The Lawkeeper of Samara (The Fourth Age of Shanakan Book 2) (17 page)

Dawn brought no relief. There had been no sign of Talis since the night before. The last of the lawkeepers to see her had been Gadilari, and they had separated just down the street from the law house, each to go their own way after work. Arla sent Gilan and his underlings down to the docks to find a ship, and was glad to have them gone. At least some of her friends would be safe.

After that she sent them all out to look for Talis, all but Ulric, who sent runners to his various contacts throughout the city on the same quest.

It was one of Ulric’s people who found her.

She must have gone somewhere on her way home, to eat or to meet someone, because she was not close to a direct route.

She was dead, of course.

Some of Ulric’s agents, an old man and a boy with a donkey cart, brought her back to the law house on a wagon. Arla was angry, though she couldn’t have said if she was angry about Talis’s death or about the fact that they had moved the body, or both. She’d wanted to see where it lay. Whatever it was that enraged her, she took it out on Ulric’s people.

“Idiots,” she berated them. “I wanted to see where the body lay – how it lay. We could have learned something.”

They looked frightened. Ulric stepped up beside her and spoke in a quiet voice.

“They’re not lawkeepers,” he said. “They knew no better.”

Arla stopped. In the wagon she could see the outline of a shoulder, a stray lock of yellow hair, but she didn’t want to see more. She had liked Talis. Talis had been hers, one of her own. She turned and walked back into the law house, resisting the powerful urge to slam the door behind her.

She walked through to her office and sat down behind the desk, her face in her hands. It was different from being a guard. In the guard you expected to lose people, friends, mentors, captains, especially after Borbonil began his ill fated campaign against Gerique. But lawkeeping wasn’t like that, fighting and killing was not their trade, and Arla had not steeled herself against this possibility.

This was war, she reminded herself. Others would die. Perhaps she herself would fall and it would be up to another to lead the fight.

“Arla?”

She looked up. It was the fat man, his desk abandoned.

“What?”

“The others are waiting for you, for their orders.”

She did not feel like giving orders, but then she supposed such was often the case for commanders in poor circumstances. She had lost Talis, Hekman was incapacitated, and they still did not know the names of their adversaries. But duty was duty. At least Hekman had killed one of them.

“I will come in a moment,” she said.

Ulric withdrew. Arla looked down at the wood of her bare desk. It was not a new piece of furniture. Its surface was scarred and smoothed by time. She ran her hand across its imperfect veneer. Somehow this piece of old wood that had seen so much was a comfort to her. She rubbed it once more, making a talisman of it. It was hard and durable – persistent. She stood and went to the big room.

They were all waiting for her, and looking at their faces she could see that they all felt the loss. It would have been good to have the chief here. Hekman’s solid presence would have calmed them, but Arla would have to do.

“Talis was one of ours,” she said. “One of us. There will be payment for that. But we have to be clear headed. We have to follow every trail, step by step. They will have made a mistake, and we are going to find it, and that will lead us to them.”

She gave them their orders, and she was surprised that she barely had to think. Each task sprang unbidden to mind and she chose the lawkeepers. Some were to seek the smith, others to search the area where Talis had died, and still others to seek hostelries and see if the man who had worn the lily blade had used his false name elsewhere in the city.

Arla had selected a task for herself – a personal one. She had wounded one of the men that had attacked her the night before, and he had bled. It had been a dry night, and with a little luck the blood would still be there. With a little more luck she could follow the trail the wounded man must have left.

She was tempted to take Gadilari with her. He was nominally all that she had left, but he would serve her better searching for the smith. Arla chose one of the newer recruits, a man called Nattis, to be her sword.

They walked down to the waterfront through streets busy with morning traffic. Arla knew that they were not safe, even in daylight, even in crowds, but they were safer than at night when all manner of evil deeds might be committed away from the light. They came to the Sea of Gold, all closed up in the dawn, and Arla went at once to the place where she had shot at the assassin the night before.

Blood. It was almost black with the passage of time, but the mark she had seen by lamplight was still there. She knelt by it and looked up the alley. In daylight it was just an alley, narrow and cobbled like so many others in the old town.

“Keep your eyes ahead,” she told Nattis. “There may be danger that I do not see while my eyes are down.”

“Aye, Chief.”

