Belor was by far the most conspicuous of the group, not for his size, his mass, or even the sinister aspect of his countenance, for had he had any of those, he might have fit in quite well. No, Belor was the softest one of the lot, slightly round of belly, round of shoulder in a sloping sort of way, and with a furtive and rather fearful element to the way he moved. The rabble behind him seemed as if Belor might be some wayward innocent from the merchant parts of downtown Crown who’d gotten a gang of thieves on his tail, neighborhood ruffians and brutish deckhands on shore leave for a while.
But Belor walked before them without fear, and they followed immediately behind, quiet but for the sound of their feet on the low boardwalk. Black Sander joined them, falling in beside Belor silently as they passed together along the waterfront and then up a street that took them through the food district and then upwards through neighborhoods heading toward the Decline.
Their passing became conspicuous after a time, and whores peeked out from brothels, and drunkards raised their heads from where they sat against walls or upon street corners. The few riders who passed by on horseback reined in their mounts as the group strode purposefully past, silent while the group was near, but then leaning together to speculate where the little troop might be headed to. Sometimes trouble was obvious, even in that part of Kurr.
Hits and large-scale beatings were not uncommon in Murdoc Bay, and a small army of thugs sent from one crime lord to another was familiar enough, but Black Sander’s presence lent the circumstance something extra sinister. Men wealthy enough and connected enough to ride horses into town with an expectation of keeping them would recognize him immediately. They also knew well enough to turn and ride away if he looked back, despite nagging curiosity urging otherwise. But Black Sander did not bother with them. He had work to do.
“How’s your Earth tongue coming?” Black Sander asked, looking to Belor as the group began its ascent up the Decline. He said it in the language of that world, the language they called
English
.
“Mine’s coming, Master. I’ve worked on it as you said.”
“Me too,” said one of the ruffians in the pack, their leader in an undisciplined kind of way. Leader by way of being the biggest and meanest of them, and perhaps a tad smarter too. “That bitch you stole from Crown school teached us good.”
“Well, I’m not sure that’s quite how you say it,” Belor corrected, “but you do have it better than the rest.” He glanced sideways at Black Sander to confirm it, though not for long, as his effort was mainly bent on enduring the climb. His round, fat cheeks were already red and huffing, and they’d hardly made it a quarter way up the slope.
“The three of us will be adequate,” Black Sander said. “You are called Twane, are you not?” he asked of the man whose Earth English was passing, if not good.
“Yes, sir. Twane, sir,” he replied. “’Cuz me mum was twain one husband an’ the next.” He laughed aloud at that, as if it was the first time he’d said it, and the men with him laughed too, as if it were the first time they’d heard it as well—all but Belor and Black Sander, of course. Black Sander only closed his eyes for a moment, letting a rise of irritation pass. They were who they were, and the mnemonic was how he had recalled the brigand’s name.
He turned back and looked skyward, seeing that the ship was now low enough that he could make out its long, graceful lines, the gentle sweep of modest wings lying back along its body like an eagle in a dive, though perhaps a very slender one, for the craft seemed a long sliver of mercury as it swooped down from the sky.
“Listen up, Twane,” Black Sander said. “You will be taking three of these men with you in one of the crates. You’re going to keep them all quiet. You will keep them that way the entire time. You’ll relieve yourselves in the jars we’ve put in the boxes for that purpose, and you’ll keep them corked when you are done. You’ll eat quietly and not make one peep no matter how long you sit in there or how dark it gets. You keep them calm if they get antsy or start feeling too confined, and if any of these gentlemen sniffles in such a way that might be overheard, you are to break his neck. And I mean
break
his neck. Not cut his throat, not gut him like a fish or anything else. I don’t want blood running out and giving us away.”
He nodded that he understood. Belor had explained it to them several times.
“Good,” said Black Sander. “Do any of them have anything enchanted on them? Any weapons, any armor, any lockets, trinkets, or amusement devices? Even a sunscreen enchantment will get us all killed.” Black Sander watched as Twane processed the Earth words, watched him grapple with the gaps in diction that he surely was suffering. “Say it back to me, in common,” he demanded as he watched.
To his credit, the burly sailor had the essence of it right. Black Sander repeated the last part in the common tongue of Kurr, the part about any last bit of magic spelling doom for them all, or at least, spelling the likely ruin of the plan. If the crew of that spaceship found out there were stowaways packed into three crates of Goblin Tea, they surely wouldn’t go straight to Earth. Not without stopping first at a TGS depot and getting the group sent straight to Crown City and the guillotine. Twane nodded that he understood and confirmed that everyone had been checked and double-checked. There was no magic on any of them.
“Good,” Black Sander said, once again in English. “And you understand how to work the bellows pump and how to get out when it is time?”
Again the man nodded.
“Good. Then let’s be quick, and get this under way. The time for talking is done.”
They stopped about halfway up the Decline at a small shop, the front of which was made of faded planks, the rest of which was cut deep into the cliff. The sign above the door read “Gevender’s Candle and Lamp.”
Black Sander went in, ordering all but Belor to wait in the street and Belor to wait just inside the door. He had to blink into the ironic darkness of the place. It seemed the shopkeeper was stingy about burning down inventory—as well he should be, for his employer was a master of accounts, and the least drop of candle wax unaccounted for would cost the man a finger if not a hand.
“Is the teleporter here?” Black Sander asked the man working in the back, bent over a box of sand into which he’d shaped a mold for a tabletop candle to be poured.
“He is,” said the candle maker. “He’s waiting for you.”
Black Sander had to duck as he neared the back of the narrowing hollow that housed the business, a crude passage cut into the rock and little more. A sharkskin hung from a wooden frame, creating a room beyond. He pulled it aside and peered into the small space. A thin man in his middle years sat on a stool and looked up at him with fearful eyes.
