Jane, on the other hand, wasn't visibly bowled over by Tennetty's claim. She tilted her head toward Jason as they leaned against the forward rail, watching the river bend and turn in the distance.

"The other possibility, of course," Jane murmured, "is that Tennetty would have pushed him so far, so hard that he would have called for the local armsmen." Which was entirely possible.

Still, maybe Tennetty would have gotten a better deal. s.p.a.ce wasn't at a particular premium today: the bags of grain and barrels of dried beef weren't piled more than shoulder high anywhere on the barge. There were only a dozen or so chicken cages with their clucking birds idiotically eyeing the outside world as they floated gently toward somebody's stewpot. There was even enough room for the bargemen to have all four of their mules on board, carefully hitched and hobbled at the rear rail, instead of trotting along the mulepath on the riverbank, the same path they would take to haul the barge upriver.

Riding or walking, downriver was easy on the animals, although it was a bit trickier for the bargemen. Instead of using their poles simply to keep the barge far enough from the riverbank to avoid grounding it, the four brawny men, their torsos gleaming with sweat, worked in almost silent coordination to keep the ma.s.sive craft well toward the middle of the river. The current was fastest there, and business waited for no man. Still, they had to keep the ungainly craft under control, antic.i.p.ating the turns of the swollen Orduin.

Which were, granted, familiar to them. But the work was hard; all four of them were heavily muscled, and the chief bargeman's hand had been hard and strong when Jason had shaken it.

The day wore on, and with a changing of the guard it was Jason's, Tennetty's and Jane's turn to nap in the shade of the tent, with Durine posted just outside. Tennetty unbuckled her belt and lay down flat on her back, folding her hands over her belly as she shut her eyes.

Jason decided that he was tired; when Janie unselfconsciously stripped down to bare skin and slipped into her blankets, he barely noticed.

Just as he was stretching out and deciding that he really couldn't sleep, that he had a responsibility to keep an eye on everything, tiredness overcame him and he dropped off to sleep.

Durine woke him when they were only a short while out of Elleport; the other two were already up and out of the tent.

Jason rubbed the backs of his hands against his gritty eyes and scratched at where the bugs infesting the tent had bitten hima"all over, basicallya"and took a few moments to dress, again checking his pistols to make sure that both of them, the one in his shoulder holster and the one in his rucksack, were loaded, which they always were, and turning the cylinder until the chamber under the hammer was the one just ahead of the empty one, then dryfiring each pistol once to make sure that the mechanism still worked, which it did.

Valeran, his teacher, had taught him to handle firearms ritualistically; adapting to a new ritual wasn't difficult.

In only a few moments the pistols were checked and ready and stowed. He walked out into the afternoon.

As the barge rounded the final bend, the bargemen swung the craft out into the river to avoid a pair of barges bound upriver, then bent their backs and their poles to bring it back into the quiet water near the banks, so that it wouldn't be carried away into the Cirric.

Beyond the banks the fields stood idle, expanses of rotting cornstalks proclaiming that they had been harvested neither recently nor long ago, but somewhere in between.

"There's the docks, over there," one of the bargemen said, indicating a direction with a jerk of his chin as he once again bent his back to his pole. It took longer for them to maneuver the barge over to its berth than Jason would have thought it should, but only a few moments for the waiting dock crew to grab the expertly thrown lines, pull the barge in tight against the dock and tie it firmly in place.

Still, the sun was getting low in the sky as they left the barge, making their way across the floating dock to the sh.o.r.e, all of them staggering a bit as they got their land legs back.

Bren Adahan took the lead. "The first thing we should do," the baron said, "is to find some lodgings for the night. Tomorrow we get to find out what's going on."

"Or," Jane put in, "at least what the locals think is going on."

CHAPTER 17.

Questions and Answers.

Kindness is within our power, but fondness is not.

a"Dr. Samuel Johnson.

A little gentleness goes only a short way. Ladle it out generously, and often, when you can.

a"Walter Slovotsky.

Jason, Jane and Bren Adahan made their way through the farmers' market, toward the docks and the Slavers' Guildhall. Elleport wasn't exactly Pandathaway, but the markets had some charm.

Just goes to show that you can waste a lot of time and effort doing more planning than is necessary, Jason thought. As it turned out, "the Warrior" and his two companions were the talk of the market, and the rumors were flying thickly. Too thickly: the story was growing in the telling.

Jason and the others had made some changes to their appearance: with their gear stowed in their rooms under the watchful eye of Kethol, they could tolerate a careful search. Jason and Bren wore the raw leather of Wehnest cattlemen, and Janie was in the ragged shift and rude iron collar of a slave. The fact that the collar had a secret catch that not only allowed her to take it off, but brought out a slim blade that could easily slice through leather or flesh, was not apparent.

That she had very nice legs, however, was. When they'd stopped to get directions toward the guild pens, they'd gotten several offers on her.

They stopped at an appleseller's stall, Bren quickly negotiating for three shiny apples, each about the size of his fist, then handing one to Jason, tossing the smallest to Janie, and biting into the third himself.

