Samlor hil Samt stood with the controlled power of a derrick shifting a cargo of swords. The booth was suddenly very cold. 'Lady,' he said as he paused in the doorway. 'I thank you for your service. But one thing. I know that the Rankans say their storm-god bedded his sister. But we don't talk about that in Cirdon. We don't even think about it!'
Except when we 're drunk, the stocky man's mind whispered as his hand flung down the sash. His legs thrust him through the pattering curtain and again into the square. Except when we're very drunk, but not incapable ... may Samlane burn in the Hell she earned so richly!
Amazingly, the execution was still going on. Lord Tudhaliya's breechclout was black with sweat. His body gleamed as it moved through its intricate dance. His swords shone as they spun, and the air was jewelled with garnet drops of blood.
The victim's forearm was gone. Tudhaliya's blades were sharp, but they were too light to shear with a single blow the thick bone of a human upper arm. Right sword, left sword - placing cuts only, notching ... Tudhaliya pivoted, his back to his victim, and the blades lashed out behind him, perfectly directed. The stump of the victim's elbow bounded away from the block. She moaned, a bestial sound... but she had never been human to Tudhaliya, had she? The Beysib entourage gave well-bred applause to the pass. Their left fingertips pattered on their right palms.
Samlor strode out of the Bazaar. He was thinking about a child. And he was thinking that murder might not always be without pleasure, even for him.
In the years since Samlor's first visit to Sanctuary, the tavern's sign had been refurbished. The unicorn's horn had been gilded, and his engorged penis was picked out with red paint, lest any passerby miss the joke. The common room stank as before, though it was too early to add the smoky reek of lamp flames. There were a few soldiers present, throwing knucklebones and wrangling over who owed for the next round. There were also two women who would have looked slatternly even by worse light than what now streamed through the grimy windows; and, by the wall, a man who watched them, and watched the soldiers, and - very sharply - watched" Samlor as he entered the tavern.
No one was paying any attention to the fellow in the corner with the sword, the lute, and a sneer of disgust at the empty tankard before him. 'Ho, friend,' Samlor called to the slope-shouldered bartender. 'Wine for me, and whatever my friend with the lute is drinking.' The instrument had inlays of ivory and mother-of-pearl, but Samlor had noticed the empty sockets, which must recently have been garnished with gems.
The women were already in motion, lurching from their stools - remoras thrashing towards the shark they hoped would find their next meal. It was to the pimp against the wall that Samlor turned with a bright smile, however. 'And for you, sir -' he said. His thumb spun a coin through the air. Its arc would have dropped it in the pimp's lap if the fellow had not snatched it in with fingers like eagle's talons. The coin was silver, minted in Ranke, a day's wage for a man and as much as these blowsy whores together could expect for a night. 'If you keep them away from me. Otherwise, I take back the coin, even if you've swallowed it.' Samlor wore a smile again, but it was not the same smile. The women were backing off even before the pimp snarled at them.
The minstrel had risen to take the cup Samlor handed him from the bar. It was wine, though poverty had drunk ale on the previous round. 'I thank you, good sir,' the man said as he took the cup. 'And how may Cappen Varra serve you?'
Samlor passed his left hand over the sound box of the lute. The coin he dropped sang on the strings as it passed. 'A copper for a song from home,' he said. He knew, and from the sound the minstrel knew also, that the coin had not been copper or even silver. 'And another like it if you'll sing to me out on the bench, where the air has less - sawdust in it.'
Cappen Varra followed with a careful expression. He gave the lute a gentle toss in his hand, just enough to make the gold whisper again in the sound chamber. 'So, what sort of a song did you have in mind, good sir?' he asked as he seated himself facing Samlor. The minstrel had set his wine cup down. His left leg was cocked under him on the bench; and his right hand, on the lute's belly, was not far from the serviceable hilt of his dagger.
'A little girl's missing,' said Samlor. 'I need a name, or the name of someone who might know a name.'
'And how little a girl?' asked Varra, even more guarded. He set down the lute, ostensibly to take the cup in his left hand. 'Sixteen, would she be?'
'Four,' said Samlor.
Cappen Varra spat out the wine as he stood. 'It shouldn't offend me, good sir,' said the minstrel as he up-ended the lute, 'there's folk enough in this city who traffic in such goods. But I do not, and I'll leave your "copper" here in the gutter with your suggestion!'
'Friend,' said Samlor. His hand shot out and caught the falling coin in the air before the sun winked on the metal. 'Not you, but the name of a name. For the child's sake. Please.'
Cappen Varra took a deep breath and seated himself again. 'Your pardon,' he said simply. 'One lives in Sanctuary, and one assumes that everyone takes one for a thief and worse ... because everyone else is a thief and worse, I sometimes fear. So. You want the name of someone who might buy and sell young children? Not a short list in this city, sir.'
'That's not quite what I want,' the Cirdonian explained. 'There is - reason to think that she was taken by the Beysib.'
The minstrel blinked. 'Then I really can't help you, much as I'd like to, good sir. My songs give me no entree to those folk.'
Samlor nodded. 'Yes,' he agreed. 'But it might be that you knew who in the local community - fenced goods for Beysib thieves. Somebody must, they can't deal among themselves, a closed group like theirs.'
'Oh,' said Cappen Varra. 'Oh,' and his right hand drummed a nervous riff on the belly of his instrument. When he looked up again, his face was troubled. 'This could be very dangerous,' he said. 'For you, and for anyone who sent you to this man, if he took it amiss.'
'I was serious about the payment,' Samlor said. He thumbed a second crown of Rankan gold from his left hand into the right to join the piece already there.
'No, not that,' said the minstrel, 'not for this. But... I'll give you directions. Go after dark. And if I thought you might mention my name, I wouldn't tell you a thing. Even for a child.'
Samlor smiled wanly. 'It's possible,' the caravan-master said, 'that there are two honourable men in Sanctuary this day. Though I wouldn't expect anyone to believe it, even the two of us.'
Cappen Varra began fingering an intricate sequence of chords from his lute. 'There's a temple of Ils in the Mercer's Quarter,' he began in a rhythmic delivery. It would have suited the love lyrics his face was miming. 'Just a neighbourhood chapel. Go through it and turn right in the alley behind ...'
It had been three hours to sundown when Samlor left the Vulgar Unicorn, but it took him most of the remaining daylight to shop for what he would require during the interview. Nothing illicit, but the city was unfamiliar; and the major purchase was uncommon enough to take some searching. He found what he needed at last at an apothecary's.
The streets of Sanctuary had a different smell after dark, a serpent-cage miasma that was more of the psychic atmosphere than the physical. Under the circumstances, Samlor did not feel it would be politic to carry his dagger free in his hand as he might otherwise have done. He kept a careful watch, however, for the casual footpads who might waylay him for his purse, or even for the wine bottle whose neck projected from his scrip.