The Dragon Round (35 page)

The guard told Chelson's men that when he patrolled uphill, he didn't see the barrowman, but he admitted he wasn't looking very hard. He wished he could've spoken to the couple with such impudence.

Hanosh has no end of freelancers in every trade, however despicable, which leaves Chelson's guards with the unenviable task of looking into them. To speak with the person who can probably tell them where to start, they repair to an after-hours in Workers called the Salty Dog.

The tunnel entrance extends so far into the Hill that the Dog is rumored to have a door directly into Gate's dungeons so prisoners can come out for a glass. And the ceilings are so low that some patrons flee the place, too strongly reminded of their time on the benches. Smoke collects between the beams, letting the meanest men stand to get a snort they couldn't otherwise afford.

Holestar, the man with the half-red eye, spins his pint between his hands. Skite of the Crooked Nose works on his second. The third man, Derc, who has no distinguishing features beyond his size, considers a man at the bar.

The man, a tanner by his reek, says to a corner full of cronies, “We found out where he stored his cart and waited for him. The Aydeni walks right up to us, like we're customers. Hah! First we let him watch us smash his cart, then we smashed him with the pieces. I never knew a wheel could do so much wrong to a man's face.”

The men laugh. The tanner says, “One more round, then we'll get back to drafting folks for the morning.” Ayes are said. Beers are brought.

Derc says, “You volunteering, Strig?”

“When Ayden gets here, I'll volunteer,” he says. “In the meantime, we'll give a slap to anyone who doesn't want anyone volunteering. General orders, as it were.”

Derc says, “So you'd rather fight Hanoshi than for Hanosh?”

“They aren't Hanoshi,” Strig says. “And anyone fighting for Hanosh is just fighting for some company. Useless drones.”

Derc says, “I fought, and I'll fight again. Hundreds will. Good men.” He stands up. “Am I a fool? Are they?”

Strig looks at his cronies, and reluctantly stands. His cronies don't. Holestar hisses sharply. Derc sits down.

Strig says, “That all he has to do to pull your leash?”

All talk ceases. The smoke stands still.

“I'm going to make you a bet,” Holestar says. He takes a silver coin out of his pocket and holds it up. “This whole coin says you can't beat me senseless.”

Strig says, “I don't have a whole coin.”

“What do you have?”

The tanner fumbles in his pockets. He finds ten pennies. “Half.” He drops several pennies, which other patrons corral and return, a fair price for their amusement.

Holestar says, “That'll do.” He puts the silver between his teeth and gnashes the coin in half. He drops one shard on the barrel he's drinking around and pockets the other. “Now, you could concede our bet, pay me my ten pennies, and leave, or we can play this out.”

Strig hesitates. A broken old tar in the corner fondles a shark's tooth and says, “I'll bet a penny he pisses himself before he can answer.”

Strig rubs the pennies off his sweaty palm onto the plank and runs from the Dog. His cronies follow sheepishly. Holestar gives the pennies to the tapman, who raises one in appreciation.

A woman comes in. Her face has the skin of a much larger face. The veins ridging her arms and hands are almost as thick as her bones. She says to the tapman so everyone can hear, “What's the story of that guy who left? I swear he pissed himself just looking at me.” The after-hours patrons laugh. “Fakkin Tawmy,” one says, shaking his head.

She grabs a pint, spots Holestar's crew, and comes over. “Need some help,” Holestar says. He pushes the half coin to her with his cup.

“So generous,” Fakkin Tawmy says, pocketing the shard. “Must be company business. No receipt, of course.”

Holestar says, “I need a barrow: black, deep, two-wheeled, probably wood, possibly used for night soil, possibly not by someone formally associated with that trade. Who would I want to find?”

“You interested in the barrow or the man?”

“The barrow, to start.”

“I can think of a dozen barrows like that. One stands out. It was stolen this afternoon in Servants, and found not long ago.”

“Where?” Holestar says.

“Alley in the Upper City. Near the tower.”

“Where is it now?”

“Back with its owner.”

“Know who stole it?”

