Fires of Scorpio (7 page)

I said, “I may have to start at the beginning and go to every house in Lower Squish Street. I should find the right house then. But it would be easier — do you not think, landlord, it would be easier? — if you told me which house.”

“Would you care for a refill? Your glass is—”

I did not grasp the landlord. I did not touch him. Nor, for that matter, did I blow up. I said, “Ashti — leave that Rapa’s bucket alone—”

Too late.

The Rapa, swabbing at the floor with his mop, let out a yell. The bucket spilled. Bloody water swilled across the clean floor. Ashti laughed delightedly.

I took a breath.

“Palando the Berry. Tell me. Where does Pompino live? I ask for the last time.”

He said: “I will tell you before that little she-pinki destroys my tavern and my relationship with my servants.”

Ashti laughed as a Rapa coming in the door slipped on the blood and skidded into a table and so brought that down on his head. Truth to tell, Ashti hadn’t done anything yet. I would promise Palando Ashti’s full resources of mischief if he didn’t cooperate.

But, in the end, he said: “The fourth house along. You can’t miss it, it has a red door.”

“Oh? Why red?”

“I thought you said you knew Pompino?”

“Maybe his fondness for red is something new.”

Ashti was red now, the hem of her dress, where she was banging the bloody froth. I bent down and hoicked up the squealing, kicking, struggling handful — the reason I hadn’t pulled her out of it before. There would be a stern contest of wills in the immediate future between clean dresses and having further mucky fun.

“Well, he did have that front door repainted when he came back from one of his excursions, recently, I’ll say that. It always used to be a decent blue.”

Having at least wormed out the secrets of Pompino’s whereabouts from his fellow Khibil, and having sorted out all I could in the way of Ashti’s dress, and not being in the frame of mind to hang about in the Swod’s Revenge any longer, I hoicked up the struggling handful and said the remberees and started off along Lower Squish Street.

Eventually I had to let her run ahead. And then I noticed that although she wanted to get down and run, freely, off, she didn’t go over far. She ran and played within easy distance. She, as it were, kept her radius of action located on where I happened to be. I own I felt highly perked up at that, and, also, dismayed.

The fourth house along stood within what was obviously a pleasant evening stroll down to the Swod’s Revenge. Pompino was not one to miss a trick like that. The house looked charming, white-walled, freshly painted, with two stories and with highly polished windows. The roofs were blue slate. That was probably imported, for Tuscursmot had a busy trade, and was a clear indication of conspicuous wealth. If the jungle folk could use honest leaves for roofs what was the need to import slate? Well, there are ways among men and women not explicable by logic.

The area before the house was set out as a gravel garden. The gimmick — no, that is the wrong word — the art in a gravel garden is not to let anything grow. It is all stone and gravel and chipped flints, split rocks to yield a fascinating spectrum of colors. The suns bring out the shine and the glitter of mica and the fleck of semi-precious stone. Cunning sculptors earn vast sums designing gravel gardens, and contractors earn vast sums laying them out. When it comes to the slave who goes around uprooting the weeds, vast sums are conspicuous by their absence.

So Pompino did all right for himself. By the word “ti” in his name, meaning “of” he was a man of importance.

I walked up the gravel path through the gravel garden, and an enormous one-eyed, one-tusked Chulik stood up from the porch and glowered one-eyed at me.

He was taller than me, yellow-skinned, his pigtail hanging down his back dyed blue. He had only one tusk thrusting up from the left corner of his mouth. I judged he’d taken a back-handed slash in some old fight. There was a scar above the gap in his jawline. His piglike eye regarded me solemnly. The missing eye was decently covered by a blue patch on a string around his ear. He wore a leather kax and pteruges, and looked uncomfortable in the warlike costume.

“Llahal, dom!” I called, getting in with the friendly greeting early. “I am a friend to Pompino the Iarvin.”

He said: “Go away, master. You can do no good here.”

I felt the astonishment. The Chulik spoke as though I had come forewarned of some disaster. All I wanted to do was pass the time of day with my fellow kregoinye, Pompino, chew the fat about old times in Jikaida City, and then take off. I also, I must admit, hoped I’d get him to help in the way of transport. So I said: “I just want to have a word with him. We have not seen each other for some time.”

“Best leave now, master.”

He carried a short spear and that was all in the way of weapons. Now I knew he’d be expert in the use of the spear, for Chuliks on their islands are trained up from birth to become mercenaries and to handle any kind of weapon. They usually adopt the weaponry of their employers. But this little spear which looked as though it would snap the moment the Chulik put his strength behind it?

Despite all the comicality of getting through locals and their clannish close-mouthed remoteness, I suddenly began to fancy there might be something amiss, after all.

