"All I want to do is buy a little information, friend," said Samlor, reaching deliberately into the purse which balanced the long knife on the other side of his belt. He hoped the lantern on the guard shack illuminated his movement clearly. The sky'd gotten dark as a yard up a pig's ass, and he really didn't want this jumpy fathead to think that the threat level was going up.
Samlor carried five pieces of Rankan gold wrapped in chamois to keep the mint marks sharp and the metal bright. They were useful in just this sort of situation, where you had to convince somebody unmistakably that his best interests were your interests.
Now Samlor spilled the coins from his right hand to his left, letting them fall far enough through the air to wake shivers of light. Not even brass could mimic that color or the particular music of gold ringing on gold.
"Buy it at a pretty good rate, too," the caravan master added, relieved beyond measure to hear a sigh of wonder from the guard shack. There were enough people who wanted Samlor hil Samt dead that being killed by accident would be ridiculous.
"Here," he added. "Catch."
The Cirdonian spun one of the gold coins off the thumb of his left hand, aiming it between the bars of the fence and into the dark rectangle of the shack's window ten feet beyond.
There was a crash of objects within, a thump, and then the barely distinct pinging of the coin bouncing onto the floor despite the watchman's desperate attempts to catch it in the air.
Samlor waited, his face neutral, while the hidden watchman shuffled on his hands and knees and bumped the walls of his shack repeatedly. There was no light inside beyond what slipped between thoboards, and the coin-the price of an excellent donkey or a horse that might or might not carry an adult twenty miles-was not large physically.
The noises stopped. The watchman reappeared at the window and stuck his arm out so that he could see the coin in the light of the lantern on the shack's front. It winked, and Samlor winked cheerfully at the amazement of the man whom he saw for the first time.
Money was generally the best way to approach a stranger.
"What d'ye wanna know?" said the watchman. His voice was no less suspicious than before, but now it was pitched an octave lower. The coin disappeared somewhere out of sight as soon as he realized that he was flashing it to the world.
"How long you been here?" Samlor asked. Then, realizing that he knew exactly what answer he would get-Huh? Since sundown-he added, "How many weeks, I mean?"
The watchman's hands reappeared in the light. He was counting on his fingers while his lips mouthed one, two, three-
He paused. "Pay me," he demanded.
"When I'm satisfied," the caravan master said, "you get all the rest of this. If I'm not satisfied, I'll take back the first, and I'll have your guts for garters."
Gold danced from one hand to the palm of the other in time with Samlor's broadening smile. The mixed message suddenly got home in the watchman's brain. He jumped back away from the window.
"No problem, friend," said Samlor. "I want to give you this money."
"Three weeks. An' a day," came the voice from the dark. "Look-"
"And have you seen any signs that anybody lives in the place opposite?" Samlor continued, trampling steadily over the notion that the watchman had something useful to say that wasn't an answer to a direct question. "People going in or out? Food deliveries? The lantern by the door lighted?"
"Gods and demons," the watchman mumbled, leaning forward again in his shack. "Well, I dunno, I-what was that last thing again?"
Like working with a camel, thought Samlor, except that a good camel was probably smarter. "The lantern by the doorway there," he repeated gently, pointing with the hand which held the money. "Has it ever been lighted while you're on duty here?"
"There's no lantern," said the watchman, stretching as far forward as he could from the window. He was a scrawny man, and the effect was rather that of a turtle trying to grasp a berry hanging well above it. "Say, but yer right, there was a light over there back. . Well, I dunno for sure, but there was a light."
That was going to have to do, the caravan master realized. There had been at least some evidence of occupancy at Setios' house three weeks ago, and now there wasn't. Samlor'd never been a big one on finesse if it looked like a quick and dirty way was going to accomplish the job.
"Fine," he said aloud to the watchman. "Now you bring me that screw jack over there-" he pointed " – and I give you this.
"Better yet-" he went on, because he saw the watchman's mouth drop open before the fellow skipped out of sight again in fear " – I'm going to drop the gold right here."
Samlor reached inside the grating and let the coins fall with a glittering song. "Now," he repeated. "All you have to do is bring me that jack. Then I'll go away, and you can scoop up the money safe as can be. Right? Look at it."
Despite himself, the watchman did peer out of his shack again. "But if they miss a tool. .," he said in a tone of desperate pleading.
"I'm paying you more than you'd make in a year doing this," said the caravan master reasonably. The coins shone on the ground as invitingly as the eyes of the most beautiful whore in the world. "For that matter, I'll bring the jack back if I've got a chance-but what d'yoit care?"
The watchman sidled out of his shack. As the caravan master had suspected, the fellow's weapon\ was not a crossbow but a pike which had been sawed ofP-or broken and smoothed-to a total length of about five feet, butt to point. It was useless except for prodding away a drunk who tried to climb into the site, but serious trouble was for soldiers summoned by the alarm gong-not for the cretin to deal with by himself.
"I dunno," the fellow muttered, but he picked up the heavy jack with as much assurance as he managed with anything.
"The bar too," Samlor directed. "To turn it."
The watchman blinked, fumbled, and then laid down his pike to bring the iron rod which drove the mechanism.
The jack was a solid iron screw which the contractor's men were using to drive into place the quarter-ton blocks which had to interlock with the existing fabric of the structure being renovated. A frame clamped to the front of the building provided a base from which the jack could be screwed. Its steady thrust would move stones smoothly, instead of shattering them as would result from an attempt to hammer them into place.
The watchman had approached within six or seven feet of the fence. Then he lobbed the pieces of the jack underhand in the direction of Samlor and skipped back like a keeper who had just fed a restive lion. Iron bounced from the ground into iron with exactly the sort of clangor which Samlor had hoped to avoid.
"Idiot!" the caravan master snarled under his breath as he tried to damp the ringing bars by squeezing them in his hands. It didn't help a lot-the grating vibrated in a hundred separate harmonies-but it was a good release for the fury that wrapped Samlor for the moment. As well get mad at a dog for barking. .
He reached through the grate and lifted the screw jack. Maybe the watchman, holding his pike again in the terrified certainty that he would need it, wasn't as frail as he looked. The bar and screw weighed a good thirty pounds, and the handle was solid enough to be a crushingly effective weapon in a strong man's hands.
The noise hadn't aroused any obvious interest. It wasn't exactly that residents of this district minded their own business. Rather, they were wealthy enough that noise in the night implied criminality of too trivial a nature to be profitable to them.
"Spend it wisely, friend," said Samlor as he tucked the jack under his cloak. No point in giving a view of the proceedings to anyone who chanced to be peering through a window. He backed a few paces away from the fence and bowed sardonically to the watchman, who was hopping from one foot to the other as if executing a clumsy dance with his pike.