A Darkness at Sethanon (6 page)

Gardan sent the
man off with a shove. “Tell him to find us.”

As they hurried
along, Gardan gathered nearly a dozen soldiers to him. When Arutha
reached the door to his quarters, he hesitated a moment, as if
fearful to open the door.

Pushing open the
door, he discovered Anita sitting next to the cribs wherein their
sons slept. She looked up and at once an expression of alarm crossed
her features. Coming to her husband, she said, “What is it?”

Arutha closed
the door behind him, motioning for Carline and the others to wait
without. “Nothing, yet.” He paused a moment. “I
want you to take the babies and visit your mother.”

Anita said, “She
would welcome that,” but her tone left no doubt she understood
there was more here than she was being told. “Her illness is
past, though she still doesn’t feel up to travel. It will be a
treat for her.” Then she fixed Arutha with a questioning look.
“And we shall be more easily protected in her small estate than
here.”

Arutha knew
better than to attempt to hide anything from Anita. “Yes. We
again have Nighthawks to worry about.”

Anita came to
her husband and rested her head against his chest. The last
assassination attempt had nearly cost her life. “I have no fear
for myself, but the babies . . .”

“You leave
tomorrow.”

“I’ll
make ready.”

Arutha kissed
her and moved toward the door. “I’ll return shortly.
Jimmy advises I keep in quarters until the palace is free of
strangers. Good advice, but I must remain on public view a while
longer. The Nighthawks think us ignorant of their return. We cannot
let them think otherwise, yet.”

Finding humour
amid the terror, Anita said, “Jimmy still seeks to be First
Adviser to the Prince?”

Arutha smiled at
that. “He’s not spoken of being named Duke of Krondor for
nearly a year. Sometimes I think he’d be better suited than
many others likely to come to that office.”

Arutha opened
the door and found Gardan, Jimmy, Laurie, and Carline waiting. Others
had been moved away by a company of the Royal Household Guard. Next
to Gardan, Captain Valdis waited. Arutha told him, “I want a
full company of lancers ready to ride in the morning, Captain. The
Princess and the Princes will be travelling to the Princess Mother’s
estates. Guard them well.”

Captain Valdis
saluted and turned to issue orders. To Gardan, Arutha said, “Begin
to slowly place men back at post throughout the palace and have every
possible hiding place searched. Should any inquire, say Her Highness
is feeling poorly and I am staying with her for a while. I’ll
return to the great hall shortly.” Gardan nodded and left. Then
Arutha added to Jimmy, “I have an errand for you.”

Jimmy said,
“I’ll leave at once.”

Arutha said,
“What do you think you’re going to do?”

“Go to the
docks,” said the boy with a grim smile.

Arutha nodded,
again both pleased and surprised at the boy’s grasp of things.
“Yes. If you must, search all night. But as soon as you can,
find Trevor Hull and bring him here.”

J
immy
searched the room.

The Fiddler Crab
Inn was a haunt of many who wished a safe harbour from questions and
prying eyes. As the sun began to set the room was crowded with
locals, so Jimmy was at once the source of curiosity, for his
clothing marked him out of place. A few native to the city knew him
by sight - after the Poor Quarter, the docks had been a second home
to him - but no small number of those in the inn marked him as a rich
boy out on the evening, perhaps one with some gold to be shaken
loose.

One such man, a
sailor by the look of him, drunken and belligerent, barred Jimmy’s
passage through the room. “Here and now, such a fine young
gentleman as yourself 11 be having a spare coin or two to buy a drink
in celebration of the little Princes, wouldn’t you think?”
He rested his hand upon his belt dagger.

Jimmy adroitly
sidestepped the man and was half past him, saying, “No, I
wouldn’t.” The man reached for Jimmy’s shoulder and
tried to halt him. Jimmy came around in a fluid movement, and the man
found the point of a dirk levelled at his throat. “I said I
don’t have any extra gold.”

The man backed
away, and several onlookers laughed. But others began to circle the
squire. Jimmy knew at once he had made an error. He’d had no
time to scrounge up clothing to fit his present environment, but he
could have made a show of turning over a half-empty purse to the man.
Still, once begun, such a confrontation could not be aborted. A
moment before, Jimmy’s purse had been at risk, now it was his
life.

