Mickey Zucker Reichert - Shadows Realm (9 page)

“This way.” Taziar chose a familiar alley which he knew would lead nearly to the porch steps of Cullinsberg’s inn. Rain barrels stood at irregular intervals; old bones and rag scraps scattered between them. From habit, Taziar assessed the stonework of the closely-packed shops, dwellings, and warehouses hedging the walls of the lane. Moss covered the granite like a woolly blanket, its surface disturbed in slashes where a climber had torn through for hand and toe holds. Taziar glanced at the rooftop. A cloak-hooded gaze met his own briefly, then disappeared into the shadow of a chimney. A careful inspection revealed another small figure in the eaves. A third crouched on a building across the walkway.

Engrossed in his inspection of the rooftops, Taziar never saw the trip-rope that went suddenly taut at his feet. Hemp hissed against his boots, making him stumble forward. A muscled arm enwrapped his throat and whetted steel pricked the skin behind his left ear. A deep voice grated. “Give me your money.”

Taziar rolled his eyes to see a blemished, teenaged face. He felt the warmth of the thief’s body against his spine, and the realization of a daylight attack against an armed group shocked him beyond speech. It never occurred to Taziar to fear for his life; he knew street orphans and their motivations too well. Instead, he appraised the abilities of his assailant. The youth held Taziar overbalanced backward. The grip was professional. He could strangle Taziar with ease. If threatened, a spinning motion would sprawl Taziar and drag the blade across his throat.

The assessment took Taziar less than a heartbeat. Aware the setup would require one other accomplice to draw the rope straight, Taziar numbered the gang at five.
Whatever happened to peaceful begging and petty theft?
“Fine. I’ll give you ten gold. Two for you and each of your friends,” he said deliberately, intending to inform his companions as well as appease his assailant.

Taziar felt the bandit’s muscles knot beneath his tunic. “No. I want all your money.”

Apparently taking his cue from Taziar’s calm acceptance of the situation, Larson loosed a loud snort of derision. “Are you swimming now, Shad? Upstream? Downstream? Backstroke?” His taunt echoed between the buildings.

Agitation entered the thief’s tone. “Tell your friend to shut up. Now!” Sharp pain touched Taziar’s skin. Blood beaded at the tip of the blade, and sweat stung the wound.

Larson’s hand fell to his hilt, and he took a menacing step. “Who are you telling to shut up, asshole? I’ll cut off your ears and shove them up your nose.”

“Calm down.” Taziar tried to keep his voice level. He had never seen Larson so hostile, and the thief’s greed alarmed him. Ten gold was more than a common laborer might make in a year, and the northern mintage would make it no less valuable. If Taziar had been alone, he would have felt certain that the thug would not harm him; but, challenged by Larson, the youth might be driven to murder. “You’re not the one with a knife at your throat.” Reminded of what he might have become at the same age, Taziar grew careless of risk. “Friend, you’re doing this dumb.”

The thief’s fingers shivered against the dagger’s hilt. He, too, seemed out of his element, unaccustomed to getting lectured by victims. “I’m doing this dumb? Which of us is jabbering on the blade end of the knife? If one of us is stupid, I’m not guessing it’s me. Now give me your money and I may not kill you. Everyone else can just drop their purses, turn around, and leave.”

Taziar cursed the loose hood that slid over his eyes and made it impossible to meet his assailant’s gaze. “Look, friend, you can’t have all our money. I offered you some. I’d have given the same to you if you’d asked nicely. Anything more than we’re willing to give freely, you’ll have to take. You’ve got four companions. See that man there.” He tensed a hand to indicate Larson.

Immediately, the arm clamped tighter around Taziar’s neck, neatly closing off his airway.

Taziar fought rising panic. Blackness swam down on him, but even vulnerability could not shake resolve. Given slightly different circumstances, he could have been this teen.

Gradually, the thief’s grip relaxed. Taziar gasped gratefully for breath, then forced himself to continue. “If you want to take money from my friend, you’ll need at least six more of you. Then, the one survivor can gather the money into a pile and spend it.” Taziar measured the thief by his actions, sensed uncertainty beneath forced defiance. “Ten gold could feed you all for a month and more. Are you going to take the ten I offered you, or will you get all your friends slaughtered for the chance to get a few more? I can’t compromise. My friends have to eat, too. And you won’t live long on the street acting stupid.”

