Juliet McKenna - The Assassin's Edge

“What did the Watch want?” Usara asked before he could stop himself.

“There was this goldsmith,” began ’Gren with a happy smile.

“We don’t all have Planir’s bottomless bags of gold.” Sorgrad took a handful of silver chains out of one pocket and stowed them in his pack. He looked blandly at Shiv.

“Does Planir earn his coin or does he make it?” ’Gren was next to Larissa, pale against her darker colouring, azure eyes engaging. “Alchemists go to Hadrumal, don’t they? Everyone says they’re looking for magical help to turn base metals precious.”

“Shall we get on our way?” Pered suggested, offering Larissa his arm. ’Gren sauntered along on her other side. The others followed some paces behind.

“So let’s go look for a ship,” said Sorgrad. “No sense in delaying, not if there’s a fight in the offing.”

“We’ve tried the harbour master and all the various princes’ factors,” Usara said gloomily.

“I’ll find someone who sees the sense of taking your coin.” Sorgrad’s confidence was laced with a hint of menace.

Pered looked back, shading his eyes with a hand. “Are we all going down to the docks?”

Sorgrad shook his head. “I only need these two to sit still, look rich and keep their mouths shut.”

“You’re lodged at a decent inn?” ’Gren smiled obligingly at Larissa. ”Let’s wait for them there.”

“Larissa’s rather more than just Planir’s pupil,” Shiv murmured to Sorgrad.

“I don’t see him hereabouts.” The Mountain Man shrugged. “Your choice: risk ’Gren cutting a slice off Planir’s loaf or taking him down to a dockside after your magic just spoiled his hopes of a good fight.”

“Pered will keep things decorous,” Usara offered.

“As long as he doesn’t go off trying to work out how to paint a spell,” frowned Shiv. “All right, let’s find two coaches.”

Pered was already whistling them up and ’Gren ushered Larissa inside the first with exquisite courtesy at odds with his grimy clothes.

“Somewhere near the pilot academy, if you please.” Stifling his qualms, Usara followed Sorgrad and Shiv into the second vehicle and the coachman whipped up his horse. Once down from the heights, they rattled through streets thronged with people intent on the buying and selling that kept both halves of Zyoutessela rich.

After some distance, Usara cleared his throat. “Sorgrad, how did you get on in Solura?”

The carriage swayed round a corner before Sorgrad shook his head with disgust. “Everything Gilmarten told me was true. Every mageborn must be apprenticed to some other wizard and every master mage is under vow to some baron or other. The best I found were earnest do-gooders desperate to sign me up with someone in their circle. The worst were pig-headed bastards who locked me up and called for the local headsman to brand me as an untrained mage.”

“You escaped, obviously.” Shiv looked at him speculatively. “Using magic?”

“Picklocks and ’Gren’s talent for breaking heads,” Sorgrad said without humour.

“We could share a few things with you,” Usara said with studied casualness.

“Just so you can help out Livak and Halice,” added Shiv.

“Good of you to offer.” Sorgrad smiled, this time with satisfaction. “That was going to be a condition of my cooperation.”

“I thought we’d already agreed your price,” said Shiv with mild indignation.

“That was ’Gren’s price,” Sorgrad assured him earnestly.

Usara laughed. “It’s not far now. What do we do when we get to the docks?”

“We find a likely tavern where you two sit still, look rich and don’t so much as clear your nose like a wizard. In the kind of tavern we want, that’ll mean knives coming your way.” Sorgrad’s tone was simply matter-of-fact.

“So we’re looking for our own crew of pirates?” guessed Shiv.

Sorgrad smiled. “No, we’re looking for a ship. I’ll go looking for crew after dark and I’ll take ’Gren because I probably will be dealing with freetraders. If it takes a fight, I’d rather have him at my back, if it’s all the same to you.”

“We can get ourselves out of trouble,” protested Shiv.

“You won’t see how to keep yourselves out of it in the first place,” countered Sorgrad.

“If we’re caught using magic in some brawl, the word will get back to D’Olbriot quicker than bees to honey,” Usara pointed out to Shiv.

“What’s D’Olbriot’s stake in this game?” Sorgrad looked from Usara to Shiv and back again. “I think it’s time you told me what’s going on. Let’s start with why you two are playing truant from Hadrumal?”

With Shiv’s frequent interjections, Usara’s explanations lasted all the way through the grimy, gimcrack terraces cramped between the generous holdings of the merchant classes and the unyielding sprawl of the dockside districts. Warehouses loomed high on either side with blank walls and doors barred from within. They passed the much extended building where ship owners and captains paid for their helmsmen and pilots to learn the mysteries of the ocean coast, its winds and currents. The coachman drew up in a small square dank with the scent of the retreating tide and hammered on the roof. “This is as far as I go.”

Shiv stood with Sorgrad as Usara paid the man off. “Where do we start?” he wondered aloud.

Sorgrad nodded at a man selling freshly cooked shrimps from a bubbling pot on a small brazier. “Got a cup on you?”

Neither wizard did so each had to pay for a misshapen reject from someone’s kiln to hold a steaming spoonful. Sorgrad produced a short-stemmed silver goblet from some pocket and exchanged a few words as the shrimp seller filled it.

Nodding to the mages, Sorgrad led them away, holding a shrimp between his teeth to pull off its head before crunching the rest. “Our friend tells me there’s a captain about to be left high and dry by a merchant whose creditors will be breaking down his doors any day.”

“He told you that for the price of three pots of shrimps?” The difficulties of peeling one with one hand and his teeth didn’t mask the fact that Shiv was impressed.

Sorgrad shrugged. “I told him it’d be worth ten times that if the word turned out to be sound.”

Usara was licking a burnt finger. He passed a hand over his shrimps, which abruptly stopped steaming. “Where do we find this captain?”

“A dive called the Moon and Rake, so watch your step,” Sorgrad warned. “And if you use magic again, ’Sar, I’ll break your fingers.” He led them down a noisome lane running between a barred storehouse and a yard with high walls topped with broken glass. A few more turns brought them out on to a raucous dock. Sorgrad hailed a man hauling a laden sled on iron runners over the slick cobbles. The docker directed them with an unsmiling jerk of his head.

“Yonder.” Sorgrad led the way towards the tavern whose battered sign showed a man dragging a pole through shallow water beneath the lesser moon casting the secretive light of her full round. Her bolder sister was no more than a blind crescent. The building looked more respectable than Shiv had expected and he raised his hand to the door already ajar.

A dagger thudded into the jamb barely a finger’s width away from his startled hand. “No, this way.” Sorgrad retrieved his blade and gestured to an alley beside the tavern.

The wizards did as they were told. Sorgrad watched from the shadows for a moment before pointing to a big man. “Now what do you suppose he’s doing here?”

Much of a height with Shiv he was half as broad again across the shoulders, muscles emphasised by a close-cut shirt in faded red linen beneath a buckled jerkin. He was deep in conversation with a man handing bundles of clothes, baskets of bottles and a few crates of battered fruit down to a lad standing in a broad, flat-bottomed rowing boat tied to the stubby posts on the dock. The trader paused to consider several of the ocean ships anchored safe in the embrace of the curving arms of the harbour and surrounded with boats like his own tempting their crews to spend their coin on a few trifles.