Unclean (7 page)

“The same thing you do during the day. Show me the slaves.”

The watchman hesitated. “That’s all?” “Yes.”

“Give me the coin.”

Batetis handed over the coin. The guard bit it, pocketed it, then led him into the barracoon, a shadowy, echoing place that smelled of unwashed bodies. The bard felt as if he were all but vibrating with impatience. It took an effort to keep from demanding that his guide quicken the pace.

In fact, they reached the long open room where the slaves slept soon enough. The wan yellow light of a single lantern just barely alleviated the gloom. The watchman called for his charges to wake and stand, kicking those who were slow to obey.

Confident of his ability to recognize Tammith even after six years, even in the dark, Bareris scrutinized the women.

Then his guts twisted, because she wasn’t here. Tracking her, he’d discovered that since becoming a slave, she’d passed in and out of the custody of multiple owners. The merchant who’d bought her originally had passed her on to a caravan master, a middleman who made his living moving goods inland from the port. He then handed her off to one of the many slave traders of Tyraturos.

Who had obviously sold her in his turn, with Bareris once again arriving too late to buy her out of bondage. He closed his eyes, took a deep bteath, and reminded himself he hadn’t failed. He simply had to follow the trail a little farther.

He turned towatd the watchman. “I’m looking for a particular woman. Her name is Tammith Iltazyarra, and I know you had her here within the past several days, maybe even earlier today. She’s young, small, and slim, with bright blue eyes. She hasn’t been a slave for very long: Her black hair is still short, and she doesn’t have old whip scars on her back. You almost certainly sold her to a buyer who wanted a skilled potter. Or … or to someone looking to purchase an uncommonly pretty girl.”

The watchman sneered. Maybe he discerned how frantic Bareris was to find Tammith, and as was often the case with bullies, another person’s need stirred his contempt.

“Sorry, friend. The wench was never here. I wish she had been. Sounds like I could have had a good time with her before we moved her out.”

Bareris felt as if someone had dumped a bucket of icy water over his head. “This is the house of Kanithar Chergoba?”

“Yes,” said the guard, “and now that you see your trollop isn’t here, I’ll show you the way out of it.”

Indeed, Bareris could see no reason to linger. He’d evidently deviated from Tammith s trail at some point, though he didn’t

understand how that was possible. Had someone lied to him along the way, and if so, why? What possible reason could there be?

All he knew was his only option was to backtrack. Too sick at heart to speak, he waved his hand, signaling his willingness for the watchman to conduct him to the exit, and then a realization struck him.

“Wait,” he said.

“Why? You’ve had your look.”

“I paid gold for your time. You can spare me a few more moments. I’ve heard your master is one of the busiest slave traders in the city, and it must be true. This room can house hundreds of slaves, yet I only see a handful.”

The watchman shrugged. “Sometimes we sell them off faster rhan they come in.”

“I believe you,” Bareris said, “and I suspect your stock is depleted because someone bought a great many slaves at once. That could be why you don’t remember Tammith. You never had a reason or a chance to give her any individual attention.”

The watchman shook his head. “You’re wrong. It’s been months since we sold more than two or three at a time.”

Bareris studied his face and was somehow certain he was lying, but what did he have to gain by dissembling? By the silver harp, had they sold Tammith to a festhall or into some other circumstance so foul that he feared to admit it to a man who obviously cared about her?

The bard struggled to erase any trace of rancor from his features. “Friend, I know I don’t look it in these worn, dusty clothes with my hair grown out like an outlander’s, but I’m a wealthy man. I have plenty more gold to exchange for the truth, and I give you my word that however much it upsets me, I won’t take my anger out on you.”

The guard screwed up his features in an almost comical expression of deliberation, then said, “Sorry. The girl wasn’t here.

We didn’t sell off a bunch of slaves all at once. You’re just wrong about everything.”

“I doubt it. You paused to consider before you spoke. If you don’t have anything to tell me, what was there to think about? You were weighing greed against caution, and caution came out the winner. Well, that’s all right. I can appeal to your sense of self-preservation if necessary.” With one smooth, sudden, practiced motion intended to demonstrate his facility with a blade, Bareris whipped his sword from its scabbard. The guard jumped back, and a couple of the slaves gasped.