“You’re the T?” Black Sander asked.
“I am,” replied the man, brushing nervously at wisps of hair hanging by his ear. “And I got H-class healing should it come to it.”
“It won’t if you keep your mouth shut and do what you’re told.”
“I will, sir. Please just don’t let them hurt my wife.”
“They won’t. Just keep quiet and don’t lose your head. She’ll be fine.”
He nodded, quick, anxious movements that were barely perceptible.
“When are you due back to TGS?”
“Not for two more months,” he replied, stammering some. “M-Misty, my wife, she’s due to give birth any day. Councilman Gangue arranged me leave f-for the delivery and, y-you know, help with the baby for a time.”
Black Sander smiled as he watched the man’s nervousness mount. “Relax,” he said. “I give you my word: do as you’re told, and you’ll be there for the baby and in time to be back at work. And so long as you never mention the least part of this to anyone, your baby might even make it to university someday. You hear me?”
“I do,” rattled the man. “I truly do.”
“Good. Then we have an understanding.”
The man nodded again, like the last, almost more a facial chatter than a nod.
“You’ve checked the boxes?”
“I have.”
“Mass will be right?”
“As near as I can tell.”
Black Sander nodded. That was the biggest risk as he saw it: the weights. That and the smell, if it came to it. But they’d be packed with leaves too. He studied the teleporter for a moment more, watching him and knowing that it was all the man could do to keep from curling up and cowering on the floor. He’d do his job.
“All right, bring them in,” Black Sander called out to Belor, who was still waiting near the candle shop door. “It’s time to get crated up.”
Chapter 38
T
he
Glistening Lady
flew in low, Murdoc Bay shrinking in the aft video feed and the blue-green line of the southeastern stretch of Gallenwood growing on the horizon ahead. Altin stood behind Roberto’s chair as the Spaniard piloted them in. Deeqa Daar, seated beside the
Glistening Lady
’s captain, was already shutting down some of the ship’s systems in advance of the teleport that would send them straight back to Earth—a particular convenience of having Altin Meade along. The five hours it would take to restart the ship were nothing compared to the fifteen to forty hours they’d have to wait at the Tinpoa TGS depot—not to mention the indignity of a ship-wide search. It wasn’t that they had anything to hide from the authorities, but both Roberto and Deeqa chafed at authoritarian intrusions on principle.
“It’s beautiful, man,” Roberto said as they approached the sprawling Goblin Tea plantation, which spread before them like a quilt over the rise and fall of gentle hills, miles and miles of them running up a continental slope that disappeared beneath the southern edge of Gallenwood and eventually became the teeth of the Gallspire Mountain Range. “They told me this is the only place on Prosperion where Goblin Tea will grow. Maybe the only place in the universe. I’d sure love to have a spread like this to retire on someday. Not even this big, but enough to, you know, have something to do during the day, then sit out on my veranda and just look over it into the sunset or something.”
“It is lovely,” Altin agreed. “But it’s too fraught with tension and petty—well, and not-so-petty—feuds and turf wars. You’d be ever on guard for thieves and smugglers trying to get in and steal from you; vigilance would be constant and fatiguing. Hardly a relaxing way to settle down in your last decades.”
As if to prove Altin’s point, they flew over the first of several wide moats that drew shimmering bands across the landscape, dug into the last of the flatlands before the foothills began to rise. Each canal was guarded along its forward bank by a palisade, sharp pales like rows of wooden fangs, and mounted patrols moved back and forth along them at regular intervals, all of them bristling with weaponry.
Roberto, like Altin, peered down at the security and shook his head. “Yeah, well, based on our last two trips, apparently they need more than moats and dudes on horses to keep all the douchebags out.”
“Yes, security is difficult in wide-open spaces like this. The cost of maintaining foolproof enchantments would be nearly impossible to sustain, even with the price of Goblin Tea.”
“Prepare for touchdown,” Deeqa said into her com, alerting the crew. “Chelsea, Betty-Lynn, you set?”
“Set,” came the replies.
Roberto brought the ship over a broad, flat expanse of bare dirt, which had been cleared and leveled just for him. The landing site was some fifty yards south of a huge wooden building, the first in a series of ten exactly like it, in which Goblin Tea was dried and processed. Men were running out from a much smaller outbuilding off to one side.
“Look at them,” Roberto muttered as he set the ship in place and began shutting the engines down. “They come like that every time. Crossbows and swords everywhere, like we’re alien invaders or something. You’re right about that tension thing. These guys’ assholes are so tight I bet they fart birdsongs.”
Deeqa laughed at that, but Altin was too busy watching the men approach. There were six of them, all armed, as Roberto had observed, and a seventh man with them who approached more casually and was therefore well behind.
“Who is that?” Altin asked.
“He’s the tea master. He told me his name the first time I met him, but everyone just calls him Tea.”
“Sormand Fallowfield,” Deeqa supplied.
“That seems contradictory, doesn’t it?” Altin observed.
“It does, doesn’t it?” said Roberto. “Anyway, he’s the plantation big shot. Actually a pretty decent guy. He’s one of only three plantation masters down here, apparently, that are entirely loyal to the Queen. I guess some of the other ones are less devoted. Makes for even more tension around here.”
“Where there is gold to be had, that’s usually how it goes,” Altin said. “Especially between the Queen and the marchioness.”
“Well, all I know is, I’m going to get me a big fat heap of it back on Earth, so these guys can piss over each other’s fences all they want.” He shot a wide, gleaming grin across the console to Deeqa, who reflected it right back at him.
A few moments passed, and then Altin felt the ship settle beneath his feet, a thrum that he’d not been aware of since teleporting aboard suddenly gone, making itself conspicuous in its absence.