D& D - Greyhawk - Night Watch (35 page)

He felt the eyes of Kentellen Mar upon him. Kentellen sat apart, uninvolved in the argument. He did not even bother to hide his interest in Garett. For a moment, the room seemed to swirl, and it was as if the others disappeared and they were alone. Garett’s heart quickened, and the rush of the blood in his veins surged in his ears.

Then the moment passed, and Garett discovered his hand curled lightly around Guardian’s hilt. He didn’t remember even moving. “Excuse me,” he said loudly enough to attract everyone’s attention, “but I have duties to catch up on. If you have no further questions ...”

Ellon Thigpen interrupted. “We have plenty of questions, Captain Starlen,” he said authoritatively. Then, surveying the expressions of his fellow directors, he relented. “But perhaps we should deal with more pressing matters first. You are excused.”

More pressing matters. Funerals and investitures. Fools! Garett thought as he turned and left the chamber. The city could crumble upon their heads, but never without an appropriate ceremony!

Garett went straight to his office. There was no fire in any of his lamps, nor any oil. For light, he flung op'fl the shutter on his only window. Then he grabbed the first watchman he found in the corridor and sent for Burge.

“You’ve got your job back,” he told his friend. “That’s not an offer. It’s an order. And go find Blossom. I need her, too. All of you. Here, tonight.”

“Yes, sir, Cap’n, sir!” Burge answered with exaggerated enthusiasm. Deliberately, he snapped a crisp salute with the wrong hand.

“We’re going to do this our damned selves!” Garett swore grimly.

Burge left, and Garett sank down in his chair, turned it toward the window, and propped his feet up on the sill. Once again, he tried to put it all together in his head, to convince himself that he was right. There were so many pieces to the puzzle, and all of them were rough. He told himself he should have been more forceful with the directors. He should have made them listen. But what real proof did he have that his conclusions were the right ones?

How could he hope to convince them that the enemy was their beloved Kentellen Mar?

Garett knew that he couldn’t. So he folded his hands over his stomach, leaned back in his chair, and made his plans. The directors would help him whether they wanted to or not. He knew their weaknesses. He intended to use

them.

Outside his window, the black birds circled in evergrowing numbers.

By midafternoon, the streets were once more choked with citizens and outlanders come to celebrate the investitures. The High Market was a mass of seething human flesh, and the Processional a colorful river of costumes and banners and flower garlands. People danced on the corners, sometimes in the middle of the road. Men and women leaned out of windows and shrieked at the tops of their voices. Music sounded from everywhere, wild and furious, sometimes played by musicians, and sometimes by folks beating sticks on the lampposts or banging spoons on pots and pans as they marched through the crowds, employing anything that could make a noise.

On horseback, Garett rode through it, taking side streets when he could to avoid the worst crowds. He had never seen the people of Greyhawk like this before, and it disturbed him. It begins to border on hysteria, he thought uneasily as he guided his mount southward down the Processional to the Black Gate. Since he was again dressed in uniform, the guards did not bother to stop him. They saluted, and he nodded and passed through into the Thieves’ Quarter. He rode up Rat’s Road, then turned down Black Lane, and stopped at last before the great hall of the Thieves’ Guild.

The hall was the true heart of Old Town. Little transpired south of the Black Wall that was not known, or even sanctioned, here. The hall’s windows and rooftop commanded views of every possible approach, and Garett knew that he had been observed for some time by spies who had followed him from the moment he passed through the gate.

A pair of young, rough-looking boys, apprentice thieves, stood guard at the entrance. Garett rode right up to the steps before he stopped and called up to them. “Tell Sor-vesh Kharn that—”

The great doors swung inward. “I am here, Garett Starlen,” the master of thieves responded as he stepped into the daylight. He came halfway down the steps and stopped, and the pair of guards at the door came down to take up positions just behind him. Still another pair slipped out of the hall and took their posts on either side of the entrance.

Garett nodded to himself with satisfaction. It was a small exercise, but it showed that the thieves were disciplined. “We need to talk,” Garett said.

Sorvesh Kharn inclined his head slightly in consideration. “We can do so out here in the heat,” came his answer, “or, if you will surrender your weapon and allow yourself to be blindfolded, there is the luxury of my quarters inside.”