“No,” Fakkin Tawmy says. “And it was empty when it was found. Someone probably needed to move something uphill and didn't want to pay a carter.”

“Something, yes,” Holestar says. He drains his beer. “So who's the lucky owner?”

A quarter hour later the crew
watches a woman scramble out of a cesspit. She spits filth off her lips and points to a barrow, which is half-full. Holestar points at Derc.

Derc says, “Why me?”

“For spouting off in the Dog,” Holestar says.

Derc takes a deep breath and squats beside the barrow with a candle. He runs his finger along the top strake. Nothing. He scratches at the residue there. He holds his palm to the light. Flakes of dried blood.

“Tell me,” Holestar says to the woman, “exactly where the barrow was found.”

Standing in the mouth of a
pitch-black alley, the tower looming above them at its far end, Chelson's guards consider where the barrowman
might have gone. The lamplit street has a dozen shops that service the tower, all closed, as are the offices of petty merchants above them. The city gates don't open for another two hours, so the shops won't open until then at the earliest.

“Not a bad place to dump a body,” Skite says. “Quiet.”

“I'd carry her off in the canvas,” Derc says. “Like the rug that time.”

“He could have put her in another barrow,” Skite says, “or a carriage. She could be out of the city.”

“We can't be sure she's dead,” Holestar says.

“She's dead,” Skite says. “No ransom note.” They'd stopped at Chelson's house on the way uphill to check. “Why keep her alive? And if a company took her, would they really bring her to the tower?”

Derc says, “Maybe they want Chelson to worry all night, then speak with him right before Council when he's exhausted.”

“They should be the ones worrying,” Holestar says. He surveys the street and alley. “How far could he have carried her body?”

Two tower guards in their blue leather caps come around the end of the block, footfalls echoing, their shadows splattered by the streetlamps. “You three,” one says. “Step out of the alley.” Holestar slaps Derc's arm, which has been catching the light.

Chelson's men oblige. “What's your business?” the other guard says.

“None of yours,” Holestar says. He produces a Shield badge.

The first guard says, “Not the best badge to have come morning.”

“Why's that?” Holestar asks.

“Word's spreading that a war would be paid for by all our monthlies.”

“Owners excluded, of course,” the second says, “on account of all they do for us already with their owning.”

“Who's spreading this word? Besides yourselves?”

“Talk to the people in front of the tower,” the first guard says. “Give you a place to move along to.”

“We'll move when we move,” Holestar says.

“You'll move along now,” the first guard says. He sits his hand on his pommel.

“The army could use two stalwart boys like yourself,” Holestar says. “Shall I spread the word you're interested? Or would you like to keep patrolling empty streets far from any front?

“You have a nice night,” the second guard says. They move along.

“Let's check this alley,” Holestar says. “Give me a candle.”

With flint and steel Skite sparks a piece of char cloth, with which he lights a spunk and, in turn, three candles. He passes them around and repacks his battered little tinderbox.

The alley is wagon-wide and separates two buildings whose side doors are locked. One, the dormitory for tower staff, has a fenced-in yard with a locked gate. It's shut too tightly for someone to squeeze himself or a body through, and the fence is too high to pitch a body over.

The alley opens onto a yard that wraps around a back quarter of the tower. Its windows are dark too. The crew doesn't need to be told to keep quiet as they approach the tower's service door: broad, double, made of thick wood, and standing atop a brick loading dock. It's locked. Holestar gently rattles the latch in frustration. “Who is this guy?” he says. “What's his game? Where did he go?”

Derc, seeing a glint in the candlelight, taps the side of the loading dock with his dirk. Metal. Holestar holds his candle down. Set into the side of the stoop is an iron grate painted black. A fresh scrape on the cobbles indicates it's been opened recently. Derc tests the rivets holding it in place. One falls off in his hand.

“Must be an old way to move stuff straight into the basement,” Derc says. “Big enough for a man.”

“A little man,” Skite says.

“You have the honors, Derc,” Holestar says.

Derc grumbles. He's hardly little compared to most men.

