The Assassin's Edge (Einarinn 5) (23 page)

With Shiv’s frequent interjections, Usara’s explanations lasted all the way through the grimy, gimcrack terraces cramped between the generous holdings of the merchant classes and the unyielding sprawl of the dockside districts. Warehouses loomed high on either side with blank walls and doors barred from within. They passed the much extended building where ship owners and captains paid for their helmsmen and pilots to learn the mysteries of the ocean coast, its winds and currents. The coachman drew up in a small square dank with the scent of the retreating tide and hammered on the roof. “This is as far as I go.”

Shiv stood with Sorgrad as Usara paid the man off. “Where do we start?” he wondered aloud.

Sorgrad nodded at a man selling freshly cooked shrimps from a bubbling pot on a small brazier. “Got a cup on you?”

Neither wizard did so each had to pay for a misshapen reject from someone’s kiln to hold a steaming spoonful. Sorgrad produced a short-stemmed silver goblet from some pocket and exchanged a few words as the shrimp seller filled it.

Nodding to the mages, Sorgrad led them away, holding a shrimp between his teeth to pull off its head before crunching the rest. “Our friend tells me there’s a captain about to be left high and dry by a merchant whose creditors will be breaking down his doors any day.”

“He told you that for the price of three pots of shrimps?” The difficulties of peeling one with one hand and his teeth didn’t mask the fact that Shiv was impressed.

Sorgrad shrugged. “I told him it’d be worth ten times that if the word turned out to be sound.”

Usara was licking a burnt finger. He passed a hand over his shrimps, which abruptly stopped steaming. “Where do we find this captain?”

“A dive called the Moon and Rake, so watch your step,” Sorgrad warned. “And if you use magic again, ’Sar, I’ll break your fingers.” He led them down a noisome lane running between a barred storehouse and a yard with high walls topped with broken glass. A few more turns brought them out on to a raucous dock. Sorgrad hailed a man hauling a laden sled on iron runners over the slick cobbles. The docker directed them with an unsmiling jerk of his head.

“Yonder.” Sorgrad led the way towards the tavern whose battered sign showed a man dragging a pole through shallow water beneath the lesser moon casting the secretive light of her full round. Her bolder sister was no more than a blind crescent. The building looked more respectable than Shiv had expected and he raised his hand to the door already ajar.

A dagger thudded into the jamb barely a finger’s width away from his startled hand. “No, this way.” Sorgrad retrieved his blade and gestured to an alley beside the tavern.

The wizards did as they were told. Sorgrad watched from the shadows for a moment before pointing to a big man. “Now what do you suppose he’s doing here?”

Much of a height with Shiv he was half as broad again across the shoulders, muscles emphasised by a close-cut shirt in faded red linen beneath a buckled jerkin. He was deep in conversation with a man handing bundles of clothes, baskets of bottles and a few crates of battered fruit down to a lad standing in a broad, flat-bottomed rowing boat tied to the stubby posts on the dock. The trader paused to consider several of the ocean ships anchored safe in the embrace of the curving arms of the harbour and surrounded with boats like his own tempting their crews to spend their coin on a few trifles.

“Darni!” Shiv was furious. “So Planir trusts us, does he?”

“He’s shaved off his beard,” Sorgrad noted with approval. “Passes better for Tormalin that way, I reckon.” With his black hair and dark colouring the big man certainly bore more than a passing resemblance to the incurious passers-by.

“He might have some business nothing to do with us,” Usara suggested doubtfully.

“Even when he’s hiring out as a mercenary Darni’s about some scheme of Planir’s,” said Shiv grimly.

“Can we get rid of him somehow?” wondered Usara.

“You really want to break with Hadrumal?” Sorgrad looked surprised, then considered the task. “I can take him with a knife in the back down some back entry but I’m not going up against someone that size in broad daylight. We’ll get some gang of sworn men running in to spoil the fun for one thing.”

“I didn’t mean kill him,” protested Usara, horrified.

“What do you suppose he’s doing?” Shiv watched as a woman came to see whom the trader was talking to. She was tall and stout with improbably dyed hair and rouged like a child’s doll. Several other women hovered close by, gowns cut low and legs bare beneath their soiled skirts. They flanked a couple of malnourished girls, one with her wrists held tight by her hard-faced elder. Darni turned to talk to her, gestures curt, face intimidating. The whoremistress had plainly faced his type before and shook her head, unimpressed. Darni turned on his heel, heading further down the dock. The trader and whoremistress looked after him with resentment.

