CHAPTER 23.

A Tap on the Shoulder.

Am I a G.o.d? I see so clearly!

a"Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.

His clothes had been uncomfortably damp until he stepped out into the rain, but his belly was warm, his tongue and throat still aching with the taste of a last cup of almost scalding tea.

Now his clothes were simply soaked again as he splashed down in the waterlogged gra.s.s behind the Steer's Head Inn, then stepped back into the cover of the balcony.

Between the flashes of lightning the night was dark, the darkness broken only by lamps in the windows of the buildings that vanished into the distance in the rain and the gloom. Most places, that was enough light to see by, but just barely.

He stood silently next to the shingled side of the building. Wiping the back of his dripping hand across his eyes, he took a moment to get his bearings.

The inn was to his back and to the south. Immediately to the east were the inn's stables, where their horses waited under the none-too-watchful gaze of the stablemen, both of whom had reeked of cheap wine. To the west, further up the street, were three residences, clearly of upper middle-cla.s.s merchants, and then the stables of the Silver Mushroom Inn. The Mushroom itself was across the street from its stables.

Two streets over and three down was the Slavers' Guildhall. That was Jason's ultimate target for the night, but it was hours away, at least. When you're on a stalk, move slowly and carefully, Walter Slovotsky had said. Move not at all, if possible; wait for the prey to come to you.

Well, that wasn't possible here.

He'd have to keep away from open s.p.a.ces. Dressed as he was in wet, dark clothes, he would be invisible in the shadows, but in a flash of lightning he could easily be seen if somebody happened to be looking the right way.

On the other hand, immediately after a flash of lightning would be a safe time. He closed his eyes and waited. When brightness flickered through his eyelids and thunder crashed in his ears, he opened his eyes and stepped off into the night, adjusting the coil of thin climbing rope that ran diagonally over his left shoulder.

With every step, his boots would sink ankle deep into the muck. That did no harm, but they made sucking sounds when he pulled them out. n.o.body would be able to hear it very far, not over the sound of the rain, but it did carry a few yards.

Jason hid in the lee of an old oak tree, leaning against it, the wet bark painfully rough against his back even through his tunic. He pulled off first one boot, then the other; he tied them together with a thong from his belt pouch and slung them over his shoulder, then used another thong to tie them to his chest.

A stone bit into the ball of his right foot with his first step; the edge of a rock cut into the side of his left foot when he hopped to one side.

s.h.i.t. This wasn't going to make it. He leaned back against the tree and felt at his toes. This had the makings of a disaster, but you had to do the best with what you could. That was the rule.

Rinsing his feet off as best he could in the muddy water, he untied his boots, then pulled them back on, mud squishing between his toes. With his first step, something gave beneath his right foot; he tripped and fell flat on his face in the mud, the fall knocking the wind right out of him.

Some hero.

Face down in the mud, he fought to get his hands underneath him and push himself out of the mud, struggling both to not breathe in the cold goo and to get some air.

Finally he was able to force himself up to his hands and knees, and draw a jagged, shuddering breath, before he almost fell over in a coughing fit. He knelt again and wiped as much of the mud from his mouth, eyes and nose as he could.

There was nothing to do but press on. He staggered to his feet and off into the night as quietly as he could, a taste of mud and grit between his teeth, shivering, miserable, exposed, cold, dirty and utterly alone.

The first four buildings he checked turned out to be just what they had appeared to be: the homes of middle-cla.s.s merchants, or n.o.ble merchantsa"it was hard to tell which, in Salket. Jason guessed that one was an ironmonger, another an olive dealer, the other involved in the sale of dried fish, but he could have been wrong, and couldn't guess what the owner of the fourth house was.

What the houses weren't were barracks, and that was what was important.

Was the rain starting to ease, or was that just his imagination? As if in answer it beat down harder on his head, the wind picking up, driving the icy water into his face.

He moved on.

The Silver Mushroom Inn had been built primarily for comfort, not security; each of its several suites seemed to have its own balcony, lower than those of the Steer's Head Inn. Ladderlike trellises supported trails of ivy.

Above his head, a narrow shaft of light from a gap in the curtains cut into the night; laughter and the rattle of dice in a cup suggested what was going on. Jason waited under the balcony until he could count at least four different voices, although he thought it was probably more like half a dozen. He moved on to the next balcony; the window above was dark.

He thought for a moment about climbing the trellis, but that was just too tempting, and too dangerous. There could easily be some sort of trap, some sort of alarm cord hidden beneath the dripping leaves.

Still, that was the sort of thing that it was best to find out about. He stooped to check one of the rungs of the trellis, one at his knee level. He carefully inserted his fingers in the gap, gently probing for anything suspicious. Nothing. He stiffened his fingers and arm, and then rested part, then all of his weight on it.

