The Brazen Gambit (3 page)

Pavek paused on the brink of the rubble. He cocked his head, using the stars to fix his position relative to Joat's
Den, then recalling the first scream, the murdered woman's scream.

There was little doubt in his mind that the raver had killed her before bursting into Joat's: the timing was right, the
raver would have killed anything that crossed his path, and, witless as the madman was, the squatter's quarter was
probably where he'd been living.

By Hamanu's decree, Urik was a square city. Streets were supposed to intersect at squared angles, but the king's
order had broken down in the squatter's quarter. The old streets were blocked with fallen walls, new paths wove
drunkenly through the ruins.

Pavek took his bearings again and reconsidered his whole plan. This wasn't his job. He was a customs guard:
third-rank Regulator in link's third-rate civil bureau, who spent his days making sure no one stole the city's bonded
property without the proper signatures. He wasn't authorized to haul corpses up to the necromancers for interrogation,
and he wasn't authorized to worry about Laq.

But he'd gotten a glimpse into the fire of the raver's mind just as he'd gone flying rump-first into the wall, and he'd
seen the face of a woman torn apart with terror.

Find the woman, find some answers about Laq-that was his entire plan. Urik was all the home he'd ever have, and
he didn't like the thought of its being overrun with ravers, especially mind-bending, magic-resistant ravers. Pavek had
been face-to-face with King Hamanu just once in his life, when he'd gotten his first yellow robe. He'd have sworn there
wasn't anything he feared more than his king, until he watched five templars focus flameblade spells on a
black-tongued raver, without reducing him to ash.

Eventually, Pavek found what he was looking for: human, lying on her back, half in shadow, half in the pale
starlight, one leg tucked demurely beneath the other, her neck so brutally torn and twisted that her face was pressed
against the ground. Pavek moved her gently into the full starlight; his hands trembled as he turned her head back to a
normal angle. The face matched the one the raver had blasted into his memory. The bureau necromancers would be
pleased: a sudden death-alive one heartbeat and dead the next-meant the dead-heart sorcerers would get useful
answers to their questions.

Pavek closed her mouth and eyes, then closed his own, waiting for his nausea to pass before he tried to hoist her
across his shoulder for the long hike back to the civil bureau's headquarters.

A scraping sound emerged from the nearby shadow: a leather sandal grinding on sand and broken bricks, but a
smaller sound than anything full-grown would make. Pavek lunged low and caught himself an armful of human boy
that he dragged into the starlight for closer inspection.

"Leave her alone!" the boy sobbed, pummelling Pavek ineffectively with bis fists.

"I can't. She's been murdered. Questions have to be asked, answered. The man who did it can't help. His mind
was gone before he died."

The boy went limp in the templar's arms as all his strength flowed into wails of anguish. Pavek thought he
understood. He'd never known his father. His mother had done the best she could, buying him a bed in the templarate
orphanage when he was about five years old. He'd hardly seen her after that, but he'd cried when they told him her
crumpled body had been found at the base of the highest wall. There was a lock of her black hair beneath the
leather-wrapped hilt of his metal knife.

But Pavek had forgotten the words for compassion, if he'd ever known them. Ten years in the orphanage,
another ten in the barracks had erased such simple things from his mind. He squeezed the boy against his chest and
thumped him on the head. He thought that was what his mother had done, once or twice, and the boy did grow quiet

"Give me a hand. We'll take her to the civil bureau, then I'll find you a place-"

"The bureau!" Shocked out of his tears, the boy wriggled free. "Who are you?"

"Pavek. Just plain Pavek. Regulator-"

"A templar!"

The boy's fist shot forward, a small hard object striking just below Pavek's groin. He folded inward, barely
staying on his feet as the boy scampered into the shadow. Not far. The footsteps didn't fade; they stopped. Pavek
cursed beneath his breath as he slowly straightened his back and his legs.

"Boy-come back here. Urik's no place for a boy alone."

Pavek knew he was right, but words gasped through clenched teeth lost something of their effectiveness, and
the orphan stayed where he was. When he was confident of his balance, Pavek removed a few ceramic coins from his
belt purse, displaying them in the starlight.

"Look-you'll need these."

