It was an unlooked-for retort and surprise stayed the bartender’s motion. “How so?”
“The thing that he does, he must do. Else they will come here on the seek, to this very place, disturbing the peace of mind of many.”
The bartender laid a thick forearm on the table and leaned upon it. “And if he does do it?”
“Then those whom they will seek will be gone from this place, never to brighten its precincts again, never to trouble you the more.”
“That end may be reached,” the bartender suggested, “with less effort and greater profit.” He smiled, but his teeth were like the line of northern ice astride the far horizon.
No, said the Brute, it could not.
The bartender looked into his eyes for a moment, then shrugged. “Ah. The Terran Foo-lin! Him I may know.”
“There are many Foo-lins,” the Fudir allowed. “A man might not know them all.”
The bartender reached under the bar. “Art thou a Terran, also?” he asked in the Tongue.
The Fudir might have happily assented to this, but Inner Child seized control. «I don’t understand.»
The bartender relaxed infinitesimally. “I asked if you was a Terran.”
“This is Terra, no? Are not all here Terrans?”
“This world is called Zãddigah.”
“That only means ‘New Earth’ in the old Cant.”
“If it does, then new it is. I will explain because you are an Eighty-second and so, ignorant. The Old Terrans left this world to wander off among the stars. Our ancestors came from worlds nearby, and we inherited the earth. A remnant of the Terrans also remained who preserved old ways—as if they were still the lords of all creation—until they learned their new place on the New Earth. Across the Rift are some who style themselves Terrans, and they would come here if they could and seize our homes, save that our faithful boots prevent them.” He reached into a pocket and produced a flat, dull metallic disk. “Here. This sigil will direct you to the man called Foo-lin. But go wary of him.”
“He is a Terran, you say.”
“He is. He worships the vanished Commonwealth like all his tribe, but he at least knows it has vanished. Go now, before you draw your pursuers to this place.”
The disk lighted with an arrow that directed Donovan toward the storied Foo-lin. Much of the scarred man followed it, while his remainder kept watch on shadows and alleys. The expected ambush came less than five blocks from The Severed Arm.
Three men whom Inner Child had noticed earlier slipping out the rear of the daforni leapt dagger drawn upon him. Surely, a man who sought the service of Foo-lin would carry much portable money on his person, for Foo-lin was among those who shunned the traceable sort.
But the Brute had been waiting for the moment and at the first squeak from Inner Child—as a shadow moved within a shadow—he swung into a kick, disarming the first and breaking his arm. The second man he dispatched with a backhand fist and the third by driving his bunched knuckles into the man’s solar plexus.
It was the work of a moment, and the three were lying on the brickwork adding their vomit to the dried blood of past attacks. Donovan bent over them.
“Tell your master that he gave you too much time with his story of Old Earth, and that you grew restless in your concealment, thus betraying your position. Tell him that those who will betime notice my absence are not mere policemen, but Shadows of the Names. They will know I passed through The Severed Arm. It may be a matter of some few days before they come, but come they will. Tell the taverner to take what measures he sees fit.”
The moans of his three attackers increased in pitch and Donovan left them there. He did not know if any of them would return to warn The Severed Arm, nor did he care.
He followed the sigil deeper into the warren, but at a certain shop, a late-night daga, he heard men speaking in the Tongue. He paused and dropped the name of Foo-lin in their ears and received in return flat-faced stares and, from one man, a slight nod toward the right.
Outside the shop, armed now with a warmed peach pastry, he checked the sigil. It too directed him to the right. He shrugged. Perhaps the directions were genuine after all. Undoubtedly, the bartender received a portion of Foo-lin’s fee and, while deprived of the whole of Donovan’s purse by the failure of his cutthroats, he would at least garner his commission. Wise is the man who profits from either side of a wager.
Foo-lin was located in the basement of an abandoned apartment house. Perhaps it had once held supplies or boilers or comm.junctions. What it held now was the equipment that Foo-lin required to practice his trade: scalpels, anesthetics, stitchers, a white ring that was no longer quite white.
“What you want?” was his friendly greeting.
“I seek that for which thou art justly famed,” the scarred man answered in the Tongue.
That did not elicit the response the Fudir had looked for. The wizened old black man scowled. “You accent funny. Where you from?”
“I hight a Terran, seeking help of Terra. By the Taj and the Wall and the Mount of—”
“Ayii! Thou art a Peripheral Terran! Go ’way! You bring trouble.” He made fending motions with his hands but continued in the Tongue. “This be Holy Terra. Profane her not!”
“What I seek is simplicity itself: the removal of niplips—locators—from my body.”
“Ayii. That be against the fiqh of the Northern Mark. Shall I place my head on the block merely because thine ancestors once lived here?”
“No,” said the Fudir. “Because I have coin to give.” He handed over the sigil he had been given.
Foo-lin laughed. “If thou comest from The Severed Arm, few are the coins remaining thee.”
“Yet fewer still are the patrons remaining to The Arm.”
The foo-doctor paused and looked at the scarred man, as if for the first time. “Where are these coins of which thou braggest?”
He handed Foo-lin a leather bag the size of his palm. The other glanced within and hefted its weight. “And the brothers of these few lonely orphans?”
“Safely concealed. But when thou hast finished thy work, the remainder shallt be thine.”
“Thou art a man of care. Remove thy clothing, then, down unto thy skivvies. And please to be lying on this table where I will perform the ritual called ‘the scanning of the cat.’”
Donovan stripped, and the scars on his body gave the doctor pause. Then the old man shrugged. “I must cut thee open to remove any niplips my cat may find. But what would mean another scar among so many? I see that thou art not a man of such care as to avoid injury.”
“I fought a Shadow.”
The foo-doctor scoffed. “Who can walk away from such a fight, save only a…”
He fell silent as answers suggested themselves. “There are rumors,” he ventured, not looking directly at the scarred man.
“Believe them all. They may not be true, but they make thy life more interesting.”
Donovan expected the ritual to involve the sacrifice of a cat, but there was no more involved than his passage through the white ring. The foo-doctor uttered certain prayers and incantations while he did so. “Step one,” he recited in the ancient Murkanglais. “Turn the red power switch to ready…”
Foo-lin located two niplips. They had been implanted, Donovan was certain, during his long sleep in the autoclinic aboard White Comet. Once they were found, it was the work of a few moments to remove them, requiring little beside a local anesthetic and some deep cuts. So far as pain went, it was the sort that the Silky Voice could easily handle.