'I still do not see enough. Bazaar-games or not, this is not the time to scry this thing.'
'I'll come again after sundown - that would be a better time, wouldn't it? I've no garrison duties until after sunrise tomorrow.'
'For the cards, yes, of course, but Dubro will have banked the forge for the night by then, and I do not want to involve him in this.' Walegrin nodded without argument. 'I understand. I'll come by at midnight. He should be long asleep by then, unless you keep him awake.' Illyra sensed it would be useless to argue. She watched silently as he swept the pile of baubles, the knife, and the shard into one pouch, wincing slightly as he dribbled the last beads from her sight.
'As is your custom, payment will not be made until the question is answered.'
Illyra nodded. Walegrin had spent many years around her mother learning many of the S'danzo disciplines and rousing his father's explosive jealousy. The leather webbing of his kilt creaked as he stood up. The moment for farewell came and passed. He left the stall in silence.
A path cleared when Walegrin strode through a crowd. He noticed it here, in this bazaar where his memories were of scrambling through the aisles, taunted, cursed, fighting, and thieving. In any other place he accepted the deference except here, which had once been his home for a while.
One of the few men in the throng who could match his height, a dark man in a smith's apron, blocked his way a moment. Walegrin studied him obliquely and guessed he was Dubro. He had seen the smith's short aquiline companion several times in other roles about the town without learning the man's true name or calling; they each glanced to one side to avoid a chance meeting.
At the entrance to the bazaar, a tumble-down set of columns still showing traces of the Ilsig kings who had them built, a man crept out of the shadows and fell in step beside Walegrin. Though this second had the manner and dress of the city-born, his face was like Walegrin's: lean, hard, and parched.
'What have you learned, Thrusher?' Walegrin began, without looking down.
'That man Downwind who claimed to read such things...'
'Yes?'
'Runo went down to meet with him, as you were told. When he did not return for duty this morning Malm and I went to look for him. We found them both ... and these.' He handed his captain two small copper coins.
Walegrin turned them over in his palm, then threw them far ' into the harbour. 'I'll take care of this myself. Tell the others we will have a visitor at the garrison this evening - a woman.'
'Yes, captain,' Thrusher responded, a surprised grin making its way across his jaw. 'Shall I send the men away?'
'No, set them as guards. Nothing is going well. Each time we have set a rendezvous something has gone wrong. At first it was petty nuisance, now Runo is dead. I will not take chances in this city above all others. And, Thrusher...' Walegrin caught his man by the elbow, 'Thrusher, this woman is S'danzo, my half sister. See that the men understand this.'
'They will understand, we all have families somewhere.'
Walegrin grimaced and Thrusher understood that his commander had not suddenly weakened to admit family concerns.
'We have need of the S'danzo? Surely there are more reliable seers in Sanctuary than scrounging the aisles of the bazaar. Our gold is good and nearly limitless.' Thrusher, like many men in the Ranken Empire, considered the S'danzo best suited to resolving love triangles among house-servants.
'We have need of this one.'
Thrusher nodded and oozed back into the shadows as deftly as he had emerged. Walegrin waited until he was alone on the filthy streets before changing direction and striding, shoulders set and fists balled, into the tangled streets of the Maze.
The whores of the Maze were a special breed unwelcomed in the great pleasure houses beyond the city walls. Their embrace included a poison dagger and their nightly fee was all the wealth that could be removed from a man's person. A knot of these women clung to the doorway of the Vulgar Unicorn, the Maze's approximation to Town Hall, but they stepped aside meekly when Walegrin approached. Survival in the Maze depended upon careful selection of the target.
An aura of dark foul air enveloped Walegrin as he stepped down into the sunken room. A moment's quiet passed over the other guests, as it always did when someone entered. A Hell Hound, personal puritan of the prince, could shut down conversation for the duration of his visit, but a garrison officer, even Walegrin, was assumed to have legitimate business and was ignored with the same slit-eyed wariness the regulars accorded each other.
The itinerant storyteller, Hakiem, occupied the bench Walegrin preferred. The heavy-lidded little man was wilier than most suspected. Clutching his leather mug of small ale tenderly, he had selected one of the few locations in the room that provided a good view of all the exits, public and private. Walegrin stepped forwards, intending to intimidate the weasel from his perch, but thought better of the move. His affairs in the Maze demanded discretion, not reckless bullying.
From a lesser location he signalled the bartender. No honest wench would work the Unicorn so Buboe himself brought the foaming mug, then returned a moment later with one of the Enii-bar oranges he had arranged behind the counter. Walegrin broke the peel with his thumbnail; the red juice ran through the ridges of the peel forming patterns not unlike those on his pottery shard.
A one-armed beggar with a scarred face and a pendulant, cloudy eye sidled into the Unicorn, careful to avoid the disapproving glance of Buboe. As the ragged creature moved from table to table collecting copper pittance from the disturbed patrons, Walegrin noted the tightly wound tunic under his rags and knew the left arm was as good as the one that was snapping up the coins. Likewise, the scar was a self-induced disfigurement and the yellow rheum running down his cheek the result of seeds placed under his eyelids. The beggar announced his arrival at Walegrin's table with a tortured wheeze. Without looking up Walegrin tossed him a silver coin. He had run with the beggars himself and seen their cunning deceit become crippling reality many times too often.
Buboe split the last accessible louse in his copious beard between his grimy fingernails, looked up, and noticed the beggar, whom he threw into the street. He shuffled a few more mugs of beer to his patrons, then returned to the never ending task of chasing lice.
The door opened again, admitting another who, like Walegrin, was in the Maze on business. Walegrin drew a small circle in the air with a finger and the newcomer hastened to his table.
'My man was slain last night by following your suggestions.' Walegrin stared directly into the newcomer's eyes as he spoke.
'So I've heard, and the Enlibrite potter as well. I've rushed over here to assure you that it was not my doing (though I knew you would suspect me). Why, Walegrin, even if I did want to double-cross you (and I doubly assure you that such thoughts never go through my mind) I'd hardly have killed the Enlibrite as well, would I?'
Walegrin grunted. Who was to say what a man of Sanctuary might do to achieve his goals? But the information broker was likely to be telling the truth. He had an air of distracted indignation about him that a liar would not think to affect. And if he were truthful then, like as not, Runo had been the victim of coincidental outrage. The coins showed that robbery was not the motive. Perhaps the potter had enemies. Walegrin reminded himself to enter the double slaying in the garrison roster where, in due course, it might be investigated when the dozens preceding it had been disposed of.