Robert Asprin: Uneasy Alliances

He let his eyes go out of focus-an easy task since his hair had begun turning white as well as gray-and was struck by a wild insight that shook him in his shoes: His beloved Unicorn and the palace weren 't so very different after all. He gulped his mug of wine and blamed his seeping eyes on it.

But, no, the comparison was in his mind and the similarities would not go away. The Vulgar Unicorn and the palace were both places where style was generally more important than substance. They were both places where you belonged, or you didn't belong-and where you had to always prove that you still belonged. Both had reputations which exceeded reality, and-might as well admit it-both were parasites in the city's lifeblood.

Dark Shalpa knew how many honest men it took to support a thiefeven one who lied as all thieves lie. Hakiem guessed it took about as many as it took to support an aristocrat.

"You look like you've seen a ghost," Hort said cheerfully as he took the chair opposite his mentor.

Hakiem raised his head to see twins smiling at him. Puttering Nethergods! What did these people put in their wine? Old habits, however, died hard and stood him in good stead as he reestablished conscious control over his body with slow, deliberate gestures. Old habits, and the fact that he had drunk no more than half a mug of sour wine.

"You've forgotten everything I've taught you," he said, using drawling sarcasm to mask the stiffness in his tongue.

"What sort of introduction is that? Make a point, Hort. Get your audience's attention. Add color. What manner of ghost; what sort of look-"

They had played this game before. Hort puffed up his chest and spread his arms wide. "Ye gods, old sot, your eyes are as red as the gutters in Shambles Cross; you're as pale as a man who's seen his mother's ghost dancing naked with Vashanka's tent peg!"

Hakiem swallowed hard, and not because of the wine. The boy had talent; had learned everything he'd been taught. He didn't need a mentor any longer.

"Better, lad. Much better. You do yourself, and myself, proud. Now, tell me, what have your pointed little ears heard this week?"

"Tales of vengeance: brothers for brothers, fathers for sons. Ordinary folk are confident that the worst is over and are stepping out to settle their own scores."

Hakiem nodded. He'd sensed as much himself. The Nisibisi-funded PFLS anarchy was over and there was a sense that the future would not be like the past. But debts had to be evened before the future was embraced.

"What else?"

"A whole new society growing in Shambles where the rousters who moved Torchholder's stones make their homes. They think the streets of Sanctuary are paved with gold-or at least the walls are-and, dammit, if they don't seem to be right. Everybody's swinging a mallet or smoothing mortar, even our Prince, and the common folk think the world's getting better each day."

"Are there any clouds on our cheerful horizon?"

The young man shed his expansiveness. His eyes grew intense and he leaned across the table. Still good storytelling, but Hakiem sensed there was something more in Hort's eagerness.

"Men are vanishing, maybe five or six a week. And they're not turning up in any of the usual places. Some say it's the Mageguild trying to get power back, but I've found a blind alley there. Best guess points toward the harbor."

"You've checked that out?"

Hort drew back a hand's breadth. He was the son of the best fisherman in town, and, while he had no taste for salt water himself, he had the confidence of those who did.

"We're taking more trade up and down the coast: stone for the walls and pretties for Beysib gold. Most goes where it should, but some sails west and hooks about the Hag Banks-and you know what that means."

It galled a bit, but Hakiem had to shrug and shake his head. He'd heard of the banks, where the Beysib fisherfolk had taught Hort's people to set their nets for deep water fish, but he knew nothing more.

Hort's smile deepened. "Catch the current there," he whispered, leaning further across the table. "And you bring up in the lee of Scavenger Island with a harbor as deep as ours, twice as wide-and no law at all to interfere with your gold."

The master storyteller twirled a grey tuft of his beard. He knew the history of Sanctuary better than any other man. These days the Rankans were the tyrants and the townsfolk pointed with underdog pride to their Ilsigi ancestry; it hadn't always been that way. Not far beyond the reach of living memory the Ilsig kings had been the enemy, and Scavenger's Island had been the sanctuary toward which the oppressed fled.

Scavenger's Island-pirate haven. A place which made Sanctuary at its worst seem serene and orderly by comparison. Scourge of the seas, Harrier of the coast, and, also, a place which had generally regarded Sanctuary as a poor relation and left it alone. But Sanctuary wasn't poor any longer.

"How does this tie to the missing men?" Hakiem asked, completely sober now.

Hort shrugged. "Some go willingly as recruits, the rest as galley slaves."

"And no one else suspects that we're being harvested by pirates?"

"Did you?"

Again Hakiem had to shake his head. Sanctuary had always been downtrodden-a home to thieves, not the target of pirates. Old habits died hard, indeed.

"The Old Man," Hort continued, speaking of his father, "says you can always trust kings and princes to build their walls in the wrong place."

I suppose you can, Hakiem agreed in silence.

"You'll tell them, won't you?" Hort asked, no longer a storyteller but simply a young man who was afraid for his home and his life.

Hakiem nodded. He would, of course; nevertheless, a tale like this was wood-ripe for burning and required special care. There were people in Sanctuary who could confirm the substance of Hort's suspicions, and few of them owed an old storyteller a favor. He'd get started tomorrow, but without Hort. There were some tricks to his trade Hakiem hoped the younger man would never need to know.

"Anything else, my boy? Scandals, magic, two-headed calves?"

Hort relaxed and began one of many tales, about a love charm gone remarkably awry.

It was nearly dawn when Hakiem made his way out of the Maze to West Gate Street. He'd stayed out later than planned, drunk more than he should, and could practically feel his plump bed beneath his cheeks. A group of tired guards hailed him as he came through the gate, then looked the other way as he took a candle from the rack and slipped into the backways.

The backways were always the fastest, most discreet ways through the palace. A warren of hidden stairways, corridors and cul-de-sacs had been built in order to be officially forgotten at the end of each burst of palatial expansion. Like the Maze and the sewers, they were runwred to be more mysterious than they actually were. Beneath the Hall of Justice, Hakiem passed not one but three courtiers scurrying back to their proper beds; he didn't even try to count the servants.

There was only one protocol along these backways: silence. One might look, but never see; hear but never speak. Hakiem remembered what he saw, but unless he saw the same event in a public area it stayed locked forever within him.

As the storyteller rounded the dusty comer where the backways merged with the public ways, he was minded again of the similarities between palace life and criminal survival. There were seeds of an epic tale sprouting in his mind and no room for other thoughts.

Later on Hakiem would say of those next few moments that he was neither a kowtowing Beysib nor a stiff-backed Rankan courtier and so he looked the Beysa straight in the eye as a proud Ilsigi. Truth was, though, that the sight of Shupansea-with her dark gold hair night-braided, her soft wool gown and slippers, and her deadly emerald beynit draped across her shoulder-sitting on his cushions completely unnerved him.