The boy didn't take the bait. Well, Pavek reckoned he wouldn't have taken it either, under similar circumstances.
He dribbled the coins into the dirt for the boy to retrieve later, then, with a stab of pain through his midsection and a
loud groan, he hoisted the corpse across his shoulders and headed back the way he'd come.

Hot, sun-filled days came and went. The fist-sized bruise in Pavek's groin faded; so did the memory of who'd
given it to him and why. He filled his memory with scribbling from the archive, not the dreary details of his own life.

Pavek was on morning duty in the vast customhouse, transferring hock-sized sacks of salt from one barrel to
another, ticking off groups of five on a wax tablet as he went. His gut reaction was anger when the adolescent
messenger interrupted him. The girl dropped to her knees. Slender, trembling arms thrust through the plain yellow
sleeves of her robe and stretched across the floor to touch his feet.

"Forgive me, great one."
Pavek was a big man with limbs as thick-muscled as any gladiator's, but not a great one.

Who knew what Sian would say if she could see her only child now? His cronies joked that the only promotion
waiting for him was the one to intimidator, for which he was so, obviously well suited.

Intimidator. Templar of the eighth rank. Not if he lived a thousand years like King Hamanu. He was just plain
Pavek, a third-rank, flash-tempered fool, and he'd never be anything more.

"Get up, girl."

He tried to help her, but she scrabbled away.

"Medea wants you." The messenger hid her arms beneath the long panel at the front of her robe and regarded
Pavek with a stare that was both defiant and defeated.

Pavek threw the three sacks dangling from his left hand into the barrel he was filling. He made a mark in the wax
with his thumbnail and peeked into the barrel he was emptying. Ignoring the girl, he scooped up another handful of
sacks.

"One... Two... Three..." He tossed them as he counted.

"She said 'now'."

"Four. Five. I'm counting, girl. 'Now' happens when I'm done." Another fingernail impression in the wax, another
scoop of salt-sacks.

"I can count for you."

"Yeah-for me and who else? Rokka? Dovanne? Metica herself? I go up there and find she doesn't want to see my
ugly face at all, then I come back here and find there's half a barrel missing-with my mark on the roster. No thanks, girl."
Pavek tossed sacks as he spoke. "I've been down that road before."

"Metica said 'now,' great one, and I'll catch it if you're late. I'll just count, I swear it. I'll swear whatever you want.
Put in a good word for me, great one?"

"Five. Pavek. Just plain Pavek, or Right-Hand Pavek- and if you think my good word will help you with Medea,
you're an even greater fool than me." He clapped the salt dust from his hands and handed her the wax tablet. "If there's
less than two hundred when I get back, I'll come looking for you, girl, and you'll wish you were never born."

She pushed back stringy locks of dull, brown hair, revealing a blood-crusted gouge along her hairline. "Gotta do
better than that, Pavek, if you want to intimidate me."

The salt-room had only a grease-lamp for light. It was hard to tell whether she was full-human or half-elf. Pavek
guessed half-elf. Whatever attraction drew elves and humans together, it didn't usually extend to their children. He'd
never met a half-elf who wasn't outcast by its mother and father's kin alike. They were all orphans, and they scrambled
for whatever crumbs of patronage they could get, just like him.

"Right," he said, rolling down his yellow sleeves, uncovering a slim collection of crimson and orange threads.
"Two hundred, and seal the barrel when you're done."

"I could wait for you...."

"Don't bother."

Pavek left with the sound of laughter ringing in his ears. Maybe she would wait. Tomorrow was Todek's Day, so
named for the largest of the outlying villages, which, according to the ten-day rotation that was as old as Urik itself,
was scheduled to bring its produce into the city market.

More importantly, tomorrow was the one day in ten that he could claim for himself. He usually spent his free time
in the archives, copying and memorizing spellcraft, but there were other ways to pass the time. She was only a
messenger; he was a regulator. He couldn't put in a useful good word for her with Metica, but he could buy her a free
day. A day with him.

Striding along the crowded streets between the custom-house and the stone-fronted civil bureau where Metica
had her office, Pavek weighed the possibilities several times. Any-thing to distract him from thinking about the
reasons his taskmaster want to see him.

