The Palace Job (16 page)

"You hear the Skilled talk about helping others," Silestin continued, his voice pitched lower now. "They want to legislate charity. Kind of makes you wonder what kind of person thinks charity has to be forced, doesn't it?" The young woman smiled at the crowd, and then Silestin led her to the podium. "I didn't see the Skilled Party helping young Naria when Imperials took her eyes and her family during the war. Did the Skilled help you? They must have been helping
somebody,"
he said with a chuckle, looking around the crowd, "to hear how they talk about their programs and taxes, but mostly, I think they're helping themselves."

Silestin caught sight of Warden Orris standing at the edge of the crowd and cut smoothly to the end of his speech. "The Skilled would like you to believe that the Republic isn't on the right path. They think we need to bow down to the Empire, and I'm sure the Empire would like that." Silestin's adopted daughter Naria shook her head angrily. "But that's not the kind of man I am," Silestin went on. "I think the Republic needs to move forward, not back! Ambassador Bi'ul, come on up here."

From the front row, a tall, lean figure stood. His ivory skin flickered with a multicolored aura, like a rainbow beside a waterfall, and his loose black robe rippled like oil as he moved. "This is Ambassador Bi'ul of the Glimmering Folk," Silestin said to the suddenly hushed crowd. "He's here meeting with the Voyancy, the first of the Glimmering Folk in a thousand years to do any nation that honor! That's the kind of strength the Republic has, people! That's how we're keeping you safe!"

Silestin, the ambassador, and Naria waved to the cheering crowd for awhile. Then Silestin and Naria shook some hands. When enough of a crowd had gathered around Naria, Silestin slipped off to Warden Orris, who was smiling broadly.

"Great speech, sir!" Orris declared.

"Just telling it like I see it," Silestin said, smiling at the workers nearby. In a lower voice, he added, "I thought you were taking care of the problem on the ground."

"This is the former warden?" asked Ambassador Bi'ul suddenly. He had approached silently, carving out a circle of emptiness as the workers moved aside for him. His voice was light and twangy, as if it were not a real voice but a clever reconstruction. "The one who lost the prisoners?"

"Indeed." Silestin clapped Orris on the shoulder. "He was rounding them back up. How's that going, Orris?"

Orris shook his head. "Well, to be honest, sir, Pyvic is causing all kinds of trouble. Getting in my way, keeping me from doing my job."

"Wait. You don't have them?" Silestin looked from Orris to Bi'ul in evident confusion. The crowd was moving around Naria now, leaving Silestin, Orris, and Bi'ul alone.

"If he doesn't have his prisoners," Bi'ul said, his head cocked curiously, "why has he returned?"

Orris fidgeted. "Well, Silestin, you have to know how it was." Silestin frowned. "I really wanted you down there as part of the effort."

"I, I, that is, I delegated it, Archvoyant."

"Sure, delegated, that's good." Silestin cupped his jaw. "Hard to explain to the politicians, though."

"They will assume that the warden was incompetent again," Bi'ul agreed.

"No!" Orris was starting to sweat again. "I'll go back down, sir, if that's—"

"Can't go back down now, Orris." Silestin cut him off with an impatient slash of the arm. "Can't look indecisive. You're up, and you'll stay up." He glanced at the crowd. "We'll have to play it different, that's all. You'll be there when the ship docks." He turned back to Orris and smiled, and his voice warmed. "Now, if you'll excuse me, I've got to greet the rest of these people."

With that, Silestin moved back to the common people, shaking hands and leaving Orris behind.

They hit Ros-Oanki a few days later. It was a slow afternoon, and the locals looked up curiously at the sight of two Urujar, an Imperial, a wizard, three women and a kid coming through the gates.

"We've got eyes," Kail murmured as they entered the market square nearest the gates, heels clicking on the freshly laid flagstones. Ros-Oanki had profited from its status as a port town for the Spire, raking in enough tax money to have bronze fountains and large marble arches with patriotic mosaics done on the sides. "Right, two pair."

"Over or under?" Loch turned to a stall where a vendor was selling clothes and, in a louder voice, said, "Let's make nice, everyone. Meet up where and when we agreed." The others went their separate ways, with Dairy being wrenched in two directions simultaneously by Hessler and Ululenia until the wizard finally proved victorious.

"Under," Kail said as Loch picked through several hats. "Oooh, I like the red one with the floppy brim. Very neo-Uru."

"I do try to keep up with the times." Loch paid for the floppy red hat, then moved to a stall selling weapons. "Still with us?" "Oh yeah. Moving in now, by the produce wagon."

"The white wagon with the Imperial vendor, or the unpainted one with the apples?" A pair of knives caught her eye, and she smiled at the merchant. "Are these balanced for throwing?"

"Ten, fifteen paces." The merchant shrugged. "Cost too much to throw them away, though. Twenty apiece."

"The one with the apples," Kail said. "You want me to go mention their mothers?"

"Thirty-five for the pair, and they'd better be good from fifteen," Loch said to the merchant, and then to Kail, "Let's not play your only card just yet."

The merchant grunted. "No credit. You miss at fifteen, it's on you, not them."

Loch put several coins on the merchant's table. "Just a moment." She picked up the knives, hefted them carefully, then spun and threw.

The marketplace erupted into screams, mothers grabbed their children, and merchants began slamming their cases shut. Loch crossed the square toward the produce wagon, where two scruffy-looking men were tugging frantically at their shirtsleeves, which had been neatly pinned to the wagon. She drew her sword, adjusted the brim of her floppy red hat, and hollered, "Everyone take a look! You tell everyone you know that Loch is in town, and Byn-kodar himself is with her!" Then she leveled her sword at the two men. "I'm taking down Jyelle. You run and let her know, or you have no use to me."

