“I'm heading down into town,” I said. “Where's a good place to eat this time of night?”
“What've you got a taste for?”
“Seafood,” I decided.
“Well, Fiddler's Green – about two thirds of the way down the Main Concourse – is very good for seafood. It's a fancy place...”
I shook my head. “I don't want a fancy place,” I said.
“The Net's still supposed to be good-down near the comer of the Smiths and Ironmongers Street. It's not real fancy.”
“But you wouldn't go there yourself?”
“Used to,” he replied. “But a number of the nobles and big merchants discovered it recently. I'd feel kind of uncomfortable there these days. It's gotten sort of clubby.”
“Hell! I don't want conversation or atmosphere. I just want some nice fresh fish. Where would you go for the best?”
“Well, it's a long walk. But if you go all the way down to the docks, at the back of the cove, it's a little to the west... But maybe you shouldn't. It's kind of late, and that isn't the best neighborhood after dark.”
“Is that by any chance Death Alley?”
“They do sometimes call it that, sir, as bodies are occasionally found there of a morning. Maybe you'd better go to the Net, seeing as you're alone.”
“Gerard took me through that area once, during the day. I think I could find my way around it, all right. What's the name of the place?”
“Uh, Bloody Bill's.”
“Thanks. I'll say hi to Bill for you.”
He shook his head. “Can't. It was renamed after the manner of his demise. His cousin Andy runs it now.”
“Oh. What was it called before?”
“Bloody Sam's,” he said.
Well, what the hell. I bade him a good night and set out walking. I took the path to the short stairway down the slope, which led to the walkway through a garden and over to a side gate, where another guard let me out. It was a cool night with the breezed smells of autumn burning down the world about me. I drew it into my lungs and sighed it out again as I headed for the Main Concourse, the distant, almost-forgotten, slow clopping sounds of hoofs on cobbles coming to me like something out of dream or memory. The night was moonless but filled with stars, and the concourse below Banked by globes of phosphorescent liquid set atop high poles, long-tailed mountain moths darting about them.
When I reached the avenue I strolled. A few closed carriages rolled by as I passed along the way. An old man walking a tiny green dragon on a chain leash touched his hat to me as I passed and said, “Good evening.” He had seen the direction from which I had come, though I was sure he did not recognize me. My face is not that well-known about town. My spirits loosened a bit after a time, and I felt a spring come into my step.
Random had not been as angry as I'd thought he might. Since Ghostwheel had not been stirring up any trouble, he had not charged me to go after it immediately and try again for a shutdown. He had merely told me to think about it and come up with the best course of action we might pursue. And Flora had been in touch earlier and told him who Luke was-a thing that seemed to have eased his mind somehow, knowing the identity of the enemy. Though I'd asked, he would not tell me what plans he might have formulated for dealing with him. He did allude to the recent dispatch of an agent to Kashfa, though, to obtain certain unspecified information. The thing that seemed to trouble him the most, actually, was the possibility that the outlaw Dalt was still to be numbered among the living.
“Something about that man...” Random began.
“What?” I'd asked.
“For one thing, I saw Benedict run him through. That generally tends to terminate a person's career.”
“Tough son of a bitch,” I said. “Or damn lucky. Or both.”
“If he is the same man, he's the son of the Desacratrix. You've heard of her?”
“Deela,” I said. “Wasn't that her name? Some sort of religious fanatic? Militant?”
Random nodded. “She caused a lot of trouble out around the periphery of the Golden Circle-mostly near Begma. You ever been there?”
“No.”
“Well, Begma's the nearest point on the circle to Kashfa, which is what makes your story particularly interesting. She'd raided a lot in Begma and they couldn't handle her by themselves. They finally reminded us of the protection alliance we have with almost all the Circle kingdoms-and Dad decided to go in personally and teach her a lesson. She'd burned one Unicorn shrine too many. He took a small force, defeated her troops, took her prisoner and hanged a bunch of her men. She escaped, though, and a couple of years later when she was all but forgotten she came back with a Fresh force and started the same crap all over. Begma screamed again, but Dad was busy. He sent Bleys in with a larger force. There were several inconclusive engagements-they were raiders, not a regular army-hut Bleys finally cornered them and wiped them out. She died that day, leading her troops.”
“And Dalt's her son?”
“That's the story, and it makes some sense, because he did everything he could to harass us for a long time. He was after revenge, pure and simple, for his mother's death. Finally, he put together a fairly impressive fighting force and tried to raid Amber. Got a lot farther than you'd think, right up to Kolvir. But Benedict was waiting, his pet regiment at his back. Benedict cut them to pieces, and it sure looked as if he'd wounded Dalt mortally. A few of his men were able to carry him off the field, so we never saw the body. But hell! Who cared?”
“And you think he could be the same guy who was Luke's friend when he was a kid – and later?”
“Well, the age is about right and he seems to hail from that same general area. I suppose it's possible.”
I mused as I strolled. Jasra hadn't really liked the guy, according to the hermit. So what was his part in things now? Too many unknowns, I decided. It would take knowledge rather than reasoning to answer that one. So let it ride and go enjoy dinner...
I continued on down the concourse. Near to its farther end I heard laughter and saw where some hardy drinkers still occupied a few tables at a sidewalk cafe. One of them was Droppa, but he didn't spot me and I passed on. I did not feel like being amused. I fumed onto Weavers Street, which would take me over to where West Vine wound its way up from the harbor district. A tall masked lady in a silver cloak hurried by and into a waiting carriage. She glanced back once and smiled beneath her domino. I was certain that I didn't know her, and I found myself wishing I did. It was a pretty smile. Then a gust of wind brought me the smokesmell of someone's fireplace and rattled a few dead leaves as it went by. I wondered where my father was.
Down along the street then and left on West Vine... Narrower here than the concourse, but still wide; a greater distance between lights, but still sufficiently illuminated for night travelers. A pair of horsemen clopped slowly by, singing a song I did not recognize. Something large and dark passed overhead a bit later, to settle upon a roof across the street. A few scratching noises came from that direction, then silence. I followed a curve to the right, then another to the left, entering what I knew to be a long series of switchbacks. My way grew gradually steeper. A harbor breeze came up at some point a little later, bearing me my first salt sea smells of the evening. A short while afterward-two turns, I believe-and I had a view of the sea itself, far below; bobbing lights on a sparkling, swelling slickness over black, pent by the curving line of bright dots, Harbor Road. To the east the sky was powdered slightly. A hint of horizon appeared at the edge of the world. I thought I caught a glimpse of the distant light of Cabra minutes later, then lost it again with another turning of the way.
A puddle of light like spilled milk pulsed on the street to my right, outlining a ghostly gridwork of cobbles at its farthest downhill reach; the stippled pole above it might advertise some spectral barbershop; the cracked globe at its top still showed a faint phosphorescence, skull-on-astick style, reminding me of a game we used to play as kids back in the Courts. A few lighted footprints proceeded downhill away from it, faint, fainter, gone. I passed on, and across the distance I heard the cries of sea birds. Autumn's smells were submerged in ocean's. The powdered light beyond my left shoulder rose higher about the water, drifted forward across the wrinkled face of the deep. Soon...