The Dragon Round (29 page)

Herse uses the break to spot Rego looking at him from next to a window across the square outside the alley. Herse nods, Rego points at a door, and the soldiers break it down. The crack is drowned out by the crowd's sudden “oooh!” and laughter.

Herse turns to find a new challenger, a woman nearly his age with hips as formidable as her eyes. She wears a worn tunic carefully repaired and soft leather pants that have been severely brushed. His mother treated her clothes the same way, having nothing else to keep nice. He learned early to sew with a fishbone needle to keep her from crying when he tore holes in his own threadbare outfits. Herse shrugs his shoulders to shift his black sash of rank. It makes him feel like a dandy.

He bows to the woman in a pre-League way, then turns this into a greater sign of respect: a deep stretch to open up his hips and hamstrings.

The woman transforms the curtsey her grandmother might have performed into a long, slow lunge. She doesn't bow her head, though.

They stand. “To five?” she says. The crowd vibrates like a plucked string.

He considers how much time Rego will need. It can't be much. Although the situation is a military matter, Herse's jurisdiction ends at
the city gate. Everything inside the walls is under Ject, the city guard's general. He and Herse don't get along as it is, the popinjay, and he would certainly want to take charge, take credit, and take the spoils.

“To nine,” Herse says. “That red cobble can be our center line.”

“No,” she says, “the advert. I want to remember you in your prime.”

The crowd “ooohs” again, and Herse laughs. “I want to remember me in my prime too,” he says. He moves back and looks around for the ball. Behind him a painter, given the stains on his canvas pants and overshirt, tosses it to him. Herse catches it on his hip, a nifty trick, and says to the woman, “Losers serve first.”

She opens her hands to indicate her readiness.

As Herse considers how to serve, he pictures the lovers in the room beyond the broken door. They're half-naked, sweaty with terror, and holding up their hands to ward off Rego and his force. One is his soldier. The other, his soldier's Aydeni and, like all Aydeni, a possible spy.

“Don't let her off easy, General,” the painter says. “She's got no use for war. Or you.”

“You have to work for every fan,” he says, “some harder than others.” She doesn't appreciate this. So much for a friendly game.

Herse bounces the ball, a bladder of blackened guayule in a hard leather shell, and fires it with his right hip to her left, thinking her right-handed from how she lunged. She isn't troubled, slides gracefully, and fires it back. They volley a few times before she short hops him and he can't get his hip down quickly enough to return it. He realizes she'd been testing how limber he is.
Well, I'm warmed up now
, he thinks. The painter throws the ball to him and he passes it to her.

“She's not going to let you off easy either,” the painter says.

“Good practice for Ayden then,” he says. The crowd laughs.

“I'm not Aydeni,” she says.

“That's fortunate,” he says. “If they had your spirit, we should surrender now.”

Herse figures the lovers surrendered immediately. They would know the penalty for consorting and that Rego's force, drawn from the soldier's own squad, couldn't afford to be gentle. The lovers also had to know they'd be discovered. They had to be awaiting this. Their affair's surely been exciting, but also draining. They must be relieved it's over.

He hopes the lovers are resisting, though. The soldier knows his fate. The Aydeni can imagine hers. As a Hanoshi, his first instinct will be to think of himself and turn on her, and if the Aydeni's smart she'll turn on her own people. As a couple, though, they could have the will to fight together. That's what Herse wants most for his men and for his city.

Herse wins the next two volleys, the first on a lob with so much spin she strikes at empty air, the second on a ball low to her right with enough topspin to elude her too. She retaliates with a ball off the wall that has him taking three steps down the alley after it. The painter holds it out to him with a plastic grin. All even at two.

“I'm feeling ambushed,” Herse says.

The painter tilts his head as if to say,
Curious
.

Herse hears the woman tapping her foot on the cobblestones. He decides he doesn't like having the painter behind him. The alley feels tighter. But he has to turn and bounce her the ball.

Her serve comes straight at his head. He leaps off a crate beside the wall and flings up his hip so he can return it. It's a spectacular move that leaves him in no position to deal with her return. Three–two.

