"Easy, Randi," Goldie muttered under cover of a lip-smacking sigh. "If you grip me any tighter, your knees will leave dents in my flanks."
"You're right," Zaranda said. She sucked in a deep breath and tried to force her tension out with it. She relaxed her legs and steered the mare up a slope littered with loose gray plates of shale to the breach in the city walls.
Eogast stood spraddle-legged just inside the hole, overseeing the mules as they came through one at a time. Though there was ample room to pass four mules abreast without rubbing flanks, he gave Zaranda a red-eyed glare as she walked Goldie through. She ignored him.
Inside the city wall she stopped and gazed about, The sun had passed the zenith, and already the block was shaded. The street was much as she remembered it. It was perhaps thirty feet broad, with greasy-looking puddles where Zazesspurians had swiped cobblestones for their own purposes. The buildings were of several stories each, displaying close-fit stonework, elaborate ornamentation around doors and windows and along rooflines, and other signs of elegance.
It was the elegance of a corpse lying in state in some wealthy tomb. The facades of certain buildings had slumped to the street, leaving the long-gutted chambers behind exposed and looking uncannily like the eye sockets of skulls. Cornices and friezes had flaked off to lie in sad piles of rubble chips along the bases of intact walls. A stone rooftop gargoyle crazy-canted on its back favored Zaranda with a cynical wink from the nearby gutter.
"An uncanny sort of place," Father Pelletyr said as he rode up on his little ass. An eerie moan rang down the street. He jumped and made the crossed-hands sign of Ilmater to ward off evil.
"Why so nervous, Father?" asked Farlorn, riding by in apparent high spirits. " 'Tis merely Sister Wind, blowing across a cavity in the masonry."
"What sort of person dwells here?" the priest asked.
"None," said Zaranda. "This was a wealthy residential district long ago, during an age when folk felt small need to dwell behind high walls topped with iron spikes or broken glass. When times became less orderly, it was the Street of the Seamstresses, and so it's called to this day."
"The only seamstresses I can envision at work here," the cleric said, "are the Norns who in legend spin, measure, and cut the fabric that is our destiny."
Zaranda laughed, alleviating a few nerves of her own. "The seamstresses left, too-at least the ones actually concerned with working cloth." The priest gave her a quizzical look. "Most recently the fine structures were houses of pleasure-not the finest of establishments, you understand, but of reasonable quality and great pretension."
"Ahh!" breathed the priest, as solemn and great-eyed as a child. "Thus the name Zazesspur the Wicked!"
"Well, Father, no. As with the term 'Empire of the Sands' for Tethyr, it's a misnomer, although I suspect one concocted deliberately by the city fathers to pump up the tourist trade from the north. Actually Zaz isn't unduly wicked as port cities go, though I grant you that leaves considerable latitude. This isn't Calimshan, after all; with slavery not tolerated here for generations, you'd be hard-pressed to find sin here that wasn't equally common in, say, Waterdeep."
The priest's face fell so far that Zaranda felt guilty for disillusioning him. "But is not prostitution legal here?"
"Indeed, and as a consequence it's a less rough and sordid business. Those who would patronize such establishments regardless can do so without consorting with the criminal element-or feeding it, either. Which is not to say it's respectable, Father; to this day, joy-girls and -boys are called notch-tooth, in honor of the days when they plied their trade in the old Thread-Biters' Lane."
The cleric brightened slightly-here at last was a lurid detail to relish. Zaranda shook her head and reflected that celibacy was a terrible thing-something she knew all too well of late.
With another round of extravagant dwarven oaths, Eogast chivied the last of the burden beasts safely through the breach in the wall. He strode forward, browbeating mules and men into line. In a chaotic city such as Zazesspur, moving in good order became essential.
"Why was the district abandoned then?" the priest asked.
"A water main burst, cutting off supply to the district. This was back during the Troubles, the rioting that followed the murder of the royal family. Folk had little energy to tend to such details then, so the joy-houses moved out. Now the neighborhood's given over to rats." She glanced around at the doorways. "Not in-frequently of the two-legged variety." Goldie had her head up and was swiveling her impressive ears from side to side. "Ah, Zaranda," she said. "Speaking of those two-legged rats…"
At once there were uniformed men all around. They materialized in doorways, in the blind-eye windows of derelict buildings, along rooflines. A party suddenly emerged to block the road while a second group stole from the rubble to prevent escape through the hole in the city wall. The ones on street level bore halberds with bronzed heads, while those above leveled cocked crossbows at the startled muleteers and their escorts. All wore gorgeous puffed royal-blue sleeves, blue pantaloons, bronze cuirasses, and morions of the Zazesspurian civic guard.
From the phalanx of halberdiers blocking the end of the street stepped a tall man in bronzed greaves, a scarlet egret plume nodding over his morion. He had a long face with a scar that ran from his right brow to the line of his jaw, crossing a dead, staring eye. The other eye was the near-colorless pale blue of northern sky.
"You are Zaranda Star, who styles herself Countess Morninggold?" he demanded in a harsh voice. One gloved hand rested on a rapier's swept hilt.
Zaranda urged Goldie forward to meet him. She was aware of Stillhawk riding at her elbow. She could feel the heat of his embarrassment at allowing the caravan to be taken so by surprise.
Rest easy, my friend, she signed to him. Don't blame yourself. You're out of your element here.
From the clot of halberdiers came alarmed cries, and the bronzed axe blades wavered as their bearers tried to make signs against evil while keeping grasp on the weapons.
"Desist from this magic hand-waving!" the officer rapped. "We know of you. Gesture more, and my men will pierce you like Waterdhavian cheese!"
Stillhawk growled deep hi his throat.
"No magic," his employer said quietly. "I am Zaranda Star. Why do you block my way?"
"I am Cangaro, captain of the guard," the officer said, unrolling a parchment scroll. "In the name of the city council, I hereby impound this caravan and all the goods it carries!"
8
It had not been a day to improve her composure. The scar-faced guard officer's parchment declared that the caravan was being seized for unlicensed importation of magic artifacts into Zazesspur in violation of city council edict. Nothing she could say would dissuade him from executing it-and his troop of bravos had the drop on her own tiny guard force. Not that she would have fought, since she was trying to do business in an honest and aboveboard way.
The rest of the day gave her leisure to repent that choice. It had been spent in fruitless wrangling with officials in the slab-sided Palace of Governance in the city's middle, so new it was still under construction. There had been the usual block-faced indifference of officialdom: No, you'll have to wait for things to take their course, like anyone. No, I can't help you. There had also been the usual half-clever solicitations for bribes, with the odd sniggering suggestion-accompanied by a free wandering of the eye over Zaranda's wiry but very feminine form-that they need not be paid in gold.