Grand Conspiracy (23 page)

Together, he and his companion plowed through the flattering hands of those wenches not engaged by drunken sailhands.

The landlord of the Fat Pigeon held nothing in common with the comfortable name of his establishment. Slender as worn string, he limped on arthritic knees, which had led many to
underestimate the hand that could strike with the speed of a cobra. More than one swaggering brawler had found himself flattened, spitting smashed teeth on the floorboards. Given the sight of Parrien's squared jaw and soft tread, the man dropped the damp rag he used for buffing the enameled glaze on his tankards. His black eyes brightened to recognition like a spark chipped off a struck flint. ‘Don't give a rat's tail for my customers, I see. That's no excuse. Make trouble, and just like any other scum, you'll land facefirst in the gutter.'

‘That's what happens with fleabrains who draw their damned steel in this taproom,' Parrien quoted in an evil imitation of a southcoaster's drawling vowels. He grinned wide as the moon, folded his arms, and leaned across the bar top. The muffled grate of metal beneath his loose sleeves betrayed the fact he wore a mail shirt. ‘Don't tempt me. The bodies you'd toss alongside mine in the midden would be for the dogs, stone dead.' He measured the spotless, bleached cloth of his cuff as if weighing the cost of the penalty. ‘For that lot, a roll in the garbage might just be worthwhile.'

As a beery new recruit in a sunwheel tunic swiveled to sling return insults, the Fat Pigeon's landlord scowled. ‘Fighting armed packs of drunks was beneath your family dignity once. Or has your clan honor gone to mayhem along with the peace in this Ath-forsaken port?'

‘So Southshire's been raided, too?' Parrien laughed.

‘Three galleys hit, just this past week. Made off with the chained oarsmen and sank every hull without troubling to off-load their cargoes.' The landlord inclined his head toward the merchants wringing lace sleeves in the company of the Alliance captain. ‘That lot were just hired on with the gold sent for the cause by the Mayor o' Jaelot's generosity. So now you know why this joint reeks like a barracks.'

‘Never mind.' Parrien's grin broadened. ‘I like my shirts clean and my steel sticky, right enough. That finicky habit's unlikely to change. Not for as long as I walk on two legs without need of a stick to stop doddering.'

‘What's to do then? Do I pour you a beer?' The landlord wiped oversize knuckles on his apron and hefted a crockery mug thick enough to be used for a cudgel.

Parrien folded an elbow, eased the wet rag aside, and leaned close. ‘Beer's fine.' His blunt, sword-scarred finger traced a cipher on the dampened wood of the bar, then idly swiped the mark out.
‘Along with the drink, I need a wee dispatch slipped to the next courier who happens through.'

The landlord looked up, his shrewd eyes intense.

That instant, the door to the kitchen banged open. Parrien's wary start passed unnoticed amid the leaping commotion as a sweaty, cursing drudge barged into the taproom, hauling a yelping cur by the scruff.

The snapping animal and the woman tussled their way toward the streetside exit, while sailhands caught in her path staggered clear. As she passed, the sunwheel mercenaries hooted and pinched, or called noisy wagers to name which combatant would wind up arse down in the gutter.

‘Damned Jaelot thugs have the manners of swine.' A whipcrack snap of Parrien's fingers dispatched one of his mercenaries, who took two fast strides and relieved the girl of her problem. The outer door swung closed on the heels of the cur, to a pounding on tables and derogatory hoots of displeasure. Alestron's swordsman never once turned his head, an astounding display of strong character.

‘Those blighty curs take advantage all the time,' the landlord smoothed out by way of wry thanks and apology. ‘Though their fracas serves Kats right, since her little daughter steals from my tables to feed them.' Turned reticent since the byplay with the cipher, he blinked, while Parrien waited.

No revealing move was forthcoming from the s'Brydion or his mercenaries. The one given orders reassumed his post, planted and watchful at his lord's shoulder. The coded request would not be repeated, nor the sketched sign, too dangerous to redraw on the bar top where the sunwheel informer might notice.

The landlord repressed the nervous urge to glance backward over his shoulder. ‘The next man who could make your delivery isn't due for six months.'

‘No matter.' Parrien jerked loose his cuff lace. ‘This news will keep.' He fished a sealed square of parchment from beneath the gambeson under his mail shirt.

