"Twelve kisa," the man replied. "Fourth floor. The washing facilities are at the end of the hall. Take it or leave it."
Twelve kisa was a steep price for such a place, Tristan thought, but clearly Faegan thought it better not to bargain. Reaching into his robes, the wizard took out the necessary kisa and dropped them on the desk. After counting them, the innkeeper produced three keys, which he handed over to the wizard. Saying nothing more, Faegan turned his chair to the stairs, Tristan and Shailiha following behind.
At the foot of the steps, Tristan leaned in, putting his lips to the wizard's ear. "Are you joking?" he growled quietly. "Four flights of stairs?"
"No." Faegan smiled. "Actually, I'm hoping there will be five." Looking over to Shailiha, he gave her a wink. She smiled back quizzically.
"What do you mean five?" Tristan argued.
"We have no friends here, and this is no time for a debate," Faegan answered urgently. "Let's go."
Sighing, Tristan began pulling the wizard's chair backward up the steps. After what seemed an eternity, they finally reached the fourth floor. Tristan looked around cautiously. Nothing seemed amiss.
"What are our room numbers?" Shailiha asked Faegan as Tristan leaned over, breathing heavily from exhaustion.
"We won't be using the rooms." Faegan smiled and looked up at the ceiling. "That was just for show."
Before either of the Chosen Ones could ask the obvious question, the wizard found what he was looking for. In the middle of the ceiling was a wooden framework, from which hung a rope ending in a pull handle.
Faegan wheeled himself to the rope and gave it a tug. Stairs to the roof slowly descended on a pivot, revealing the first stars of the evening twinkling through the opening. Faegan grinned at the prince.
"As I told you, there are five," he said impishly. "But again you must pull me up without my using the craft. There might still be people about."
Tristan nodded. With a determined grip he pushed the chair to the stairs, and, with some help from Shailiha below, managed to pull it up and onto the roof. Shailiha scrambled up behind them, then pulled the duplicate rope on the other side, wisely lifting the pivoting stairway back into place.
The gray slate roof was large and flat. The wind had risen, and the smell of the sea came to them again. From here the prince could see much of the city, the flickering streetlamps casting macabre, dancing shadows along the sides of the buildings and down the cobblestoned thoroughfares.
"Quickly, Tristan," Faegan whispered. "Lift me from my chair and put me down by the east edge of the roof. Then both of you come and lie next to me, one on either side."
Tristan did as the wizard ordered, and Faegan lay on his stomach, peering over the edge toward the docks. Tristan and Shailiha lay down beside him.
Down on the stone piers that formed the breakwater to the sea, hundreds of people were milling anxiously about.Three large ships, their sails furled, lay tied up in docking berths, their white, salty waterlines riding well above the waves. Even Tristan's inexperienced eyes could guess that meant the ships were empty of cargo.
A raised wooden platform had been placed in a cleared area between the crowd and the water's edge. A short series of steps ran down from one of its sides to the ground. Alongside the platform a long, crude, rectangular table sat upon the pier. Seated behind it were at least a dozen men in dark robes. Consuls' robes, the prince thought. On the table before each man lay several objects, but Tristan could not identify them from this distance. The men behind the table sat patiently, as if waiting for something.
Before the table stood two large, black kettles with strange, curved iron handles. An orange-red glow emanated from each of their circular tops. Tristan assumed that the strange auras were being produced by glowing, red-hot coals deep within them. Black smoke rose lazily from the kettles' glowing embers, vanishing into the growing darkness of the evening sky.
Near the kettles, two pillories had been constructed. The orange glow from the black kettles mixed with the light from the dozens of oil lamps to cast strangely flickering shadows across the hulls of the silently waiting ships and the stark, empty pillories.
Then Tristan saw the white-skinned demonslavers lining the inner edges of the clearing, keeping the burgeoning crowd from approaching the raised platform by the constant threat of their nine-tails and tridents. Then Krassus came into view. The people in the crowd began to shout invectives and wave their arms in anger. Krassus didn't seem to care.
Slowly he walked to the platform in his blue-and-gray robe. An elderly woman with frizzled gray hair and dressed in a shopworn black robe followed along behind him. As they approached, the demonslavers kept the crowd back. Without fanfare Krassus and his unknown companion walked to the side of the platform and up the steps. They remained silent.
Tristan looked over at Faegan. "Is that woman the partial adept Krassus talked about that day in the palace?" he asked urgently. "Do you know her?"
"From here, I can't tell who she might be," Faegan whispered back, not shifting his eyes from the scene. "But it is obvious she has importance for him."
Tristan expected Krassus to speak. But he didn't. He simply stood there, the woman by his side, as if he, too, waited for something.
Suddenly Tristan heard the sound of shod hooves rattling harshly against the same cobblestoned street he, Faegan, and Shailiha had just come down. Turning, he crawled on his stomach across the slate roof to its northern side and looked carefully over.
At least a dozen carriages-of-four were approaching, their teams trotting down the street and toward the docks. But as they neared, Tristan could see that the vehicles were really not carriages at all. They were more like bizarre, wooden-slatted cages on wheels, and they were being driven by yet more of the demonslavers. Finally he could see them better, and his heart skipped a beat.
They were full of people.
Each of the rough-hewn cages contained perhaps twenty or more people, men and women alike. They sat crammed upon what looked like piles of soiled straw, and he could make out black iron manacles here and there.
The cages continued rattling up the street toward the docks. Tristan crawled back across the roof to lie beside Faegan. Below, the demonslavers on the pier barked out orders, and the crowd reluctantly parted to allow the vehicles to pass.
The cages came to a stop before the long table. A group of demonslavers promptly went to one corner of the clearing, and from a pile lying there each of them took up a device that seemed to be a long iron rod with a ring at one end. Another group of demonslavers began unlocking and opening the cage doors.
One by one the rod-wielding demonslavers approached the open cages. With a quick twist of the rod handles, the rings at their ends clanged open. The open rings were shoved into the cages and forced up against the throats of the captives. With another twist, the rings closed viciously around the prisoners' necks. One by one, the men and women were dragged out, kicking and screaming.
With the captives finally free of their cages, Tristan could see them much better. It was then that he began to get an inkling of why he and his sister had been regarded so strangely all day.
All the slaves were about the same age as he and Shailiha!
Tristan looked back to Krassus. The wizard had yet to speak, but his dark eyes missed nothing as the prisoners were hauled from their cages and forced to move toward the table where the robed men sat waiting.
"Can you tell what's happening?" he asked Faegan quietly. All he could make out was that the robed men were busy doing something that involved the occasional azure glow of the craft, and were making notations in some kind of large books.
"I can see part of it," the wizard responded softly. "And yes, I believe I have a good idea of what is going on. But let us not speak of it now."
There was a distinct sadness in the old man's tone. Shailiha looked to her brother and placed an index finger across her lips. Tristan nodded back.