But she was a mad one, no doubt about it. He could smile casually at her but he avoided her eyes. They burned, and there were fires there that would be raging when the world went cold.
Dragonfly-kinden. He didn’t know many of them. They had to go off the path of virtue early to become wicked enough to end up in his business. Otherwise they were all peace and light as far as he knew. So where’d this waste-blasted woman come from?
She was tall, almost as tall as he had been when he could still stand straight and without need for a cane. She kept herself cloaked but there was armour beneath it, and a blade that seemed always in one hidden hand. But she had money and, when she had talked to him, the money seemed to outweigh that drawn and hungry sword.
Now he wasn’t too sure. He was going to be in real trouble if his contact didn’t show, and equally so if the Empire had got wind of this deal and sent along more than he could handle. Either way he guessed that her first move would be to stick him for it, his fault or no.
Risk, risk, risk. He used to say he was getting too old for pranks like this, but then he had got too old for it, and still not given up the habit.
He hobbled back across his backroom’s width, cane bending under his weight at each step. Propping it against a table he took his clay pipe out and filled it, trusting that his age would excuse any shaking of his hands. He had dealt with murderers, fugitives, revolutionaries, professional traitors and imperial Rekef, but this woman, now, she gave him the shudders.
She called herself Felise Mienn and, apart from the name of her mark, that was all he knew.
At last a Fly-kinden boy dashed in, making everyone start.
‘He’s here, Master Hokiak,’ the boy blurted out.
‘How many’s he got, boy?’
‘Got three. Three and hisself.’
‘Then get out of here,’ Hokiak advised him. As the boy dashed off again he looked about him at his other lads. They were regulars of his and three were Soldier Beetle locals: blue-grey-skinned and tough, wearing breastplates that had the old pre-conquest red and black painted out. The fourth was an innocent-looking Fly-kinden who could puncture a man’s eyeball with a thrown blade at twenty paces. They all looked ready, relaxed. In contrast, Felise Mienn seemed to be shaking very slightly and very fast. Hokiak decided that discretion was a good trait in an old man, and poled himself behind the vacant bar counter.
The men who stepped in were also locals, less well armoured but with swords at their belts and one with a crossbow, its string drawn, hanging loose in his hand. They inspected the room suspiciously, and then stepped aside for their patron.
After all the tension he was an anticlimax: a plump Beetle-kinden with a harrowed expression who looked as soft as they made them. He wore a cloak but the clothes beneath it were of imperial cut and colour.
‘Draywain,’ Hokiak greeted him from behind the bar. In a moment’s inspiration he added, ‘Fancy a drink?’
‘Never mind the wretched drinks. Where’s the money?’ Draywain demanded. He was some manner of Imperial Consortium clerk, Hokiak gathered. He had been quite the big man under the previous governor but, since that man’s mysterious death, the former favourites, those who had survived him, had been having a hard time of it. Sometimes a fatal time.
‘She’s the money,’ Hokiak said, and Felise Mienn stepped forwards.
Draywain flinched from the sight of her. ‘A Common-wealer? You must be mad! Where could I spend her gold?’
‘She’s got good imperial gold. I seen it myself,’ Hokiak assured him, privately reckoning she had taken it off good imperials.
‘Do you have what I want?’ Felise asked impatiently.
Draywain narrowed his eyes. ‘Let me see the money.’
‘Do you have what I want?’ She asked it more slowly, emphasizing each word separately. ‘If you don’t know where Thalric has gone, nothing for you.’
‘Thalric of the Rekef? That bastard!’ Draywain barked. ‘Oh, I know where he went, don’t you worry. Now let me see the money.’
Without taking her eyes from him she unshipped a pouch, emptied it onto the table. A flurry of gold and silver spilled out, and Draywain and his men pulled closer to inspect it.
‘One hundred Imperials — our agreed price,’ she said. It was a decent sum of money, Hokiak decided, for just a piece of information. Not a fortune, certainly, but an awful lot.
Draywain looked up from the money, and he had obviously come to a slightly different conclusion. ‘It’s not enough,’ he said. ‘Not enough for imperial secrets that nobody else’ll sell you. My life’s hit the rocks recently, Dragonfly-lady. I need to relocate myself somewhere an honest man can do business, and that isn’t cheap.’
‘That is not the arrangement,’ Felise snapped.
‘Well then the deal’s changed places when you weren’t looking,’ Draywain replied. ‘Now you double what you’ve got there and I’ll start talking.’
‘That is not the arrangement.’ Again the words were slower, more pointed, as though she was clarifying some simple matter for a simple man.
‘I have what you want, Wealer,’ Draywain told her. ‘Cough up the goods or I’m taking it right back out with me.’
‘Draywain-’ Hokiak began, but the Beetle cut him off sharply.
‘Stay out of this, old man!’ he snapped. ‘I’m doing business here.’
That’s all I need to hear. Hokiak rubbed the two claws of his good hand together, seeing his men pick up the signal.
‘So let’s see the rest, Wealer,’ Draywain insisted.
‘You knew the terms I offered,’ she said. ‘I need that information.’
‘I’m a merchant and this is a seller’s market,’ he responded without sympathy.
And she smiled and Draywain took that for a good sign.
Then the sword came out from under her cloak, the whole gleaming length of it that had been held close down the line of her body. The cloth was flung back as she lunged into action, revealing armour beneath that was iridescent blue and green and mother-of-pearl.
She had the blade through the first bodyguard’s gut before he could react, drawing it smoothly out to smash the next man’s crossbow and the half-fired bolt on the back-swing. The crossbowman fell backwards, reaching for his blade, and the remaining bodyguard went for her.
He was not bad, that man. Clearly he had seen a few fights before. It was a waste, Hokiak decided, but that was the nature of this business.
Felise Mienn’s sword was four feet long, but half of that was the hatched and bound metal hilt. The blade itself was straight and double-edged, tapering only towards the very point. She swung it with both hands and in either hand, dancing it round and past and over his guard as the luckless man tried to defend his patron. In a single fluid move she had sidestepped his strike and put the blade across his neck with far more force than her slender arms looked able to muster, half taking his head from his body.
Draywain bolted then, and she flung the sword at him as if without thinking. It slammed into the wall right alongside his head, cutting a line across his cheek. He screamed and stopped there, tugging at the hilt. The point of it had pinned his ear to the wall. His ear? Hokiak had never seen such a throw, and it had been solid enough that the Beetle could not yank the sword free using both hands.
The crossbowman had his blade now and he went for the unarmed woman. She stepped back and back as he came, cloak swirling about her, and then blades flicked out from her thumbs. It was the first Hokiak knew of the weapons that their Ancestor Art gave to Commonwealers. They were two-inch curved razors and she now stood poised with them ready, fingers clenched inwards but thumbs ready to strike.
The last bodyguard paused, weighing up the odds.
‘Kill her!’ Draywain screamed weakly. ‘For blazes’ sake, just kill her.’