George Martin - Old Mars

Dair looked pained. “I don’t work that way. We can sort out the money later.”

I knew that he had no intention of splitting it: He just wanted to keep an eye on me and perhaps get my help. But that was fine for the moment.

With me up behind Dair on his black tope, we tracked them as far as the edge of the plain, then lost the trail. The tope stood, swinging its head in indecision. Since the sorcerer had stolen my mount, I wondered what he’d done with his own. Maybe the lizard-thing was still roaming around the place.

“Might as well camp up for the night,” Dair said, philosophically.

“I’m still not up for ‘companionship.’ ”

“Now that I’ve found out you’re a woman, actually, neither am I.”

We took turns keeping watch. It was a quiet enough night, although for a time I heard sounds out on the plain suggesting the Tribes were having another jamboree. Dair woke me at dawn, handed me a leather cup of tea, and told me that we were getting going. I was quick enough to agree. I wanted to get out of tribal lands, before the priestess—Hafyre’s aunt—discovered that we were still on her patch and sent her warriors out against us.

We’d gone far enough west already that by the time evening fell, we were back in Scarlight, and I was surprised to find how much I’d missed the place. At least, compared to the Cold Deserts.

We found a bar to sit out the early evening in a corner booth. I thought that the sorcerer, having presumably dealt with Hafyre’s aunt, might come back through Scarlight. If he still lived. Whatever the case, I was resigned to Hafyre’s loss. But by that time, I was also looking forward to a sweat lodge, and wine.

“You’re quite attractive now you’re not covered in filth,” Dair said when I reappeared. I gritted my teeth. I was likely to get more attention as Zuneida than I had as the anonymous Thane, so I’d kept the mask on, rendering his remark even more irritating.

“I thought you didn’t like women.”

“I like some women. Just not for sex.” He glanced around at the men in the bar.

“Trust me, that’s refreshing.”

“So,” Dair said, primly. He poured me a glass of Ylltian white and watched as I took a sip. If he’d been going to poison me, I thought, he’d have done so earlier. “You’ve had a varied career.”

“You noticed.”

“Whereas I’m more single-track. I’ve always been a bounty hunter, ever since I was a young man. Followed in my uncle’s footsteps.”

“You’re from Cadrada?”

“I’m from a lot of places. I was born in a desert village. Didn’t have a name, it was too little. I got out on a barge down the Grand Canal and never went back. You?”

“Cadrada, but I don’t know who my parents were. Brought up on the edge of the court, by a variety of people, then into the temple as a dancer. They used me to seduce visiting aristocracy. Reliable enough work.” And it paid for my poetry, but I didn’t really want to tell Dair that; I thought it might make me seem less threatening.

“Easier than bounty hunting.”

“Only sometimes. Anyway, I wanted to travel.” I was trying to be philosophical about Hafyre’s loss, and failing. This is why one should never mix business and personal matters.

Dair was scanning the room behind me; he’d seen something, but I didn’t want to draw attention by looking round. “I can understand that.”

“This is decent wine,” I said, loudly. “Want some more?”

His eyes remained on the back of the room. “Whatever you say, my friend.” His free hand traced a couple of sigils on the tabletop: northwest, leaving . Then he stood. “There’s a back way out behind the kitchen.”

So that was the way I took, while Dair went out the front. I passed a greasy scullery and someone washing pans; she did not look up. The staff were probably used to it. I sped through an alley, seeing no one, and met Dair again outside the bar, standing in the shadows.

“They’re here. The sorcerer is, anyway.”

“Did you see her? Why would he have brought her back here and not to the Tribes?”

“I don’t know. Negotiating on neutral ground? Or maybe he thinks it’s safer now that he’s found out we’re on the scene. I only saw him. I don’t think he saw us, though. But I can’t be sure.”

“Did you see where he went?”

“No.”

“I want my tope back,” I told him. A quick trip round the town’s stables seemed in order, and, in the second, belonging to one of the cheaper guesthouses, we found my mount. He bellowed a welcome when he saw me, looking up from his steaming bucket of entrails and enveloping me in a blast of fetid breath. Dair said that he thought it was sweet. I did not bother to reply. We took the back stairs, weapons at the ready. Dair took a phial from his pocket, broke off the top, and threw it into the corner; after a moment, smoke billowed out, seeping under the doors.

“Fire!” Dair shouted, with a convincing note of panic.

We waited until there were a series of gratifying cries and people in various stages of undress bolted forth. At the far end of the hall, however, a door remained firmly closed. I ran through the clouds of smoke and kicked it in.

The sorcerer was standing by the window, in the act of throwing open the shutters.

Hafyre cried out, muffled by a gag. Her hands were tied behind her back. I sliced through the bonds while Dair fired a bolt at the sorcerer, who flung himself to one side. I stood up to get a clear shot with the barb gun, aiming at the sorcerer’s face, but at that moment the room crackled with the cast of a spell.

I felt it hit me, and it felt as though it should have brought me down, but it broke over me like a fiery wave and was gone. There was a cry of fury and I turned to see the priestess, Hafyre’s aunt, standing in the doorway. Her hand was outstretched; her face, bewildered. The sorcerer gave a sudden caw of laughter.

“That’s the trouble with women’s spells!”

My magic can fry any man at seven paces . Being a poet, I really should pay more attention to figures of speech, especially in other people’s languages.

The sorcerer flung out a hand of his own. Dair tackled me low, clutching me around the waist and bringing me to the floor.

The bolts shot over my head like twin comets: one green and one blue. There was a sharp cry, a curse from Hafyre, then the ringing silence that follows concussive-weapons fire. The pressure of Dair’s body on mine was abruptly released. He pulled me to my feet. A scorched outline against the opposite wall was all that remained of the sorcerer: Evidently rage had lent force to that particular spell. In the doorway, the body of the Ynar priestess, Hafyre’s aunt, had slumped lifelessly to the floor. And a window banging against its own shutters was the only trace of Hafyre herself.

She’d stolen my tope, we discovered shortly. But there were no prizes for guessing where she was headed: Cadrada, decent restaurants, and a lifetime of business opportunities. We could have gone after her, but I couldn’t help feeling that she deserved to have a free run.

Later, though—later I would return to Cadrada. Maybe with money in my pocket. The hope in my heart was already there, however misplaced.

Aloud, I said I thought that she was more trouble than she was worth. So Dair and I split the proceeds along gender lines: He took the sorcerer’s cash bag and poison store, while I stripped the priestess’s body of her coin belt and the wealth-beads in her hair. Then we dumped her body in the Yss and gave the guesthouse proprietor a bit over the cost of the room to keep her quiet. Even with this unexpected expense, over another bottle of Ylltian white, we calculated that we’d made slightly more than the finders’ fees.