“Go,” Holestar says. “We have maybe an hour and a half until
dawn, two until we have to escort Herse to Council. Be nice to grab some sleep first.” He wishes Chelson would let them use powder.

4

An hour before dawn and riding a double high tide, a Shield galley called
Blue Belong
approaches Hanosh at double-time and under full sail. A dinghy with a customs official named Mags, a scrivener, and three sea guards is rowed out to meet them just beyond the gibbets. The galley lowers her sail and draws in her oars. The official declares himself and requests permission to come aboard. The captain, Sivarts, grants it, the dinghy ties on, and the party climbs aboard. The two rowers, employed in one of the last positions available to guild members, stay with the dinghy.

Sivarts has never given Mags problems before, and his paperwork is always neat and accurate, so Mags's little visits are usually quick and uncomplicated. In the cant of his profession, they are enjoyable.

Sivarts presents his manifest. As he examines it, the scrivener looks over his arm to calculate the harbor fees. Mags hands it to him, then he takes some records from the satchel the scrivener wears on his back. He compares them to the manifest. Mags says, “Your load looks light compared to previous ones. And you're three days early.”

“Our enterprise wasn't paying out,” Sivarts says. “No sense in staying in Yness.” He knows questions like these are within Mags's purview, but it's always felt like prying to him. Fortunately the Shield's informants say Mags isn't an informant for their competitors.

“Why the rush?”

“Time. Tide.”

Mags checks the crew roster again and digs out more records. He says, “Why do you have three cabin boys? On your previous voyage you had two. I thought that was the standard Shield complement now.”

Sivarts says, “One fell ill in Yness. We took on a new boy to handle his duties.”

“Ynessi?”

“No, Hanoshi,” Sivarts says. “And a Shield boy. He'd been left behind by an earlier ship. Got a long-deserved whipping for tardiness.”

“You're lacking two rowers.”

“Powder burn.”

“That why you took on a healer?”

“Yes,” Sivarts says. “My rowers' boy has a heavy hand. That's why he took ill, too.” Sivarts shakes his head. “Shame to lash someone so sick. He really couldn't appreciate it.”

“This healer a Shield orphan too?”

“No,” Sivarts says, “but she's Hanoshi. Traded her craft for passage home.”

“Good,” Mags says. “Let's take a look at your cargo.”

“Is anything out of order?”

“Not that I can see,” Mags says, glancing at the paperwork. “But, security's been tightened. We could be at war with Ayden in a few hours.”

“War? What's changed in the last week?”

“Time. Tide,” Mags says. He turns to a guard. “You come with us.”

“You realize this is a Shield galley?”

“Entirely, Captain.”

Sivarts smiles with clenched teeth. So that's the way of it. They need better informants. “Let's go below.” He ushers the agent and reduced party forward.

The search is perfunctory, Mags's point made. In twenty minutes the dinghy is leading the galley to the pier, where the cranes go to work immediately. Once Mags has moved off, a wagon is brought up. Two sailors carry a stretcher out of a stern cabin. On it an unconscious figure is wrapped to the chin in clean white sheets. What's visible of her face is badly burned.

The new cabin boy, Rowan, walks with the stretcher to the wagon. He helps load her, then climbs aboard himself.

Sivarts says, “They'll take her to the Castle. You'll come with me to see an owner.”

“She'll be taken care of?” Rowan says.

“Yes.”

The boy squeezes Everlyn's hand and climbs out of the wagon. He and the captain walk uphill.

The wagon rumbles through the Harbor, nearly overwhelming the screeching that comes across the sky. The poth stirs, but can't sit up. The straps beneath the sheets are too tight.

Before the lowest gates of the
West Crest a crowd of workers has gathered. A few are half-drunk from earlier that evening. Most are sober and well behaved. No one says anything as Sivarts passes through them, but they barely part, forcing him to rub his pristine silk against their dingy leathers and sagging cottons. Rowan nods at them, but their faces don't unscowl.

Sivarts says to a Crest guard corporal, “Who's let these people gather?”

“That's Quiet's business,” he says. “Ours ends at the gates.”