The Water Road (26 page)

Behind Antrey a chorus of shouts
and hollers rang out. Antrey had no chance to work out any real meaning, but
they sounded more positive than negative. She felt the first slight bit of
relief.

Ushan put her hands on Antrey’s
shoulders, said something, then returned to her seat.

Goshen looked at Antrey with a
dazed but ecstatic look. “She said that my people are at your service, jeyn.”

By the time they arrived at Innisport,
Strefer had just gotten used to her routine on board the
Kanawha
. After
running from Tolenor so quickly, without having much time to think about where
she would go or what she would do, the long days on the river provided plenty
of time for reflection. She also felt safe and calm after it became clear that
the boat was a safe haven where she had nothing to fear. Now, as they walked
down the ramp to the bustling docks, she began to feel butterflies spring to
life in her stomach once again.

Before they left the boat, Rurek
had come into Strefer’s room, locked the door behind him, and given her a stern
lecture. “We’re going to have to stay together once we leave here,” he said,
stating the obvious.

“Of course,” Strefer said. “You’re
my guide, you know. I’ve no clue where Oberton is.”

Rurek shook his head. “That’s not
what I’m talking about. Not right now, anyway. What I mean is that while we’re
in the city, I need to be at your side at all times.”

“All times?” she asked, trying to
inject some humor.

“You know what I mean,” he said,
clearly not impressed. “I’m not going to have you hold my hand, but make sure
you don’t lose sight of me in a crowd. And if we do get separated, stay put and
let me find you. Got it?”

Strefer nodded.

“Good.” He reached into his tunic
and pulled out a small, dull-looking knife. “Take this,” he said, handing it to
Strefer.

“Really?” she said, taking it in
the palm of her hand. It was barely serviceable as a knife; its days of slicing
meat at the table were past. Strands of thread had been wrapped around the
handle for better grip.

“I hope you don’t have to use it,
but you never know,” Rurek said. “I doubt it would be able to kill anyone, or
even wound them very badly. But you can slash at people with it. It’ll hurt,
and, more importantly, it will slow them down.”

Strefer said nothing, just slipped
the blade down in her pouch next to the red notebook.

“All right,” Rurek said, turning to
open the locked door. “Let’s get out of here.”

Strefer got up off the hard little
bed where she had slept for so many nights and looked around the room, her
protective cocoon, one last time.

Strefer had been through Innisport
once before, on her way from Quantstown to Tolenor. It was, as these things go,
a large city. Perhaps not quite as big as Tolenor, at least as far as
population went. It did have more room to spread out, however. Where it most
obviously differed from Tolenor was in its age. Innisport sat on top of the
ruins of half a dozen other settlements that came and went at the confluence of
the rivers. The city as it existed now was established nearly five hundred
years before, in a narrow strip that hugged the River Innis. In those few
narrow streets the seeds were planted for the great city that expanded west and
north for the next several centuries.

After a few words with Traf, Rurek
met her on deck and they began to walk down into the mass of people milling
around the docks. Innisport had two sets of docks, one each on the Water Road
and the River Innis. It would have been better had the
Kanawha
docked on
the great tributary, further upstream towards their ultimate goal. Instead, it
disappeared in a clutch of larger vessels docked on the south side of the city.

“Do we have a plan?” Strefer asked
Rurek as they walked along the docks.

“I don’t think we can leave the
city yet,” Rurek said, his eyes scanning the crowd and almost avoiding looking
at Strefer as he talked. “It’s too late in the day. We don’t want to be around
the fringes of the city at night.”

“All right,” Strefer said, doing
her best to keep up with Rurek as he carved his way through the crowd. “Then we
need a place to stay. I know there are some inns and taverns along the other
riverbank.”

Rurek shook his head. “I’d like to
stay away from the rivers, at least when we settle in for the night.”

“But before then?” Strefer asked.

“Before then, I need to gather some
intelligence,” Rurek said. He looked back at her. “Come on. Let me buy you a
drink.”

