Emmis didn't believe that for an instant. Guards did not lounge on Commission Street. It wasn't on the way from any of their usual posts to anywhere they would need to go. If guards were needed on the Shiphaven docks or at the shipyards they would be sent from Westgate and would come down Shipwright or Captain Street, not Commission. If there had been a disturbance in Shiphaven Market, as sometimes happened, they would lounge in the market itself, not on Commission Street. If it were evening, and the guards were planning to get a drink when they went off-duty, it might have just barely been possible, but in the morning?
So they were watching the Crooked Candle.
Which meant there was no chance at all that Annis or the Lumethans or the assassins would be there. The foreigners weren't that stupid.
Why were the guards being that stupid? Wouldn't it make more sense to have a few men out of uniform inside the inn, ready to pounce if one of the foreigners or assassins came in?
Well, that wasn't Emmis's problem. He already knew coming here was pointless, but Lar had told him to go to the inn, so he would go to the inn. He marched forward.
At the door of the inn he paused; the two guards were watching him closely, but neither of them had said anything or reached for a weapon. These two, he noticed, were wearing swords, as well as bearing truncheons, which meant they were definitely not simply ordinary guards varying their patrol.
"Is there something going on?" Emmis asked, pointing to one guard's sword.
"Nothing that concerns you," the soldier replied.
"It's all right if I go inside?"
"We won't stop you, but mind your own business."
Emmis nodded, and stepped through the door into the inn's common room.
A third guard looked up at his entrance, and Emmis was startled to realize that he recognized this one. This was one of the two who had come up from the Palace last night to investigate the attempted assassination.
A white-haired old man was seated at a table just behind the guardsman, speaking intently with someone Emmis recognized as the innkeeper, who was sitting on the opposite side of the table. The innkeeper's face was toward Emmis, and he looked worried; the old man was facing away.
A few customers were scattered about – very few; Emmis counted four. Gita was serving one of them a mug of beer. No one was else was in sight.
The familiar guard looked at Emmis, then tapped the old man on the shoulder. "My lord?" he said quietly.
The old man cut off whatever he was saying to the innkeeper in mid-sentence and looked up. "Yes?"
"My lord, Emmis of Shiphaven just came in."
So much, Emmis thought, for any hope that he might be able to get a quiet beer and slip away unnoticed.
The old man turned and looked at Emmis. Emmis stood where he was and smiled politely. He had no idea who the old man was, but anyone addressed as "my lord" was not someone he wanted to antagonize.
"Ask him to join us," the old man said.
The guardsman stepped forward, and Emmis came to meet him. "I heard," he said.
"I'll have to ask you to give me your knife," the guardsman said.
Startled, Emmis drew his belt-knife and handed it over, hilt first. Whatever was happening here, the soldier was taking it seriously; ordinarily no one even thought of a belt-knife as a weapon. Disarmed, he approached the table cautiously, and took a chair under the watchful gaze of the guard and the old man. The innkeeper was too busy looking confused and miserable to pay any attention to Emmis; he just stared ahead blindly as the young man settled into his seat.
"Hello," Emmis said. "I'm Emmis of Shiphaven."
"My name is Ildirin," the old man said. He did not offer a hand or make any other polite gestures, but his gaze remained focused on Emmis.
Ildirin. The guardsman had addressed him as "my lord." The age was about right. Emmis swallowed. "The overlord's uncle?"
"Yes."
That explained why the inn was being guarded. "I am honored."
"We have been discussing your contention that this man has allowed people to hire assassins in his inn."
"Oh." Emmis threw the innkeeper a quick glance. "Well, I don't know that the actual hiring took place here, but one of his guests did tell me her companion had hired assassins, and sure enough, I was attacked in my employer's home as soon as I got back there."
"I can't possibly be expected to know everything that people do here!" the innkeeper burst out.
"So you said," Lord Ildirin replied dryly. "And I have acknowledged the truth of your claim. Nonetheless, it would behoove you to tell me everything you have ever known, every whisper you have ever heard, about the four foreigners who slept under your roof."
"But I don't know anything," the innkeeper wailed. "They paid every day, in good coin, and then yesterday afternoon they all departed hurriedly. They settled their bill and took their things and they were gone!"
"And you can't tell me anything they said, anything they ate, anything they drank, anyone they met, anyone they declined to meet."
"No! I mind my own business and let my customers mind theirs!"
Lord Ildirin nodded, and turned to Emmis. "And you? Can you tell me any more?"
"A little," Emmis admitted.
"Then do."
Emmis blinked, then began describing how Gita had first brought him to meet Annis and the three Lumethans.
Lord Ildirin stopped him.
"Gita?" He glanced at the innkeeper.
"My niece," the innkeeper said.
"She's over there," Emmis said, pointing.
Lord Ildirin gestured to the guardsman. "Fetch her." Then he turned to the innkeeper. "You may go, but do not leave the premises."
"Why would I leave? It's my inn!"
"'Why' does not concern me. Just don't."
"Yes, my lord." The innkeeper slid from his chair and fled to the kitchen.
A moment later Gita took the chair her uncle had vacated. "My lord," she said, with a bob of her head. Then she turned to Emmis and said, "I have your bags."
Emmis blinked in surprise. "You do?"
"Yes. When I saw you run out I asked Annis what was going on, and she said it wasn't anything but she would be leaving, and I saw the bags and asked if those were hers – I thought she might have already packed – and she said no, they were yours, you'd left them, so I put them aside for you. They're in the scullery, in the locker with the special china."
"Thank you!" Emmis felt a rush of relief. He had not been looking forward to replacing his lost belongings, and now he wouldn't need to.
Gita smiled warmly. "You're welcome," she said.
Lord Ildirin cleared his throat. The others turned their attention to him.
"If you would be so kind as to explain how you came to introduce this young man to the foreigners…?"
"Oh, well, we had this Ashthasan woman here, she said she was waiting for someone, and then the day before yesterday she asked about another foreigner who was staying here, a man with a plumed hat and red coat, whether I knew anything about him, and I said I'd seen him and his assistant. She seemed surprised he had an assistant, and asked if I could arrange for her to speak to him without the foreigner knowing about it…"
Emmis sat and listened silently as Gita explained, and as Lord Ildirin backtracked and went over her entire story in relentless detail, asking her question after question.
Then Lord Ildirin started on him, asking him to describe his conversations with Annis, then the encounter with the two would-be assassins, and then backing up to how he had first met Lar Samber's son.
The interrogation went on and on, and Emmis began to become nervous. He glanced at the angle of the sunlight outside, and finally said, "My lord, the ambassador wanted me back not long after noon, so that I could bring his papers to the Palace."