Garett had expected the blindfold. No one who was not a member of the guild was allowed to enter the hall. And those who were taken inside never saw more than one room. That way, no outsider learned the layout of the place, or where any of the many deadly traps were set. It was the guild’s oldest rule and known throughout Greyhawk.

He was, however, reluctant to part with Guardian for any reason.

Sorvesh Kharn saw his hesitation. “You came to me, Captain,” he noted. “So you must trust me.”

“I will wear your blindfold,” Garett answered firmly. “But I didn’t demand your weapons when you came to my apartment, and I won’t surrender my sword to any man. You must give what you ask for—trust.”

Sorvesh Kharn smiled and whispered something to the man at his right side. The apprentice ran back up the stairs and disappeared inside. “I like you, Captain,” Sorvesh stated. “You have the courage so many of our city leaders lack.”

The apprentice returned to his master’s side with a strip of white cloth, and Garett dismounted. Without saying more, he allowed them to cover his eyes. He gave his right hand to the apprentice to lead him, while he wrapped his other around the hilt of Guardian to ensure nobody tried to take it.

“Trust, Captain,” he heard Sorvesh whisper with a trace of amusement.

Garett heard someone leading his horse away as the apprentice guided him carefully up the steps. By the dimming of the tiny amount of light that leaked through the cloth on his eyes, and by the smooth tile upon which he suddenly tread, he knew that he was inside. Almost immediately, the apprentice stopped him, then began to turn him around and around. When he stopped again, Garett was thoroughly disoriented.

They led him up a flight of steps, then down another. It might have been the same stairs, for all Garett knew. The floor actually seemed to rise at an incline at one place. They steered him around a comer, and around another corner. Through the blindfold, the light brightened and dimmed.

At last, someone removed his blindfold, and the watch captain found himself in a room whose opulence surpassed anything he had ever seen in Greyhawk. The carpets were blue and red silk, and blue velvet tapestries hung upon the walls. Small sculptures and lavishly decorated vases stood upon slender pedestals and upon tables made of highly polished roanwood. Beautiful paintings stood on display easels in the room’s corners, their frames glittering with gold. Two cushioned couches, one of plushest black velvet, the other of rich black leather, faced each other in the center of the room. It was a room to make the nobility of the city envious. And, Garett reminded himself, probably all stolen.

The door closed softly behind him, and the watch captain found himself alone with Sorvesh Kharn. Despite the awe he felt at such richness, Garett forced himself to get to business. “Just how many thieves do you command, Sorvesh?” Garett asked, realizing that the master of thieves would never give him a true answer to that question.

Sorvesh Kharn inclined his head thoughtfully and steered Garett toward the couches, where they sat, Sorvesh on the leather and Garett on the black velvet. Garett ran his palm over the material, savoring the feel of its incredible texture.

Sorvesh watched him carefully. “Why would you ask?” he queried, a polite dodge.

Garett leaned forward intently, placing his elbows on his knees and interlocking his fingers. “Because I have come,” Garett said carefully, applying his hook, “to make you Mayor of Greyhawk.”

A short time later, Garett rode up High Street to the palace of the lord mayor. “I have come to make you mayor,” he said when a servant led him into Ellon Thigpen’s private office.

Ellon gave him a puzzled look. “I am already mayor,” he answered.

“Ah,” Garett said, holding up a finger. “Not officially until tomorrow at noon. And there is a plot against you tonight.”

Ellon Thigpen paled. Then he leaned forward nervously in his chair to listen.

Hooked.

For some time Garett waited in the garden of Axen Kilgaren’s home before the master of assassins came to him,

“’¥ou should know,” Axen said before Garett could speak, “that Kael was not a sanctioned kill. Someone has attempted to make it look like a guild job, but it wasn’t. I kept quiet at the meeting this morning only because it got you your job back, Captain, and you are good for Greyhawk.” His dark brows furrowed suddenly, and his voice dropped a note. “I won’t try to find out who did the deed. However, if the name of the murderer should ever defile my ears, I will be forced to act. I hope it was none of your friends.”

