Robert Asprin: Storm Season

Then the curtain moved, and a darkskinned man in a hawkmask stood there with a sword aimed floorward in his hand. "We talk," the man said, and Mradhon's heart, which had leapt several beats while his fingers, obeying previous decision, stayed still... began to beat again.

"So," Mradhon said cockily enough, "I was wondering when the rest of us would get into it. Look-I'm short of funds ... a little bit for earnest, so I can reckon I'm hired. I'm particular about that."

"Mercenary," the young man said.

"Once," Mradhon said. "The guard and I came to a parting of the ways. It's this skin of mine."

"You're not Ilsigi," said the mask.

"Half." It was a lie. It served, when it was convenient.

"You mean," the youth said, "your mother really knew."

Heat flamed up in Mradhon's face. He gripped the knife and let it go again. "When you know me better," Mradhon said softly, "I'll explain it all . . . how women know."

"Cut it," the woman said. She tucked her feet up within her arms.

"What would it take," the hawkmask said, "for you to consider yourself hired?"

Mradhon looked at the man, his heart pounding again. He sat down on the edge of the firepit, making himself easy when his instincts were all otherwise. He thought of something exorbitant, remembered the hawkmasks' fallen fortunes. "Maybe a silver bit-Maybe some names, too."

"Maybe you don't need them," the hawkmask said.

"I want to know who I'm dealing with. What the deal is for."

"No. Mor-am; Moria; they'll deal with you. You'll have to take your orders there-Does that gall you?"

"Not particularly," Mradhon said, and that too was a lie. "As long as the money's regular."

"So you knew Mor-am's face."

"From across the river. From days before the trouble. I dealt with a man named Stecho."

"Stecho's dead."

The tone put a wind down his nape. He shrugged. "So, well, I suspect a lot were lost."

"Stabbed. On the street. Tempus' games. Or someone's. These are hard times. Vis. Yes, we've lost a few of us. Possibly someone talked. Or someone knew a face. We don't wear the masks outside, Vis. Not now. You don't talk in your sleep, do you, Vis?"

"No."

"Where lodging?"

"Becho's."

"If," the voice grew softer still, difficult, for its timbre, "if there were a slip, we would know. You see, it's your first job to keep Mor-am and Moria safe. If anything should happen to the two names you knew-well, we'd suspect, I'm afraid, that you'd made some kind of mistake. And the end of that would be very bad. I can't describe enough-how bad. But that won't happen; I know you'll take good care. Go back to your lodgings. For now, go there. We'll see about later."

"How long?" Mradhon asked tautly, not favoring this threatening and believing every word of it. "Maybe I should move in here-to keep an eye on them."

"Out," said Mor-am.

"Money," Mradhon said.

"Moria," the hawkmask said.

The woman uncurled from the cot, fished a bit from the purse she wore and offered it to him.

He took it, snatched it from her fingers without a look, and strode for the door. Mor-am got out of his way and he opened it, stepped out into the foul wind and the dark and the reek of the alley, and walked, out onto the main way again.

Doubtless one of them would follow him. His mind seethed with possibilities, and murder was one. -For less than the silver, any one of them would kill. He sensed that. But there was the chance too that the hire was real: their casualties were real, and they could not get too many offers now.

He padded as quickly as he could toward his own territory down the main road, down which the last few stragglers moved, homeless and searching, muddle-minded, some, which kleetel left of one when its use had been too long; or moving with purpose it was unwise to stare at. He strode along in a world of faceless shapes and lightless buildings, everything anonymous as himself. Hooves sounded in the dark, moving in haste, and in a moment the streets were clear, himself among the lurkers that hid along the alleys: a. quartet of riders passed toward the bridge, Stepsons, Tempus' men. They were gone in a moment and life poured back onto the street.

So the business out by Jubal's estate continued, and Tempus settled in. A shiver ran down Mradhon's spine, for the inconvenience of the neighborhood. He wanted out-desperately he thought of Garonne-if he had had the funds. But they hunted spies. War with Nisibis was on them. Any foreigner was suspect, and one who really happened to be Nisibisi-

Most especially he avoided the main ways after that, grateful for the anonymity of Mama Becho's, which lay off the main track the carts and the riders took. Something in him shivered, remembering the hire he had just accepted, pay which had set him against the new occupants of the estate. Tempus' men hunted hawkmasks as they hunted spies and foreigners; and gods knew it was no prettier way to go.

The alleyways unwound, almost home territory now. A beggar or two always huddled near Mama Becho's, one wakeful enough tonight to put out a claw and want a coin a true cripple, perhaps, or too sick to make the bridge to richer streets. A dry spitting attended his lack of charity.

Then for one heart-stopped moment he heard a sound behind, and turned, but there was nothing but the moon on a muddy alley and the tilt-walled buildings leaning together like some fever dream of hell in the dark.

Followed, he thought. He quickened his pace, on the verge of home, and came to the alleyway by Mama's, where the drinking continued, and the hangers-about-the door still loitered, but fewer of them. He walked into that alley and Tygoth was there, to his relief, a hulking stick-carrying shadow making his rounds.

"It's Vis," Mradhon said.

"Huh," was Tygoth's comment. Tygoth rapped against the wall with his stick. "Walk with you?"

Tygoth did, taking his duty seriously, rapping the wall as he went, rapping at the door of his lodgings, opening the door for him like the servant of some palatial home, across from the lighted parchment window that was Mama Becho's own.

"Coin," Tygoth said, and held out his hand. Mradhon laid the nightly fee in the huge palm, and the sturdy fingers closed. Tygoth went into the room and fetched the little light from its niche by the door, stumped away with it to Mama Becho's back door and opened that to light it from that inside, then came back again, shielding the flame with his monstrous hand. With greatest care he went inside and set it in its place.

"Safe," Tygoth declared then, a murmurous rumble, and walked off tapping his stick against the walls.

Mradhon looked after that shambling shadow, then went in and barred the door.

Safe.

So he had a bit of silver to bolster his dwindling coppers, and a bar on the door for the night, but it was in his mind that this Mor-am and Moria would change their lodgings tonight and not show up again.

He hoped. It was more surety than he had had the day before.

In the safety of his room he pinched out all but the nightwick and lay down to his sleep, hoping for sleep, but knowing that there would be dreams.

There always were.

* * *

Ischade, the wind whispered coming from the river and riffling through the debris outside. He dreamed her walking the streets of Downwind this time, her black robes unsullied, and the stench became the musk that surrounded her, like the smell of blood, like the smell of dead flowers or old, dusty halls.

He waked in sweat, more than once. He lay awake and stared into the dark: the draft had put the wick out. It always did. He reminded himself that there was the silver; he felt it in the dark, like a talisman, proving that that meeting had been real.

He needed anonymity and gold. He needed power that could put locks on doors. He put fanatic hope in this Jubal, who had once had both.