“Are you crazy?” stammered the guard, his hand easing toward the whip on his belt. “You can’t murder me just because I didn’t tell you what you want to hear!”

“I admit,” Bareris replied, advancing with a duelist’s catlike steps, “my conscience will trouble me later, but you’re standing between me and everything I’ve wanted for the past six years. Or since I was eight, really. That’s enough to make me set aside my scruples. Oh, and snatch for the whip if you must, but in all my wanderings, I never once saw rawhide prevail against steel.”

“If you hurt me, the watch will hang you.”

“I’ll be out of the city before anyone knows you’re dead, except these slaves, and I doubt they love you well enough to raise the alarm.”

“I’ll shout for help.”

“It won’t arrive in time. I’m almost within sword’s reach already.”

The watchman whirled and lunged for the door. Bareris sang a quick phrase, sketched an arcane figure in the air with his off hand, and expelled the air from his lungs. Engulfed in a plume of noxious vapor, the guard stumbled and doubled over retching. Holding his breath to avoid a similar reaction, Bareris grabbed the man and pulled him out of the invisible but malodorous fumes. He then dumped the guard on his back, poised his sword

at his breast, and waited for his nausea to subside.

When it did, he said, “This is your last chance. Tell me now, or I’ll kill you and look for someone else to question. You’re not the only lout on the premises.”

“All right,” said the slaver, “but please, you can’t tell anyone who told you. They said we weren’t to talk about their business.”

“I swear by the Binder and his Hand,” Bareris said. “Now who in the name of the Abyss are you talking about?” “Red Wizards.”

At last Bareris understood the watchman’s reluctance to divulge the truth. Everyone with even a shred of prudence feared offending members of the scarlet orders. “Tell me exactly what happened.”

“They—the mages and their servants—came in the middle of the night, just like you. They bought all the stock we had, just the way you figured. They told Chergoba that if we kept our mouths shut, they’d be back to buy more, but if we prattled about them, they’d know, and return to punish us.”

“What were the wizards’ names?”

“They didn’t say.”

“Where did they mean to take the slaves?”

“I don’t know.”

“Why did they want them?”

“I don’t know! They didn’t say and we had better sense than to ask. We took their gold and thought ourselves lucky they paid the asking price. But if they’d offered only a pittance, or nothing at all, what could we have done about it?”

Bareris stepped away from the watchman and tossed him another gold piece. “I’ll let myself out. Don’t tell anyone I was here, or that you told me what you have, and you’ll be all right.” He started to slide his sword back into its worn leather scabbard then realized there was one more question he should ask. “To

which order did the wizards belong?”

“Necromancy, I think. They had black trim on their robes and jewelry in the shapes of skulls and things.”

Red Wizards of Necromancy! Bareris pondered the matter as he prowled onward through the dark, for Milil knew, he couldn’t make any sense of it.

It was the most ordinary thing in the world for wealthy folk to buy slaves, but why in the middle of the night? Why the secrecy?

It suggested there was something illicit about the transaction or the purchasers’ intent, but how could there be? By law, slaves were property, with no rights whatsoever. Even commoners could buy, sell, exploit, and abuse them however they chose, and Red Wizards were Thay’s ruling elite, answerable to no one but their superiors.

Bareris sighed. Maybe the watchman was right; maybe it was something ordinary folk were better off not understanding. After all, his objective hadn’t changed. He simply wanted to find Tammith.

Evidently hoping to avoid notice, the necromancers had marched her and the other slaves away under cover of darkness, but someone had seen where they went. A whore. A drunk. A beggar. A cutpurse. One of the night people who dwell in every city.

Exhausted as he was, eyes burning, an acid taste searing his mouth, Bareris cringed at the prospect of commencing yet another search, this one through squalid stews and taverns, yet he could no more have slept than he could have sung Selune down from the sky. He arranged his features into a smile and headed for a painted, half-clad woman lounging in a doorway.

The fighter was beaten but too stubborn to admit it, as he demonstrated by struggling back onto his feet.

Calmevik grinned. If the smaller pugilist wanted more punishment, he was happy to oblige. He lowered his guard and stepped in, inviting his opponent to swing. Dazed, the other fighter responded with slow, clumsy haymakers, easily dodged. The spectators laughed when Calmevik ducked and twisted out of the way.