“Wait here.” Sorgrad darted across the cobbles to be welcomed by the woman with an avaricious smile. They exchanged a few words and then Sorgrad headed back towards the wizards with the youngest whore released from her captor.

“What do you suppose he wants her for?” asked Usara with alarm, seeing Sorgrad’s protective arm around the girl’s thin waist.

“I’ll get Pered to draw you a picture.” Shiv was quite nonplussed.

Sorgrad ushered the girl into the alley. “How much coin are you carrying?” he demanded of the mages.

“Pardon?” Usara looked blank but Shiv was already reaching for the purse he’d tucked prudently inside his breeches.

Sorgrad unbuttoned his shirt and pulled several gold and silver chains over his head. “Right, I told the old bitch there were three of us, so you should have time to run before they come looking for you.” He scooped up the marks and crowns that Shiv offered and pressed them into the girl’s trembling hands, bruises banding her wrists. “Buy a ride on some carrier’s cart to the far side of the pass before nightfall.” He stowed the jewellery in the girl’s meagre cleavage with impersonal efficiency. “Sell that before you sell yourself, chick.”

She looked at him with huge, hopeless eyes. “My da drowned last year and the scour took the babe and my mam with it. My auntie took the little ones but—”

“There’s a goldsmith on Angle Street,” said Usara with sudden inspiration. “Find a man called Renthuan there. Tell him Ryshad Tathel wants him to help you.”

A spark of life lit the girl’s fearful face. “Yes, masters.” She turned and ran down the alley away from the docks, fists clutching the coin to her bony breast.

Sorgrad watched her go with a shake of his head. “Whoring for sailors is no task for children.”

Shiv was looking at Usara. “Sending her to his money lender isn’t going to flatter Ryshad’s reputation.”

“Shall we go before that fat madam comes asking what we’ve done with her?” Usara looked apprehensively at the whoremistress who was fortunately busy with a handful of newly arrived sailors. “Did she say anything about Darni’s business?”

“He’s looking for a girl who he reckons is looking for a passage over the ocean. From the description, he’s after your Larissa.” Sorgrad was watching the woman now deep in negotiations. “Now, quickly.”

Neither Shiv nor Usara delayed as Sorgrad led them out of the alley and, unseen, away down the dock. He passed the first tavern beyond the Moon and the Rake but ushered the mages into the next; a sour-smelling, ramshackle place. “Over there.” He led them past a gang of men waiting for a boatswain to pay them off according to the figures chalked on their broad-brimmed, oiled-leather hats or the offside shoulder of their dark leather jerkins. A thickset man with a cudgel stood ready to discourage anyone keen to take more than their share from the coffer of coin.

“I think we should offer Darni a seat at the game,” announced Sorgrad.

Shiv leaned against a pillar. “Livak doesn’t like him.”

“Livak’s not rounding up a crew willing to fight pirates with just you two dancing masters to back her up.” Sorgrad grinned at Shiv. “Besides, Livak takes the runes as they roll, just the same as me. Darni’s big and scary and he’s useful with a sword. We worked together well enough in the Mountains and that counts for a lot.”

“If Planir’s concerned enough about Larissa to send Darni after her, we should surely let him know she’s safe.” Usara realised he was standing in a sticky pool of ale and looked down with distaste.

Shiv pursed his lips. “Do you think he’s here to haul her back to Hadrumal?”

“Possibly,” said Usara cautiously.

“If we’re taking a pretty piece like her on this voyage, she’ll need her own guard dog,” Sorgrad pointed out. “Otherwise you’ll find ’Gren playing her champion and slitting the throat of anyone stepping too close.”

“Darni’s no fool.” Shiv looked at Usara. “He’ll find us or her sooner rather than later. Don’t we want to have that conversation on our terms rather than his?”

Usara nodded. “He might let slip what Planir thinks of our little expedition.”

“Let’s go find him.” Sorgrad was already heading for the door.

Shiv grimaced. “It’s more cursed complications every way we turn.” He pointed a firm finger at Usara. “You can tell Livak.”

Suthyfer, the Southern Approaches,

44th of Aft-Spring

For someone who so dislikes the sea, I was spending entirely too much time aboard ships.

“Still feeling queasy?” The ship’s carpenter passed me leaning on the rail of the
Eryngo
.

“No, thanks all the same.” I glanced up to the crow’s-nest where several sailors were keeping as eager a vigil as me. “Any sign of the
Dulse
or the
Fire Minnow
?”