Garett studied Axen Kilgaren. Despite the fact that Kilgaren was an assassin—one of the deadliest killers in the city—Garett liked the man. There was an honesty and a directness about him. He wished that he could tell this man the truth about his suspicions, but he didn’t dare. Kentellen Mar had too many supporters on the Directorate, and he didn’t know where Axen stood.

“I don’t know how many men you have,” Garett said. “But you must arm them all and put them in the streets tonight. It could make you mayor.”

Axen Kilgaren sneered. “I don’t want to be mayor.” “Listen to me anyway,” Garett continued, unruffled. It didn’t surprise him that Axen didn’t want the office. That fact only heightened Garett’s respect for the man, and he had a different hook to apply. It was only slightly different, but it was the right one for Axen. “And listen closely. There’s a plot, and I know how much you love this city.”

Raenei and Kule burned like huge white jewels over the city of Greyhawk. Their frosty radiance washed out all but the brightest stars, and the air itself seemed to glow with a milky luminescence.

In the streets, the madness of celebration had reached a peak. There was no place in the city where the noise and music did not reach. Venders hawked quick foods, wines, and beers, for which they charged exorbitant rates. Mimes and minstrels and prestidigitators performed on every corner for huge crowds of gawkers. The watch houses in all quarters were overflowing with petty arrests, and offenders were returned to the streets as soon as their names were logged.

Garett watched it all from horseback in an alley just off Horseshoe Road, which was the boundary between the River Quarter and the Foreign Quarter. Burge, Blossom, and Rudi waited with him. They wore helmets and heavy chain mail under their uniforms. Rudi wore a bow and quiver of arrows slung over one shoulder. It was the order of the night that

every watchman was so armored.

Garett scanned the streets for signs of trouble, not knowing from which direction to expect it, but sure that it would come. He watched faces, looking for any suspicious out-lander. He noted knives and clubs, which were legal, and kept a sharp eye out for any cloak or loose garment that might conceal a sword.

“The Directorate will have your head if nothing comes of this, Captain,” Blossom said in a low voice.

That was certainly true. If he had guessed wrong, his trickery would be obvious to all by morning. The mayor would feel he’d been made a fool of. Garett had convinced Ellon to call out the entire garrison to protect his house and his person, and to search the High Quarter and Garden Quarter for a terrorist team of assassins from the Shield Lands. That put three hundred and fifty men on alert in the two most strategic quarters of the city. The same story had convinced Korbian Arthuran to assign fully half of the day shift watchmen to tonight’s duty.

Sorvesh Kharn would be angry, too, and would feel he’d been made a fool of. No matter that Garett had secretly opened the barracks armory to provide his thieves with good swords. Sorvesh wanted to be a hero, to be the man who saved the city from a desperate nighttime attack from a force that had found a way in through the sewers. Every man he commanded was secreted near the gratings, waiting and watching.

Axen Kilgaren might take it in stride. Then again, he might not. It was impossible to predict anything about that man.

There were others whom Garett would have to answer to as well. He had gone to the Temple of Pholtus and given veiled warnings to its patriarch about trouble tonight from the priests of Trithereon, and immediately given the same warnings to Trithereon priests about the Pholtus Temple. The enmity between those two rivals was old and strong, and he knew with certainty that both sides would be well

armed and watchful this night.

At the Temple of St. Cuthbert he had taken tea with its patriarch and casually complained about the number of dirty outlanders who were swarming within Greyhawk’s walls. An appeal to the old man’s prejudice was all it took to win assurances that when Cuthbert’s adherents walked the streets tonight they would keep their cudgels handy.

In short, Garett had spent the day making Greyhawk into a tinder box. Now he was waiting for the spark.

Lieutenant Graybo and four watchmen suddenly appeared at the mouth of the alley. Korbian Arthuran had been too busy or to disinterested to name a new permanent commander to take charge of the River Quarter watch house, so Graybo still held the post. He approached Garett and looked up. “The sewer grating on River Street is still locked,” he reported quietly, “and the mechanism appears untouched.”

“So is the grating back down this alley,” Garett answered. “But keep checking them. Check every grating. And if you spot any of Sorvesh’s thieves lurking in the shadows, don’t give them away. Remember, for this one night, they’re working with us.”