She laughed, her lips parting to show perfect teeth. "You're awful."
Egil toasted her again. "The priest agrees entirely."
"I am awful," Nix acknowledged with a nod. He drained his tankard. "I really am. As it happens, I spent most of a year at the Conclave. That's where I learned the bits I know."
She looked even more surprised than when he'd mentioned the Mages' Tongue. "I thought studies there lasted several years."
"He dropped out," Egil said.
" No," Nix said irritably. "I was expelled. That's a much more honorable method to part ways with that place and its so-called instructors."
"Agreed," Egil said, and harrumphed. "Wizards."
"Third best event of my life, that expulsion," Nix said, thinking back on his younger days at the Conclave.
"So, in only a year you learned the Mages' Tongue?"
"Bits of it," Nix said, unwilling to admit that he knew some words but not their meanings. "Enough to do a few things. I wouldn't want to know much more. It's the gods' tongue, used to create Ellerth and the vault of stars. Speaking it too much is said to drive a man mad. Words not meant to be heard by mortals and so forth."
"There's truth in that," Egil said. "From what we've seen."
Now it was Nix's turn to toast his friend. He and Egil had crossed many sorcerers over the years and not one seemed to think with sense.
"They say magic's in the blood, not the tongue," Kiir said. "So I guess you're born of a sorcerer, Nix Fall."
"Ha!" Nix said. "Not likely in this blood."
Nix was born of a prostitute and a Jon and had no idea of his lineage.
"So then," Kiir said, "how'd you get into and out of a wizard-king's tomb with your lives?"
Gadd put an ale before her and she smiled her thanks at the tall easterner.
Nix just shook his head. "Tricks of the trade, love. Some secrets we must keep to ourselves. Suffice to say it was a close thing."
Egil said, "It was. But we rob tombs better than we run taverns, so here we sit."
"Here we sit," Nix said, toasting his friend a second time.
"I'm glad of it," Kiir said.
"And I," Nix said.
Tesha spoiled the moment by calling down from the stairs. "Kiir!"
"Work calls," Kiir said, standing.
Tesha stood at the top of the stairs, a young man beside her. The man eyed Kiir hopefully and Nix liked it not at all. The man shifted on his feet in his eagerness, his smile filling his whole face. He couldn't have been more than twenty winters, just some bird-witted hob with a few terns rattling around in his pocket and a prick hard for a pretty girl.
Nix said, "You know, you don't have to-"
She put a small hand to his lips. "Don't do that, Nix. This is my life. I chose it. Let's not pretend this is more than it is."
He stared into her eyes, nodded. "If it is, though?"
She smiled, patted his arm.
"I must remember never to underestimate you," he said.
"Men always underestimate women, so you're ahead on that score."
He touched her wrist, unwilling to let her go. "Are all the women who work here as sharp as you and Tesha?"
"Every one," she said. She winked and walked away, letting her fingertips drag across Nix's forearm.
After she'd left, Nix looked to Egil. "There's no one naive left in this town."
Egil nodded, staring into his ale cup. "Still in love?"
Nix watched Kiir walk up the staircase, the sway of her hips, the way the bodice of her dress gripped her curves. "Pits, maybe more than ever."
Egil took a slug of Gadd's ale. "I don't blame you."
CHAPTER FIVE
Baras and a dozen of his men lingered near the mouth of an alley across Shoddy Way. Drums beat in the Low Bazaar behind them, laughter. The air carried the smell of sizzling meat and exotic tobacco. The few street torches lighting the street glowed feebly in the rain-misted night air.
"What now?" Derg, one of his men, asked Baras. Both of them stared at the doors of the Slick Tunnel.
"We wait," Baras said. "If they come out, we take them on the street."
"And if they don't?"
"We go in when it clears out. Get some men around the back and make sure they don't sneak out that way."
"Why would they sneak? They don't know we're out here."
"Those two sneak out of habit, I expect."
"Truth," Derg said. He ordered a third of the detachment around to the rear of the Tunnel and the men jogged off.
"Shite night and shite street for this kind of duty," Derg said. He looked longingly back at the bazaar.
"Aye," Baras said.
A voice sounded from a shadowed alley next to the Tunnel.
"Baras, is that you?"
Baras and his men whirled on the speaker, hands on their hilts.
The speaker stepped out of the alley, holding his empty hands out wide.
"No threat here, lads," the man said, walking toward them, and Baras placed his voice at last.
"Jyme?"
"Aye," Jyme said, and hurried across the way. "Gods, man. What are you doing here?"
Jyme looked a bit older than the last time Baras had seen him, but he remained as thin as a willow reed. His thin mustache and beard looked like a dusting of soot on his narrow face. One eye and half his face were red and swollen, as if from a punch.
"Working."
"Working?" Jyme said, and glanced around the men. "I heard you wasn't watch anymore."
"I'm not," Baras said, and didn't bother to explain. "What happened to your face?"
Jyme's thin mouth curled in anger. He ran a hand over his swollen eye. "Big tattooed fakker got over on me in the Tunnel."
"Tattooed?" Baras said. "Egil? The priest?"
Jyme spat. "He's no priest. Wait, how do you…?"
Jyme looked around at the men again, their blades, their eyes focused on the Tunnel. He looked at the empty horse-drawn wagon on the street before them. His eyes widened as realization set in.
"You're looking to take that one down, ain't you? The priest, I mean?"
"None of your concern," Baras said.
"He gave me this eyeshine," Jyme said. "I been waitin' on him to come out myself. Figured I'd acquaint him with my blade as answer for his punch."
Baras said nothing, but didn't figure Jyme would come out on the bloodless end of a fight with the priest.
"None of this concerns you, Jyme. Be on your way. We'll have a drink come another day."
"I ain't going nowhere," Jyme said. "Like I said. I'm waitin' on that priest to show. Maybe I'll just wait here with you, yeah?"
"I can have you moved," Baras said.
Jyme sneered. "Arrested, like? After all we saw together back in the watch? Come on, Baras. Besides, I'll make enough noise in the going that your ambush here'll go for nothing."
Baras turned to face him, irritated.
Jyme took a step back, hands raised. "Listen, I just want in. You know I can account for myself with a blade. I don't even want payment. I just want that priest to get his, see?"
Baras considered it. Jyme had been a decent watchman once, and an extra blade didn't hurt.
"If you're in, you're in," Baras said. "That work for you?"
"Yeah," Jyme said. "Works."
"Good," Baras said. "When they come out, we take them. If they don't come out, we go in and get them. But I need them both alive. And you're to do exactly as I say."
"Ah, you're no fun, Baras."
"I'll introduce you to the men."
By the time the water clock tolled three hours past deepnight, the Tunnel was almost empty. A few drunks slouched over tables, sleeping. Gadd and Egil escorted them out the door and Gadd made a half-hearted attempt at sweeping the floor.
Nix's eyes kept going to the stairway. No one had emerged from the upstairs pleasure rooms for hours. Nix didn't think any patrons remained up there, or at least he hoped not. In his mind's eye, he saw Kiir… servicing that country hob, and it bothered him more than he liked to admit.