Long since, the Fat Pigeon's landlord had given up trying to fathom the recipient: like all such missives, this parchment's wrapping had no mark. Nor did the wax impressions in the seals ever show a device to reveal the point of its origin.

As Parrien pinned him with the same narrow look used to sight down a fresh-sharpened sword blade, the landlord gloved his unease in forced humor. ‘Though actually, this could be your day
for blind luck. It just happens the carrier who made last month's pickup hasn't left here on schedule.'

That news made Parrien's flesh crawl. Without turning, he knew: someone's eyes watched his back. A flashed glance toward his captain confirmed the suspicion by way of a covert hand signal: the shifty, robed informer billeted with Jaelot's company now took an unwelcome interest.

A silver coin passed across the bar top. ‘Get your prettiest wench to sally over to that clerkish type in robes, and trip up, and maybe spill a trayful of beer in his lap,' Parrien suggested. ‘His prissy white silk is making me wonder if there's a man with natural parts underneath. Now, say on. Why hasn't this courier taken his bundle and gone?'

The Fat Pigeon's landlord returned the blank, injured gaze of a catfish. ‘My girls are never clumsy. The inn's reputation relies on them. With regard to the laggard still camped upstairs, since your mercenaries seem handy at tossing out layabouts, I'd be pleased if you'd lend help with this one.'

Parrien's eyebrows peaked up in startlement. ‘The courier's a wastrel?'

‘You might say so, yes.' A grin like a twist of sun-faded yarn pulled at the landlord's lean mouth. ‘He's been barricaded inside my third-story garret with the best of my whores for three days.'

Parrien went owlishly deadpan. ‘He's fat? Has hair in screwed tangles like my wife's wretched lap spaniel?'

‘He's a friend?' Surprised, the landlord added, ‘You know he carries on as though he's being knifed each time my cleaning drudge tries the door latch.' On a sigh of irritable resignation, he hooked back his rag and grabbed for the next water-spotted tankard. ‘Go on. The potboy by the hob will take you. Though by now, the miserable wretch might be prostrate. My Sashka could tumble a spring ox to exhaustion. Three days of her favors would wring most of her partners unconscious.'

Shown the closed panel of a door in a corridor ingrained with stale sweat, closed-in dust, and the musk of randy sailors, Parrien wasted no time. He sent the potboy away with a fistful of coppers. Then he tipped his sleek, braided head toward the strapped pine that had not budged to his opening soft knock and flashed a wild grin at his mercenaries. ‘Stove the damned thing in.'

No peep of protest emerged from the threatened sanctum. One
ear pressed flat to the door, the captain signed back that the room appeared to be empty.

Parrien frowned. ‘Break in, but quietly,' he repeated, too jaundiced to accept the stillness inside at face value. Nor would he credit the landlord's pat theory. ‘As I know the scoundrel I think we'll find in there, the whore's more likely the one who's banged senseless. Her client won't have scarpered after the fact, either. Far more likely he's sunk in his cups to the nethermost pit of oblivion.'

The captain at arms straightened, linked elbows with the stoutest of his men, then jammed his steel cap straight, and said, ‘Go!'

The pair struck the door shoulder down in neat unison. The latch burst. Torn bits of metal scribed arcs into gloom and skated with a tinny clangor across the floorboards inside. Stray noise ended there; the captain's deft hand hooked the edge of the panel before it slammed into the wall.

Inside, the gloom lay thick as black silt.

The shutters were drawn closed. Fingered by pallid light from the hall sconce, the louvers appeared stuffed with socks, a whore's lace point chemise, and what seemed a rag that closer inspection revealed for the ripped-up remains of a man's pair of button-front breeches. The rumpled-up sheets on the bed were quite empty, and streaked scuffs in the floor wax bespoke a galloping rumpus.

‘Ath,' Parrien swore. ‘That whore must've fought like a tiger.' His cast shadow loomed inward, obscuring the view as he thrust his head through the doorway.

Something large and dark unfurled with a grunt and swooped like a bat from the rafters.

The knife that Parrien unsheathed to impale it mired to the hilt in a goose-down pillow wrapped in a blanket. On field-trained, fast reflex, Parrien sidestepped. The bundle which plummeted after the pillow missed its broad-shouldered target. It struck the floor with a thud that cracked wood, and a whuff like a challenging walrus. Three mercenaries pounced. They extracted from within its thrashing folds two struggling fists and a pair of larded ankles.

‘Hello, Dakar,' greeted Parrien on the congenial note he saved for interrogating spies.