If she did want to see him. The old adage about not trusting strangers held true in the bureaus. He didn't know
the messenger.

Pavek paused at the bottom of the broad stairway leading to the administrators' chambers, mopping the sweat
from his brow and shaking the dust from his robe, then started climbing.

A man got tired in the templarate. Pavek guessed he was about twenty-five years old, but he'd already
accumulated a lifetime of tired. For once he thought of Metica not as a familiar adversary, but as a gray-haired half-elf,
and wondered how she had survived-how anyone survived long enough to grow old. His life wasn't a choice between
the half-elf girl and a day in the archives, it was a choice between any tomorrow and no tomorrow at all. Sometimes he
wondered why he hadn't Mowed his mother's example, except that when templars cracked-and one did from time to
time-they didn't do it quietly or alone.

All at once and without warning, his thoughts were back in Joat's Place, watching the raver suffocate, and in the
squatters' quarter, looking down at a woman with a broken neck. He swallowed the thoughts and kept climbing.

"Sit," Metica said when his shadow touched the door-less threshold of her chamber.
Her back was to the door. A hot afternoon wind blowing through the open window in front of her lifted tendrils
of her dull, gray hair. Pavek thought he'd been quiet coming up the stairs; he guessed he'd been wrong.

Surely Metica was after his hide.

"Our Mighty King's personal necromancer extends her thanks," Metica began, fixing Pavek with a chilling smile.

"The king's-?" he stammered: "I'm grateful, great one." "The corpse, Regulator! The broke-neck corpse you
found three nights' past."

"I brought her here, to the civil bureau. It was street crime, our crime. I even marked the roster-"

"Well, she wound up at the palace and-thanks to your mark in the roster-that black-hearted dead-speaker knew
enough to send her pleasure to me."

Metica was after his hide, his life, and his eternal essence. The only thing that might appease her was a rounded
heap of gold and silver coins, mostly gold. Pavek felt rich when he had a heap of ceramic bits.

"Thought you might like to know what she said."

Pavek lifted his head in time to see the folded parchment Metica scaled his way, but not in time to catch it. He
fished it off the floor without letting his eyes drift away from the half-elf's face. Damned if she wasn't pleased about
something.

He opened the parchment, scanned the script. The necromancer had gotten the woman's name, her man's, and
the name of their son, Zvain, which Pavek immediately associated with the boy who'd gotten away after punching him
in the groin. The report confirmed that she'd been murdered by her man and that he'd been raving mad when the crime
was committed. Nothing more.

It was hard to believe Metica was pleased; Pavek certainly wasn't when he returned the parchment to her
worktable.

"There should've been more," he grumbled, risking Metica's good humor.

"There was," she confirmed. "What you gave the palace was better than gold. Not that the necromancer told me,
mind you. But she was happy, no doubt of that."

With a steady expression of disinterest fixed on his face, Pavek wondered how many lies Metica had just told
him, and whether he dared ask her what was better than gold. "I did my duty, great one. Nothing more," he said with
lowered eyes and excruciating deference.

"In your dreams, Regulator, in your bloody dreams. I don't want to know why you hauled that corpse up here. I
truly don't. You were lucky, not smart, Pavek-"

He looked up again. Last time Metica called him by his name he was only sixteen. She said he'd scored well on
his bureau exams, said he had rare talent. Then she said she was almost sorry he was dirt-poor and without patrons.

You'd rise with gold and connections, Pavek. As it is, you'll stay right here for as long as I want to keep you.
"I don't want you pushing luck again," the half-elf continued. "You hear me? You stay smart and keep your

rock-head down in the gutter where it belongs."

"Yes, great one. I don't know what got into me."

Metica settled into a sturdy chair. She shuffled scrolls, tablets and marking pens. "I heard there was scarcely a
mark on him-except for that black tongue. Believe that, if you want. But the black tongue was what they called
important, Regulator Pavek: a thread toward Laq. You stay clear of it now, if you're smart. You don't want to be near
that thread when it gets pulled. You understand?"

"Yes, great one," he replied with absolute sincerity. But it had worked-his simple plan had worked! The days of
mind-bending, magic-resisting ravers were numbered in Urik. That was all he'd wanted. It never paid to think too much
about the middle when the ends were clear. "As far away as I can get," he assured his taskmaster, then started to
stand.

