Rise of a Merchant Prince (13 page)

“Then why haven't you shut us down?”

“It's been to my advantage just to keep you under observation. But, as I said,
now
I need certain things. As I'm sitting in his shop and chatting with him this instant, we both understand I know who the current successor to the Upright Man is; if I kill you, I might have to spend years finding out who the next leader of the Guild of Thieves is after you.”

There was a moment of silence; then James said, “It's ironic, but the reason I knew you were back in the city all those years ago is because we look so damn alike.”

A long sigh answered that. “I've often wondered about that. Do you think we're related?”

“I have a theory,” came the answer, but no details followed. “Just do us both a favor and keep your animals on a short tether. A few robberies of modest
gain, a shakedown here and there. Boost some goods off the dock and cheat the customs agents now and again out of their duties. I may even have a few jobs for you that will guarantee you and your ragged brotherhood a profit—commissions of sorts—but this wholesale crime spree is over and the killings must stop today; if I have to go to war I will. Is that clear?”

“I'm still not convinced, but I'll think on it.”

James laughed, and to Roo it was a bitter laugh. “Think on it? Not hardly. You agree this moment or you don't leave here alive.”

“Not much of a choice” was the hot reply. The man's voice showed his temper was held in check, but not by much.

Roo glanced about. The conversation had lasted only a few minutes, but it felt as if he'd been eavesdropping for hours. Things seemed shockingly normal on the street, though he knew at least a score of the Prince's men were within a hundred feet of where he and de Loungville stood.

“You have to understand,” said James, “that when I say I need a quiet and prosperous city, it isn't my desire to make money for a bunch of merchants and provide an improved tax situation for my sovereign—desirable ends, in and of themselves—but the safety of my city depends on it, and I will say no more, save I will happily crush you, if I must. Do we have an understanding?”

“We do,” said the merchant. There was a note of anger mixed in with the resignation.

“Then let me give you some good news,” came James's voice, accompanied by the sound of a chair being pushed back. “For ten minutes after I leave, the
door to one of your bolt-holes—the one that starts in the basement below and leads to the sewers—will be left uncovered. While I know exactly who you are, I am the only one. Flee to your next identity, and after you've cooled down and given some thought to what I've said, send me a message. If you understand, leak word on the street that the Sagacious Man has fled and the Upright Man has returned—tell your Daymaster and Nightmaster that it's to lead the authorities to think they've successfully driven you off. If I don't hear that message from you by this time tomorrow night, I will know that either you've been betrayed by your own people or you haven't taken my warning seriously. Either way the Mockers had best prepare for war.”

There was a pregnant silence, and James finally said, “Good. I know if I were you I'd have thought for a brief second about going for that dagger, but I also judged you would decide against it. No one who is stupid rises to rule the Mockers.”

“It was a close call.”

“You wouldn't have lived; trust me. Now, as I was saying, you have ten minutes to flee. Go to Mother's and establish whatever new identity you need; those agents of mine who know you by sight do not know who you really are. They know you only as a merchant I wanted watched. Some no doubt think you to be an agent of Great Kesh or some other political foe. Those who know you by reputation and deed have no idea what you look like. I'm enough of a Mocker at heart to give you that much.

“But I will always be able to find you. Never for a minute doubt that, Lysle—for that's how I always think of you.”

“I don't doubt that for a moment, Jimmy the Hand. One thing.”

“What?”

“Were all the things they said about you true?”

There was a ironic laugh. “Not half of the truth, Lysle. Not a half of it. I was a better thief than I thought I was, and not half as good as I claimed, but I've done things no other Mocker has ever attempted, let alone succeeded at.”

“Gods, that's the truth,” came the grudging reply. “No man can argue that; never been another thief who's risen to the rank of bloody damn Duke and single most powerful man in the Kingdom next to the King.”

“Now, where's Tannerson?”

