal considered swiftly. What had happened to Hanse was awful. To have these City Watchmen know, and spread it about - that would be insupportable. Again Mignureal lied. It was her brother Antelope, she told them, and they made sympathetic noises and let her be on her way, while they. muttered about dam'

sorcerers and the nutty names S'danzo gave their get. Both men agreed; they would make a routine check of Awful Alley and stop in at the Alekeep, just down the street.

Mignureal led Hanse a half-block more and went into her parents' shop-and living-quarters. They were asleep. The tautly overweight Moonflower did not heed summonses and did not make house calls. Furthermore her husband was an irrepressibly randy man who bedded early and insisted on her company. At her daughter's sobbing and shaking her, the seer awoke. That gently-named collection of talent and adipose tissue and mammalia sufficient to nurse octuplets, simultaneously, sat erect. She reached comfortingly for her daughter. Soon she had listened, was out of bed, and beside Hanse. Mignureal had ordered him to remain on the divan in the shop.

'That just isn't Hanse, Mother!'

'Of course it isn't. Look on sorcery, and hate it.'

'Name ofTiana Saviour-it's awful, seeing him, hearing him this way...'

'Fetch my shawl,' Moonflower said, one by one relieving Hanse of his knives,

'and do make some tea, sweetheart.'

Moonflower held the quaking young man and crooned. She pillowed his tear-wet face in the vastness of her bosom. She loosed his wrists, drew his hands round, and held their wiry darkness in her large paler dimple-backed ones. And she crooned, and talked low, on and on. Her daughter draped her with the shawl and went to make tea.

The ray of moonlight that fell into the room moved the length of a big man's foot while the seer sat there with him, and more, and Hanse went to sleep, still shivering. She held his hands until he was still but for his breathing. Mignureal hovered close, all bright of eye, and knew the instant her mother went off. Sagging. Glassy-eyed. She began murmuring, a woman small inside and huge without; a gross kitten at her divining.

'A yellow-furred hunting dog? Tall as a tree, old as a tree ... he hovers and with him is a god not of Ilsig. A god of Ranke - oh, it is a Hell Hound. Oh Hanse it is not wizard-sorcery but god-sorcery! And who is thi - oh. Another god. But why is Theba involved, who has so few adherents here? Oh!'

She shuddered and her daughter started to touch her; desisted.

'I see Ils Himself hiding His face... a shadow tall as a tree and another, not nearly so big. A shadow and its pawn? Why it has no head, this smaller shad oh. It is afraid, that's it; it has no face left. It is Ha - I will not say even though he sleeps. Oh Mignue, there is a corpse on the street up in front of the farmers' market and - ahhh.' Her relief was apparent in that great sigh. 'Hanse did not kill her. Another did, and Theba hovers over her. Hmm. I see - I s-I will not say what I s ... it fades, goes.'

Again she sighed and sat still, sweating, overflowing her chair on both sides. Gazing at the sleeping Shadowspawn. 'He has spoken with the governor who is the emperor's kinsman, Mignureal my dear, did you know that? He will again. They are not enemies, our governor and Shadowspawn.'

'Oh.' And Mignureal looked upon him, head to one side. Moonflower saw the look.

'You will go to bed and tomorrow you will tell me what you were doing abroad so late, Mignue. You will not come near Hanse again, do you understand?'

'Oh, mother.' Mignureal met the level gaze only briefly. 'Yes, mother. I understand.' And she went to bed.

Moonflower did not; she stayed beside Hanse. In the morning he was all right and she totd him what she had Seen. He would never be the same again, she knew, he who had met quintessential fear. Lord Terror himself, face to face. But he was Hanse again, and not afraid, and Moonflower was sure that within a few hours he would have his gliding swagger back. She did note that he was grim-facedly determined.

The message left at the little Watchpost at the corner of Shadow and Lizard's Way suggested that the 'tall as a tree Hell-hound take a walk between stinky market and the cat storage' at the time of the fifth nightwatch 'when the shadows are spawning fear in all hearts'. The message was delivered to Tempus, who ordered the sub-prefect to forget it, and looked fierce. The wriggly agreed and got thence.