"You can do something for me, Regulator, since you're so good at tracking things into shadows."

Pavek's heart sank and so did his body. He barely caught himself before he broke the flimsy tripod. "Anything,
great one."

"We've had complaints," Metica let that unprecedented notion hang between them. "Complaints about the Ral's
Breath powder our licensed apothecaries are selling. Seems it's not doing the job it's meant to do."

Pavek shrugged, and nearly lost his balance. "What job? Ral's Breath doesn't do anything. Tell a sick man he's
getting better long enough and either you're right or he's dead." ... though he'd bought a few of the yellow powder
packets himself. Work in the customhouse was usually more strenuous than tossing salt sacks, and Ral's Breath was
cheap enough even he could afford it. "Stuff tastes awful until it numbs your mouth. Then you're so busy trying not to
bite your tongue, you forget what else hurts."

"Well, apparently it doesn't taste as bad as it's supposed to and the rabble isn't forgetting, they're complaining.
Our great and mighty king tolerates the sale of Ral's Breath because it's lucrative and because, unlike just about
anything else that could be ground up and sold, the seeds it's made from can't be used to make anything else-anything

veiled"

She alluded to the Veiled Alliance, a loose-knit association of magic-users that was banned in Urik and
everywhere else in the Tablelands.

Templars got the thrust for their spells directly from their sorcerer-king. Templar spells, Pavek knew from his
archive research, belonged to the broad tradition of what the archive scrolls called clerical or priestly spellcraft.

And, as Metica had pointed out, since the outlawed Alliance magicians could wreak spells with just about
anything, any substance that was useless to them was noteworthy. Small wonder, then, that King Hamanu allowed
Ral's Breath to be sold for city profit. Except

"If these seeds are so useless, how can anyone truly tell if the Ral's Breath has been overcut?"

"Useless to the Veil, Regulator, but as you said, the zarneeka seeds have a distinctive taste and numbing texture.
Someone's shrinking the amount of zarneeka that goes into every packet of Ral's Breath. You'll find out who, and why,
and then you'll tell me. As a favor to me... for my inconvenience dealing with the dead-heart. Simple?"

The sinews holding the tripod together creaked protest as all the implications of Medea's "favor" sifted down
through Pavek's thoughts. Harmless, practically useless Ral's Breath was a city commodity, stored in the customhouse
and sold to the licensed apothecaries who resold it in their shops. If, the bitter, numbing ingredient in Ral's Breath was
zarneeka-a word Pavek had never heard before-then zarneeka was also a city commodity, stored in the selfsame
customhouse. Either the suppliers who sold zarneeka were shorting the city or the templars who made up the Ral's
Breath packets were pilfering yellow powder. Pavek had his suspicions between the two possibilities-and his hopes.

"Where do we get zarneeka, great one?"

"Itinerants trade it directly for salt and oils."

Pavek couldn't resist a frown: itinerants weren't merchants who paid city taxes and spelled out their names with
trade tokens (and probably knew city-script, just as every civil templar knew the token code). Itinerants didn't even live
in market villages where their lives were lived under constant observation. Itinerants dwelt beyond civilization, deep in
the wastelands, in places that had no names. They were dirt-poor and as free as a man or woman could be.

Direct trade meant no coins changed hands when the itinerants exchanged their seeds for the other commodities,
and that meant procurers from the civil bureau handled the whole transaction. There were at least twenty procurers
working Urik's customhouse, but when Metica wouldn't meet his eyes, Pavek knew which one handled the zarneeka
trade: the dwarf, Rokka.

If Rokka's dwarven focus-that innate need dwarves had to organize their lives around a single purpose-wasn't
greed for gold, it was only because Rokka'd found something more valuable.

But zarneeka? Seeds that turned a man's tongue into a useless lump? Seeds that King Hamanu himself certified
were useless?

Not if gold-hungry Rokka was involved.

Had Pavek been anywhere but Metica's chamber, he would have spat the evil thought into the nearest hearth.

Instead he recited an old street rhyme as casually as he could. "Itinerants: 'Come today and gone away. Come
again? Who knows when?'"

"They registered last night at Modekan."