Arla was taken aback for a moment. Chief was what they called Hekman, but she didn’t correct him. It was unimportant. She edged forwards, scanning the ground. Sure enough, here was another mark, a black splash on a cobble, and not a trivial amount by the look of it. Her arrow had found a vital target.

“Chief?”

She looked up.

“An arrow,” Nattis said, pointing. It was one of Arla’s. She picked it up, but there was no blood on it, so it must have been the first arrow she’d shot. A clean miss.

She went back to the trail and followed it down the alley, around two corners and still the amount of blood had not diminished. She’d seen men bleed like that, and if this one had been a natural man she’d be looking for a corpse, but she knew better.

They emerged from the alley onto one of the roads that ran down to the strand. Now the task would become more difficult. It was still early, but already several hundred pairs of feet had stamped and scuffed down this road. There was no continuation of the lane of the other side of the road, so Arla looked uphill first. Passing traders and citizens gave her curious looks as she walked up and down, to and fro with her head bent over the cobbles with bow in hand and Nattis circling her like a nervous dog.

She found nothing up the hill.

When she went the other way she found the trail almost at once. A dark splash of blood had seeped down between two cobblestones where it was protected from passing feet. She stood and looked ahead. She could see the sea, the docks and the tall masts of ships. What if he had boarded one? What if he had already fled the city?

She followed the trail. The man must have been moving at a steady pace because the blood marks appeared at regular intervals between the cobbles, and in no time at all she was stepping off the strand onto one of the wooden jetties.  The last mark lay on the wood before her, and just beyond it was the hull of a ship, a gangplank. She looked up and examined it – a small trader, single masted, and a sailor standing on the deck looking down at her.

“What ship is this?” she asked.

“The Willow Heart,” the sailor replied. “Fresh out of Darna, cargo of Darnese cotton.”

“A man came aboard late last night,” Arla told him. “It would have been before the middle of the night, an hour or two perhaps.”

“Indeed he did not,” the sailor said.

Arla looked down at the bloodstain on the jetty. There was no doubt that the trail ended here. “There’s no point in lying,” she said. “The evidence is clear.”

“Clear it may be, but unless your man was a powerful swimmer he couldn’t have come aboard. We’ve been at sea nine days. Just docked half an hour gone. Even now we’re waiting for the wagons to unload us, and look, here they come.” He pointed, and sure enough a small procession of wagons was easing down the strand.

The implication was clear enough. Arla cursed. There had been another ship, and now it had gone.

“What ship was here?” she asked.

The sailor shrugged. “How would I know that?”

Stupid. How
could
he know? She turned around. There was a ship at the next jetty in the midst of loading, men swarmed the deck.

“On the ship there!” she called across. One of the sailors heard her and leaned on the rail.

“Couldn’t resist, eh?” he called, grinning. For a moment Arla was confused, but then she recognised him. He was the seafarer from the night before, the one who had lamented her lonely bed, whose calling out had probably saved her life.

“What ship was here last night?” she asked, pointing at the Willow Heart.

“Lost another man, have you?” he asked, still grinning.

“The man that tried to kill me,” she shouted. “Last night. He was on the ship that was here.”

The grin vanished. “You’re certain?”

“His blood led us here.”

“Well, you’ll not catch him now,” the sailor said. “That was the Red Fox, bound for Pek. She’s a quick ship. There’s not another here could catch her, even if the captain was willing.”

Arla turned and looked out to sea. There was nothing there, just the corrugated endless water, bathed in a deceiving sunlight.

Gilan.

Ulric sat and waited. Patience was one of his many skills, and one that he believed was greatly underrated by most. He sat in a law house that was almost empty – just two men had been left behind to provide it with some notion of security, and they lounged on the seats in the front room, close to the front door. Ulric had insisted that they lock the rear door until the death man arrived to take care of Talis.

Ulric didn’t mind waiting. He did not harbour the illusion of inactivity. Instead he saw himself as a hub around which a sea of frantic activity revolved. There were lawkeepers all over the city, busy with their tasks, and his own agents were ferreting out certain matters that he thought might help, and here he sat at the centre of the web, waiting. All of them would come back here and report to him.

Hekman understood. The chief would not be rushing around the city trying to set the world to rights himself, he would be here, with Ulric, waiting. But Hekman was indisposed, and Arla had yet to master her new role.

