'Who got him?' Hanse asked finally, and there was a general shrugging of shoulders. 'Who?' Hanse snapped, looking round at the onlookers. A corpse was indeed no novelty in the Maze, but an otherwise young and healthy one, with no mark of violence on it... but a man on the doorstep of the tavern he frequented, a turn or two of the alleys to his own lodgings ...
There were amenities like territory. A man was never assured ... but there were places and places, and when he was in his own place, he was least likely to end up among the morning's debris. There were stirrings among the crowd, discomfort - with Hanse, for one, whose smallish size meant a temper backed with knives, a bad reputation for every kind of mischief.
And his sullen, headachy stare passed right round to a stranger in the territory - to one Mradhon Vis; to a new and frequent patron at the Unicorn. 'You,' Hanse said. 'You left about the same time last night. You see anything?'
A shrug. A useless question. No one in the Maze saw anything. But Vis looked too thin-lipped about the shrug and Hanse looked back with a blacker stare still had sudden awareness of the silence of the crowd when he spoke, of eyes on him; and he unfolded his arms and thought of how they had jostled in a doorway last night, Sjekso and Mradhon Vis, and Sjekso had laughed and acted his usual flippant self at Vis's expense. Hanse drew quiet conclusions - quiet because he cut a mean figure at the moment, having got off with a dead man's last cash and last pleasure ... he swept a glance about at faces dour with their own private conclusions. No love lost on him or dead Sjekso; but Sjekso being local and dead was the focus of pity, while regarding himself- there was quite another thing in the air.
Vis started to leave, edging away through the crowd. "That's the one to look at,' Hanse said. 'Hey, you! You don't like the questions, do you? The garrison threw you out, hey? You come back here, whoreson coward, you don't turn your back on me.'
'He's crazy,' Vis said, stopped behind an unwilling screen of onlookers who were trying to melt in all directions, but Mradhon kept with the migrating cover. 'Figure who got his money and his woman,, you figure that and wonder who did for him, that's who...'
Hanse went for the knives. 'Wasn't no mark on him,' a youngish voice was shrilling. The crowd was swinging wildly out of the interval Vis was busy preserving. Minsy yelled, and several strong and larger arms wound themselves into Hanse's elbows and about his middle. He heaved and kicked to no use while Mradhon Vis, in the clear, straightened his person and his clothing.
'Crazy,' Vis said again, and Hanse poured invective on him and most especially on those holding him from his knives - cold, sweating afraid, because Vis might do anything, or the crowd might, and the knives were all he had. But Vis walked off then, at an increasing pace, and Hanse launched another kick and a torrent of abuse on those holding him.
'Easy.' The grip on his left was Cappen Varra's, an arm tucked elbow to elbow into his arm and a hand locked on his wrist; he had no grudge with the minstrel. It was a calm voice, a cultivated, better-than-thou voice: Hanse hated Varra at the moment, but the grip persuaded and the object of his rage was off down the street. He took his weight on his own feet and slowly, brushing off his clothes while he stood fairly shaking with his anger, Varra eased up and let him go. Igan on the other side, big, not very bright Igan, let go his other arm, and claps on his shoulders and sympathy offered ... started to settle his stomach and persuade him he had some credit here. 'Let's have a drink,' Varra said. 'The corpse-takers will get the rumour - do you want to be standing here conspicuous? Come on inside.'
He went as far as the door of the Unicorn, looked back, and there was Minsy standing over Sjekso, sniffling; and Sjekso lying there a great deal sadder, open-eyed, while the crowd started away under the same logic.
Hanse wanted the drink.
*
Mradhon Vis turned the comer, none following, stopped against an alley wall and let the tremors pass from his limbs. Ugly, that back there. Corpses, he had seen - had created his share, in and out of mercenary service. He had no wish to take on useless trouble ... not now, not with gold in his boot and a real prospect of more. A bodyguard sometimes, but he was not big enough for hired muscle; and with a surly and foreign look - even guard jobs were hard come by. He meant to be on time for this one. A patron who could come up with a fistful of gold on a whim was one to cultivate - if only her throat was still uncut. And that thought worried him: that was what had drawn him, against his natural and wary instincts, to that noisy scene outside the Vulgar Unicorn - a body he had last seen alive and escorting the patron who was his latest and most fervent hope. He was more than concerned.
Other alarums sounded in his mind, warnings of greater complexity, but he refused them, because they led to suspicions of traps, and connivances; he had a knife in his belt, his wits about him, and no little experience of employers of all sorts, no few of whom had had notions of refusing him his pay at the end ... one way and the other.
3
The Vulgar Unicorn still thumped with comings and goings, an untidy lot of early-moming patrons and irregulars. For his own part Hanse drank down his ale and nursed his head back to size, across the table from Cappen. He had no inclination to talk or to be the centre of anything at the moment.
'They've got him off,' the potboy said from the door. So the corpse was gone. That cleared out some of the traffic. Inquiry and snoopery might be close behind the corpsetakers. 'Excuse me,' Cappen Varra said, likewise discreet, and left his place at the table, bound for the door. Hanse recovered his equilibrium and stood up from the bench amid the general flow of bodies outward.
Someone touched his arm, a feathery light hand. He looked back, expecting Minsy, in no mood for her - and looked up instead into eyes like a statue's eyes, as unfocused and as vague, in a male face old/young and beardless. The man was blind.
'Hanse called Shadowspawn?' The voice was like the man, smooth and sere.
'What's my business with you?'
'You lost a friend.'
'Ha. No friend. Acquaintance. What's it to you and me?'
The groping hand caught his arm and directed it to the other hand, which caught his fingers - he began to resist this eerie familiarity, and then felt the unmistakable metal heaviness of a coin.
'I'm listening.'
'My employer has more for you.'
'Where?'
'Not here. Do you want a name? Come outside.'
The blind man would have taken him out the front, among the others, following the crowd. Hanse pulled him instead to another door, out into the back alley where few had gone and those already vanished. 'Now,' Hanse said, taking the blind man by the arm and backing him against the wall. 'Who?'
'EnasYorl.'
He dropped his hand from the blind man's arm. 'Him. For what?'
'He wants to talk to you. You come - recommended. And you'll be paid.'
Hanse took in his breath and fingered his coin, looked down at it a space, found it new minted and heavy silver, and reckoned uneasily in what quarters he was recommended. Coin of that denomination was not so easily come by ... but Enas Yorl - the wizard took few visitors ... and there were things lately amiss in Sanctuary. Things larger than Hanse Shadowspawn. Rumours filtered down into the Maze.
Sjekso dead, unmarked, and Enas Yorl - offering money to talk to a thief: the world was mad. He walked it for the narrow lane it was.