Tales From the Vulgar Unicorn Part 19

Hanse became visibly uncomfortable: 'I am Hanse. I was ... apprentice to Cudget Swearoath. Prince Kitty-Cat had him hanged. I am Shadowsp.a.w.n. I have breached the palace and because of me a h.e.l.l Hound is dead. I have no friends.'

And you slip and call him 'Kitty-Cat' when you think of your executed mentor, do you? Not seeking a father, eh? Do you know that all men do, and that I have mine, in Vashanka? Ah Hanse how you seek to be enigmatic and so cool - and are about as transparent as a pan of water caught from the sky!

Tempus waved a hand. 'Save all that. Just tell me not to be your friend. Not to call you friend.'

A silence fell over them like a struck banner and something naked stared out of Hanse's eyes. By the time he knew he must speak into the silence, it was too late. That same silence was Tempus's answer.

'Yes,' Tempus said, considerately-cleverly changing the subject. 'What old whatsisname Torchholder yammers about is true. Vashanka came, and He claimed Sanctuary. His name is branded into the place, now. The very temple of Ils lies in rubble. Vashanka created the Weaponshop, from nothing, and-'

'A pedlar-G.o.d?'

'I didn't think much of the lactic myself,' Tempus said, hoping Vashanka heard him while noting how good the youth was at sneering. 'And the Weaponshop destroyed the mage the governor imported to combat him. Vashanka is not to be combated.'

Hanse snapped glances this way and that. 'Say such things a time or two more in Sanctuary, my friend, and your body will be mourning the loss of its head.'

The blond man stared at him. 'Do you believe that?'

Hanse let that pa.s.s, while he rowed into the current of other conversations in the tavern. A current restless as a thief on a landing outside a window, and conversations just as stealthy and dark. He tuned it out again, stepping out of the flow yet flowing with it. Quietly.

'And how many of those fell Things do you think are still loose?'

'Too many. Two or four? You know our job is to collect them.'

'Our?'

'The h.e.l.l Hounds.'

'Who's your bearded friend, Hanse?'

The speaker stood beside the table, only a bit older than Hanse and just as c.o.c.ky. Older in years only; he had not benefited from those years and would never be so much as Hanse. Self-consciously he wore self-consciously tight black. Oh, a brilliant thief! About as un.o.btrusive as hives.

Hanse was staring at Tempus, who was pink and bronze of skin, gold and honey of hair, lengthy and lengthy of legs, and smoothshaven as a pair of doeskin leggings. Hanse did not take his dark-eyed gaze off the h.e.l.l Hound, while his dark hand moved out to close on the (black-bracered) wrist of the other young man.

'What colour would you say his beard is, Athavul?'

Athavul moved his arm and proved that his wrist would not come loose. His arrogance and mask of c.o.c.ky confidence fled him faster than a street girl fled a man revealed poor. Tempus recognized Athavul's chuckle; nervousness and sham.

Tempus had heard it a thousand or a million times. What was the difference? He reflected on temporality, even while this boy Athavul temporized.

'You going blind, Shadowsp.a.w.n? You think myself is, and testing he and I?' With a harsh short laugh and a slap with his other hand on his own chest, Athavul said, 'Black as this. Black as this!' He slapped his black leather pants - self consciously.

Tempus, leaning a bit forwards, elbows on the little table, big swordsman's shoulders hunched, continued, to gaze directly at Hanse. Into Hanse's eyes. His face looked open because he made it that way. Beardless.

'Same's his hair?' Hanse said, and his voice sounded brittle as very old harness-leather. His eyes glittered.

Athavul swallowed. 'Hair...' He swallowed again, looking from Hanse to Tempus to Hanse. 'Ah ... he's your, ah, friend, Hanse. Let go, will you? You twit him about his ... head if you want to, but I won't. Sorry I stopped and tried to be civil.'

Without looking away from Hanse, Tempus said, 'It's all right, Athavul. My name is Thales and I am not sensitive. I've been this bald for years.'

Hanse was staring at Tempus, blond Tempus. His hand opened. Athavul yanked his arm back so fast he hit himself in his (nearly inexistent) stomach. He made no pretence of grace; with a dark glance at Hanse, he betook himself elsewhere, sullenly silent.

'Nicely done,' Tempus said, showing his teeth.

'Don't smile at me, stranger. What do you look like?'