Time passed. The cook that Ulric had hired brought through three cups of jaro and a bowl of snacks – larger than usual because this morning Ulric would have to share it – and he tucked in, savouring each bite. This morning the cook had used the thin sausages they made in Blaye and cut them up, wrapping them in bacon and pouring melted cheese over the top.

Ulric wiped his fingers on a cloth that he kept behind the desk for the purpose. He looked at the door. Still nothing. He did not try to guess who would come back first or what news they would bring. That would be pointless. He simply rotated the groups that had been sent out and their tasks through his mind to keep them fresh.

Bandisan was first back. He was one of Ulric’s, and Ulric had sent him to speak to the weapons dealer Zumaran, to see if there was any more information to be gleaned. Ulric liked to squeeze every source as dry as he could, and Bandisan, who stood well over six feet and was barely able to fit though most doors, was good at squeezing.

Ulric could tell by the expression on his agent’s face that all had not gone well.

“He’s dead,” the big man reported. “Stabbed to death.”

Ulric raised a questioning eyebrow.

“Not me,” Bandisan protested. “He was dead when I got there.”

“And?”

“Nothing. The place was tidy. No sign of a fight. The door was even locked.”

Ulric nodded. That was bad news. Worse still it was disturbing. How did they know Gilan had talked to Zumaran? And why would they kill the man unless he knew a lot more than he’d told Gilan? His only thought was that they were tidying up loose ends. Even so, Zumaran must have known something important to be killed so promptly, and they must have been watching his house.

He sent Bandisan on his way and made a note of their conversation. He would send lawkeepers to Zumaran’s house as soon as some were available. For now it was back to waiting.

He was tempted to ask for more food. Ulric did not drink alcohol because it clouded his mind, and a man with as much delicate knowledge as Ulric could not afford to have a loose tongue. He had been collecting secrets for years, and each one was a little lever with which he prised small favours out of those who might be embarrassed by their exposure. He did not think of it as blackmail – he never asked for money – but men like Bandisan were only too happy to render the occasional small service on the understanding that their indiscretions would remain secret. Others were men and women for whom he had performed some small service in the past – a recommendation that had secured a job, a tip as to what might be a good item to trade, a small loan to see someone through hard times. To Ulric it was all investment. Now he was reaping the rewards.

But he came back to food. It preyed on his mind. He was not immune to boredom and food was his preferred distraction. Other men drank or wandered from their duty, but Ulric ate. He ate a lot.

His mind now turned to potato skins, grilled and flavoured with Pekkan spices and dollopped with a cream and onion sauce. The cook left just enough flesh on them to make them a satisfying mouthful.

Gadilari’s arrival brought him back.

“News?”

“I found the smith,” he said. “Or so I believe.”

“But?” The lawkeeper’s face told Ulric that all was not well.

“Dead.”

Another? “How do you know it was the right smith?”

“There were some working sketches, drawings of the cage, still nailed up.”

“Really?” It seemed quite unlikely that the killer would have permitted that, seeing what purpose the cage served. But Ulric supposed that the killer would never have expected the cage to be found, or its purpose discerned. It would need to be checked again. It was possible that they had killed a convenient smith and stuck the sketches up themselves to misdirect.

“Plain as day,” Gadilari said. He pulled a sheet of parchment out from under his tunic and laid it on the table. It was exactly what he had said it was: a sketch of the cage that the chief had found in the river mud.

He was barely through examining the sketch when Arla came through the door. Ulric could see at once that she was angry.

“Report,” she said.

“Not good,” Ulric said. “Zumaran’s turned up dead and Gadilari found our smith in the same state.”

She looked at Gadilari. He shrugged. “Stabbed,” he said.

She looked around the room. “Not all back yet?” she asked.

“The ones you sent to see where Talis died,” Ulric said. “They’re still out, and the others checking names – but they’ll be out all day unless they find something.”

“The way this is going they’ll find nothing but corpses,” Arla said.

“Well,” Ulric said. “Let’s hope Gilan has better luck in Pek.”

Arla threw him a black look. “If he gets there,” she said.

Ella Saine stepped through the law house door, and at once the impromptu meeting broke up. Ella looked at Arla.

“I need to speak to you now,” she said. “In private.”

Ulric knew at once that it had to do with the chief, and that something was wrong, but he had to stay at his desk. He was the face of the law, the part that always looked out at the world, but he would discover what had transpired later. Even if Arla did not choose to tell him he had ears and eyes all over the city, and they would bring him the news.