“Stop. It’s all right.” Silme spoke in the rapid, high-pitched manner of a frightened woman, but Taziar knew the sorceress too well not to recognize a performance. She passed her dragonstaff to Larson who accepted it grudgingly in his off hand. “I’ll give you my purse. I don’t care. Money doesn’t mean anything. Just don’t hurt him.” Reaching into her side pocket, she removed a thin pouch of coins. She approached the thief, flicking her hands in contrived, nervous gestures. “Let him go. You got his ten and mine. That’s more than half of it. It’s better than the deal he gave you. Just let him go.” She pushed her purse at the thief’s free hand. “Here. Take it. Take it.”

Instinctively, the thief glanced at the purse.

Quick as thought, Silme grasped the youngster’s knife hand. Positioning her thumb on his littlest knuckle and her fingers around and over his thumb, she gained the leverage to twist. The blade carved skin from Taziar’s cheek. He dodged aside as Silme used her other hand to wrench the dagger from the youth’s surprised grasp. A sudden punch beneath his elbow finished him. The thief tumbled, flat on his back, in the street.

A rock sailed from the rooftop.

Larson dropped Silme’s staff. His sword met the stone in midair and knocked it aside. He completed his stroke, stopping with the blade against the thief’s neck. “One more rock and the next thing in the street’s your friend’s head.”

The gang went still.

Taziar pressed a palm to his gashed face to stop the bleeding. Silme’s maneuver had jarred his hood aside, and black hair was plastered to the wound. He watched as Astryd whispered to herself, casting a spell. Hunched behind a rain barrel, the thief’s partner suddenly became as immobile as a statue. Taziar knew from the strategies of his own childhood gang that the thief beneath Larson’s blade was undoubtedly their leader.

Larson caught the thief by stringy, sand-colored hair and hoisted the youth to his feet. “Bend over.”

The thief hesitated, then complied.

Larson raised his katana and yelled to the accomplices on the roof. “One move and your buddy’s head comes off.” He lowered his voice. “This is how you stop someone in the street, you little jackass.”

Taziar stepped around the thief, met eyes dark with hatred. He winced, fearing Larson had taken things too far. Humiliation might force the thief to kill an innocent or a follower to maintain his position as leader. At the least, the youth would have to defy Larson, perhaps at the cost of his own life.

The leader howled. “Idiots! Don’t let them get away with this. Throw rocks. Attack! Do something.”

“Quiet!” Taziar seized a handful of gold from his pocket, trying to maintain the thief’s self-respect by creating an illusion of partial success. “Here’s your money.” Seeking answers, he dropped the gold at the boy’s feet and continued. “This isn’t how things work here. I don’t care about me. I wasn’t in any trouble. I knew you wouldn’t hurt me. You were in more danger than I was because there was a good chance the man with the sword would kill the whole damn bunch of you. What, in Karana’s hell, is going on here?”

The youth stared, as if noticing Taziar for the first time. “Wait! I know you. You’re that filthy Medakan worm. We don’t want your blood-tainted money.”

Shocked, Taziar searched for a reply.

Larson spoke first. “Uh, could you repeat that for the benefit of the person holding the sword ready to decapitate you?”

“I don’t care!” Still hunched, the leader screamed, “I’ll die before I’ll be humiliated by some traitor.”

Larson hollered back, apparently as confused as Taziar. “What’s this traitor bullshit?”

The youth refused to elaborate.

Taziar used a soothing tone. “Speak up, friend. Please. Were I you, I’d want to befriend the man holding the sword.”

The youth remained stalwartly silent.

Behind the thief, Larson raised a threatening foot.

Afraid for the leader’s dignity, Taziar waved Larson off. “Don’t kick him.”

Larson lowered his foot, but he went on speaking in a voice deep with rage. “What do you mean ‘don’t’? He put a knife to your throat. I ought to cut his goddamned head off. He’s a threat. I can remove a threat in an instant. Want to see?”

“No.” Taziar winced, his loyalties suddenly shifted. “Look, Allerum, he’s a street orphan. He’s got enough problems without you making things worse. I grew up like that, damn it!”

A stone bounced from Astryd’s magical shield, unnoticed by anyone but its thrower. Larson relented. “Fine, street scum. Pick up the money and go. Right now!”

The youth did hot hesitate. He scooped up the coins and ran. Astryd scarcely found time to dismantle her sorceries before the leader and his smaller companion raced deeper into the alleyway.