The crowd sours. The game's getting personal, and he's their man. Herse takes her side, though. He says, “All's fair when the ball's in play.”

So after she serves off a quick dribble, he blasts one at her head. She drops to a knee to avoid it and scowls. The crowd laughs. They're still on his side.

When the lovers are brought back to camp, he'll show his men the Aydeni and make her watch the soldier do his final duty: die for his
crimes. They'll appreciate that. Nothing brings a group together like a good execution. He won't give her to them, though. He's no Ynessi.

Herse's stomach burbles.
Nevertheless
, he thinks,
this is a disgusting business
. Where did the soldier even find an Aydeni woman? Most Aydeni left the city long ago, encouraged by the interrogations of those the army picked up. And he's no prize. He might have a dozen teeth. Why has he made Herse do this to him?

Herse almost smiles. His soldier couldn't resist.

The general serves.

The woman returns the ball sharply off the wall. His return is weak, and she puts away her fourth point. A half minute later she gets her fifth.

She isn't stopping between points, serving as soon as the returned ball touches her hands. So he slows the game down, volleying not to win the point but to push her increasingly off balance. He won't try to overpower her as she expected. He'll wait until she makes a mistake. He feints to one side, and she gives just enough for him to get the ball past her on her other side. The crowd sees she's lost the advantage. He tries the same ploy again, an insult really, and she counters, but twice more he does it, moving her farther to one side, then practically rolls it past her to the other. With the slightest smile, she appreciates his change in tactics then responds in kind. The crowd leans forward, waiting for one to strike fatally. For a long time, they're tied at five.

As the lovers, tied up and hooded, are dragged through the broken door into the hallway, Herse pictures the soldier begging for her life. Rego, ever measured, responds, “She won't be killed. She'll be questioned.” Rego turns to the Aydeni. “And afterward, you'll be released. You aren't a spy, are you?” The bag tips up and shakes. “Good,” he says. She's reassured. The soldier doesn't say that “afterward” never has a set date. From that point, they come quietly.

Herse is about to put away his point when the painter cries out, “Ho!” and Herse mishits the ball. The woman charges and fires it past him, and she keeps running at him. Does she have something in her hands? Herse grabs her wrists, locks them together, and swings her
around to use her as a shield in case the painter is coming at him from behind. He isn't, and the crowd is preoccupied with the faceless figures being led out of the lodging house to the wagon.

“Don't worry,” she says, “I'm not like you. Lots of people aren't.”

“Let's see,” he says, letting her go.

One of the boys has started to cry. Herse squats beside him. Many are asking, “What have they done?” but the boy puts it more simply, “Are they the bad people?”

“Yes,” Herse says. “We try to keep them outside the walls, but they're sneaky. Like rats. Sometimes they get inside, and what do you do when a rat gets inside?”

“Eat it!”

“Exactly,” Herse says. “We gobble them up.” He makes a chomping motion with one hand. This amuses the boy. Herse clasps the boy's shoulder.

The crowd jeers the lovers. The boy's brother retrieves the ball and winds up to throw it at the soldier. Herse plucks the ball from his hand. “No need for that, though. If you want to help, keep your eyes open. See something. Say something. That's how we caught them, one of our own soldiers ensnared by an Aydeni. Do your duty better than he did.”

The boys salute. Herse stands and returns it smartly. He tosses them the ball and they run off as the lovers are locked in the wagon's windowless cabinet.

The woman is still there. She says, “You'd eat your own to survive?”

“No,” he says. “I'd eat our own so you'd survive. And everyone here.”

The crowd approves and turns its jeering on her. He whispers, “You might run off as well. I'd eat you too, if you were worth eating.” He jogs to the wagon, waving good-bye, and climbs up beside Rego on the seat in front of the cabinet. The driver snaps the reins. The other soldiers walk alongside.

Rego scans a side street. “No patrols. Our information was good.”

Herse says, “Did they surrender or resist?”