The appleseller was a short, wan man, vaguely toad-faced, yellowing teeth showing for just a moment as he eyed Janie in her shift and collar. Jason m.u.f.fled a glower, while Bren Adahan shared the appleseller's smile.

"Had her long?" the merchant asked, while Bren Adahan eyed a basket of apples as though pretending to consider buying more.

"A while," Bren Adahan said. "I picked her up in Wehnest, to make the trip more pleasant."

"I can imagine."

Janie didn't blush, although she did lower her eyes.

"Cooks, too," Bren Adahan said. "But I've had better. I thought I'd sell her here, but I'm beginning to suspect that the market isn't good right now."

"Not from the guild," the merchant said, "although a private sale might bring you some good luck." He shrugged. "You might try Emmon the silversmith, over on the Street of the Dead Doga"he always seems to have some extra coin, and a keen eye for flesh. Though that ax-faced woman of his'd probably make him resell her."

"Not the guild?"

He shook his head, then shrugged. "The slavers are nervous about buying, what with the Warrior and his friends running around slitting their throats and then vanishing." He picked up and hefted an apple, the shiniest of the lot, and then polished it still further on his ap.r.o.n, before calling out to the baker across the way and tossing the apple in a practiced high arc that brought it almost exactly into the baker's outstretched palm.

The baker threw a quarter of a head-sized loaf back; the appleseller tore off a hunk and nibbled at it.

Jason forced a slow nod. "Where were they last seen?" He bit into his apple again.

The merchant looked him over thoroughly. "I wouldn't, young man. The hilt of your sword may be well-worn, but trying to take on Karl Cullinane isn't something for an amateur. Particularly not one who enjoys a good apple as much as you do." He raised his hand in a brief salute of dismissal. "I'd like your business again."

The three walked off.

"Too much information," Jane murmured.

The Warrior and his men had been spotted in Lundeyll, and on Salket, and on half a dozen of the Shattered Islands, and in Enkiar, and Nyphien. Slavers had been found dead in Pandathaway itself, and on ships bound for Ehvenor. There were three of them, armed with nothing more than swords and knives; there were a score of them on a stolen slaver ship; hundreds of them could appear at any time. They were nowhere and everywhere.

The rumors were just beginning to make a splash here. In a few days, or a few tendays, it would be old news, but now it was all flying fast and furious, and there was no way to sort the truth out from the noise.

If there was any truth to be sorted out.

d.a.m.n.

Janie had the only good idea that occurred to any of them all afternoon: since they wanted to know who was killing the slavers, the best place to go was the guild section of the market.

The Slavers' Guildhall was ahead; the steel pens outside held only half a dozen people, although there was ample room for a hundred.

Bren Adahan leaned toward him. "What do you say we skip this? We already have enough information. Too much."

Jason nodded. "Just what I was thinking."

"Then why didn't you say it?" Jane whispered, irritated.

"More beer, if you please," Durine called out.

There was no immediate response.

He pounded his fist on the table. Tankards and platters rattled on the battered wooden surface, spoons, knives and spicers dancing for a moment. "More beer, if you please," he repeated, his voice almost a whisper.

"My pleasure, sir. My pleasure," the innkeeper called back, scurrying out with two fresh tankards of what was probably the worst beer Durine had tasted in years. The stocky man across the table started to glare at him, but clearly thought better of it; he decided that the watery stew in his bowl was interesting to watch. "Your food will be ready in a moment, or right now, if you'd like," said the innkeeper.

"No rush," Durine said, sipping at the beer. Awful stuff. Was it as bad as the beer they'd had in the barracks a couple years back, from the barrel where they later found a drowned mouse? It was a close call.

Tennetty pursed her lips, inclining her head slightly toward the nearest of the three skinny men with seamen's pigtails who were seated together, down the bench from where she and Durine sat. Her ears were sharper than his; she'd heard something that suggested the sailor knew something of interest.

The dining room of the inn had probably been the outside not too long ago: the long room ran across the front of the inn, as though it were an enclosed porch; the door that led inside was large, thick and weatherbeaten.

At the far end of the room, a pair of ragged children of indeterminate s.e.xa"the older perhaps seven, the younger perhaps five or soa"took turns slapping at each other and stomping on the treadle that turned the spit over the cooking fire. A heavily freckled, moderately pretty girl in her early teens occasionally paused in her dicing of carrots and onions to ladle some more brown sauce over the leg of lamb on the skewer, then waited a few moments for the sauce to burn in a bit before slicing off another few pieces of meat and stacking them haphazardly on a platter.

There was definitely some wild onion in the sauce; Durine could smell it from where he sat.

But just as the cook finished preparing a plate for the two of them, the sailor mopped up the last juices on his plate with a slab of bread, crammed the dripping slice in his mouth and stood, pushing his plate away, resting his hand for a moment on the shoulders of one of his comrades to steady himself. He turned to leave.

Tennetty tilted her head closer to Durine's. "He was saying something about 'the Warrior' and some island." She rose and he followed, ignoring the way the innkeeper looked curiously at them, then decided that it wasn't any of his business why they had decided not to eat the food that came with their rooms.