'Exactly what you see, Hanse. Exactly.'

'And ... what did he see?' Hanse's wave of his arm was as tight as he had become inside. 'What do they see here, talking with Hanse?'

'He told you.'

'Black beard, no hair.'

Blond, beardless Tempus nodded.

Neither had taken his gaze off the other's eyes. 'What else?'

'Does it matter? I am in the employ of that person we both know. What you people call a h.e.l.l Hound. I would not come here in that appearance! I doubt anyone else would be in this room, if they saw me. I was here when you came in, remember?

Waiting for you. You were too cool to ask the obvious.'

'They call me sp.a.w.n of the shadows,' Hanse said quietly, slowly, in a low tone.

He was leaning back as if to get a few more centimetres between him and the tall man. 'You're just a d.a.m.ned shadow!'

'It's fitting. I need your help, Shadowsp.a.w.n.'

Hanse said, enunciating distinctly, 's.h.i.+t.' And rising he added, 'Sing for it.

Dance in the streets for it.' And he turned away, then back to add, 'You're paying of course, Baldy,' and then he betook himself elsewhere.

Outside, he glanced up and down the vermiform 'street' called Serpentine, turned right to walk a few paces north. Automatically, he stepped over the broken plank in the boardwalk. He glanced into the tucked-in courtyard that was too broad and shallow to be dangerous for several hours yet. Denizens of the Maze called it variously the Outhouse, Tick's Vomitory., or, less seriously. Safe-haven. From the pointed tail of the shortcloak on the man back within that three-sided box, Hanse recognized Poker the Cadite. From the wet sounds, he made an a.s.sumption as to Poker's activity. The man with the piebald beard glanced around.

'Come on in, Shadowsp.a.w.n. Not much room left.'

'Looking for Athavul. Said he was carrying and said I could join him.' Lying was more than easy to Shadowsp.a.w.n; it was almost instinctive.

'You're not mad at him?' Poker dropped his tunic's hem and turned from the stained rearmost wall.

'No no, nothing like that.'

'He went south. Turned into Slick Walk.'

'Thanks, Poker. There's a big-bearded man in the Unicorn with no hair on top.

Get him to buy you a cup. Tell him I said.'

'Ah. Enemy of yours, Hansey?'

'Right.'

Hanse turned and walked a few paces north towards Straight, his back to Slick Walk (which led into the two-block L whose real name no one remembered. Nary a door opened onto it and it stayed dark as a sorcerer's heart. It smelled perpetually sour and was referred to as Vomit Boulevard). When Poker said the weather was sunny, turn up your cloak's hood against rain. When Poker said right, head left.

Hanse cut left through Odd Birt's Dodge, angling around the corner of the tenement owned by Furtwan the dealer in snails for dye - who lived way over on the east side, hardly in tenement conditions. Instantly Hanse vanished into the embrace of his true friend and home. The shadows.

Because he had kept his eyes slitted while he was in the light filtering down from Straight Street, he was able to see. The darkness deepened with each of his gliding westward steps.

He heard the odd tapping sound as he pa.s.sed Wrong Way Park. What in all the - a blind man? Hanse smiled - keeping his mouth closed against the possible flash of teeth. This was a wonderful place for the blind! They could 'see' more in three quarters of the Maze than anyone with working eyes. He eased along towards the short streetlet called Tanner, hearing the noises from Sly's Place. Then he heard Athavul's voice, out in the open.

'Your pardon, dear lady, but if you don't hand myself your necklace and your wallet I'll put this crossbow bolt through your left gourd.'

Hanse eased closer, getting himself nearer the triple 'corner' where Tanner sort of intersected with Odd Birt's Dodge and touched the north-south wriggle of the Serpentine as well. Streets ; in the Maze, it has been said, had been laid out by two love-struck snakes, both soaring on krrf. Hanse heard the reply of Ath's intended prey: 'You don't have a crossbow, slime lizard, but see what I have!'

The scream, in a voice barely recognizable as Athavul's, raised the hairs on the back of Hanse's neck and sent a chill running all the way down his coccyx. He considered freezing in place. He I considered the sensible course of turning and running. Curiosity urged him to edge two steps farther and peek around the building housing Sly's. Curiosity won.

