All That Glitters (10 page)

“Carlo,” Tyvian offered.

“That's the chap! Kroth, you weren't more than fourteen then, were ye?”

Tyvian motioned toward Artus and the gnolls. “Maude, allow me to introduce my associates: Artus, Lady Hool, and Brana. Friends, this is Maude Telversham, co-­owner of the Cauldron, and one of the ­people directly responsible for my corrupted youth.”

Maude's eyes fixed on Hool and she gave a low whistle. “Hann's boots, girlie, but you're a looker.” She winked at Tyvian, “Always had good taste, eh?”

Hool's nostrils flared. “We are not having sex. He is disgusting.”

Maude laughed so hard her face turned red. “Oh . . . oh my, I see you've got good taste, too, eh darling? Well, don't stand there in the dark—­come in, come in!”

Inside, the Cauldron was smoky and overly warm, with low-­beamed ceilings and not quite enough lanterns. It was crowded, too, even though Artus judged dawn to be no more than an hour or two away. Maude had to duck under the beams as she led them to a big round table in a corner. Sitting around it were a trio of half-­drunk young men in waistcoats. She slammed one fist on the table three times, making their tankards shake. “Off you go, gents—­this table's reserved.”

The men offered not a word of protest before moving off, and Artus tossed his pack under the table and sat down. Fatigue hit him like a wet blanket. He yawned. “Well, I guess they remember you.”

Tyvian nodded. “I guessed she might. I don't see too many other ­people here I recognize. None of the barmaids, not the bartender, and I haven't spotted any patrons I know either.”

“Is that a problem?” Artus eyed the other patrons. It was hard to make out faces in the smoky half-­light.

Tyvian shrugged. “Maybe, maybe not. The same faces might mean somebody might want to turn me in, I suppose. Different ­people means we don't know what we're getting into, and it's concerning that Maude heard we were coming.”

“You should have kept on your old man disguise,” Hool said.

“Then we couldn't have made it through the door, Hool,” Tyvian countered.

“
I
still have to wear this stupid magic disguise.”

“Hool, for the last time: there is a difference between disguising my human self as another human and you disguising your gnollish self as a different species altogether.”

Hool snorted. “Easy for you to say—­you don't have stupid knights wanting to mate with you all the time.”

Maude reappeared bearing four tankards of something that smelled like beer, but not very strongly. She set them down on the table with a clank, spilling some. Artus noted that the table was already sticky with . . . something. He hoped beer. “There you are, my darlings,” Maude said. “I take it you'll need a room, then?”

Tyvian put a gold mark on the table—­their very last one. “And discretion.”

Maude slipped the gold off the table and it seemed to vanish in her hand. “Claudia will set aside a room for you and the lady; the boys can sleep here. Last call is sunup, and nobody'll bother 'em after that. As for discretion, well, there's only so much I can do. Things have changed a bit since you've been here.”

Tyvian arched an eyebrow. “How so?”

Maude sighed and ran a hand through her thin iron-­gray hair. “We're owned by the Prophets, now. And
lucky
to have them.” The hard stare she gave Tyvian didn't indicate any sense of fortune.

“They're fine fellows, in their way,” Tyvian answered, also cool.

Artus blinked at this. “Who are the Proph—­Ow!” Tyvian's kick to his shin made his eyes water, and it was all he could do to not start crying. “Why'd you—­”

“Who are the Prophets?” Hool asked. Artus noted, with some degree of bitterness, that Tyvian didn't kick
her
in the shin.

Tyvian smiled at her. “Don't worry about them. Old friends.”

Hool snorted. “You aren't acting like they're your friends.”

Maude cocked her head—­somebody was banging on the door. “Catch up to you later. Good to have you back.”

When Maude had gone, Tyvian leaned in toward the rest of them and motioned that they lean close. Artus, his leg still smarting, half wanted to refuse out of spite, but he was too curious to resist. “The Mute Prophets,” Tyvian whispered, “are
the
crime syndicate in Saldor. I've not always been on the best of terms with them. They made contact with me back in Derby.”

“What did they want?” Hool asked.

“For me to stay away from Saldor.” Tyvian shrugged. “When I said no, their messenger tried to kill me, so I killed him first.”

Artus's mouth popped open. “You never said anything about that!”

