"Why are you looking at the door, you straw-gutted mule?"
"I never did, sir!" blurted Zirfet. He stood rooted to the spot, his enormous frame turned slightly in the direction of the tower door. Ott crossed the room to face him. The top of the old man's head was little higher than Zirfet's elbow.
"You had a mind to slip away," said Ott, very low.
"No, sir!" exploded Zirfet.
Ott held Zirfet's gaze without moving. Then, in a smooth gesture, he unsheathed a long white knife.
"You were scheming, Zirfet," he said. "An illness, a broken leg, your dear ma dying in Hubboxum. Any story, so long as it kept you off that ship."
"You're wrong! I never-not for one minute-"
Ott slid the naked blade through Zirfet's own belt, then withdrew his hand.
"Master Ott!" Now Zirfet's great shoulders were quaking. "I don't want your knife, sir! I don't!"
"You've got the only blade in the room, lad. And I'm calling you a coward. A reeking, swill-blooded coward. You'll want to challenge me, Zirfet. It's your right."
With contemptuous slowness, the old man turned his back on the younger spy and cast a cold glance at the other five.
"Men of the Secret Fist. Which of you could stand before his father and not hang his head? By the Night Gods! I watched them leap onto burning ships. I watched them charge up ladders through the boiling pitch, into the very teeth of the Mzithrin horde. Murder in their eyes, blood to their elbows. And look at their progeny. A few years of peace and you turn into dolls. Straw dolls, scarecrows, cowards! Rin spare me, you're like old Quimby, Her Highness' pet. White flabby sows, too fond of your slops to bother with the oath you swore at the Ametrine Throne, or even to defend your own rancid, maggot-mounded, offal-heap honor! Pelech!"
The last word was in Old Arquali, a ritual battle-cry to be flung at an enemy, and with it the old man twisted sideways, out of the path of Zirfet's lunge. The knife missed his back by an inch, but Ott did not escape unharmed: Zirfet's huge left fist caught him squarely in the eye. The old man flung himself with the blow, rolled over the little table with the candles and the sea chart. The other men retreated to the walls. No stopping a fight the spymaster himself had provoked.
Zirfet leaped for Ott again, snarling, all hesitation gone. But Ott was quicker. His fall from the table carried back into a roll, and as he gained his feet, still spinning, he caught the table by one leg and whirled it with terrific speed. His first pass checked Zirfet's advance, his second caught the knife in mid-stab and tore it from the other's hand.
To the watching spies, the rest of the fight seemed pitifully one-sided. Zirfet rushed Ott like an elephant, Ott leaped back and let him slip on the wine. Zirfet had learned enough from his old teacher to use the fall rather than struggle against it, and sprang to his feet again with something approaching grace. But then he took another hopeless swing at Ott. The spymaster parried it easily with his knee, and at the same time broke the second wine bottle over Zirfet's head. Even as he fell, Zirfet managed to lash out with his fist. Ott merely danced backward, absorbing the blow, and seizing the big man's wrist in one hand. The blow had stretched Zirfet out, and almost at his ease the spymaster kicked him in the stomach, leaped on his back, and pressed the jagged stem of the bottle to his throat.
All was still. Sandor Ott grinned hideously, one eye blind with blood from Zirfet's first blow. He pulled the other's head up by the hair.
"You're a coward, are you not?"
"No, sir."
"A coward, I say. A leech from a pigsty pool, like all the men of your line."
"I'll kill you, sir."
"What?"
"I swear I'll see you dead if you insult me more. I'm no coward, sir!"
A quiet sound reached the ears of the spies, and it was a moment before they recognized it as laughter. Ott's shoulders shook. He threw the bottle aside and leaped off Zirfet, who bucked himself unsteadily to his feet. Watching him, Ott laughed louder.
"If you'd answered yes I'd have believed it, lad. You'd be dead on this floor with your throat slit."
"Well I know it, Master," said Zirfet, wheezing.
"This knife," said Sandor Ott, tugging it from the table, "was placed in my hand by my first general, after I slew the Mzithrin Lord Tiamek on the Ega Bridge. Will you take it, Zirfet Salubrastin, as token of your honor defended?"
For the second time, Zirfet froze. Then he staggered forward, eyes wide with astonishment, and took the knife from his master's hand. Eyes met around the room; there were nods of grim approval.
The spymaster plucked the chart from the floor. Wine had ruined it: the western lands seemed to vanish in a sea of blood.
"Now hear me once and forever," said Ott. "There'll be no glancing at doors, for there are no doors to escape by. Not for you six, nor for me, nor even for His Supremacy. Rose will captain that ship, and we shall sail with her. The game's begun, lads. We'll play it to the last round."
Carriage
1 Vaqrin 941
7:40 a.m.
Captain Nilus Rotheby Rose felt the cat nuzzle his leg and repressed an urge to lash out. A good kick would remind the animal to keep its distance. He knew better, of course. The big red cat, Sniraga, was Lady Oggosk's darling. With luck the beast would remember his great aversion to being touched, without need of a blow that could cost him the hag's services. They had sailed together before, these three.
The carriage lumped along uphill. He sat with his big arms folded against his beard, watching the hag smoke. A new pipe. Clenched in drier lips. Lost in deeper wrinkles. But the milk-blue eyes with their predatory gaze were unchanged, and he thought: She'll be sizing me up the same. Best note these eyes, too, you deadly old crone.
"So," he said, "they nabbed you in Besq."
"Fah."
"Beg your pardon," said Rose. "They wooed you, perhaps? Called you Duchess? Handed you a card in silver writ?"
The old woman rubbed her nose vigorously. Repulsed, the captain turned to the window.
"Why are we going uphill?" he demanded. "Why aren't we making for the port?"
"Because there's a crowd like a Ballytween Fair about your vessel," muttered Oggosk. "And we've two more to pick up."
"Two? The mayor spoke of just one-that preening doctor."
Oggosk snorted. "The mayor of Sorrophran is the Emperor's bootshine-boy-nay, the rag itself. But His Supremacy doesn't own the Chathrand. If he hires the Great Ship, he does so at the pleasure of the Chathrand Trading Family. There will never be a crew aboard her but meets with the Family's blessing."
"Don't lecture me, Oggosk," said Rose, his voice a warning rumble. "I've commanded her. Farther and better than any man alive."
"Then you'll recall Lady Lapadolma's most irritating habit."
"Reciting that foul verse?"
"Stocking the crew!" snapped Oggosk. "Intruding on your rights as captain! Every voyage she afflicts us with one or two, her personal tattlers. No other Family presumes so much."
Rose grunted. Lady Lapadolma Yelig was the ruling grandmother of the Trading Family that had owned and outfitted the Chathrand for twelve generations. She was the Emperor's own cousin, but showed no better than a formal loyalty to the Ametrine Throne. Her family had always married power, both within the Imperium and without: Lapadolma herself was the widow of the Bishwa Egalguk, monarch of the Isle of Fulne.
The Yeligs owned dozens of ships, but the Chathrand was their great glory. No other vessel could carry a third what she did on a trading voyage, nor earn a third the gold. And no other Family managed, under the very nose of the Emperor, to keep so much of that gold for itself. The culprit was tradition: to the Emperor's long fury, a belief held that the day Chathrand left port in the hands of another owner would be the day she sank. Nonsense, probably. But not even His Supremacy could risk disaster on such a monstrous scale.