The rung didn't give at all. Not surprising; the Salkes were known for building things to last. Still, the wood was old and splitting. He thought about splinters, and about pulling on his climbing gloves, but decided that good touch was the better part of valor here.

He tested another rung, and then another, and then slowly, carefully began to climb. He reminded himself again: patience on a stalk wasn't preferablea"it was essential. You had to master time, not let it be your master.

Haste was dangerous.

It was fifteen rungs to the balcony; slowly he put some weight on it, until he was standing on the ninth. He reached up to close his hand on the railing and pull himself the rest of the way upa"and then he caught himself. He couldn't see it, and he'd better see it before he put his weight on it.

He put his hand on the top rung, and started to draw himself up, but it gave fractionally. Slowly, slowly, he withdrew his hand, then felt around, slowly, carefully. Pretend that there might be sharpened razors hidden behind the trellis, at any moment, that was the trick. There might be.

He didn't find any razors, but his fingers found a hinge on one side of the trellis rung, and a cord running from the other side. Some sort of alarm.

He pushed a vine aside far enough so that, in the dim light coming from the next balcony over, he could see that the floor of the balcony was empty. There was nothing but water there, and not much of that; the floor was ever-so-slightly convex, like the lens of a magnifying gla.s.s, allowing water to run off the side and into the vines.

His probing fingers found nothing on the rain-slickened marble of the railing. Not a likely candidate for some sort of pressure switch; he pulled himself up and over the rail.

The panelled gla.s.s doors to the balcony were locked, and probably stronger than they looked, perhaps constructed like the panelled doors to the balconies at Castle Biemestren: what appeared to be criss-crossed wooden support members were actually wrought iron covered by thin wooden slats.

He unstrapped and drew his bowie, and tested the point against one of the criss-cross members; the sharp point sank easily a quarter-inch into the wet wood, but touched metal beneath. Just like home. There was no easy way inside, at least not through this balcony.

Jason slipped his knife back into its sheath and tied it into place.

He moved to the other side of the window; the curtain didn't quite cover there. Beyond the wet gla.s.s, light came into the room through the door leading to the bright hall beyond. He could see four tightly crowded sleeping pallets, two of them containing dim forms, and a rack of eight rifles, certainly slaver-powder rifles, set up near the door. It was a fair bet that this was a sleeping room for at least eight slavers. Multiply that by the six other balconied rooms in the inn, and he could guess that there were about fifty slavers in the Silver Mushroom Inn alone.

The next step was toa"

A creak from inside the room froze him solid. His hand dropped to the bowie at his belt, but that was silly. There was nothing he could do with a bowie that wouldn't reveal him.

He stood next to the door and unwound the twin wooden handles of the garrotte from his belt. The thought of killing again made his hands tremble, but if the door opened he'd have to. Slip the thin strand of woven sinew over the neck, tighten and pull, and then ease the body to the ground and get the h.e.l.l out of here.

His fingers tightened on the grips when there were low murmurs from inside the room. He couldn't quite make out the complete sentences, but caught a few fragments: "Your turn . . . awake this time . . . yeah, sure, if it don't rain."

Pressing his ear to the door, he could hear the sounds of somebody dressing, then stomping out of the room, while somebody else undressed, boots. .h.i.tting the floor.

Then the thump of somebody dropping, dead tired, to a sleeping pallet. Jason waited until all he could hear were snores before climbing gingerly down the trellis. The rain was still coming down hard enough to make him miserable.

The Silver Mushroom Inn stables were next. There were only twenty horses in the stable, which wasn't in accord with his estimate of fifty slavers in the house. But there you had it: twenty horses, and one drunk stableboy sleeping up in the hayloft.

Next would be the guildhouse itself, and he'd have to be very careful there. It was only two streets over and three down, but walking down the cobblestone streets wasn't a good idea, dressed as he was. If they had any watch out at all, he'd be spotted.

He stuck to the service alleys behind the rows of houses. They were muddy, but there were more places to hide.

This business was miserable and dull, and when it wasn't dull it was dangerous. Something slippery under the mud behind one of the houses shot his feet out from him, landing him on his side, something biting into his back, just below his right shoulder blade.

He reached back, and pulled a piece of wood from his flesh. It was a splinter as long as his finger, and his back hurt like h.e.l.l where it had gone in. He had a small metal bottle of healing draughts in his pouch, but it wasn't for minor injuries; he had to save it for something that really hurt.

While the wind was getting colder and colder, the rain was starting to ease up, and, from the top of a hill, he could even see the stars through a distant break in the clouds. If he was going to check out the Slavers' Guildhall, he'd best hurry.