By the time he looked, Athavul was whimpering and gibbering. Someone in a long cloak the colour of red clay, hood up, stepped around him and Hanse thought he heard a giggle. Cowering, pleading, gibbering in horribly obvious fear - of what? - Athavul fell to his knees. The cloak swept on along Tanner towards the i Street of Odours, and Hanse swallowed with a little effort. A knife had got itself into his hand; he didn't throw if. He edged down a few more steps to see which way the cloak turned. Right. Hanse caught a glimpse of the walking stick.

It was white. The way the person in that cloak was moving, though, she was not blind. Nor was she any big woman.

Hanse put up his knife and started towards Athavul. 'No! Please plehehehease!'

On his knees, Ath clasped his hands ; and pleaded. His eyes were wide and gla.s.sy with fear. Sweat and [ tears ran down his face in such profusion that he must soon have i salt spots on his black jerkin. His shaking was wind-blown wash on the line and his face was the colour of a priming coat of whitewash.

Hanse stood still. He stared. 'What's the matter with you, Ath? I'm not menacing you, you fugitive from a dung-fuelled stove! Athavul! What's the matter'th you?'

'Oh please pleoaplease no no oh ohh ohohohono-o-o...' Athavul fell on his knees and his still-clasped hands, bony rump in the air. His shaking had increased to that of a whipped, starved dog.

Such an animal would have moved Hanse to pity. Athavul was just ridiculous.

Hanse wanted to kick him. He was also aware that two or three people were peering out of the dump still called Sly's Place though Sly had taken dropsy and died two years back.

'Ath? Did she hurt you? Hey! You little piece of camel dropping - what did she do to you?'

At the angry, demanding sound of Hanse's voice, Athavul clutched himself.

Weeping loudly, he rolled over against the wall. He left little spots of tears and s...o...b..r and a puddle from a spasming sphincter. Hanse swallowed hard.

Sorcery. That d.a.m.ned Enos Y - no, he didn't work this way. Ath was absolutely terrified. Hanse had always thought him the consistency of sparrow's liver and chicken soup, with bird's eggs between his legs. But this - not even this strutting a.s.s could be this hideously possessed by fear without preternatural aid. Just the sight of it was scary. Hanse felt an urge to stomp or stick Ath just to shut him up, and that was awful.

He glanced at the thirty-one strands of dangling Syrese rope (each knotted thirty-one times) that hung in the doorway of Sly's. He saw seven staring eyeb.a.l.l.s, six fingers, and several mismatched feet. Even in the Maze, noise attracted attention ... but people had sense enough not to go running out to see what was amiss.

'BLAAAH!' Hanse shouted, making a horrid face and pouncing at the doorway. Then he rushed past the grovelling, weeping Athavul. At the corner he looked up Odours towards Straight, and he was sure he saw the vermilion cloak. Maroon now, in the distance. Yes. Across Straight, heading north now past the tanners' broad open-front sheds, almost to the intersection with the Street called Slippery.

Several people were walking along Odours, just walking, heading south in Hanse's direction. The lone one carried a lanthorn.

All six walkers - three, one, and two - pa.s.sed him going in the opposite direction. None saw him, though Hanse was hurrying. He heard the couple talking about the hooded blind woman with the white staff. He crossed well-lighted Straight Street when the red clay cloak was at the place called Harlot's Cross.

There Tanner's Row angled in to join the Street of Odours at its mutual intersection with the broad Governor's Walk. He pa.s.sed the tiny 'temple' ofTheba and several shops to stop outside the entrance of the diminutive Temple of Es.h.i.+ Virginal - few believed in that -and watched the cloak turn left. Northwest. A woman, all right. Heading past the long sprawl of the farmers' market? Or one of the little dwellings that faced it?

Heading for Red Lantern Road? A woman who pretends to be blind and who put a spell of terror on Athavul like nothing I ever saw.

He had to follow her. He was incapable of not following her.

He was not driven only by curiosity. He wanted to know the ident.i.ty of a woman with such a device, yes. There was also the possibility of obtaining such a useful wand. White, it resembled the walk-tap stick of a sightless woman.

Painted though, it could be the swagger stick of ... Shadowsp.a.w.n. Or of someone with a swollen purse who could put it to good use against Hanse's fellow thieves.

He looked out for himself; let them.

Hanse did not follow. He moved to intersect, and could anyone have done it as swiftly and surefootedly, it must have been a child who lived hereabouts and had no supervision.