“Neither,” Rego says. “That information was bad. The landlord
was wrong. They weren't there. Left yesterday. So we grabbed these two, who were squatting.” Herse gives him a look. “We had to grab someone,” Rego says.

“They'll do,” Herse says. “Just keep the bags on. If the other two are smart, and we're lucky, they're already halfway to nowhere.”
Good for them
, he thinks. “Let's go over the script for the Council.”

The Tripple Inn is notable for
three things: cheap rooms, cheaper beer, and the cheapest secrets in the Harbor if, like Omer, you're fluent in drunk.

Having ridden all night, he planned to go straight to sleep, but a man in the common room chooses Omer to tell his tale of woe to, and no one ever went broke trading in woe. He gets the man to tell him about a load of Meresi cinnamon that is stranded on the docks for want of harbor fees. Omer thinks the Shield could pick it up cheap, and that would mean an easy finder's fee for him.

As he pours the man some wine to open the negotiation, the good half of Felic's face slides into the doorway. He locates Omer, one side of his lips moves, and he disappears. A moment later three men take his place. If they haven't spent time at the oars, they will, should their scars testify against them. The one with a half-red eye leads them to a table behind Omer, a hand on the hatchet tucked in his belt.

4

Having spent a half hour staring at manifests, bills, and logs to avoid staring at the galleys leaving for Yness, Livion climbs to the Upper City and the Blue Tower, where Council takes place. Three hundred feet tall, the tower is the most recent magnification of the simple wooden keep around which the city first grew. The previous iteration was called the Raven Tower for the birds that had long roosted on it. The
current name comes from the great blue dome that was added when the tower was heightened to mark the League's creation. The ravens now float around the dome's white cupola, their own private tower.

Livion hurries across the plaza in front of the tower, through the tall double doors, and up a wide staircase to a thin vestibule. It's crammed with the aggrieved and desperate waiting for the public pleading later in the meeting. As a guard lets him through the door into the council chamber, Livion wonders how many of them would end up dying if Hanosh went to war. They seem to wonder why, having paid their pleading fee, they can't go in with him.

The semicircular room covers half a floor of the tower. From an elevated banc the councilors face two columns of pews populated by those scheduled to address them. Agents and factotums from the major and minor companies, as well as the few petty companies that can afford it, have standing tables around the room. Each sports a small company flag like those in front of each councilor, except theirs belong to the richest companies in Hanosh.

The largest tables are empty, though, their flagsticks pulled. Over the last six months, the other League cities have called their lead agents home to protest Hanosh's war talk. They still have their sources in the city and their alliances with various companies, so the Council declared the gesture mere pageantry. Livion slows as he passes through them, feeling the weight of their agents' absence, until he notices Chelson staring at him from one end of the banc and he ducks into a back pew.

The Council is dispensing with basic business: decobbling the streets in the workers' district instead of repairing them (back-­burnered), installing more streetlamps in the servants' district (rejected), adding workhouses in both (heartily approved). It's dreary talk in a dreary room. The walls are bare stone, the ceiling plain wood. The only decoration other than the flags hangs behind the banc: a large pine H. The symbol of the city, its crossbar extends beyond its stems, making it look like either a gallows or, as the Aydeni say, a double cross.

Livion wishes they could meet in the original council chamber
beneath the dome. He's heard it's magnificent, with gorgeous murals, stained glass windows, and dominating views, a celebration of all the League aspired to be. But when the councilors discovered how taxing it was to climb so high, they moved Council here to what had been a ballroom and left the old chamber to the rats and dust. The decision makes sense in retrospect. The League is decaying too. And no one has balls anymore. They're a pointless expense.

Eles, leader of the council, gavels the ongoing business closed and opens the speakers' portion of the meeting. Ject, general of the city guard, rises from the front row. He's polished from his boots to his mustache. Given his rank, he's allowed dyed silk for his shirt, which is cut to recall a guardsman's blouse. Its deep green vibrates against his red sash of rank, which glitters with a long matrix of honors. His tight pants are brushed to perfection. A ceremonial dirk completes his outfit.