A curtain of sapphire light flashed across the western sky, and Starmouth Way surged a few inches upward, cracking and crunching as cobblestones popped free of the street. In the next instant, the lowing and braying of terrified draft animals was echoing off the swaying storefronts, and the merchant’s moon-faced wife began to grow impatient.
“Hantur, this is no time to be cheap!” she said. “With this mob, you’re asking the good watchman to take his life into his hands. Give him twenty.”
“Twenty gold lions?” Hantur gasped. “That’s as much as he earns in a month!”
“And you had me up all night rolling cloth worth a thousand times that,” she countered. “With the portals corrupted and the travel-wizards dead or gone, you’ll pay him twenty platinum tricrowns, if that’s what it takes to get us out of this city.”
Hantur scowled, but he reached under his robe for more coins. It made Kleef’s stomach turn to even consider taking the bribe, but he knew that most of his fellow watchmen would have laughed at his aversion. The Marsember Watch had been founded in a cesspool of corruption nearly a century ago, when the merchant’s guild had decided the city needed its own militia to protect its members’ interests-and to prevent the local garrison of Purple Dragons from interfering with the way they conducted business. And not much had changed in the last hundred years.
Hantur’s hand came out again, filled with more gold. “Twenty lions,” he said to Kleef. “If you want more, go rob someone else.”
Kleef sighed. “Ten gold lions is enough,” he said, putting his hand out. “And offer no more bribes. In this madness, there are too many who will see it as a chance to take your entire purse.”
Hantur frowned, clearly insulted. “I know how to conduct my own business, Watchman.” The merchant dropped ten gold into Kleef’s palm, then tucked the rest back inside his robes. “Just get on with your job-and be quick about it. This wagon should be halfway to Suzail by now.”
Kleef felt his jaw clench at the merchant’s tone, but he supposed such treatment was to be expected when a watchman opened his hand for gold. He cast one last glance across the boulevard and, finding the mule cart still blocking his view, dropped off the wagon. He moved to the near side of the street, where his small troop of uniformed drunkards and wastrels stood waiting in an alcove, their short swords still sheathed and their halberds resting against their shoulders.
Kleef motioned for his troop to gather around, then said, “We can’t have the evacuation choked off like this.” He turned to the largest man, a heavy-jawed brute with legs like tree trunks. “Tanner, take the troop and remove those priests from the square.”
“And do what with them, Topsword?” Tanner gave him a sly grin. “Dump their bodies in the lagoon?”
“If it comes to that, yes.” Kleef could see the surprise in the faces of his men, for he had never been one to tolerate the mistreatment of prisoners. “It might be less work to just escort the priests outside the city walls and order them to stay there, but do what you need to do. If we don’t get those wagons rolling through Wilhastle Square before the assault begins, we’ll have a riot on our hands.”
Kleef held out his hand, displaying the coins the merchant had given him, then added, “Clear the square within a quarter hour, and there’s a gold lion for each of you.”
His first blade, a young Shou from the now-flooded quarter of Xiousing, scowled in open disapproval. The rest of the troop looked confused and suspicious.
“That’s a mean joke,” said the oldest man, a gray-stubbled fellow named Rathul. “We’re selling our lives cheap as it is. There’s no need to rub our noses in-”
“Does it look like I’m joking?” Kleef interrupted. “Clear the square, and the gold is yours.”
The men continued to look wary.
“Right,” scoffed Ardul, a fuzzy-cheeked youth. “So you can flog us for taking a bribe? This must be another one of your tests.”
“No test,” Kleef said, allowing his frustration to color his voice. “Times are desperate, and I need you to clear that square without Jang and me. Now.”
Tanner frowned. “So, we’ll all be in the square, while you and Jang are … doing what, exactly?”
Normally, Kleef would have rebuffed the question with a curt reminder of who gave the orders. But not much was normal right then. Dozens of senior watchmen had already deserted their posts, and that morning, even the day-watch oversword had failed to report for duty.
Kleef sighed and pointed across the street. “Jang and I will be back there somewhere, watching a Shadovar spy.”
“The Shadovar are inside the city?” Jang gasped. “Already?”
“I believe I’ve spotted one,” Kleef said, hedging a little, since he had not yet confirmed his suspicions, and he did not want his men to panic or rethink their priorities. “Maybe I’m wrong, but Jang and I need to check it out.”
Tanner raised his brow, studying Kleef with grudging respect. “Just the two of you? Alone?”
“No choice,” Kleef said, knowing that Tanner and the rest of his troop’s ready blades would be more hindrance than help against a Netherese shadow warrior. “Someone has to clear the square. Besides, if I bring more men, he’ll see us coming.”
Tanner’s gaze drifted back to the coins in Kleef’s palm. “Makes sense,” he said. “But maybe you should leave the coins with me, just in case you don’t-”
“Sorry,” Kleef said, closing his hand. “Clear the square first. If I don’t return-”
“Don’t worry, we’ll come and find you.” Tanner grinned, displaying a set of broken brown teeth, then added, “Or whatever is left of you. You’ll be carrying our gold, remember?”
With that, the big man turned and, using his halberd to shove and poke his way through the crowd, led his companions toward Wilhastle Square. Kleef motioned for Jang, then started down the street in the opposite direction, bulling his way through the pedestrians. It was difficult to see anything on the far side of the wide street, but Kleef knew his best chance of locating the Shadovar again lay in finding the red-haired woman.
Jang seemed to slip through the crowd like an eel, and he easily kept pace with Kleef. “Now you are giving bribes?”
“Not really,” Kleef said.
Jang was the only man under his command whose respect truly mattered to him. The Shou wielded a blade almost as well as Kleef did, and he followed a code of honor as strict as Helm’s Law. Unlike Kleef, however, Jang hadn’t devoted his life to faithful service; he was simply an honorable man, and Kleef both admired and envied him for that.
“I just needed a way to keep the troop from deserting the instant we’re out of sight.”
“By offering them a bribe,” Jang insisted. “It is good that you follow Helm. A dead god will not punish you for ignoring his laws.”
Kleef winced. He was stretching Helm’s Law of Service, but he saw no alternative. He knew his troop too well to think they would clear the square without the promise of gold. Moreover, Helm had been gone so long that even his most devoted worshipers considered his Law more of a guideline than an inviolable code. Under the circumstances, was it wrong of Kleef to think the same way?
After twenty paces, Kleef glanced over the backs of two stamping mules and caught a glimpse of green wool slicing through the crowd near the middle of the street. He tugged Jang’s sleeve and stepped into the slender gap in front of the mules’ noses. The beasts brayed and balked, but Jang quickly grabbed their halters and calmed them with a few words of whispered Shou.