—"Better we clean up a little," he had said to the company. "Get a little trail dust off."
Which the company had known how to understand. Only Taizu's bandages had escaped washing—and Taizu with her filthy sheepskin coat, her topknot and her bandages was easily the worst, the latter by now stained with food, trail dirt, an appalling amount of old blood and a small circle of new—Eidi had contributed that this morning as they were setting out, to make the wound seem recent, for fear someone might question it otherwise.
But the looks it drew here gave him second thoughts —a ghastly wound, a soldier from off a fighting front. People shied from it and stared for more than fear of pilferage, and doubtless whispered after they had passed.
War-jitters here too, the same as on tannery row. And a lot of soldiers on guard by the bridge.
What are we going to do? he imagined Taizu's question. She felt steadier, as if her focus had come back. There was noise and confusion on all sides as they walked the quayside. Someone chopped a chicken close by them and Taizu glanced that way—but any soldier might. At the next aisle a whore importuned them. Taizu stared.
"No," Shoka snarled, and the whore yelled out something about boy-lovers as he pulled Taizu past.
A sweetmeat at a booth in mid-market, a cup of wine in an area that smelled less of the fish and poultry-sellers. Taizu sipped through her bandages, returned the cup to the vendor.
Horsemen came through, not mercenaries. Banner of Angen, red circle on black.
Gitu.
Taizu went completely still. Not a twitch. Then she moved again naturally, put the cup up.
"Through?" A male hand reached for it, four, five soldiers moving up to the drink-vendor. Shoka drew in his breath, heart speeding, but Taizu nodded calmly, and before he could get her out:
"Where you in from?" one asked.
"South," Shoka said, edging in, trying to catch Taizu's expression past the bandages, with the panic feeling that she might just, if he got tied down in the first chance they had had to find out vital information—walk off down the row and vanish in the crowd. He put his hand on her shoulder, and felt the tension. "Up from Taiyi."
The mercenaries were all attention. "Bad down there?"
"Damn bloody awful." With a shrug. "Lost half the company."
"Buy you a drink," the one said, and threw out half the contents of his cup, put it back, and indicated the edge of the market square, the sit-down wine-shops. Meaning he and his wanted the rumors.
"Lost all our money," he said over a cup of hot wine, too worried to feel the alcohol he had at lunch and after, thank the gods he had had the lunch. It was Taizu he was worried about; but if worry burned it out of him, Taizu had enough going in her, he reckoned, to burn off twice her capacity, and she was steady as he could ask—not a tremor in the hand that carried the cup, no gulping down the wine, just measured sips.
"I've been twenty years hereabouts," Shoka said. "Not this recent stuff. I hired on to a lord, personal. I was just a kid, Juni's age, here. Traveled with a caravan, got to Ygotai, I thought I'd seen a city." Not too much confidence too fast. He spilled the bits and pieces he had cobbled together, reason for a mercenary to speak the language and forget his own. "Hell, Lungan in those days—I came up looking for hire, I mean, in those days, there weren't that many places you could get, but I got a post with this old gentleman—just watch his horses. And pretty soon I was in the house guard. Ten years with that old gentleman. Then this. Captain killed, no damn pay—So I get up here, hell, I report what I know. Do I get any damn pay for risking my ass? I should've cut out down to Mandi, get the hell out, before this whole damn thing comes down—"
"What's the story down there?"
Shoka took a breath, shook his head. "I know too much."
"Like what?"
"I can't. Can't talk." He put a leg over the bench, gathered up his sword. "Come on, Juni. We'd better get back."
"You're drinking our money, you sit down. What've you heard?"
"It's not heard, man, it's seen." He settled back again, leaned confidentially across the table. "That's what they don't want spread. . . . And not a damn copper for it!"
Heads leaned forward. Shoka looked around him.
"The whole south's coming up here. Every damn province has come in with the rebels, and they're moving, they've gathered up more men than you'd think was in the south—I've seen them. I've seen things—" He dropped his voice and looked around, as a waiter passed. "We're sitting in the middle of this damn city—you know who this Saukendar is?"
"Warleader. On the outs with the Regent."
"He was damn popular. These aren't happy people. I'm telling you, twenty years in this country, and I know something, I know something scares hell out of me, sitting here in this town. This whole damn country's boiling up around us—that's what I'm feeling, all these damn streets and every window just watching—I was in the riots back in P'eng. ..."
They shifted on the benches.
"It started over a cart in the street. The people up in P'eng, I saw them kill this poor sod of a regular with pitchforks—"
They were weaving when they walked away. Shoka kept a hand on Taizu's shoulders, but two drunks could hold each other up.
"You did fine," he said, squeezing hard. "You did fine, boy."
"I didn't do anything—"
"That was the fine part." A second squeeze of her shoulders. "Good. I'm proud of you."
"I'm all right."
"I know you are. We're going back to quarters, try not to get picked up for drunk and disorderly."
"Do we get him tonight?"
"Ill have a look at it after dark."
"We."
"No 'we.' You're too damn easy to spot. I'll handle it, I'll map everything out for you. You'll be along when it's the real thing."
"I don't trust you!"
"What kind of talk is that?"
"You're the best liar I know of."
He was still thinking about that, along the row of booths and along by the back way, among the restaurants, decidedly the best way for two drunken soldiers to slip back into the city streets.
Straight on down the row and around the corner, face to face with a foreign-looking man in a fur-trimmed cap. Whose eyes widened.
"No, you don't!" Shoka grabbed the man and shoved him up against the wall, holding him by a fistful of expensive Shin brocade, thinking about murder, just a dagger in the gut and silence thereafter—no matter he had drunk this man's tea and shared his fire.
Master Yi was evidently thinking about that too. He was shaking, his teeth chattering. "I don't know you," he said, "I swear, I don't know you!"
He was a fool not to kill the man. He knew that. A damned fool with thousands of lives riding on him. But it was an old man, a scared man, who pried weakly at his hands and looked as if he was going to die of shock.
He jerked the trader into the shadow of a wagon, less in the way of witnesses. Master Yi was gasping for air, and it was not even a close grip he had on him.
"Master Yi!" Taizu said, female voice, whisper gone too high.
"I never saw you!" Master Yi protested. "I don't know a thing, I swear, I don't want to know anything—"
"What's my name?" Shoka asked him. "Tell me my name, Master Yi!"
A shake of the head, vehement. "I swear, I don't know!"