Guy Kay - Sailing to Sarantium

It was a good strategy, born of swift thinking and urgent cunning.

Had he not been felled by a blow that knocked him senseless and nearly killed him as he angled across towards the shadow of the barn under scudding clouds and a few faint, emergent stars, it might even have worked.

"Imbecile! You could have hit me!"

"Learn to duck," Crispin snapped. He was breathing hard. "I'm sorry. Couldn't see clearly enough." There was only a faint spill of light from the shuttered windows of the common room.

He shouted, "Over here! I've got him! A light, rot you all! Light, in Jad's name!"

Men calling, a confusion of voices, accents, languages, someone rasping something in an unknown dialect. A torch appeared overhead, at the open shutter of his own room. He heard footsteps approaching, the loud voices nearing as men from the common room and the servants from the other side streamed out the front door and rushed over. Some excitement on a wet autumn night.

Crispin said no more, looking down in the light of the single overhead torch, and then in the gradually brightening orange glow as a ring of men surrounded him, some with light in their hands.

The merchant's nephew lay at his feet, a black flow that would be blood seeping from his temple into the mud. The strap of Crispin's satchel was still looped through one of his hands.

"Holy Jad preserve us!" Morax the innkeeper said, wheezing with exertion. He'd raced upstairs and then back down. Robbery in an inn would hardly be unknown, but this was a little different. This was no servant or slave. Crispin, dealing with complex emotions, and aware that they were only at the beginning of what had to be done here, turned and saw the innkeeper's frightened gaze shift quickly from his own face to that of the merchant, Erytus, who was now standing over the body of his nephew, expressionless.

"Is he dead?" Erytus asked finally. He didn't kneel to check for himself, Crispin noted.

"What is happening? I can't see! He shoved me inside!" "Listen, then. Little to see. But be quiet. I need to be careful, now." "Now, you need to be careful? After I'm almost broken in pieces?" "Please, my dear."

It occurred to Crispin that he'd never said anything like that to the bird before. It might have occurred to Linon, too. She fell silent.

One of the cousins did kneel, head bent to the prone man. "He's alive," he said, looking up at his father. Crispin closed his eyes briefly; he had swung hard, but not as hard as he could. He was still holding the staff.

It was cold in the courtyard. A north wind blowing. None of them had had time for cloaks or mantles. Crispin felt mud oozing beneath his sandalled feet. It wasn't raining now, though there was a feel of rain in the wind. Neither moon was visible, and only a changing handful of stars where the racing clouds parted to the south towards the unseen mountains.

Crispin drew a breath. It was time to move this forward and he needed an audience. He looked directly at the innkeeper and said, in his most frigid voice-the one that terrified the apprentices at home-'I wish to know, "keeper, if this thief, indeed his entire party are in possession of Permits that allow them to stay at an Imperial Posting Inn. I wish to know it now." There was an abrupt, shuffling silence in the courtyard. Morax actually staggered. This was not what he had expected. He opened his mouth. No words came out.

New voices now. Others approaching, out of the dark towards the circle of torches. Crispin glanced over and saw the girl, Kasia, being hustled over, two of the inn's servants on either side of her, hands gripping her elbows. They weren't being gentle. She stumbled and they dragged her forward.

"What is happening? I can't see!"

"The girl's here."

"Make her the hero."

"Of course. Why do you think I sent her up?"

"Ah! You were thinking, this afternoon."

"Alarming, I know."

"Let her go, rot you!" he said aloud to the men jostling her. "I owe this girl my Permit and my purse." They released her quickly. Crispin saw that she was barefoot. Most of the servants were.

He turned deliberately back to Morax. "I haven't had an answer to my question, "keeper." Morax gestured helplessly, then clasped his hands together pleadingly. Crispin saw the man's wife behind him. Her eyes were burning: a rage without immediate direction, but deep.

"I will answer that. We have no Permit, Martinian." It was Erytus, the uncle. His narrow face was pale in the ring of torches. "It is autumn. Morax has been kind enough to allow us his hearth and rooms on occasions when the inn is less busy."

"The inn is full, merchant. And I assume Morax's kindness has a price and the price is of no benefit to the Imperial Post. Was I to pay a surcharge to your nephew?"

"Oh, well done! A bowshot at both of them!" "Linon! Hush!"

The satchel strap remained in the nephew's hand. No one had dared touch it. Lying on his back in the mud, Thelon of Megarium had not moved since Crispin felled him. He was breathing evenly, though. Crispin saw it with relief. Killing the man had not been part of his plans, though he was unavoidably aware that someone else might. In the north, a thief is hanged on the god's tree. He was moving quickly here, little time to assess, and less to sort out why he was doing it.

Erytus swallowed, said nothing. Morax cleared his throat, glanced at the merchant, then back at Crispin. His wife was right behind him and he knew it. His shoulders were hunched forward. He looked like a hunted man.

Crispin, no longer a fisherman with a lure but a hunter with a bow, said icily, "It becomes clear that this contemptible thief was staying here illicidy with the sanction of the authorized "keeper of an Imperial Posting Inn. How much are they paying you, Morax? Gesius might want to know. Or Faustinus, the Master of Offices."

"My lord! You will tell them?" Morax's voice actually squeaked and then broke. It might have been comical, in another setting.

"You wretched man!" It wasn't hard for Crispin to summon a tone of fury. "My Permit and purse are stolen by someone who is here only because of your greed-and you ask if I will complain? You haven't even said a word about punishment yet, and all I've seen so far is a manhandling of the girl who stopped this! He would have got away if not for her! What do they do to caught thieves here in Sauradia, Morax? I know what they do in the City to Imperial "keepers who breach their trust for private earn. You imbecile!"

"Hah! But be careful. He could kill you. His livelihood is at risk in this."

"I know. But there is a crowd."

Crispin was painfully aware that no one in this courtyard could be considered an ally, though. Most of them were staying illegally and would want to continue to be able to do so. He was a threat to more than Morax right now.

"All of the. my lord, in autumn, or winter, almost all the Imperial Inns allow honest travellers to stay. A courtesy."

"Honest travellers. Indeed. I see. I will be prompt to offer this in your defence, should the Chancellor ask. I have put you another question, though: what do you do with thieves here? And how do you recompense aggrieved patrons who are here legitimately?"

Crispin saw Morax glance quickly again at Erytus. The innkeeper was almost cringing.

It was the merchant who spoke. "What compensation would assuage you, Martinian? I will accept responsibility for my nephew."

Crispin, who had spoken of recompense in the fervent hope of hearing exactly this, turned to Erytus and let the anger seem to drift from his voice. "An honourable thing to say, but he is of age, is he not? He answers for himself, surely."

"He should. But his… failings are manifest here. A grief to his parents. And to myself, I assure you. What will serve to make this right?"