Standing in the lee of the wall surrounding the Slavers' Guildhall, it occurred to him that there must not have been a lot of warring going on in inland Salket, not for a long time. The houses, once they'd gotten away from the port area, had seemed to be designed for comfort, not security: there were windows at many levels, albeit often barred; few of the homes were surrounded by a protective wall. While the houses of the poor were of the familiar wattle-and-daub, the homes of the wealthy were built of brick, not thick blocks of stone.

The Slavers' Guildhall, though, was an exception, as were the buildings to either side.

Just to the west of the slaver compound was a wooden stable, more of a barn, really, probably property of the slavers: there was a covered walkway between the two. To the east was what had been a stately, three-storied home, but it had suffered fire damage. While the local lord's firemen had clearly put out the blaze before it spread, the house was ruined and hadn't yet been repaired or replaced; part of the facade was ripped clean off, up to the third story.

The slaver compound hadn't been damaged by the fire. It was two-storied, built of stone, not brick, and completely surrounded by a ten-foot-high wall topped with a railed walkway, with two guardposts at the rear corners of the wall, although neither of them seemed to be occupied at the moment.

It wasn't a castle; it wouldn't withstand a siege, or a large-force a.s.sault, but it was intended to stand up to anything less than that.

It was reasonably new, too; the edges of the stone were still sharp, not worn smooth by hundreds of years' exposure to the elements, as were the walls at Biemestren Castle. Jason would have been willing to bet that it had been built out of fear of an attack by the Home raiders, and only finished perhaps ten years before.

But it could be taken. You could take anything, if you had the means. Batter hard enough against any wall and it would come down. Fire enough bolts, enough arrows, enough stones, enough bullets into an enemy mob, and they'd run or die.

The slavers had gone to the expense of mounting mirror-backed glowsteels on poles at each of the four corners and halfway down each of the walls, and while their blue glow was dima"either the spells were initially weak or they badly needed refreshinga"it was enough to see by.

The slavers hadn't thought of everything, though; a huge oak tree spread its leaves and branches almost against the west side of the wall. He walked to the side of it and checked carefully around the bark for anything out of place, some tripwire, some pressure plate. There wasn't anything.

He shrugged. Could they have left such a hole in their defenses? At the same time as they were beefing up their defenses by stashing anywhere from twenty to fifty extra armed slavers at the Silver Mushroom Inn? That didn't make sense. Still, from where he was he could see that there wasn't any other tree near enough to overlook the wall.

Best to take a quick turn around the wall before he tried anything. He wouldn't want to risk checking out the streetside door, but that left three sides of the square.

Staying near the wall, though, was probably not the best idea. He crossed to the other side of the alley and, his back to the wooden fence that ran along the edge of the neighboring property, he worked his way toward the next corner, moving slowly and silently in the rain.

There was a slaver in the guardpost at that corner, after all. Muttering something or other under his breath, a dark form leaned out into the night.

Jason froze.

In seconds that felt like minutes, like hours, the guard leaned back in. He hadn't heard anything. Jason waited a dozen heartbeats, then moved on.

As he turned the northwest corner, something touched his shoulder.

CHAPTER 24.

Walter Slovotsky.

He who has patience may compa.s.s anything.

a"Franois Rabelais.

Valeran used to say something about how, in a combat situation, it was about sixteen times better to do something useful and violent right away than to wait and figure out something even more useful and violent later.

Jason spun on the b.a.l.l.s of his feet, his left arm coming around to block, while his right hand s.n.a.t.c.hed at his belt, his fingers falling on the wooden handles of his garotte, not his bowie.

It didn't matter; better something than nothing. He struck outa"

a"and let his fist drop.

Walter Slovotsky was standing a few feet away from him, dropping a crooked stick to the ground.

"Easy, kid, easy," Slovotsky whispered, beckoning him into the shadows. "Just your Uncle Walter, who doesn't want to get killed. Now or ever."

Jason could see enough of him in the light of the glowsteel to see that he looked different: thinner, older, more shopworn. His beard was thicker and longer than it used to be; a shock of graying hair that badly needed cutting framing his lined face.

But it was still Walter Slovotsky; his all-is-peachy-keen-in-any-universe-clever-enough-to-contain-Walter-Slovotsky-smile was intact, although barely.

"What the f.u.c.k are you doing here?" Slovotsky whispered.

"Where are the others?" Jason looked around. "Ahira, Fathera""

Walter Slovotsky's brow furrowed. "Your father? We need a long talk," he whispered, "and this isn't the place. You got a place around here?"

The rain had started to let up; as though bidding a farewell, a flurry of distant lightning bolts crackled to the ground.

Jason nodded. "The Steer's Head Inn. Twoa""

"a"streets over and three up." Slovotsky nodded. "You want to lead the way, or want me to take it?"