Robert Asprin - Wartorn - Resurrection

Discontent. Resentment. Anger. These conquered people of Callah had, for the most part, submitted peacefully to this occupation. Now, because of one act of violent rebellion, the Felk were coming down on their heads, in a way that they hadn't since the city's conquest.

It was ironic that Jesile's effort to find one supposed rebel was probably fostering rebellious attitudes in hundreds if not thousands more of Callah's citizens.

Aquint doubted if this would end well.

Shortly before curfew, he heard someone softly whistling for his attention from an alleyway. Aquint had been making inquiries at a slew of taverns, looking for anybody who'd seen a minstrel. No one had.

He squinted at the alley in the gathering twilight. It was possible he'd had one too many drinks while trying to blend in with the patrons.

Cat let himself be seen at the mouth of the alley. "Found him," the boy said.

"Tyber?"

"Who else?" Cat sniffed the air, as if smelling the alcohol on Aquint's breath. As usual, the boy grimaced his disapproval. "You up to paying him a visit?"

Aquint drew himself up with great dignity. "When I can't do this job, I'll let you know."

Off they went. Aquint was still wearing the sling on his left arm. It was annoying him now. On impulse, he tore it off.

"What about your disguise?" Cat asked as they moved through the backstreets.

"I won't need one with Tyber," he said.

"Why not, because he'll still be loyal to you from the old days?" Cat sounded skeptical.

Aquint shook his head. "Because that disguise wouldn't fool that ugly bleeder for a moment."

They came around a corner. Aquint halted sharply. "We're not going there!" he said, aghast.

Cat shrugged. "That's where I've heard Tyber is holed up these days."

Aquint had been avoiding it, and now here it was. His old warehouse. It was indeed sorry-looking. The place was nailed up like a poor man's coffin, with loose, careless boards.

"We can get in through the dock," Cat pointed.

But Aquint didn't move. "Why is Tyber here?"

"I heard he tried to bribe one of the garrison officers into letting him set up a contraband operation."

Aquint blinked. "I never read that in any of the Felk incident reports."

"Jesile probably didn't want it in the record. From what I heard, the officer was going to go along with it, for a cut, of course. Then he got caught and tried to turn in Tyber. Since then, Tyber's gone to ground."

Aquint nodded. Tyber, like himself, just wasn't cut out

for a legitimate business life. Felk or no Felk, men like Tyber and him had to pursue their own destinies, had to find an angle to work, had to cheat the system. They had to.

"Let's go," Aquint said, and he and Cat crept toward the warehouse.

They were nearly at the cargo dock, when Cat's fingers suddenly seized Aquint's shoulder.

"Wait," the boy whispered urgently, a dire look on his young face. He bounded onto a barrel and vaulted toward a window sill far overhead, catching it and pulling himself up and into the shadows.

Aquint faded back to the far side of the street. Peering intently at the loose boards over the dock, he saw now, in the gathering dark, the flicker of candlelight within the warehouse. Something else must have tipped off the boy to some potential danger, though.

He waited, growing worried. Cat could move with great stealth, but even real cats blundered sometimes. In the distance, he heard criers announcing the curfew.

Finally, the boy emerged from the same high window into which he had disappeared. He flitted over to Aquint.

"What was it?" Aquint asked the lad.

Cat shrugged. "Don't know. It just felt unsafe."

Aquint ruffled his hair, relieved. "Well, what did you find inside?"

The boy grinned. "Tyber. And some friends."

"Friends?"

"A motley little group. Plus, I'm pretty sure one of them is the fellow who murdered the Felk soldier. He fits the description, minus the beard."

Aquint's eyes widened. "Our minstrel? What's he doing mixed up with Tyber?" Whatever else, that minstrel was dangerous, and his actions had caused harm to the people of Callah.

Cat said, "They've got some pathetic little weapons, and I heard them making plans."

Aquint felt uneasy. "What kind of plans?"

'To overthrow the Felk and retake Callah," Cat said blandly.

Rebels, Aquint thought, dismayed. Actual rebels.

"I could go fetch a Felk patrol," Cat offered. "You would have to share the credit for the capture. But there's more than a dozen in there, and I don't think you want to take them by yourself."

Capture the rebels, Aquint thought. Abraxis would be pleased. But.. . then what?

"Then what?" he said, voicing the question out loud to Cat.

Cat looked confused. "What do you mean?"

"We turn them in, and then what happens to us? Abraxis reassigns us somewhere else. Are you in any hurry to leave Callah?"

The boy slowly shook his head. Callah, even under Felk rule, was still home to him and Cat. Neither of them wanted to be anywhere else, in the end.

"What do you want to do then?" said Cat.

Aquint's mind was working fast, cutting through the haze of the drinks he'd had.

"You said there's about a dozen of them, with not much in the way of weapons?"

"Old men and women, a couple kids, maybe one real sword among them," Cat said.

Aquint chuckled quietly. "Then, how much trouble can they cause?"

"How's that?"

"As long as there are rebels in Callah, we stay in Callah. As long as we make progress in tracking them down, Abraxis stays happy. Don't you see, lad? We can nab one of these pretend revolutionaries whenever we need to make ourselves look good. And the thing is, these people will think they actually are rebels. They'll probably confess to it."

Cat was thinking it over. "You're probably right. That's awfully sneaky, though, even for you."

Aquint looked gravely at his young friend. "Lad, I didn't ask to be snatched away from here by the Felk. I didn't even ask to be made an officer, let alone an Internal Security agent. I was happy with how things were before this godsdamned war."

"So was I," muttered Cat.

Aquint gazed across the street at the warehouse. "I presume you got a decent look at everybody in there."

"Naturally."

"Then we know who our rebels are. And we know where they congregate." Tyber must have picked the warehouse as a secret meeting place. Odd that the old black-marketeer had turned into a revolutionary, but war did strange things to people. Aquint knew.

He smiled. The game was entering a new phase here. These would-be rebels would help him sustain the fiction that an uprising was brewing in Callah.

"And the first one we hand over to the Felk," Aquint said as he led Cat away, "is going to be that minstrel."

"WELL? WHAT'S YOUR answer?"

"I... need time."

"There's none to spare."

"If Praulth says she needs time," Xink said pointedly, "you will give it to her." It was at once a show of assertiveness toward the Petgradite, and subservience directed toward her.

Praulth found, somewhat to her surprise, that she still cared for Xink deeply. They remained lovers. But love, she was learning, was a balance of power. Once, those scales had tipped completely in his favor and she had been absolutely helpless in her feelings toward him, lost in a kind of demented devotion that only the freshly deflowered could truly know.

That unequal balance had since transposed.

The messenger from Petgrad was much older than either her or Xink, and he seemed to radiate contempt for the University. His flesh was leathery, his limbs wiry. He looked built for fast travel. His name was Merse.