Tyvian grimaced. “If I had told you then, would you have furnished a cogent plan of action that would have capitalized upon the time between then and now?”

“Well . . .” Artus scowled. “You still shoulda told us.”

Hool folded her arms and flared her delicate human nostrils. “I agree with Artus. I think Artus has been right all this time. We should not have come here. Let's leave.”

Artus grinned. “Finally! I've been saying that since forever!”

Tyvian scowled. “We can't leave.”

“Yes we can.” Hool snorted. “We just go back to that awful place with the monster machines and ride one away. Easy.”

“We haven't got any money, Hool, and we
just
defrauded a pair of Defenders there, remember?”

Artus scowled. “Fine, then—­how about we walk? Get a horse? Stow away on a ship?”

“No boats!” Hool growled.

Brana grinned. “Boats! Yeah!”

Artus shrugged. “Anything's better than staying here, where
everybody
wants us dead or turned to stone in one of those creepy gardens!”

Tyvian sighed and ran a hand through his hair, dislodging some of the dust from his earlier disguise. “Myreon is in one of those gardens, you know.”

Artus froze. “What?”

“Maybe.” Tyvian shook his head. “It's a rumor, is all—­I heard it back in Derby. It said that Myreon has been convicted of smuggling and petrified.”

A collective gasp. Artus looked at his hands; Brana also looked at Artus's hands. Hool nodded. “I will get our things. We will go and save her.”

“No,” Tyvian snapped. “We will do nothing of the kind. It's a trap—­somebody framed her to get at me.”

“Then we will kill them and
then
save her,” Hool countered.

Artus blinked. “Who did it?”

Tyvian took a deep breath and then smiled faintly. “My mother.”

A million questions bubbled to the surface—­Artus wanted to ask them all, but he found himself tripping over his words. He was about to stand up and start yelling at Tyvian for keeping this from them all, for taking them this far only to lead them into a self-­admitted trap. He didn't get the chance, though.

“Tyvian Reldamar! As I live and breathe! Is it really you?” Artus looked up to see a pale powder-­cheeked man in an expensive cloak standing over the table. He had on a hat with a lot of feathers tilted at an angle that seemed to indicate it was either falling off or the wearer couldn't decide whether his hat or his hair was more impressive and decided to display both. This seemed likely, since the fellow in question had blue hair the color of the sky, fashioned into ringlets that fell down on either side of his face.

Tyvian smiled broadly. “Gethrey Andolon. Been a long time, my friend.”

“That's
Master
Andolon,
you fiendish vagabond, you.” Andolon gave Tyvian a wink. “I heard a rumor you were coming back to town. The fellows down the club haven't stopped talking about it for weeks. Weeks, I tell you!”

Tyvian put his hand behind his head and leaned back. “For me? Surely not—­I doubt the boys even remember my name.”

Andolon pulled a chair from another table and sat himself down beside Brana. Brana sniffed Andolon's shoulder surreptitiously. “Are you kidding, Tyv? We've got a whole bloody wing devoted to you! You have no idea what a draw you've been to new membership! Tyvian Reldamar, greatest duelist in the history of Saldor, wanted criminal, master smuggler, wealthy family—­oh, my dear boy, I daresay I've dined off our friendship for well over a decade.”

Artus looked at Tyvian. “I thought you were just making up that ‘greatest duelist' stuff. Is that real?”

Andolon chuckled. “When Tyv here was sixteen, he bested three men
at once
when he not only got in a duel, but managed to insult both his opponents and his
own
second to the point where they decided to have a go at him. Never seen such a thing. Gods, I still have the scar where you stuck me!”

“
You
were one of them?” Artus's mouth dropped open.

Andolon jerked his head in the direction of Artus. “Who's the scrub?”

“My assistant,” Tyvian said. “What he lacks in grace he makes up for in enthusiasm. Artus, what you fail to realize is that most duels are
not
to the death. First blood is sufficient, and in this case I managed to stick Gethrey in the calf before he ran me through.”

Andolon shrugged. “That's what I get for defending the honor of a lady.”

Tyvian laughed. “Just because she agrees to top you for no less than a crown and four, that doesn't make her a lady. Didn't she wind up bedding Squire Fundreth's famulus that very night?”