“You'll probably find him hiding out in a whorehouse called Sabella's—”

Across the porch from Roo, de Loungville turned and hissed into the darkness, and then said quietly, “Sabella's!” A figure Roo hadn't seen there a moment before scurried off into the darkness.

“I know where that is. Have a witness for me first thing in the morning.”

“She's dead, you know. If she rats out Tannerson and the others I have to put the death mark on her; you know Mockers' law.”

“Get me a young one,” said James. “If she's pretty and smart, I'll find a home for her in a distant city; maybe even save her from a whorehouse and put her with a noble family as a companion for their children. You never know. But she'd better be young enough she's not too set in her criminal ways.” A pause, then, “After all, I was fourteen when I met Arutha, and I haven't forgotten a thing.”

“That's the gods' truth, Jimmy, that's the truth,” said Lysle.

Suddenly the door opened and Lord James, still covered from head to knee in a great cloak, swept down the steps. He paused for a brief moment next to Robert and said, “You heard?”

“I heard. Word's been passed” was all de Loungville said, and then the Duke of Krondor vanished into the night. In the gloom down the street, Roo could see others fall in around him, and in a moment the street appeared to be empty again.

Roo glanced at de Loungville, who held up his hand, signaling they should wait. The next ten minutes dragged by; then suddenly de Loungville put two fingers to his mouth and blew a shrill whistle. From a side street a squad of soldiers ran up, while Jadow and Erik dashed from across the street. To the soldiers de Loungville said, “You! Into that building and arrest anyone you find there. Confiscate every document you find and let no one in or out of this building after you seal it.” To Roo, Jadow, and Erik he said, “Come with me.”

Roo said, “Sabella's?”

“Yes. And if we're lucky, your friend Tannerson will resist arrest.”

Jadow said, “Man, don't he sound happy at that prospect?” De Loungville said, “Haven't had a good excuse to kill anyone in too long a time, Jadow.”

In silence, they hurried deep into the Poor Quarter.

Roo followed close behind de Loungville and they reached the street where Sabella's occupied the first third of the block.

De Loungville whispered to a man at the corner, “Are the men in place?”

“Waiting for you,” came the reply. “Thought I saw something up there on the roof a few minutes back, but it might have been a cat. Things are pretty quiet.”

De Loungville nodded, half seen in the gloom, then said, “Let's go!”

They entered the whorehouse as if it were an enemy camp. Jadow struck a bouncer a head-ringing blow that brought the man to his knees before he could stop them entering the room, and as he knelt on the floor, Erik caught him with another blow that rendered him unconscious.

Roo ran past de Loungville and a couple of women too startled by the eruption of violence to do more than sit in openmouthed astonishment. He reached the stairs, where a large woman of middle years had just turned to see what the disturbance at the front door was. She found Roo's dagger at her chin. “Tannerson?” he said in a quiet voice dripping threat.

She went pale but whispered, “Top of the stairs, first door on the right.”

Roo said, “If you're lying, you're dead.”

The woman looked and saw Jadow and Erik coming toward her, and for the first time registered the size and lethal aspect of the two men bearing down on her. “No, I mean first door on the left!”

Roo was off and de Loungville a step behind. He turned and signaled for Erik and Jadow to hold the bottom of the stairs. He then turned back to see Roo reach the top of the stairs. Roo hesitated, motioned for de Loungville to kick the door, then ducked low.

De Loungville kicked the door and Roo was through in a crouch, his sword at the ready. He needn't have bothered. Lying in bed was Sam Tannerson, his vacant eyes staring upward at the ceiling as blood dripped from a gash across his throat.

“What?” said de Loungville as he saw the tableau before him.

Roo hurried to the open window and looked nut. Someone had exited the room minutes before they had arrived, from the look of things. Roo turned and started to laugh.

“What's so funny?” asked Erik as he reached the top of the stairs and looked in.

Roo pointed to the corpse on the bed. “Some whore killed Tannerson, and I bet it was so she could steal my gold.”

De Loungville poked around in the man's garments and said, “No purse or coins.”

