Kate Elliott - Shadow Gate

The heat melted her. She tilted her head back to rest against the slats and let her senses open.

Someone lit lamps in other chambers, oil hissing as it caught flame. Folk passed clip-clop on the walkway, treading heavily or lightly according to their nature. Business increased at dusk, as the shadows gave cover to men and women who didn't want to be recognized.

She tasted the powerful scent of night-blooming paradom like cinnamon kisses on her lips.

A pair of lovers whispered in one of the cottages, words of longing and promise poured into willing ears. How fiercely they yearned! She sank into memories of Joss, made more bitter and more sweet because she knew he might well yet be alive, older than her now although he had once been younger. She had to let go of her affection for him. He had lived for twenty years without her, grown his own life without her. And anyway, was it even possible to love where there are no real secrets, where no part of your lover is thankfully hidden away from you?

She accepted the grief, and set it aside, because there was work to be done and she had never once in her life turned away from any task laid before her.

In these baths met merchants and guildsmen who desired privacy for certain delicate negotiations. She had come to these baths the first time because she'd heard she could pay coin for a private bathing room, an astounding luxury. Now she ate and drank sparingly of the cheapest gruel and watered rice wine, and slept in a boardinghouse little better than a rathole, so she could keep coming back for the conversation that her unnaturally keen hearing picked up.

She had learned a great deal about the city of Olossi: trade secrets and outside-the-temple dealings; petty rivalries pursued by narrow-minded competitors; militia men deep in schemes for the upcoming Whisper Rains games. Olossi's Lesser Houses and guildsmen were discontented, being ruled by the greed of the Greater Houses, and certain people in their ranks plotted an uprising. A group of reckless young men was engaged in smuggling, more for sport than for profit. A lad and a lass from competing clans who would never ever consider letting them marry made their assignation here, even though — as Marit knew — they were long since being followed by various agents from their own families.

She picked out voices like threads from a multicolored shawl.

'… No one can know we are negotiating. I'll lose the contract if the Greater Houses suspect I'm going outside the official channels. I tell you, we in the Silk Slippers clan have been providing reliable river transport for generations, and what do the Greater Houses do now? They try to force us to lower our rates, greedy bastards…'

'… If you take the cargo across the river after moonset, Jaco's boys will meet you just downstream of Onari's Landing with the knives…'

'If the militia continues to refuse to send out long-range patrols, then the carters' guild has agreed to cooperate with us. We'll send a joint mission to Toskala to appeal to Clan Hall directly, and ask them to intervene to improve the safety of the roads…'

'Eh. Eh. Yes, like that. Ah. Ah.'

'I want you to kill a man.'

Her breath caught in her throat as she strained to hear.

'That would be murder. Against the law.' The other man's voice had a slight hoarse timbre, as though he had once inhaled too much smoke.

'Do as I ask, and no charges will ever be brought against you.'

'How can you possibly guarantee that?'

'We control the council. It will never get past a vote.'

'The council does not control the assizes if the reeves bring me in to stand trial.'

'Argent Hall will not charge you. They have a new marshal, hadn't you heard? He'll not interfere.'

'The hells. You sound certain, Feden. Considering what manner of crime you're asking me to commit.'

'You haven't asked the name of the target. Or why he needs killing.'

'I want to know first why Argent Hall won't interfere if it gets wind of the killing. Surely the dead man's clan will seek justice.'

'Argent Hall is too busy looking for some manner of treasure that my allies in the North seek. Something valuable taken out of the Hundred years ago that they have reason to believe has been found and brought back.'

The smoky-voiced man's laugh was sarcastic. 'Silk? Gems? A rare cutting from one of the Beltak temples' Celestial Golds? A stallion for stud?'

'I don't know.' This said brusquely. 'It's not my responsibility, but if you want to keep your eyes open at the border crossing it wouldn't hurt to get word of such a thing before anyone else did. I don't mind telling you, I don't trust that new marshal, Yordenas.'

The other man hrhmed thoughtfully under his breath. He seemed distracted, perhaps spinning out fantasies of treasure and wealth as the other man — Feden — went on impatiently.

'I don't mind telling you I think the entire cursed mob of them are hatching a plan to overthrow the Greater Houses.'

'The reeves of Argent Hall?'

'Neh, neh, the Lesser Houses and those ungrateful guildsmen. After everything we've done to make Olossi prosperous and safe! If we kill just one man, one of the ringleaders, it may make the rest hesitate.'

'Because they'll see you can get away with it?' asked Smoky Voice with sharp amusement. 'Don't they already know that you in the Greater Houses can do what you cursed well please?'

Water splashed on rock and poured away as hands emptied a bucket over stone. A door slid closed with a slap.

'What if we ran away?' the youth demanded in a husky whisper. 'We could go to Toskala, make a new life there for ourselves.'

'Dearest,' she replied breathlessly, still recovering from her drawn-out pleasure, 'the roads aren't safe. Anyway, they'd send agents after us. How can we hide from them?'

That piece of practicality silenced the idiot, thank the gods. Marit

wound a path past his unsteady breathing, past the chuckling of the young fools planning their latest smuggling venture for no better reason than the lark of evading the militia, pinched out the low-voiced argument of a man sure sure sure that the gift he had proffered to the Incomparable Eridit had been rejected because she thought herself unworthy of his attentions while his friends, lounging with him in the baths, assured him rumor had it she wicked anyone who was to her taste, so gifts were meaningless because she had rejected him merely because he was one ugly Goat.

There.

'I'll do it, then. But if you get any word about what the treasure is, you'll let me know.'

'Don't tangle with the Northerners, Captain. Don't try to take what they want. You'll regret it.'

'Only if they know I have it. If the Argent Hall reeves are so busy patrolling the Barrens and the Spires, who's to say they might miss what passes right under their talons, eh?'

'Do you envy the reeves, Captain? Is that resentment I hear?'

'I have a sword, and you have your coin and your clan's power. Don't think we're friends to share confidences. Just allies of convenience, that's all.'

'You'll be glad enough I approached you, come the end of this Fox year. Mark my words. Come Goat year, you'll value this alliance. You'll thank me.'

She hauled herself out of the tub and toweled dry with the changing cloth. She dressed quickly, and slung her bag across one shoulder; it was everything she owned and needed, the essentials of her life — or her death — pruned back to almost nothing. She waited, listening for the smoky rasp of his breathing, and followed. She did not need to stay close to keep track of him. She had been a good reeve in her day, able to sniff out trouble without knowing precisely where the rot grew, but she could now follow the odor of dishonesty and cheating and corruption and depravity straight to its putrid source in a venal heart.