Andolon nodded, chuckling. “Ah, the madness of youth.”

“Tell me,” Tyvian said, “what brings you down here? Still slumming with Claudia's ladies? Would've figured you for married by now.”

Artus had been wondering the same question. He had noted a few fops and dandies—­the kind of young gentlemen that he and some other boys had occasionally picked clean while they were drunk in some Ayventry bar, but this fellow was Tyvian's age.

Andolon shrugged. “No woman would have me, what with that hideous calf-­scar.” He laughed. He had a face that looked like he laughed a lot. Artus found himself liking him, even if he was a bit of a dandy. “Honestly, I only come down here once in a while, mostly to maintain my ‘dangerous' reputation at the club.” Andolon yawned, stretched. “It's so good to see you, Tyv, but I've had a long night. Look, come by the club when you can—­would be a treat, seeing you there again. Be good for you to get away from this rabble for a bit and reacquaint yourself with persons of quality. What say?”

Tyvian nodded and shook Andolon's outstretched hand. “Certainly. I look forward to it.”

Andolon nodded and adjusted the jaunty angle of his hat. “See you soon, then. Ta.”

Artus watched his blue-­haired head bob out the door with a wave to Maude and turned to Tyvian. “He seems nice.”

Tyvian's lips were pursed. “Yes, he seems it, doesn't he? Did you notice he had blood on his ring?” He held up his hand—­there was a streak of red on his palm.

Artus frowned. “What's that mean?”

Tyvian grimaced. “It means you and Brana are going to follow him. Right now.”

Artus felt the fatigue of their journey hit him all at once. “Now? It's the middle of the night!”

“I am well aware of the time, Artus—­go. Now.”

Artus dragged himself to his feet, scowling. “I need my machete from my pack.”

“No. No weapons. No fighting—­go.”

Artus looked around for support from Hool or Brana. Hool was glaring at him—­no help there. Brana was already standing and wiggling his arse as though wagging his tail, save that the tail was currently invisible. Artus found himself back to Tyvian, whose expression hadn't changed. All Artus could come up with was, “This ain't fair!”

Tyvian threw up his hands. “Fair isn't part of this conversation, Artus. Do what I ask—­you can sleep when you grow up. I need your eyes open tonight. Our welcome at this place is rapidly eroding, and if you don't want to wind up like that fine young arsonist we met earlier, you will
get your arse into the street and follow him
!”

Artus went, purposely dragging his feet as he walked out of the Cauldron. Maybe, if he took his time, he'd lose Andolon before he even began. Then he could come back, sit down, and sip his weak beer and sleep on a bench in a cozy corner of the taproom.

When he got to the street, though, there was no such luck—­there was Andolon, strutting down the shadowy street, twirling a cane as he went, as conspicuous as a gods-­damned drum major in a parade. Artus looked over at Brana. “Can you believe this?”

Brana wasn't listening, though. Brana was too busy lapping water out of a rain barrel. Artus sighed. It looked like another bang-­up evening of excitement for him, Tyvian Reldamar's favorite stooge.

 

C
laudia Fensron was Maude's co-­owner of the Cauldron. Where Maude was large, she was petite. Where Maude was angular, Claudia was curvy. For those who bothered to compare the two, it went on like this for some time; they were like a pair out of a storybook. For Tyvian, though, the most important point of comparison was this: where Maude Telversham was kindly and caring, Claudia Fensron
wasn't
. Tyvian would have bet a substantial sum that Claudia was the brains behind the sale of the Cauldron to the Prophets, but he guessed nobody would take such a bet.

In her youth Claudia could have turned heads in the dark. She had midnight black hair, alabaster skin, and lips that could make the kind of smile that made men bleed. Now, well over a decade since Tyvian had last seen her, Claudia's age had become apparent in her eyes. Light brown to the point of being gold, the wide-­eyed faux-­innocence she had used to part men from their money for decades had been replaced by a flint-­hard squint designed to scathe more than entice. These eyes were ringed with the wrinkles and shadows; one of them was black and near swollen-­shut, a livid cut resting just above the brow and only partially cleaned up. Claudia looked at Tyvian as though she knew this change in herself, and as though she knew he knew. “You actually came back.”