They walked a couple of blocks in
from the southern docks and turned onto a street that ran parallel to the Water
Road. Just a few feet away was a tavern. The battered sign overhead, swinging
on linked chains in the gentle breeze, announced it as the Three Lights
Alehouse. Over the door, three round gas lamps glowed, even though the sun had
not yet set.

“This ought to do,” Rurek said, and
led Strefer inside.

The tavern was far from full, but
there were more than a dozen patrons there, not to mention a bartender and one
or two serving girls. Rurek took Strefer by the hand and led her over to a
booth in the corner of the room, from which one could see both the front door
and the large window that looked out onto the street outside.

“Sit here,” he said, gesturing
towards the side of the table that provided the best view. “I’ll be right back,”
he said, and turned to walk away.

Strefer grabbed him by the forearm
before he walked away. “I thought I wasn’t supposed to leave your side?”

“You’re not,” he said. “I’m the one
leaving your side.” He pulled free of her grip and walked away.

Before Strefer could completely
panic, he returned with two mugs of ale clenched in one hand, his pikti still
in the other. He set the mugs down on the table then sat down across from
Strefer.

“Drink that slowly,” he said as she
took a long swallow. “We don’t have the money for any more if we want to sleep
somewhere with a roof tonight.” After a moment sitting in silence, he stood
back up and handed his pikti to Strefer. “Here.”

“What?” Strefer asked. “I don’t
know how to use this thing.”

“I don’t want you to use it, just
hold it for me. I need to mingle, and I don’t want to be too imposing.”

“Don’t you think the outfit is a
bit of a giveaway?” Strefer asked, gesturing towards his rumpled Sentinel’s
uniform.

“Probably,” he said. “We’ll deal
with that later. For now, just stay here, sip your ale, and watch the room.”

“That’s my specialty,” Strefer
said, giving him a tip of her mug. He walked away without another word to her.
As tempted as she was to watch Rurek walk behind her, Strefer made herself face
forward and scan the room in front of her.

Years of sitting in taverns just
like this one looking for potential leads had left her with a quick eye, a good
memory for faces, and a finely honed intuition about people. She could look at the
table of three middle-aged men sitting at a square table in the middle of the
room and tell they were merchants of some sort, probably from somewhere other
than Innisport, finishing off the day with a few pints. They were boisterous
but harmless. In front of the window was a pair of small tables, each with two
chairs. A young couple sat at one, holding hands across the table and giving
each other moony looks. At the other table sat a young man who had one of the
local newspapers spread out on the table. He was deeply involved with whatever
story he was reading. Strefer wondered it was the
Innisport Advertiser
,
the most well-regarded daily in the Guildlands, or one of the semi-regular
local tabloids, but concluded it wasn’t important.

She had seen three men sitting at
the bar when they walked in. None of them had left, at least so far as Strefer
had noticed. That left a few other people scattered around the tavern, all at
tables by themselves. One was already drunk, to the point of being unable to
keep his head upright. Another appeared to be asleep. The third, sitting at a
table near the door, looked to be doing precisely what Strefer was doing. When
their eyes met, she gave him a quick tip of her mug.

By the time Strefer had finished
her ale, Rurek had returned. He sat down across from her. “Good news,” he said.
“I found somewhere we can stay and found a good way to get across the River
Innis. It’s a day’s walk away, but it should be worth it. What about you?”

She leaned across the table and
said, in a low voice, “I think someone’s been watching us.” She discreetly
pointed towards the table by the door, but when they both turned their heads in
that direction, the table was empty. “Shit,” she said.

“Who was it? Did you recognize
him?” Rurek asked.

“No,” Strefer said, slumping back
and doing away with any attempt at stealth. “He was sitting there looking over
the place, just like I was. And now he’s gone. Maybe he was looking for us?
Looking for something?”