Lemmell shrugged. “You’ll hear it the same as everyone else.” He came to stand beside me, one hand smoothing the rail like a man caressing a favourite hound. He loved this ship, always keen to point out some virtue to me, explaining to anyone who’d listen that the
Eryngo
was a quarter as long again as the biggest of the pirate ships, never mind half as broad again. That’s right, Haut the sailmaker would agree, and we carried more canvas and better rigged. I couldn’t decide if they truly knew the ship better than anyone else or were just hopelessly biased. Captains came and went at the whim of an owner and crews were hired from voyage to voyage but I’d learned boatswain, helmsman, shipwright and sail-maker stayed with a vessel from the first laying of the keel until it was either broken or rotted as a hulk. Some even kept wives and families in their canvas-walled cabins on the lower decks but Temar had forbidden, that on this voyage.

“Don’t you worry about pirates, my girl,” Lemmell continued. “We’ve high sides and a steep forecastle ready to repel boarders and the rear deck stepped to give D’Alsennin the best view of any fight.”

As the carpenter went on his way, I glanced towards the stern but D’Alsennin wasn’t up there. He was down on the main deck and seeing me, came over. “How much longer, do you think?”

I looked back across seawaters calm with the stillness of early morning. Somewhere, just out of sight, were the islands we’d come to reclaim. Somewhere, beneath the featureless cloak of trees, Kellarin’s mercenaries were prowling with murderous intent. Quiet as a squirrel too mean to share his nuts, Ryshad on one headland, Halice on another, they would be creeping up on the watchposts Allin’s scrying had betrayed to us. Somewhere, two of Kellarin’s coasters lurked in the inlets they’d crept into under the scant cover of the moonlit night and every mask of magecraft and Artifice that Allin and Guinalle could summon. Dastennin, Halcarion and every other deity grant the ships would bring our people back to us.

“Not long.” I spoke with more hope than certainty.

“We’ll make those bastards sorry they ever thought of staking a claim to Suthyfer,” Temar muttered. Kellarin men still asleep in the
Eryngo
’s capacious lower decks would help make sure of that.

I glanced up at the sun, still broad and soft gold this early in the day. “It’ll take as long as it takes.” That would be Ryshad’s answer and Halice’s too but they’d better hurry, if we were to launch our attack to catch the pirates still fuddled with sleep.

The deck swayed beneath my feet as the
Eryngo
made a slow turn. The
Nenuphar
and the
Asterias
did the same, square-rigged mainsails furled like the
Eryngo
’s, just relying on the triangular sails on their stubby aftmasts for steering in circles. I sincerely hoped all the sailors were pulling the right ropes to stop us colliding as we marked time in the same patch of sea.

“I should have gone too,” muttered Temar, frustrated.

“This is a very different fight to sweeping across the Dalasorian plains with half an Imperial army at your back,” I pointed out.

“As Ryshad and Halice keep saying with all their talk of skulk and strike and cut and run.”

I made a non-committal sound by way of reply. It was plain his exclusion from the fun still rankled with Temar but Ryshad and Halice had been adamant. The Tormalin wars of lordly conquest back in the days before history had been a very different affair from the base civil war that was Lescar’s running sore. It was dirty fighting that was wanted here.

Still, I didn’t like sitting on my hands aboard ship any more than D’Alsennin. This inaction came all the harder after the ceaseless hectic days since Parrail had raised his alarm. All of us had roused yeomen, miners and artisans to hone their tools and fury to a murderous edge. Halice and I had set every mercenary to scouring rust from swords and summoning old ingenuity for scavenging supplies.

Temar turned to look at the sterncastle and the doors to the rearward cabins under the raised afterdeck. “Allin may have news. Guinalle might be able to reach Parrail without so much water between them.”

“We let them sleep,” I told him firmly. If I couldn’t help my friends with a weapon in my hand, I could ensure this expedition’s magical resources were carefully husbanded. Guinalle was an even worse sailor than me and the stresses of working Artifice while actually afloat left the noblewoman with a headache like a poleaxed cow. Allin wasn’t so tired but seeing the pirates’ captives daily beaten, degraded and filthy distressed the mage-girl dreadfully. After breaking our backs to get Vithrancel’s ships sailing, we’d had to stand off the islands for three frustrating days waiting for Shiv and Usara’s ship to make the longer crossing from Toremal, even with wizardry clearing a path through the waves and swelling their sails with mageborn winds.