Robert Asprin: Storm Season

So Mradhon took his place, his shoulders to the wall in the shadows, and stood and stood until his knees were numb, while the traffic came and went in and out Mama Becho's door, until soon Tygoth would take up his vigil in the alleyway.

Then the man came out again, reeling a little in satiation-but not that much, and not lingering among the loiterers by the door.

ii

The quarry passed to the right and Mradhon Vis leaned away from his wall, stepped over the sprawled legs of a fellow hanger-on and went after the young man, along the muddy streets and alleyways. The wine had lost its effect on him in his waiting, but he pretended its influence in his step-he had learned such strategems in his residency in the Downwind. He knew the • ways thereabouts, every door, every turning that could take a body out of sight in a moment. He had studied them with all the care with which in other days he had studied broader terrain, and now he stalked this shanty maze, knowing just when his step might sound on harder ground, when his quarry, turning a corner, might chance to see him, and where he might safely lag back or take a shorter way. He had not known which way this man might go; but he had him now, and knew every way that he might take, no matter which way he might turn. It had been a long wait already-for this man, this current hope of his, who visited Becho's with money, who also liked his wine, and bought krrf in the back room.

He knew this man-who did not know him. Knew him from a place across the river, in the Maze, in a place where he had courted Jubal's employ, once in better days. And if there was a chance left to him, it was this. He had tracked this man on another night and lost him; but this night he knew the ground, had set the odds in his own favor in this hunt.

And the man-youth-was at least some part drunk.

The way crossed the main road, past a worse and worse tangle of hovels, past the flimsy shelters of the hopeless, the old, the desolate, and now and again a doorway where someone had taken shelter against the wind, eyes that saw everything and nothing in the dark, witnesses whose own misery enveloped them and left only apathy behind.

Down a side track and into an alley this time, and it was a dead end: the quarry entered it and Mradhon knew-knew the door there, as he knew every turn and twist of this street. He thrust himself around the corner, having heard the steps go on.

"You," Mradhon said. "Man."

The youth whirled, hand to belt, with the quick flash of steel in the blackness.

"Friend," Mradhon said. He had his own knife, in case.

If the young man's mind had been fumed, it was shocked clear now. He had set himself in a knifeman's crouch and Mradhon measured it as too far for any simple move.

"Jubal," Mradhon said ever so softly. "That name make a difference to you?"

Still silence.

"I've got business to talk with you," Mradhon said. "Suppose we do that."

"Maybe." The voice came tightly. The crouch never varied. "Come a little closer."

"Why don't you open that door and let's talk about it."

Another silence.

"Man, are we going to stand here for the world to watch? I know you, I'm telling you. I'm by myself. The risk is on my side."

"You stand there. I'll open the door. You go in first."

"Maybe you've got friends in there."

"You're asking the favors, aren't you? Where did I get you on my heel? Or were you waiting on the street?"

Mradhon shrugged. "Ask me inside."

"Maybe I'll talk to you." The voice grew reasoned and calm. "Maybe you just put away that knife and keep your hands where I can see them." The youth inserted his knife in the seam of the door and flipped up the latch inside, pushed it open. The inside was dark. "Go first, about six steps across the room."

"Let's have a light first, shall we?"

"Can't do that, man. No one in there to light it Just go on."

"Sorry. Think I'll stand here after all. Maybe you'll change your living after tonight; maybe you'll slip me after this. So I'll have my say here-"

"Have it inside." A second figure stepped into the alley out of the dark doorway, and the voice was female. "Come on in. But go first."

He thought about it. The pair of them stood in front of him. "One of you get a light going in there."

The second figure vanished, and in a moment a dim light flared, casting a faint glow on the youth outside. Mradhon calculated his chances, slipped his own knife into its sheath and went, with a prickling sensation at his nape-a short step up to the floor with the man at his back, a flash of the eye about the single room, the tattered faded curtain at the end that could conceal anything; the woman; a single cot this side, clothing hung on pegs, water jugs, pots and pan-.nikins set on a misshapen brick firepit at the right on the rim of which the lamp sat. The woman was the finer image of the man, dark hair cropped close as his, like twins-brother and sister at least. He turned. The brother shut the door behind him with a push of his foot.

"Mama Becho's," the brother said. "That was where you were."

"You're Jubal's man," Mradhon said and ignored the knife to walk over to the wall nearest the clothes, where a halfwall jutted out to shield his back from the curtain. "Still Jubal's man, I'm guessing, and I'm looking for hire."

"You're crazy. Out. There's nothing for you here."

"Not so easy." He saw one cloak on the pegs. The man wore one. There was some clothing, not abundant. He fingered the cloak, letting them follow his train of thought, and looked at them again, folded his arms and leaned back against the wall. "So Jubal's got troubles, and maybe he's in the market. I work cheap-to start. Room and board. Maybe your man can't support anything more right now. But times change. And I'm willing to ride through this-difficulty. Better days might come. Mightn't they? For all of us."

The woman made a quiet move that took her to the side. She sat down on the cot, and that put their hands on different levels, at different angles to his vision. He recognized the stalking and the angle the man occupied between him and the door, the curtain at his shoulder, so he moved again a couple of paces along the wall, slipped his hands both into his belt (but the one not far from his knife) and shrugged with a wry twist of his mouth.

"I tell you I work cheap," he said, "to start."

"There's no hire," the man said.

"Oh, there has to be," Mradhon said softly, "otherwise you wouldn't like my leaving here at all, and I've walked in here in good faith. It's your pick, you understand, how it goes from here. An introduction to your man, a little earnest coin-"

"He's dead," the woman said, and shook his faith in his own bluff. "The hawkmasks are all like us-looking for employ."

"Then you'll find it. I'll throw in with you- partners, you, me, the rest of you."

"Sure," the man said, and scowled. "You've got the stink of hire about you already. What coin? The prince's?"

Mradhon forced a laugh and leaned back again. "Not likely. Not likely the Hell Hounds or any of that ilk. My last hire turned sour, and a post in the guard-no. Not with your complexion-or mine. Your man, now-So he and you are lying low a while, and maybe I've got reasons for doing the same. There are people I don't want to meet. No better service I can think of-than a man who might be building back from a little difficulty. Don't give me that. Jubal's gone to cover. Word's around. But one of those hawkmasks might suit me . . . keeping my face out of the sight of two or three."

"I'm afraid you're out of luck."

"No," the woman said, "I think we ought to talk about it."

Mradhon frowned, trusting her less, liking it not at all that it was the woman that took that twist, that looked at him from the cot and tried to demand his attention away from her brother? cousin? with a quiet, incisive voice.