“The Red Circle,” the man whispered. “They may have rooms, for a price. Good luck to you.” He melted into the shadows and disappeared, leaving them alone.
The smell of cooking meat came from the inn. They heard the sound of something shattering. As Mikulov opened the door, more smells and sounds assaulted them, a raucous mixture of food and human sweat, off-key strumming, hoarse singing, and lots of conversation. The inn was packed with people, some of them belting out songs accompanied by a lyre in one corner, others sitting at tables over mugs of ale.
Almost immediately, one of the drunken men spied them and waddled over, taking Cain by the arm with a grip of iron and pulling him inside.
“This is no place for a girl!” the man roared into Cain’s face, his beard dripping with sweat. The man gestured at Leah. “What do you mean, bringing her here?” Then he winked. He wasn’t as tall as Cain, but his body was solidly built. Mikulov tensed, but Cain made a calming gesture and let himself be led forward, into the fray.
At the bar, the man grabbed a mug of ale, handed it to Cain, and took another from the bartender. “Bottoms up!” he cried, clinked glasses, and downed the amber liquid in several large swallows, wiping his beard with the back of his sleeve. “Do you know,” he shouted above the din, “that a hundred years ago, this very spot was a gallows? They hung nearly fifty men where you’re standing right now—neck broken, if you’re lucky. If not, legs twitching, face turning purple while you choke to death. That’s a slow and miserable way to go. One man refused to die, they say—hung there for two days. They poked him with a stick every few hours, and he would open his bug eyes and stare at them, gurgling. They thought he was a demon. Finally they cut him down and let him go, and he went around for the rest of his life with a red circle around his neck.” The man grinned. “That’s how I named this place.” He stuck out his hand, and Cain shook it. “Name’s Cyrus,” he said. “I own the Red Circle. Welcome to the gates of Hell. Or, as some of us like to call it, Kurast.”
Cain pulled a gold nugget from his sack. “We’re looking for a place to stay for a night.”
Cyrus hooked a thumb toward Mikulov, who stood next to Leah with arms folded. “Tell him to stand down, Grandpa. If your gold’s real, I’ll give you a room. Not exactly full up in here, if you know what I’m saying.” He leaned forward, speaking in a lower tone. “I wouldn’t go flashing it around like that, though. Likely to get your arms cut off so as they can get at your pack, understand?”
Cain glanced at the other patrons. They were a ragged bunch, almost all men except for a few prostitutes, their dresses half open in front, vacant smiles on their faces. The air of celebration had a desperate edge that worked its way through the room and into the eyes of everyone there.
The lyre stopped for the moment, and someone slammed a mug down on the top of a table and shouted for more music. After a moment, the man began playing again, the notes coming faster and sounding more frantic.
“We’re full of pirates, thieves, and worse,” Cyrus said. “This is what’s left, after the decent folk are gone. The pirates take the waterway to the sea, then work their way over the plains to Caldeum, avoid the main road. Less of the Imperial Guard to watch for, you understand, and . . . other things that might get at them. A ship’s come in tonight, full of loot from Kingsport.” He waved at the room full of men. “There’s less of ’em these days, though. Even thievery is a dying profession around here.” Cyrus suddenly grew serious. “Gea Kul, that’s what it is, and what lives there. Have to pass that hellish place to get upriver, and nobody wants any part of that.”
“The port town,” Cain said.
“Aye.” Cyrus nodded. “It’s grown up over the years from what it was, deformed as a twisted back on a cripple. If Kurast is the gates of Hell, Gea Kul is right smack in the middle of the flames.”
Word had gotten around about Leah’s presence, and the room began to quiet, all eyes turning to them. A woman’s high, strained laughter drifted over the crowd, then the sound of a harsh slap of hand against flesh, and a muffled scream. “All right,” Cyrus bellowed, “go about your drinking and your whoring, all of you! Haven’t you seen a child before?”
“Tell her to step up, then,” a man shouted, and a flurry of activity erupted around him as another man threw a wild roundhouse punch at his jaw.
Leah shifted closer to Mikulov. “Excuse me a moment,” Cyrus said, and waded in, swinging with both elbows. The fighting intensified for a moment, and then someone gave a high, wavering cry, and the room quieted down again.
Cain and Mikulov looked at each other as Cyrus came back their way, his face even redder than before, his lower lip dripping blood. He grinned at them through stained teeth. “Told you this was no place for a girl,” Cyrus said. “That’s taken care of, and I don’t reckon he’ll be up and about for a while. Now, let me fix you a plate of food and show you to your rooms.”
Cyrus brought a large bowl full of meat stew and a loaf of bread. He took them through a door and up a flight of narrow stairs to a long, dimly lit hallway, the floors worn and scuffed, the walls bloodstained and carved with knives. Thuds, creaks, and moans came from behind several closed doors as they passed.
“People tend to disappear around here, intentional or not,” Cyrus said as he led the way. “Maybe you don’t want to be found. Either way, your gold’s as good as any other.”
“We’re looking for a man named Hyland,” Cain said.
Cyrus stopped short and turned to stare at him. “What do you want with that slippery bastard?” he said. “Thinks he runs this city. Nobody runs Kurast. It’s a den of thieves.”
“We were told that he would have some information for us.”
“Ah, well.” Cyrus waved his hand in dismissal. “Hyland has information, all right. Just can’t tell if it’s worth a damn. Most of what he says can’t be trusted. But I’ll let you find that out yourself. There’s some gathering tomorrow morning, at the docks. Hyland’ll be there, running the circus.” He walked a few steps down the hall and stopped in front of a battered door. “Here’s your room,” he said abruptly, the mirth gone from his voice. He handed Mikulov the bowl and bread. “I’d lock it, if I were you.”
Then he stalked past them and disappeared back down the stairs.
20
The Docks
The three of them shared the bowl of stew and stale bread, and slept fitfully side by side on a bed of straw. Bugs crawled into their clothes and bit at their skin. The shouting and music went into the early hours of the morning, but Cain found the silence in the aftermath to be worse: at least the noise meant they shared the night with others, but after it died away, they were alone.
The old building settled, creaking, into the dawn, and several times they heard moans and what sounded like the whispers of ghouls. Leah cried out from a nightmare once, and Cain touched her hand in the dark to reassure her. She was trembling, her skin hot as a furnace even as the temperature in the room dropped. He felt a rush of emotion for the poor girl; she had lost the only person in the world who meant anything to her, she had been taken from her home, and she was facing danger and darkness at every turn. Yet she had remained strong, even defiant, in the face of all of it.
She clutched his hand, and he hummed a lullaby he remembered from many years ago, a time long forgotten. Tears welled in his eyes. Eventually her trembling stopped, and her sleep grew peaceful, while Deckard Cain remained awake, his old bones aching and the wound in his side beginning to itch, until the gray, hopeless light of dawn began to slip through the tiny window.
Ratham was five days away.
The inn was quiet as they left for the docks. Mikulov found more bread in the small, filthy kitchen behind the tavern room, and they shared it as they walked down the empty street. The rain had fallen most of the night, but instead of washing everything clean, it had served only to carry trash out from the alleyways and form murky puddles.