Determined to be pleasant, Tyvian put on his most genuine smile. “Why Claudia, no kiss?”

Claudia didn't need to frown, as she was already, but she made it deepen a bit. “I see you brought that wit with you. Just what this place was missing.”

The upper floors of the Cauldron were a mixture of different rooms for lease. Some rooms contained pliant and morally suspect women, while others were simply empty; the former were leased by the hour, the latter by the night. The locks were high-­quality mechanical types and the walls were thick and insulated. What happened inside the rooms of the Cauldron was the business of the occupants and the occupants alone. At least, Tyvian mused, that had been the case before. With the Prophets owning the place, he suspected that may have changed.

Claudia led them to a room on the third floor. She gave Hool an appraising glance but made no comment and didn't address her, which to Tyvian was an encouraging sign that at least Claudia wasn't apt to pry into his business without being asked to do so. “Here is your key. I assume you settled up with Maude?”

Tyvian shrugged. “You won't believe me if I tell you, so why don't you just go and ask Maude.”

“You plan on stabbing anybody tonight?”

Tyvian made a show of thinking it over. “Hmmm . . . well, not just now.”

Claudia looked about as amused as a tar shingle might be by a mime. “Anything else?”

“Yes—­who hit you tonight, and why hasn't Maude killed them yet?”

Claudia didn't answer. Giving him a hard glare, she slapped the iron key into Tyvian's hand and left with the candle.

This left Hool and Tyvian alone in the near-­blackness of the Cauldron's main corridor. Hool sniffed the air. “I smell blood.”

Tyvian fumbled with the lock in the dark. “What kind?”

“The blood of a new mother.”

Tyvian could have asked for clarification of what this meant but decided to take it in its most positive sense. Prior to the ring being affixed to him, the inherent morally suspect realm in which the whorehouse existed had never bothered him in the least. Now, just standing in these halls was making his hand throb with that kind of low-­grade ache that told him he ought to be more proactive in his goodie-­goodie behavior. He desperately hoped to avoid asking questions that might lead to answers that would necessitate any kind of drastic action.

The room inside was furnished with a single large four-­poster featherbed, a scuffed but solidly build armoire, and the kind of crimson wallpaper that made a person think of warm lovers cuddled together in warm places. Turning up the small oil lamp, he saw Hool pluck off her shroud and throw it on the bed. The transformation was instantaneous and truly jarring, as he had grown used to tall, svelte redheaded Hool over hulking, golden-­furred monster Hool. In the blink of an eye the gnoll suddenly occupied almost twice the space as before. When she stretched, Tyvian watched as her arms reached almost far enough to touch both walls of the room. She then seized one end of the bed and pushed the entire thing over so there was more room in front of the small fireplace, wherein were smoldering a few embers. “There. Good night.” The big gnoll curled up on the floor in the manner of a giant dog.

Tyvian nodded. After a moment he decided to add, “You don't have anything to ask me?”

Hool's ears perked up and she looked at him steadily. “If I ask you questions, will you lie to me?”

Tyvian thought about it. “That depends on the questions you ask.”

Hool's ears went back. “Sometimes there is no point in talking to you.”

Tyvian shrugged. “I'm doing you a favor, believe me.”

Hool snorted. “Your mother is a sorceress?”

“Yes. A very powerful sorceress.”

“More powerful than Sahand?”

“By several orders of magnitude, yes.”

“Are we going to kill her?”

Tyvian blinked. “What? No. Of course not.”

Hool stared at him for a few moments, her copper eyes glittering in the dim lamplight. “Why does she want to trap you?”

Tyvian sighed. “That's what I'm here to find out.”

“
Then
will we save Myreon?”

“I told you, we are not saving Myreon. She wouldn't want me to and it wouldn't be a good idea.”

Hool cocked her head. “But you love her.”

Tyvian snorted out a laugh. “Of all the ridiculous—­”

Hool snorted once to demonstrate her opinion of that comment, turned around a few times and then buried her head in her own fur and fell asleep immediately. How the gnoll could do that was beyond Tyvian; of all the various ways in which Hool was physically superior to him, that was the skill he envied the most. If he could fall asleep in under a minute and wake up at the drop of a hat, he would be a much better rested criminal.