Jimmy backed up,
seeking to place his back to a wall. His expression was hard and
revealed no hint of fear, and a few who surrounded him suddenly
understood that here was someone who knew his way about the docks.
Softly he said, “I’m looking for Trevor Hull.”

At once the men
stopped advancing upon the boy. One turned and indicated with his
head a back door.

Jimmy hurried
toward it and pulled aside the hanging cloth cover.

A group of men
sat gambling in a large, smoke-filled room. From the pile of betting
markers on the table, it was for high stakes. The game was lin-lan,
common to the southern Kingdom and northern Kesh. A colourful display
of cards was unfolded and players bet and dealt in turn, determining
odds and payoffs by which cards were turned. Among the gamblers were
two men, one with a scar from forehead to chin, running through a
milk-white right eye, and the other a bald, pock-faced man.

Aaron Cook, the
bald man and first mate on the customs cutter
Royal Raven
,
looked up as Jimmy pushed toward the table. He nudged the other man,
who sat regarding his cards with disgust, throwing them down. When he
saw the youth, the man with the white eye smiled then, as he took
note of Jimmy’s expression, the smile faded. Jimmy spoke
loudly, over the noise in the room. “Your old friend Arthur
wants you.”

Trevor Hull,
onetime pirate and smuggler, knew at once who Jimmy meant. Arthur was
the name Arutha had used when Hull’s smugglers and the Mockers
had joined forces to get Arutha and Anita out of Krondor while Guy du
Bas-Tyra’s secret police had been combing the city for them.
After the Riftwar, Arutha had pardoned Hull and his crew for past
crimes and had enlisted them in the Royal Customs Service.

Hull and Cook
stood as one and left the table. One of the other gamblers, a
heavyset merchant of some means by his dress, spoke around a pipe.
“Where are you off to? The hand’s not played out.”

Hull, his shock
of grey hair fanning out around his head like a nimbus, shouted, “It
is for me. Hell, I only have a run in blue and a pair of four counts
to play,” and he reached back and turned over all his cards.

Jimmy winced as
men around the table began to curse and throw in their cards. In the
common room, as they headed for the door, Jimmy observed, “You’re
a mean man, Hull.”

The old smuggler
turned customs officer laughed an evil laugh. “That fat fool
was ahead, and on my gold. I just wanted to take some wind out of his
sails.” The nature of the game was such that as soon as he
revealed his hand, play was disrupted. The only fair thing would be
to leave the bets out and redeal the entire hand, a prospect not
appreciated by those with good cards left to play.

Outside of the
inn, they hurried along the streets, past celebrants as the festival
began to pick up while afternoon shadows lengthened.

Arutha stood
looking down at the maps on the table. The maps were from his
archives, provided by the royal architect, and showed the streets of
Krondor in detail. Another, showing the sewers, had been used before
in the last raid against the Nighthawks. For the past ten minutes
Trevor Hull had been carefully studying them all. Hull had headed the
most prosperous gang of smugglers in Krondor before taking service
with Arutha, and the sewers and back alleys had been his means of
bringing contraband into the city.

Hull conferred
with Cook, then the older man rubbed his chin. His finger pointed at
a spot on the map where a dozen tunnels came together in a near-maze.
“If the Nighthawks were living down in the sewers, the Upright
Man would have spotted them before they could have dug in. But it may
be they’re using the tunnels as a way in and out” - his
finger moved to another spot on the map - “here.” His
finger lingered over a portion of the docks resembling a crescent
along the bay. Halfway along the curve the docks ended and the
warehouse district began, but also nestled against the water was a
small section of the Poor Quarter, like a pie-shaped wedge driven
between the more prosperous trading areas.

“Fish
Town,” said Jimmy.

“Fish
Town?” echoed Arutha.

“It’s
the poorest section of the Poor Quarter,” said Cook.

Hull nodded.
“It’s called Fish Town, Divers’ Town, Dockside, and
other things as well. Used to be a fishing village a long time ago.
As the city grew northward along the bay, it was surrounded by
businesses, but there’re still some fisher families living
there. Mostly lobstermen and mussel raters who woii tne bay, or dam
diggers who work the beaches north of the city. But it’s also
located near the tanners, dyers, and other foul-smelling sections of
Krondor, so no one who can afford better lives there.”