Taziar watched the teens’ retreating figures. Bleeding stanched, he flicked his hood back over his head and chastised Larson. “Allerum, you can’t treat these people like that. He’s got enough problems, more than you could ever imagine.”

Larson sheathed his sword, breaking the tension, but his expression did not soften. He glared after the gang. “Yeah, well. I’ve got problems, too. But you don’t see me inflicting them on the weak and helpless.”

“Weak and helpless?” Silme mouthed, but it was the Shadow Climber who spoke aloud.

“They’re just hungry children!” Taziar’s hands balled at his sides in frustration as he tried to stifle the flood of memories welling within him: the pain of a week’s starvation tearing at his gut; the restless, animal-light naps necessary to protect the few rags he owned. “What’s wrong with you? I’ve never seen you like this.” Taziar stared, concerned by Larson’s uncharacteristic callousness and aware that his friend’s manner had grown more cynical and confident in the month since Kensei Gaelinar’s death. It seemed as if Larson felt he needed to fill the void his mentor had left. Yet Larson had never before lost the gentle morality that had driven him to put an elderly stranger’s life before his own and had so impressed Taziar at their first meeting. “You’ve risked your life to protect innocents and children too many times to start hating them now.”

“Innocents,” Larson repeated forcefully. “And children? Those boys are neither. They get down on their luck, hit a few hard times. Then, instead of trying to better their lives, they take the rest of us down with them.” The elfs eyes narrowed, making his face appear even more angular. “Give a kid like that a knife and a little muscle, and he thinks he has the god-given right to prey on people weaker than himself. Anyone with that kind of attitude deserves what he gets when he tries to intimidate some little man and finds out his victim’s got a big friend with a howitzer.” He slapped a hand to the katana’s hilt.

Not all of Larson’s speech made sense to Taziar, but the meaning came through despite the strange, English words. The Cullinsbergen pursed his lips, glancing at Silme and Astryd. The women whispered quietly, apparently trying to decide whether to interfere or let the men argue the issue out between themselves. “That’s not right. What you saw here today isn’t normal.”

Larson snorted. “That gang was the most ‘normal’ thing I’ve seen since Freyr brought me to your world. For a punk, you’re awfully naive.”

The insult rolled right past Taziar; he knew Cullinsberg and its streets too well to take offense. But something in Larson’s voice made the Climber push aside his anxiety for Shylar and his friends long enough for realization to take its place. Taziar had never heard of or conceived of a city larger than Cullinsberg, yet Larson had once claimed to come from a metropolis called New York, with a population four times that of the entire world. “This is personal, isn’t it?”

Larson’s frown deepened. “Yeah, you could say that.” He nodded, as if to himself. His gaze met Taziar’s, but his attention seemed internally focused. “A street gang beat up my grandfather for the thirteen dollars and sixty-seven cents he had in his pocket. That’s the rough equivalent of two medium-sized, Northern coppers.”

Taziar closed his lids, his mind gorged with the image of a white-haired elder with swollen eyes and abraded, purple cheeks. Larson’s distrust and remembrances of his grandfather’s misfortune had become one more obstacle to Taziar’s already difficult task. Though he knew it was folly, he tried to explain. “Allerum, you don’t understand. I probably put that gang together. All Shylar’s people had ways of helping the homeless. Waldmunt paid them handsomely to keep quiet or create alibis. Mandel hired them to know every building and road in Cullinsberg or to study the patterns of changing guards. Shylar just gave freely.” Taziar scanned the rooftops, making certain the gang youths had departed with their leader. “I shared food and money, too. But, I also taught the younger ones how to survive on the street. I organized them. Alone, a few bad days without food might weaken a child enough to drag misfortune into weeks of starvation, perhaps even death. As part of a group, someone always does well enough to share. And there’s companionship. But I never intended them to band together against passersby and threaten lives.”

“You’re not thinking about
that
street orphan.” Larson pointed down the alleyway. “You’re thinking about
this
one.” He tapped Taziar’s scalp to indicate childhood memories.

“Exactly.” Under ordinary circumstances, Taziar would have smiled at how neatly Larson had fallen into his trap; but now, weighed down by concern and confusion, he continued without expression. “And you’re thinking about New York. Every issue, every action, every motivation has two sides. These children didn’t hurt your grandfather.” He waved in the general direction the gang had taken. “How can you condemn them until you’ve seen the streets from their point of view?”