“What do they say about Tssa?”
“His men were there in the Tulan, before you saw the ruin. Is this attack on you or just the treaty?”
“Me. Do you know how I received my call?”
She shook her head. He stood. Relieved of his weight the couch swayed off in a parabola. She went to catch her flute before it fell.
“I had two older brothers. They murdered my father. I and Tanuojin came after them and killed them.” His back was to her. Soot powdered his sleeves. “It was the hardest time in my life. We were outlaws here, nobody could help us. For forty watches, whenever one of us slept, the other had to be standing guard. That was when I knew I was called to follow my father. To be the Akellar.”
“Why did they kill him?”
“With Yekaka there was always some reason.”
She looked down at the flute in her hands.
“Anyway, my oldest brother left two sons, both young, very young, and like a fool I let them stay in Matuko. Tssa is the elder. I’m almost sure he’s engineering the trouble, but if I take him on suspicion and I’m wrong, it will only make the thing worse, and I can’t get a grip on him. He’s too cautious.” He made an impatient gesture. “Or he’s innocent.”
She took the flute apart. The box was on the table under the window. “I look like a slave. I could go right into Tssa’s house. Find out whatever you have to know.”
“Don’t be a fool. I need you for this other work, and he’d catch you. He’s not stupid.”
She took the buckle out of her sleeve and held it out to him. “I saw you there, last watch, in the Tulan. Did you see me?”
His mouth opened. He took the buckle and turned it over. She snapped the lid of the flute’s box closed. Finally he tossed the buckle down on the couch.
“Not his house. You’ll have to follow him.”
“I’ll need Pedasen,” she said.
Tssa lived in the Tulan. For six watches she and Pedasen followed him wherever he went. He went nowhere interesting. Saba had set Bakan to spy on his nephew as well; Bakan stayed away from Paula. In the seventh watch, the low watch, Tssa came out of his rambling walled house, started off along the street, and lost all three of them.
Paula circled through the narrow grassy lanes of the Tulan and found him again, with three other men, in an alleyway watching the street. She guessed he was looking out for Bakan, who was there to be dodged. When Bakan did not appear, Tssa and his men went away at top speed into the Varyhus District.
Paula and the eunuch stayed about a hundred yards behind them. They took her around the factory, squat and stinking behind its high mesh fence, to a long house blackened with grime. The building was one story for most of its length but a narrow second-story annex was stacked up along the right side, with a stair running up the outer wall to its door. rUlugongon and drums pounded inside the windows of the ground floor. From the corner of the lane Paula watched the last of Tssa’s men go into the upper annex.
“Stay here,” she said to Pedasen. She went down the street to the stairs and climbed them. The stairs were worn sway-backed in the middle. On the landing at the door, a black and white kusin hissed at her, its long whiskers bristling, and jumped to the roof and ran away over the peak. She looked behind her. Pedasen was sitting on the ground at the corner watching her. She went into the building.
In the dark hallway she was blind a moment. The music boomed up from below, making the floor vibrate. She struggled with her fear. In the white slave clothes she felt conspicuous. Her eyes began to see in the gloom and she went down the hallway. Through an open door on the right she saw an empty room, a table, a window scummed opaque with dirt. The next door was shut. She put her ear against it but heard nothing except the pounding tuneless music. Under the banging another sound reached her, growing louder: feet coming up the stairs. She went into the empty room.
The footsteps passed her and stopped before the next door, and a knock rattled on it. She went across the little room to listen. The music drowned the words of the two voices. The plank wall between the room was so thin that it yielded when she touched it, but she could hear nothing but a loud laugh in the room beyond.
She had found Tssa’s meeting place, or one such, and she tried to convince herself that was enough. Saba would not think it was worth very much. She searched along the wall for a chink or a hole she could see through.
A voice bellowed in the hall. “Is there a nigger up here?”
She ran out the door. A big man leaned out of the next room: Tssa’s man. “Bring us a tank, and hop.” He ducked back inside and slammed the door.
She dashed down the outer stairs to the street. Pedasen stood up when he saw her, but she waved him down again and ran around to the front of the building and in the door.
The whole long ground floor was one room. In a corner six men played the deafening music. A few others sat around on the floor. Apparently it was the off-watch. There were no tables or chairs. On one side wall, beside a flight of stairs, was a big barrel with a tap faucet in the bottom and a row of jugs on a shelf beside it. The floor was deep in sand. She crossed to the barrel and took down the biggest jug on the shelf. Opening the tap, she filled the jug with the thick yellow beer.
“Hey!”
She nearly dropped the tank. A fat man in a smock blocked her way. He held out one huge hand. “Pay.”
“It’s for Tssa,” she said. “Upstairs.”
“Just the same, you pay now.”
She gave him the jug to hold and took the string of credit from her neck. The fat man said, “So now he’s bringing his own slaves. He won’t escape paying me that way.” The jug tucked under his arm, he snatched the string away from her. “He can pay what he owes me, too.” The credit jangled. He counted off more than half. Paula glanced around. A man near the door was watching and she looked hastily away from him. It was Mikka, Saba’s blood-stauncher brother. She took the jug and the raped credit string and hurried up the stairs.
Mikka had recognized her. She wondered if he worked for Tssa. The stair took her out at the end of the annex. She knocked on the closed door and it sprang open.
Tssa sat at a table under the window, counting out credit into stacks. Of her age, he was slightly built, with Saba’s marked sensual features. She put the jug down on the table. The room was crowded with men. She backed up to the wall, trying to memorize their faces. They ignored her. She was trembling, not from cold.
“Here comes Kolinakin,” said a man by the window. He nodded down into the street.
Tssa was drinking beer. He put the cup down and beckoned to another man. “Go make sure nobody is following him.” The man left. Saba’s nephew frowned at Paula. “What’s that doing here?”
“I’m supposed—” Her dry voice squeaked, and she coughed. “I’m supposed to ask to be paid.”
“Paid!” Tssa looked around at his men. “He thinks I’m a street vendor. Or that this slop is worth money; which is it?” The other men laughed. There were cups on the shelf beside the door, and the Styths took them down and passed the tank around. Tssa stretched his back, his hands behind his head. “Go,” he said to her.
“Please. He’ll beat me.” She was ruining her usefulness; he would certainly recognize her after this, but she wanted to see the man he was here to meet: Kolinakin.
“Maybe he likes beating you,” Tssa said, amiably.
The door banged open. A huge man stamped into the room. He walked flat-footed, his toes out, his knees bent; he was the tallest Styth she had ever seen, inches taller than Tanuojin. Tssa stood and they shook hands.
“That’s what I came for,” the giant said. He flicked one finger at the credit piled on the table.