The price of victory- - Thieves World 13 (47 page)

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responsible, ain't they? You go burning the whole town down, come in here with a lump of witched gold—"

"It ain't witched!"

"It come from the burnin'! Ever'thing up there's witched! And I ain't makin' no jewelry out of it and sellin' it to my clients' You're goin' to the watch, girl, an' you can explain to your neighbors 'fore the magistrate what you done up there on the hill, / ain'tl"

"Let me out of here! Damn you, damn you, I got friends, Gorthis, I got friends'H fry your insides, you damned snitch! I got wizard friends!"

"No way," Gorthis said, pale-faced and sweating, and still ringing the bell for all he was worth. "No way you got friends like that, missy, or they'd melt that there gold for you and not need no furnace-I ain't no fool! And you're going to hang, that's what's going to happen to you—"

An alarm was ringing in midtown, and Crit stopped the gray to listen. Not particularly his business: the watch and the guard responded to that sort of thing, and his own mind was on personal problems—a partner who had had a run-in with the watch last night, and who had been let go because the watch did not know what to do with him—and a Prince Governor whose orders were getting more and more arbitrary—now the damned be-curled and perfumed prig wanted a barrel tax and wanted all the taverns in town to pay a head tax ... per customer. And he was
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supposed to break the news to Walegrin, whose men were supposed to

make the thing work.

An alarm was not the kind of thing the city commander took for a personal responsibility. But he was in a mood to crack heads. He debated

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it a moment, then, set the horse off at a good clip—no run, counting the slick cobbles, just a businesslike jog that cornered well enough in the twisting streets, with their ghostly drift of cloaked, hooded figures them selves heading toward the trouble—daytime reflexes, the more so that the watch was surely on the way and folk figured there was some kind of entertainment to be had, watching the guard putter about after a thief who had probably run like hell when the bell went, and listening with delicious smugness to the shopkeeper tearing his hair and wailing ... a morning's worth of gossip, at least-And more of them would come, when they saw the city commander involved in it.

Damned busybodies.

He had an idea where the bell-ringing was coming from when he found
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the right street, about the time the bell went silent and he had an idea the watch had gotten there ahead of him. There was a jeweler hereabouts notorious for his eccentricity—and a shady past; and he saw the crowd and the waiting horses that said that matters were tolerably well under control.

He almost turned the gray about to go back about his business, back to his troubles with Strat and with the Prince-Governor, figuring there was nothing here that needed intervention.

But the crowd ohhhed and aaaahed to a great deal of shouting, and pressed close upon the door, where there was evidently something going on. A guardsman was trying to keep spectators out.

Maybe, he thought, someone had cut the jeweler's throat.

But the place was supposed to be a real obstacle course. So the rumor ran. Real crazy man.

Curiosity drew him, since the morning's business was not that attrac tive. He nosed the gray on through the crowd, figuring the guard could use a little help—might well be a few neighbors there hoping for free samples, if there had been some fracas inside and some stuff scattered.

"Get out of here!" the beleaguered guard was yelling, shoving with his sheathed sword at a clutch of women who wanted to get their noses in
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the door. The crowd booed that, and guffawed when a fat man appeared behind the guard and screamed at them to get out of his door.

"What's going on here?" Crit asked the guardsman, forcing the gray into service as a living barrier, and its teeth and the stamp of its feet made a little room.

"Dunno, sir," the guardsman said. "We got a woman and a laundry basket and a damned great lump of gold old Gorthis says is witched and stolen and he locked 'er up and called the watch." The guardsman looked doubtful a second, then: "Woman looks Rankan, sir, and old Gorthis says she's a thief named Moria who lived in the Peres house, and we got a

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warrant out on her. The corporal don't know. We got a lot of warrants.

But she talks uptown."

"Moria. Out ofPeres." Crit drew in a deep breath, all at once awake in this slow and nuisanceful morning. He slid down and threw the gray's reins at the guardsman as he ducked under the horse's neck and put his

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head into the jeweler's shop.

The damn place looked like the city jail, it had so many bars. And in the clutches of a trio of guardsmen was a blonde and distraught young woman, answering questions, shaking her head furiously, no, no, and no.

"Hey," he yelled, interrupting it all. The woman looked at him, and gods, it was for certain Moria, who had hosted the whole Sacred Band at the truce-feast in the Peres house.

Before it ended up a pile of blackened sticks and tumbled stone.

"Moria?" he asked. And listened to the whole thing over again, from the jeweler Gorthis shouting in one ear, the guard corporal shouting at Gorthis to shut up, the woman sobbing and shouting that she was inno cent, that Gorthis was a crook who wanted her gold, which was hers, and Gorthis her enemy who had lured her here with promises of help.

"Gold might be hers," Crit said slowly. "Ease up a little. Let's just all be calm, can we? Ma'am, I think you and the gold and Gorthis here better plan to spend the morning uptown and get this straightened out. They say there's a warrant out on you-I don't know about that. I know I've got a few questions. Where are you staying?"

The woman's face might have been a waxen mask. An honest woman might have answered. There would not have been that desperate dart of
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the eyes, like something trapped. Crit had had a lot of experience, judg ing reactions like that. He pulled out his kit and rolled himself a smoke, giving her time to answer, if she would. Then, finally, lighting the smoke

from the lamp by the door.

"Well, sergeant, I think you might as well take the whole damn mess uptown. You can have Gorthis. Woman goes to my office. Gold goes to your captain and it damn well better stay accounted for. Hear?"