It was amusing to make his adversary reel and stumble uselessly around, but Calmevik couldn’t continue the game for long. The urge to beat and break the other man was too powerful. He froze him with a punch to the solar plexus, shifted in, and drove an elbow strike into his jaw. Bone crunched. Calmevik then hooked his opponent’s leg with his own, grabbed’the back of his head, and smashed him face first to the plank floor where he lay inert, blood seeping out from around his head like the petals of a flower.

The onlookers cheered. Calmevik laughed and raised his fists, acknowledging their acclaim, feeling strong, dauntless, invincible—

Then he spotted the child, if that was the right word for it, peeking in the tavern doorway, one puffy, pasty hand pushing the bead curtain aside, the hood of its shabby cloak shadowing its features. The creature had the frame of a little girl and he was the biggest man in the tavern, indeed, one of the biggest in all Tyraturos, and he had no reason to believe the newcomer meant him any harm. Still, when it crooked its finger, his elation gave way to a pang of trepidation.

Had he known what it would involve, he never would have taken the job, no matter how good the pay, but he hadn’t, and now he was stuck taking orders from the ghastly representative his client had left behind. There was nothing to do but finish the chore, pocket the coin, and hope that in time he’d stop dreaming about the child’s face.

Striving to make sure no one could tell he was rattled, he made his excuses to his sycophants, pulled on his tunic, belted on his broadsword and dirks, and departed the tavern. Presumably because it was the way in which an adult and little girl might be expected to walk the benighted streets, the child intertwined its soft, clammy fingers with his. He had to fight to keep himself from wrenching his hand away.

“He’s here,” she said in a high, lisping voice.

Calmevik wondered who “he” was and what he’d done to deserve the fate that was about to overtake him, but no one had volunteered the information, and he suspected he was safer not knowing. “Just one man?”

“Yes.”

“I won’t need help, then.” Which meant he wouldn’t have to share the gold.

“Are you sure? My master doesn’t want any mistakes.”

She might be a horror loathsome enough to turn his bowels to water, but even so, professional pride demanded that he respond to her doubts with the hauteur they deserved. “Of course I’m sure! Aren’t I the deadliest assassin in the city?”

She giggled. “You say so, and I am what I am, so I suppose we can kill one bard by ourselves.”

Tired as he was, for a moment Bareris wasn’t certain he was actually hearing the crying or only imagining it. But it was real. Somewhere down the crooked alleyway, someone—a little girl, perhaps, by the sound of it—was sobbing.

He thought of simply walking on. After all, it was none of his affair. He had his own problems, but he’d feel callous and mean if he ignored a child’s distress.

Besides, if he helped someone else in need, maybe help would

come to him in turn. He realized it was scarcely a Thayan way to think. His countrymen believed the gods sent luck to the strong and resolute, not the gentle and compassionate, but some of the friends he’d found on his travels believed such superstitions.

He started down the alley. By the harp, it was dark, without a trace of candlelight leaking through doors or windows, and the high, peaked rooftops blocking all but a few of the stars. He sang a floating orb of silvery glow into being to light his way.

Even then, it was difficult to make out the little girl. Slumped in her dark cloak at the end of the cul-de-sac, she was just one small shadow amid the gloom. Her shoulders shook as she wept.

“Little girl,” Bareris said, “are you lost? Whatever’s wrong, I’ll help you.”

The child didn’t respond, just kept on crying.

She must be utterly distraught. He walked to her, dropped to one knee, and laid a hand on one of her heaving shoulders.

Even through the wool of her cloak, her body felt cold, and more than that, wrong in some indefinable but noisome way. Moreover, a stink hung in the air around her.

Surprise made him falter, and in that instant, she—or rather, it—whirled to face him. Its puffy face was ashen, its eyes, black and sunken. Pus and foam oozed around the stained, crooked teeth in their rotting gums.

Its grip tight as a full-grown man’s, the creature grabbed hold of Bareris’s extended arm, snapped its teeth shut on his wrist, and then, when the leather sleeve of his brigandine failed to yield immediately, began to gnaw, snarling like a hound.