Durine and Tennetty followed the sailor out into the daylight.

The business district was crowded as they followed him toward the docks, through streets filled with sailors from the boats in the harbor; with merchants bringing dried meat and bagged grain down toward the docks, or returning from there with their hands pressed to the sides of their tunics, accompanied by a guard or two watching the crowd nervously for pickpockets or robbers; with ragged children playing their endless games of tag through the cobbled streets; with horses standing hitched in front of flatbed wagons, p.i.s.sing noisily on the road.

Every city was the same.

"Try to look a bit less conspicuous," Tennetty said. "You're not built for following people."

"No," Durine said, "I'm not." He was every bit as tall as Karl Cullinane, and while his physique was the middle-heavy one of a wrestler's, he was heavy with muscle, not fat. He wasn't as pretty as the Emperor or Kethol were, or even as pleasantly ugly as Pirojil wasa"

But he wasn't supposed to be pretty, or inconspicuous. He was supposed to be large and dangerous. That was what the Emperor had kept him around for, and that was what he was good at: breaking things, and threatening to break things, whether the thing to be broken was a stout door or a thin neck.

Tennetty had a thin neck, and one that probably deserved breaking. But Jason had said not to, and even if the boy wasn't emperor yet, he was the closest thing to it. Besides, Bren Adahan had said she ought to be kept alive, and even if the baron was a f.u.c.king Holt he was a tame one, long as Aeia was leading him around by hisa"

He suddenly realized that he was alone, that while he had been woolgathering Tennetty had slipped away. He scanned the crowd for her, but there was no sign.

Still, the sailor was ahead, pausing at an alley to loosen the drawstrings of his trousers and relieve himself in the gutter. Fastening himself up, he seemed to see something ahead, and vanished into the alley.

Durine quickened his pace.

The narrow alley between the two three-storied buildings was nearly blocked by a man-high pile of dirt; there seemed to be some sort of excavation going on in the cellar of one of the buildings. There was barely enough room for Durine to squeeze by.

By the time he did, Tennetty already had the situation well in hand. She was standing over the bound form of the sailor, who was making only quiet noises around the wad of cloth she'd jammed in his mouth. A nice decoy; although one would expect a sailor to know better than to follow a strange woman into even a well-lit alley. Then again, Elleport was a well-policed town, within its limits.

Durine bent over the man.

"We know you know about the Warrior," he said, talking quietly, slowly, patiently, knowing that when a man as large and powerful as he talked just that way it could chill the blood. "Let me tell you what is going to happen: I'm going to take out your gag, and you're going to quietly, quietly, answer all our questions." He dug two fingers into his pouch and came up with an imperial quarter-mark, a small silver coin the size of Durine's little fingernail. "After that, I am going to give you this, and you're going to walk away, and forget this happened, and never, never mention it to anyone."

Tennetty slipped her eye patch over her gla.s.s eye and smiled at the way the man's face whitened even further as he realized who she was.

"Take the patch off and go stand watch," Durine said.

She thought about it a moment, then moved off to do just that. He was getting tired of her habit of hesitating before complying, and he wouldn't have minded doing something about it, but Jason had said no.

Durine worked his fingers for a moment. It wouldn't be fair to take out his frustration on the sailor, so he just seized the man's face in his right hand, letting the sailor feel just a trace of the strength in his fingers. "Don't worry about her. Worry about me. If you don't do exactly what I've told you, if you lie to me, if you call out, if you ever tell anyone anything about this, I'm the one who's going to find you, wherever you are, lay hold of you by the back of your head, and grind your face against the palm of my other hand until you don't have a face anymore. Do you have any difficulty in believing me?"

The sailor tried to shake his head.

"Good."

From over by the mound, Tennetty laughed. "We are not nice people," she said.

The sailor talked at length.

The others had their ways; Kethol had his.

He followed the woman past the unblinking eyes of the house's bouncer, upstairs to her crib. The room was tiny, barely big enough to hold the pallet on the floor and a pitifully small wooden chest that probably contained all the wh.o.r.e owned. There was a large iron padlock on it, and he had spotted the poorly hidden pocket in the collar of her thigh-length shift where she kept the key.

She unbelted her shift and dropped it to one side. Underneath she was glistening from her bath; Kethol had insisted that she clean herself first. There was enough filth in the world, and on the road.

Damp and naked, she reached for his tunic, but he pushed her hands away. "I can undress myself," Kethol said.

For just a moment, her eyes widened. Perhaps she'd heard a trace of threat in his voice, and while there were limits to what he could do to her, he had rented her for the night and n.o.body would complain about a few bruises. That came with the rental, too.

He nodded his head toward the pallet, and she obediently slipped under the thin blanket.

He undressed swiftly but unhurriedly, folding and stacking his clothes carefully, leaving his scabbard on the floor where he'd be able to reach it in the dark, then blew out the lamp and joined her under the blankets.

She reached for him, but he gripped her wrists.