"Yessir," the sergeant said, and Crit nodded, puffed on his smoke to calm his nerves and walked as far as the door. He had a rare impulse to chivalry, and turned back to the sergeant.

"Don'1 take her through the streets like that. Put a wrap on her and don't bruise her up any, all right?"

"Yessir."

He walked out, collected his horse and climbed up, riding out through the crowd, paying no attention to the shouted questions and the ohhhs and ahhhs and the rumors flying thick and fast. Up the street, then,

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where the last few shyer onlookers stood gawking, and around the cor ner.

A man fled his path. There was one with reason to avoid him. He was halfway moved to find out why, but the streets were slick and there was enough commotion hereabouts. The chance of overtaking the man was nil, without risk to the gray, and he was not about to take the chance. Dawn, and there were still some of the night-skulkers out, pickpockets, for sure, who worked their best in circumstances like the press and com motion back there.

Not his business, that. Not a soldier's business at all.

He rode on his way, down the mostly deserted street, at a walk, al ready back to the problem of the head tax.

And was halfway startled when a cloaked man came out of the alley and looked up at him and ran over to him. "Officer—officer—my son, f'godssakes, my son, they stabbed my son—"

"Who?" He reined in the gray, which was as like to take a piece out of the man as not. "How many of them?" The whole, damn district watch was tied down back around the corner, and a purse-cutting that went to murder was the way of things in this damn town.

"Come on!" the man cried, running back for the alley—merchant, to
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look at him. And distraught.

"Hell!" Crit threw down his smoke, gathered up his crossbow from the saddle-ties and turned the gray down the alley after him. He had wanted a head or two to crack. He was still in the market.

The iron gate flared blue as Stilcho brought up against it and pushed, sweating and gasping and desperate. Witchfire stung his hands and ached in his bones, but the gate gave to his push, and he waited for no other invitation from the river house. He ran as far as the gray stone steps before slick stone and his exhaustion betrayed him: he sprawled painfully against the edge of the steps and lost his wind, fighting even so to pick himself up.

"Stilcho," Her voice said, and he looked up, heart hammering, at the face that figured in so many of his bad dreams.

"Stilcho?"

He gathered himself up to his knees and to his feet, hanging onto the post which supported the roof. He was taller than She was, if he were not standing beside the porch and She, on it-But Her presence was over whelming, so that all the warmth of running leached out of him, and all the months of hiding seemed useless. He was back. He had never been free. He had never owned his soul, from the night Ischade drew it back
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into him.

256 UNEASY ALLIANCES

"The w-watch has M-Moria," he stammered, while the pain in his ribs bent him against the post that was the only thing keeping him on his feet.

"They've arrested her—"

"For what?" Ischade asked, a soft voice, precise, and cold.

"Th-the—" 0 gods, there was no lying to Her. There could not be. He tried for breath and knew what bargain he had come to strike, a bargain for what She already owned. "The gold from P-Peres house. They say she stole it."

"She did," Ischade said, that same quiet precision. "From me."

He had no answer for that. It was truth. Claiming it was himself, claiming anything but what was—might end everything. "You can help her," he said. "P-Please h-help her."

"She left my employ. She stole from me. Why should I intervene?"

"I'll come b-back." His lips stumbled around the words. His sou! was cold to the roots, and he met that stare of hers with a vertiginous feeling that it was already sliding away from him. "1*11 come back to you."
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There was long silence. Then:

"You and Moria," Ischade said. "Love does make fools of us, doesn't it?"

"Please. Get her away from them."

"I thought that Moria would come, long since, wanting her fine things and her soft bed. I least of all expected you, Stilcho. And for her sake. How touching."

"My lady—"

"I confess I have missed you, in more ways and for more reasons than you know." She extended her hand and touched his cheek with the backs of her fingers, a touch which—he could not help it—made him shuddei;

and She could not but tell that. "A good man. And hers. Why, Stilcho?

Debt of honor? Or do you love her?"

"I 1-1-love her."

"Poor man." She came close and folded her arms about his head, drew it against her breast. Her breath stirred his hair and he felt her gentle
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kiss, felt the unlikely warmth She gave despite the chill of her hands as She lifted his face. "I will help her. I will take you back. I will keep her with all the fine things she loves. You as well. And I shall be kinder. You know that there are times I cannot be."

"I know that—"

"She will be safe enough. I will send a message uptown. We'll do everything by town law. As the aggrieved party, I give her the gold. See?

Solved. Come inside and I'll give you the paper with my seal on it. You take it to the Palace and tell them if they have any questions about it, come to me. Come. I shan't bite. You know better than that."

They had brought the gray horse in from the streets—no one had dared steal it, nor any of its gear; it had wreaked havoc on a storefront and kicked a man in the gut before the watch got a couple of riders to herd it up the street and one of them was horseman enough to talk it calm and get the reins without having his fingers taken off or his horse kicked.

Of Crit there was no sign at all, and Straton found himself coldly, terribly sober, interviewing everyone in the affair, no one of whom knew a damned thing, except the horse might have come from a dozen streets, all of which they were searching door to door; and as many alleys, more
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likely, all of which they were searching, down to the rubbish heaps and the refuse, looking for the body. Crit's bow was missing, not with the horse and not in any place he would have left it. He must have had it with him. Must have had reason to have it in hand when trouble came on him. So he had not been taken utterly off his guard. And they had still got him. Whoever it was.