He ran past Slippery - fading into a fig-pedlar's doorway while a pair of City Watchmen pa.s.sed - then ran through two vacant lots, a common back yard full of dog droppings and the white patches of older ones, over an outhouse, around a fat tree and then two meathouses and through two hedges - one spiny, which took no note of being cursed by a shadow on silent feet - across a porch and around a rain barrel, over the top of a sleeping black cat that objected with more noise than the two dogs he had aroused - one was still importantly barking, puffed up and hating to leave off- across another porch ('Is that you, Dadisha? Where have you been?'), through someone's sc.r.a.ps and - long jump! - over a mulchpile, and around two lovers ('What was that, Wrenny?'), an overturned outhouse, a rain barrel, a cow tethered to a wagon he went under without even slowing down, and three more buildings.

One of the lovers and one of the dogs actually caught sight of the swift fleeting shadow. No one else. The cow might have wondered.

On one knee beside a fat beanberry bush at the far end of Market Run, he looked out upon the long straight stretch of well-kept street that ran past the market on the other side. He was not winded.

The hooded cloak- with the walking stick was just reaching this end of the long, long farmers' market. Hanse crimped his cheeks in a little smile. Oh he was so clever, so speedy! He was just in time to- - to see the two cloakless but hooded footpads materialize from the deep jet shadows at the building's corner. They pounced. One ran angling, to grasp her from behind, while his fellow came at her face-on with no weapons visible. Ready to s.n.a.t.c.h what she had, and run. She behaved surprisingly; she lunged to one side and prodded the attacker in front. Prodded, that Hanse saw; she did not strike or stab with the white staff.

Instantly the man went to his knees. He was gibbering, pleading, quaking. A b.u.t.terfly clinging to a twig in a windstorm. Or ... Athavul.

Swiftly - not professionally fast, but swiftly for her, a civilian, Hanse saw (he was moving) - she turned to the one coming up behind her. He also adjusted rapidly. He went low. The staff whirred over his head while his partner babbled and pleaded in the most abject fear. The footpad had not stopped moving.

(Neither had Hanse.) Up came the hooded man from his crouch and his right hand snapped out edge-on to strike her wrist while his other fist leaped to her stomach. That fist glittered in the moonlight, or something glittered in it.

That silvery something went into her - and she made a puking gagging throaty noise and while she fell the white stick slid from her reflexively opening fingers. He grabbed it.

That was surely ill-advised, but his hand closed on the staffs handle without apparent effect on him. He kicked her viciously, angrily - maybe she felt it, gutted, and maybe she did not - and he railed at his comrade. The latter, on his knees, behaved as Athavul had when Hanse shouted at him. He fell over and rolled away, a.s.suming the foetal posture while he wept and pled.

The killer spat several expletives and whirled back to his victim. She was twitching, dying. Yanking open the vermilion cloak, he jerked off her necklace, ripped a twisted silver loop out of each ear, and yanked at the scantling purse on her girdle. It refused to come free. He sliced it with the swift single movement of a practised expert. Straightening, he glanced in every direction, said something to his partner - who rolled foetally, sobbing.

'Theba take you, then,' the thief said, and ran.

Back into the shadows of the market building's west corner he fled, and one of the shadows tripped him. As he fell, an elbow thumped the back of his neck.

'I want what you've got, you murdering b.a.s.t.a.r.d,' a shadow-voice said from the shadows, while the footpad twisted to roll over. 'Your kind gives thieves a bad name.'

'Take it then!' The fallen man rammed the white staff into the shadow's thigh as it started to bend over him.

Instantly fear seized Hanse. Viced him; encompa.s.sed him; possessed him.

Sickening, stomach-fluttering fear. His armpits flooded and his sphincter fluttered.

Unlike the stick's victims he had seen, he was in darkness, and he was Shadowsp.a.w.n. He did not fall to his knees.

He fled, desperately afraid, snivelling, clutching his gut, babbling. Tears flowed to blind him, but he was in darkness anyhow. Staggering, weeping, horribly and obscenely afraid and even more horribly knowing all the while that he had no reason to be afraid, that this was sorcery; the most demeaning spell that could be laid on a man. He heard the killer laugh, and Hanse tried to run faster. Hoping the man did not pursue to confront him. Accost him, Snarl mean things at him. He could not stand that.