Roo said, “Damn! So now some whore has all my gold.” De Loungville looked at the corpse. “Maybe. But we had better leave and talk about this somewhere else.”

Roo nodded once, put up his sword, and followed de Loungville out of the room.

The girl watched as across the street the men who had attempted to capture Tannerson left the inn, dragging out those men who had been playing pokiir downstairs. Other men prowling the streets nearby were checking to see if they were being observed. She was certain they hadn't seen her leave Tannerson's room. She glanced at her hands, half expecting to see them shake, but instead they were firm upon the eaves of the roof where she crouched,
sheltered in the darkness from the sight of those below. She had never killed before, but no one had murdered her sister before either. The cold rage that had fueled this revenge had not diminished with Tannerson's death, as she thought it would. There was no sense of closure, no sense of putting paid to the account. She still seethed inside and nothing would bring her sister back to her.

Curiosity pushed aside other concerns and she wondered who those men had been. She had been less than five minutes out of the bedroom when she had heard the voices raised in anger across the street. She had left her work clothes secreted in a bag behind a chimney on the roof of the house opposite the whorehouse Tannerson used as a headquarters, against her need to get out of bloody clothing after the job was done. When she had decided to avenge Betsy, she had vowed that either Tannerson or she would lie dead on the floor of that bedroom tonight.

Getting into Sabella's hadn't proven difficult; bribing the whore to tell Tannerson someone special waited for him in the room had been easy enough, as well. The girl's native stupidity had not caused her to think any farther than her full purse of gold without Sabella taking a cut. Now she'd keep quiet out of fear.

For the first few moments of her flight, fear had nearly overwhelmed the girl. For the first five minutes after reaching the roof, she had just sat, too numb to move. Tannerson's blood had covered her from chin to waist, and she had finally gotten her fouled clothing off. Then she had heard the movement of men down the streets below and fear kept her from attempting to leave. As she waited, fatigue
pushed in on her, and she half dozed—for a minute or an hour, she wasn't clear—and then the raid had brought her alert. Now fatigue was pushed aside by fear; if those men who had entered Sabella's had been sent by the Nightmaster, she could have been seen or identified. Being hunted by the Prince's police was one thing; being hunted by the Mockers was another. Her only hope in the second instance would be to flee the city and get as far away as possible, up to LaMut or down into the Empire of Kesh.

She crept along the roof until she came to where she had left her rope. Tossing aside the small bag that had contained her regular trousers, shirt, vest, dagger, and boots—and now contained a bloody knife and a blood-snaked shirt and trousers—she glanced over the eaves.

Two men of the rear guard hurried past in the darkness below and she moved to another corner of the roof, where she saw others moving in the same general direction as those who had just left the whorehouse. The girl sat back on her heels, considering. None of the men she had glimpsed looked remotely familiar to her, and she should have recognized at least one of them if they were Mockers. Whoever had come into Sabella's were the Prince's men, no doubt, for no one else in the city would be able to mount such a raid, especially not with men who seemed to appear and disappear out of the darkness like the best in the Guild of Thieves. It had to be the Duke of Krondor's special agents, his secret police.

But what had they wanted with Tannerson and his band of thugs? wondered the girl. She was not worldly, but she was clever, intelligent, and curious. She
gauged her distance to the next roof, backed up, and made a nimble leap to the roof opposite and continued along the “Thieves' Highway” after the men below. After a block she was falling behind and quickly found a drainpipe she could clamber down.

At this hour the streets were dark and nearly empty, so she had to keep to the shadows, lest she attract attention. Twice she spied rear sentries who were placed to prevent anyone's following, so she waited and slipped after them when they at last moved out.

It was an hour before dawn when she lost sight of the last man she had trailed, but she was near certain where the raiders had been bound: the Prince's palace.

They had used a circuitous route and they had taken pains to avoid being followed, but she had kept her wits and hadn't rushed, and now she could see they were moving directly for the palace.