“Or maybe we’re just being
paranoid,” Rurek said. Strefer shot him a cold look. “All right, poor choice of
words. Besides, we’re done here. Might as well find our accommodations for the
evening. If this guy sends trouble back here, no point in being here when it
arrives.”

Rurek chugged the last of his ale
and they walked out into the young evening. As they walked through the streets,
along a route that seemed convoluted even for trying to avoid detection, Rurek
said, “Can I ask you a question?”

“Sure,” Strefer said.

“Just curious—if there’s a Guild
for the folks who raise children and whatnot, then I suppose there’s a Guild
for guys that run taverns, right?”

“Of course,” Strefer said, “the
Guild of Hospitality.”

Rurek snorted. “Of course there
is.”

“Although this particular barkeep
could have also been a member of the Guild of Culinarians,” Strefer continued.

“The what?” Rurek asked.

“Culinarians,” Strefer said. “You
know, cooks?”

Rurek snorted again, and they kept
walking into the darkness.

~~~~~

They spent the night not at a
boarding house or inn, but rather in what appeared to Strefer to be a private
home. Their host was a middle-aged woman named Aira. Strefer gathered from the
snips of conversation between her and Rurek that Aira’s husband was also a
Sentinel and was deployed elsewhere. Perhaps that was how Rurek convinced her
to allow them to stay there for the evening. Strefer never directly asked. It
didn’t seem important, and she thought that Rurek was entitled to keep some of
his secrets from her, so long as they were safe.

It was safe, as well as comfortable,
certainly more than some threadbare boarding house would have been. Rurek and
Strefer had adjoining rooms on the home’s third floor, well away from any
disturbance that could come from the street. The bed in Strefer’s room was
large and soft, a true luxury that made her forget all about her tiny berth on
Kanawha
.
In the morning there was hot water for washing and a fresh breakfast.

They sat at the breakfast table in
silence along with Aira. When she got up to go deal with something else, Strefer
said under her breath, “I could get used to this, you know.”

“Don’t,” Rurek said around a hunk
of something in his mouth. “This is the best night’s sleep and the best meal
you’ll have until we get to Oberton, I imagine.”

Strefer knew he was right and so didn’t
press the matter any further. She did notice that his Sentinel uniform was
still intact and, if anything, in better shape than it had been in Tolenor. “I
thought you were going to do something about that?” she asked quietly,
gesturing towards him.

Rurek shook his head. “I thought
about it and decided it was a better tool to use in a ruse,” he said. “Besides,
I’m always going to be carrying that thing around,” he gestured towards the
corner of the room in which his pikti rested. “It’s not exactly easy to
conceal.”

Strefer could think of no good
rebuttal to his conclusion. At any rate, Aira quickly returned to the table
with a fresh pitcher of something that turned out to be fruit juice, freshly
made from fruit imported from the Slaisal Islands. Strefer and Rurek both took
a cup and drank it down. Once breakfast was over, Rurek extended his
appreciation to Aira and they left the house, via a side door, and were back on
the street.

By the position of the sun, Strefer
could tell that Rurek was taking them due north, which made little sense to
her. “Care to let me in on your plan?” she asked. “What did that barkeep tell
you, anyway?”

“It wasn’t just him,” Rurek said,
the base of his pikti striking the cobblestones on the street with every step.
“I asked the same questions of three people at the bar. As I hoped, they each
gave different answers.”

“How is that a good thing?”

“It’s a good thing because if
someone comes back to the Three Lights asking questions about us, nobody can
tell them where we went,” he said, head turning as he scanned the thin morning
crowds on the street.

“You think that will really stop
somebody who is looking for us?”

Rurek shook his head. “We don’t
need to stop anybody. All we need to do is slow them down or confuse them.” He
paused for a moment. “To answer your original question, we’re headed for a
small private ferry just north of the city. According to one of the tavern
patrons, it was once a key link between Innisport and the Arbor, but with the
newer ferries downstream that have been completed in the past few years, it’s
mostly been forgotten. It specializes, it seems, in moving people who don’t
want to be noticed.”