Jimmy said,
“Alvarny said the Upright Man thought they were hiding in a
place that smells. So he thinks of Fish Town as well.” Jimmy
shook his head as he considered the map. “If the Nighthawks are
hiding in Fish Town, finding them will be difficult. Even the Mockers
don’t control Fish Town as firmly as they do the rest of the
Poor Quarter and the docks. There’s a lot of places to get lost
in there.”

Hull agreed. “We
used to run in and out near there, through a tunnel to a landing once
used to carry cargo into the harbour from some merchant’s
basement.” Arutha studied the map and nodded: he knew where
that landing lay. “We used a number of different locations,
moving things in and out, varying where we kept them from time to
time.” He looked up at the Prince. “Your first problem is
the sewers. There are maybe a dozen conduits leading up from the
docks to Fish Town. You’ll have to block each one. One of them
is so big you’ll need to block it with a crew in a boat.”
Aaron Cook said, “The trouble is we don’t know where in
Fish Town they’re hiding.”

“If that’s
where they are,” said Arutha.

Cook said, “I
doubt if the Upright Man would even mention it had he not a good
notion that they’re down there somewhere.”

Hull nodded
agreement. “That’s a fact. I can’t think of any
place else in the city they could be hiding. The Upright Man would’ve
pinned down the location as soon as a Mocker caught a glimpse of the
first Nighthawk. Even though the thieves use a lot of the sewers to
skulk about in, there are parts they don’t pass through much.
And Fish Town is worse. The older fisher families are independent and
tough, almost clannish. If someone took up residence in one of the
old shacks near the docks, kept to himself . . . Even the Mockers
only get silence from the Fish Town folk when they ask questions.
Should the Nighthawks have infiltrated slowly, no one but the locals
might have a hint. It’s a regular warren there, little streets
all twisted about.” He shook his head. “This part of the
map’s useless. Half the buildings shown here are burned down.
Shacks and hovels built anywhere there’s room. It’s a
mess in there.” He looked at the Prince. “Another name
for Fish Town is the Maze.”

Jimmy said,
“Trevor’s right. I’ve been in Fish Town as much as
anyone in the Mockers, and that’s not much. There’s
nothing worth stealing in there. But he’s wrong about one
thing. The biggest problem isn’t blocking escape routes. It’s
locating the Nighthawks. There are a lot of honest folk living in
that part of town and you just can’t ride in and kill everyone.
We’ve got to find their hideout.” He considered. “From
what I know of the Nighthawks, they’ll want some place that’s
first of all defensible, then easy to flee. They’ll probably be
here.” His finger pointed to a spot on the map.

Trevor Hull
said, “It’s a possibility. That building is nestled
against those two walls, so they’ve only two fronts to cover.
And there’s a network of tunnels below the streets there, and
those tunnels are all small and difficult to navigate unless you’ve
been there before. Yes, it’s a likely place.”

Jimmy looked at
Arutha. “I’d better go change.”

Arutha said, “I
don’t like the need, but you’re the best equipped to
scout.”

Cook looked at
Hull, who nodded slightly. “I could come along.”

Jimmy shook his
head. “You know parts of the sewers better than I, Aaron, but I
can slip in and out without making the water ripple. You haven’t
the knack. And there’s no possible way you can get into Fish
Town unnoticed, even on a noisy night like this. I’ll be safer
if I go alone.”

Arutha said,
“Shouldn’t you wait?”

Jimmy shook his
head. “If I can locate their warren before they know they’ve
been discovered, we may be able to clean them out before they know
what hit them. People do funny things sometimes, even assassins. It
being a festival day, their sentries will probably not expect someone
nosing around. And, with the city in celebration, there will be lots
of noises filtering down from the streets. Odd and out-of-place
sounds will be less likely to alert anyone below the buildings. And
if I have to poke around above ground, a strange poor boy in Fish
Town isn’t as likely to be noticed this night as much as other
nights. But I need to go at once.”

“You know
best,” said Arutha. “But they’ll react should they
discover someone’s seeking them out. One glimpse of you and
they’ll come straight after me.”