Tyvian stripped to his drawers and slipped under the quilts, Chance under his pillow, and lay awake, staring at the ceiling. Above him, he could hear the telltale rhythmic creaking of a prostitute earning her keep. He found himself wondering how the girl came to be in this place and why. He knew Claudia wasn't the kind to be overtly cruel or abusive to her girls, but she was hardly a loving or caring employer. Claudia tossed girls out on the street for myriad reasons, and she would look the other way if a man was rough so long as he paid for the medical fees. Tyvian had never liked that, not even when he was a spoiled, disaffected youth. He had fought at least five duels with young nobles who had roughed up a whore. He had stopped fighting such duels, though. They had never made anything better.

“The world isn't that simple,” Tyvian grumbled to himself, fiddling with the ring on his hand. “Good and bad aren't as easy as up and down. Damsels aren't so easily rescued. Say I did save all the women in here. Say I stuck a sword through whatever lout the Mute Prophets have supervising this place and carried the women out on my back, showering them with gold? What would that get me, exactly? What would that get them? I bet you more than half of them would wind up in another whorehouse before the day was out, and the rest would get themselves killed, raped, kidnapped, or married to some arse of a cooper with big fists and a mean drinking habit.”

Tyvian was holding the ring up in front of his face, hissing at it in the dark. He knew it was ridiculous, but he kept doing it anyway. “It's like Draketower all over again. I did what you wanted, didn't I? I freed them, I killed the man who had abused and enslaved them, I showered them with riches—­what goddamned good did it do? It ended with a poor girl drowned and left for the wolves in the wilderness. Some goddamned hero I am.”

Hool stirred. “Shut up. Stop whining about everything. You are keeping me awake.”

Tyvian jumped at the sound of her voice. “Sorry. I got carried away there.”

“Stop thinking so much. Do what is right when it is time to do it, and everything else will be fine.”

Tyvian frowned at this but didn't answer. Hool couldn't be expected to understand; Hool was a creature of the moment, a champion improviser and one who thought and acted in straight lines. She didn't see the complexity in the world because it was too much for her to comprehend. Tyvian knew this made what she said easily confused with wisdom, but he was too old a hand at the confidence game to be taken in by it. For every simple man the world produced, it had to come up with a dozen complex ways to keep him alive and happy, lest all the simple men of the world fall upon one another with whatever crude clubs and pieces of masonry they could find and cover the ground with a thick layer of their simple, simple brains.

Hool grumbled and shifted her position. “You think I'm stupid, but I'm not. Go to sleep.”

Tyvian scowled and rolled away from Hool. On his hand the ring throbbed slowly—­a gradual build of pressure, just short of pain, and then a sudden release, like the ponderous beating of a massive heart. It had been doing that for weeks; he had grown so accustomed to its petty tortures, he only seemed to notice while in bed. This was, he imagined, just as it was intended to be.

It was prodding him over Myreon. Myreon, who he
knew
was innocent with every fiber of his being, but whom he had promised himself he would not save. That was why he had left off telling Artus and Hool and Brana about her for so long—­they wouldn't understand. Rescuing Myreon wouldn't do anything other than put himself
and
her in more danger than they already were. She'd also hate him for it. Hell, once made whole again, she'd probably just turn him into the authorities. That was Myreon's style, after all: stubborn, loyal, and utterly incorruptible.

If not Myreon, then what
was
he doing here? The smart thing to do about a trap was walk away, but here he was—­summoned as effectively as if he'd had a leash and someone had yanked. His reasoning back in Derby—­buoyed by hot-­blooded anger and indignation—­seemed foggy to him now. What had brought him here?

The kiss.

The memory—­Myreon's cold lips beneath the mountains, suddenly blooming with a fire created by his kiss—­flared up, making him catch his breath for a moment. He pushed the memory away. Sentimental garbage, the whole lot of it. As though there were any possible way to steal her Rite of Release and rescue Myreon from a penitentiary garden without winding up there himself! What the hell had he been thinking anyway? Slowly, cursing himself and the world and everything else, he fell into a restless sleep.

In his dreams he sat on a throne of glass, his right hand burning with unholy fire, and a darkened sky overhead. Before him marched an array of the weak, the powerless, and the aggrieved. They howled at him, but he said nothing. He had no idea what they wanted him to say.