The splayed bundle moaned. One bulky end heaved to expose a beet-round, bearded face and two eyes slewed to rolling rings
of white. ‘Your men can let up before they dislocate both of my shoulders.'

‘Oh?' Parrien folded his arms, unamused. ‘You want another chance to slit me in two?'

Annoyance colored Dakar's face. ‘I thought you were from Jaelot.' He blanched at a twisting pressure from the captain, and added in patent injury, ‘That wasn't meant as an insult, and no, before you ask, I'm not in the least bit drunk.'

Something rustled in the corner and let off a muffled squeal. The two idle mercenaries moved on the sound, found a closet, which they wrenched open. Inside, knees to chin, they found the landlord's famed Sashka bound and gagged with the ripped-off flounces of her petticoat.

‘She wouldn't stay quiet,' Dakar explained. ‘You must have gathered, I'm caught in an unpleasant bind.'

‘The town guard from Jaelot might snip off your head?' Parrien's eyes lit with maniacal delight. ‘I'd do the very same, though maybe for different reasons. Whose wife did you jiggle?'

‘If that were all, I wouldn't be compromised,' Dakar said with a certain strained dignity. ‘I know you dislike me for that dustup in your armory. Try to imagine how Jaelot's men feel. I was with Arithon on the night he aroused the Paravian mysteries through song and leveled a third of their city.'

‘My memory's not soft,' said Parrien, tart; yet he relented enough to signal his men to stand down. His glance met his captain's. ‘Better take care what the whore overhears.'

‘She won't remember. I gave her spelled wine.' Lowered back to the floor, Dakar languished. Gasping his misery like a storm-beached whale, he required a wretched minute before he could muster the will to move. The first thing he did when he pushed to his knees was clasp his thick head between shivering fingers.

‘You're a lying, soft wastrel,' said Parrien, offended.

His sword captain's patience snapped also. Hard hands seized the Mad Prophet's collar and dragged him the rest of the way upright.

‘I said I'm not drunk,' Dakar mewled. He jerked his chin free of somebody's clamped fist as the mercenary captain brought the sconce candle and spilled the light full in his face. ‘Damn you to the agonies of Sithaer's black pit! I won't be handled like one of your recruits picked up on a binge in a tavern.'

‘Why not?' Parrien fished for an ear amid chestnut frizz and hauled until Dakar's squinting features were brought under his
damning scrutiny. ‘I'd ask then, why you haven't used every resource you have to keep to your assigned schedule? Those aren't clanblood swordsmen down there, to notice if you slipped past using some simple spell of illusion.'

‘Because,' Dakar gasped with both eyes squeezed shut, ‘I'm too busy wrestling the headache I'm given, courtesy of that rat-faced bastard wearing the white robes of the Alliance.'

‘The informer?' Parrien curled his upper lip, disgusted. ‘You'd better find a more colorful excuse if you want me to think you're not just piss full of gin.'

‘He's no informer,' Dakar gasped. Sweat bathed his forehead in sliding drops, until his skin glistened like a burst egg white. ‘Lysaer's new policy sees talent burned alive. What sits down there is a trained crown examiner. They're mageborn turned zealot, then unleashed to hunt down anyone born with the gift. Every resource I have has gone into shielding. For three days, I've not dared snatch an hour of sleep. Were I to try spellcraft, be very sure, I wouldn't leave this tavern, except under an Alliance writ of execution, bound hand and foot in steel shackles.'

Parrien forgot his indoor manners and spat. ‘This is Shand,' he said, outraged. ‘That upstart in Tysan dares a very long arm if he thinks he can impose his false justice inside Lord Erlien's sovereign territory.' As an afterthought, he let go of Dakar's pinched ear. ‘See the Mad Prophet comfortable.'

His captain obliged without rancor and lowered the suffering man's weight onto the crumpled bed.

Eyes shut, his pudgy hands pressed to his forehead, Dakar murmured, ‘You won't do your brother's reputation any good if you sally downstairs and gut his sworn allies in public.'

‘Damn them all!' Parrien spun, kicked the pillow which mired his knife, and snapped up the blade that spun free. Through the whirl of feathers lit like gold filigree in the spill of the candle, he let fly his implacable venom. ‘Our two-step charade with Avenor's been a downright strain anyway since the royal writ signed Lord Maenol's captive clansmen into slavery.'