The two men finally tore their ragged sleeves free and bolted without another look, and Loch sheathed her blade, stalked to the wagon, and pulled out her knives. She nodded to the apple merchant, an old woman in a faded blue dress, then tossed a coin. "Ma'am. For the damage to your wagon." The old woman sniffed in disdain, but she also neatly caught the coin.

Kail joined her as she strode from the square. "Picked up the sheaths, Captain. I assumed you'd want them."

"No, Kail, I planned to hold a knife in each hand for the next few weeks."

"With you, Captain, I never know."

Pyvic reached Ros-Oanki in the early afternoon and asked around the market, hoping for some sign of Loch.

He was in luck.

"Enormous woman!" declared a hat vendor. "She blotted out the sun, muscles like melons!"

"Tiny, barely more than a girl," said a weapons merchant. "Fast like an adder and twice as poisonous!"

"I honestly didn't get a good look at her," said an old crone selling vegetables. "Just the red hat and the sword."

Pyvic blinked. "The sword?"

The old woman nodded. "Single-edge, brass hand guard, contoured mahogany grip, and some name etched into the blade."

Pyvic came away from it without much more than he'd started with. An Urujar woman with Warden Orris's prized saber... and a big red hat.

He filed it away and started investigating the taverns and kahva-houses.

It seemed that Loch was a feather, not a rock. If you wanted to catch a rock somebody had thrown, you grabbed fast and hard to make sure you got hold of it. But with a feather, you watched carefully, spread your hands, and waited.

The first few taverns yielded only garbled accounts of the incident in the market. The kahva-houses yielded even less, until he walked into a warmly lit place with green leaves hanging from the doorway and cinnamon wafting through the air. Before he could even start the speech about people helping the Republic by answering questions, something was whipping through the air toward him with a glint of metal.

He sidestepped and caught it by reflex. A coin.

"For your kahva, Justicar," came a strong alto voice with laughter just beneath its velvet surface. "You
are
in a kahvahouse, after all."

Pyvic looked at her as the chuckles fluttered across the room. She was an Urujar, skin the color of burnished leather or fine whiskey. Her silky black hair hung carelessly over her shoulders, and her loose shirt and breeches could have been the outfit of a trader, a crafter, or an off-duty guard. There were tiny laugh-lines crinkled around her deep eyes, but as she stared up at him, he couldn't quite say that she was mocking him. There was something too intense in the look, and Pyvic found himself flushing.

Then, because he was damned if he was going to let some woman in a kahva-house show him up, he went to the counter and ordered a drink. The vendor handed him a cheap waxed-paper cup filled with steaming dark liquid, and he made his way to the table where the woman sat alone, her rough hands cradling a chipped ceramic mug.

It was too easy. Prisoner Loch wouldn't have advertised herself to him like this. But then, nobody else would have done so, either.

He let a few coins clink on the table as he sat down across from her. "Here's your change."

She raised an eyebrow, and those deep dark eyes cut right through him with a glance. "I usually tip the server. It's polite." "Did you learn your manners at home, or in prison?"

"Assuming all Urujar are convicts?" she asked, raising an eyebrow. "What charming behavior."

"What do you do, then?"

She pursed her lips, tiny dimples appearing on her cheeks as she stifled a smile. "I'm a bookseller."

"You don't have any books on you."

The smile grew. "You don't have a dozen thugs with truncheons, but you're a justicar nonetheless."

"Not all justicars work that way," Pyvic said with a hard smile. "And how did you know I was one?"

She sipped her kahva. It was the same color as her skin, and the sight of her closing her eyes and touching the drink to her lips shot little sparks through Pyvic's gut. "You're in military uniform. If you were in active service, you'd be in a tavern with your men. Also, you've got an officer's insignia but a standard-issue sword at your waist." She half-closed her eyes. "And only a justicar walks into a kahva-house, lets a single woman buy him a drink, and then asks if she's been in prison."

"Why did a single woman buy me a drink?" Pyvic asked a little hoarsely. The woman was making him sweat, and he doubted hot kahva would help matters.

She shrugged. "Has to be hard, walking and asking questions all day. I'm sure they don't pay you enough."

"The travel's not so bad. I imagine you travel a lot yourself as a bookbinder."

"Bookseller,
Justicar," the woman corrected. "And the travel isn't so bad. You go where you have to in order to get what you want."

Pyvic leaned forward, pushing his kahva aside. "I'm looking for an Urujar woman who fits your description. What if I arrested you right here, just to be safe?"

"I'd never buy a justicar a drink again," the woman deadpanned, "and that would be truly tragic. Brooding men in uniform, shoulders broad from swordplay, legs firm from riding... I'd hate to lose that."

Pyvic coughed. "What can you tell me about the escaped prisoners?"

"They're in town, but then, everyone heard that." The woman sipped her kahva again, then grinned crookedly, the dimples flashing. "Word has it that she's got a problem with some big thief in the area. If I were you, I'd have your ears out for fighting in the streets. Better chance of finding her there than in a nice kahva-house like this."

"I'll bear that in mind," Pyvic murmured. "Have you seen her? Can you tell me what she looks like?"

The woman took one last sip of her kahva, then set the mug aside and stood. "Oh, you know how it is, Justicar," she said, brushing her hair back over her shoulders. "Those Urujar women all look alike." Then she turned and walked out of the kahva-house, her hips swaying as though exciting music were playing just out of earshot.