“Are you servant to Pompino, Chulik?”

“You had best leave, master. Go — now!”

He was speaking in a hoarse penetrating voice, as though desperate not to be heard. And, he did not sound like your true overpowering Chulik would sound like, telling a mere apim to do something. He sounded like a slave. I judged that if Pompino was as important a man as, suddenly, I conceived him to be, he would have Chulik servants, and, also, that very much could be amiss with him and his family.

Thinking that perhaps my kregoinye comrade Pompino was in serious trouble, and prepared to go barging forward to sort it out, I became aware of an absence.

I looked about, sharply.

“Ashti! Ashti!”

But the girl was nowhere to be seen.

Chapter six

Puzzles for the Brown and Silvers

No sign of Ashti in the gravel garden... The left side of the path was walled off by a profusion of flowering shrubs twice man-height... To the right the path led around the side of the house. That way, then...

The Chulik regarded me somberly. I started off, going along the path right-handed.

“Hold!” he called in a stronger voice. I looked back. He hefted the little spear as though about to cast.

“For a little girl, dom?” I said. “You would not try to stop me, surely?”

His one good eye rolled in its socket, making a hideous grimace. He rolled that eye toward the solid door. In the door and at about eye-level for a well-built man the slot of darkness suddenly winked silver. I paused.

The Chulik, in his small un-Chulik-like voice, said:” Aye!” Then: “You are a friend to Pantor Pompino?”

“Yes.”

I have said many times that Chuliks are ferocious fighting men, and their women as well. I have also said that they know little of humanity. Well, I’d met a Chulik in a wrestling booth on the south coast of Pandahem, in Mahendrasmot, who approached a good long way to humanity. And his tusks had been barbarously sawn off. Maybe this Chulik also had glimmerings of humanity?

I said: “Your name, dom?”

“Men call me Chenunga the Ob-eyed—”

“Well, Chenunga the Ob-eyed, I must find the little girl. If you wish to try to stop me you must make up your mind to it.” I waited, glaring at him. I would not wait long.

He must have seen that in me. The spear lowered.

“I will cast.” His voice barely reached me. “You must run fast...”

Without another word, without a signal of movement, I took to my heels and belted around the corner of the house. I did look back as I passed the corner of the stuccoed brickwork. The little spear flew past. I smiled. So something was amiss...

At the side of the house a small arbor of climbing flowers, hung and limp in the heat, cast a welcome blue shade. A small green door showed, half-open. If Ashti had ventured in there I could well be at a serious disadvantage. If I knew the little minx, and I was coming to know her ways better each day, she was after sazz and biscuits, palines, anything sweet and sticky. I ignored the little green door and went on looking for an alternative way in.

A trap door in the gravel was flung back on its supports and two amphorae lay there, propped against a wooden tripod. Wine stained across the gravel from a third amphora smashed and leaking. I realized that if Ashti had seen that she, with her nose newly accustomed to the scents of a taproom, might well decide that down there lay the drink she loved. Sherbet drinks, sticky sweets, they would lure her on. She might be a child of the jungle, and trained already to take care of herself there, as a modern day child of Earth is trained to take care crossing the busy road and dodging traffic, but she would be lured on.

The head of a ladder thrust through the trap. I looked down, quickly, scanning what lay below and immediately withdrawing. Barrels, boxes, amphorae lay neatly stacked against the wall I could see. Also, there was an open door...

With a single bound I went up in the air, caught the ladder, slid down it as a sailor slides down a companionway. I was running the instant my feet hit the stones. The shadows engulfed me. I crouched beside the open door, unmoving, scarcely breathing, and I cocked an eye aloft to see if the Chulik had retrieved his spear and followed me. The trap gaped bright and empty against the sky.

The only other person in the cellar was a dead woman who lay against the far wall, half in shadows. She wore a decent blue dress and her face upturned in a hideous grimace. She was a Fristle, and her cat-face looked ghastly. Both her hands were clasped about the broken haft of a spear deeply embedded in her chest.

I looked away, through the open doorway. The corridor was just a corridor, with doors to either side and a staircase at the end. These were the cellars to Pompino’s house. Up aloft, then, I judged the mischief — and, also, Ashti.

I unslung the narrow trident from my back and held it over my right shoulder, tines forward, my fist gripping comfortably at the point of balance, ready to thrust or throw. If I had to switch grips into a two-handed hold for some foining, that could be done in an instant.

Padding silently along, wary of each door, I reached the staircase and looked up.

The door at the top, over a small landing, did not look particularly inviting. Down in the cellar the coolness struck in gratefully, and the shadows up there concealed enough to make me wonder if the door was locked or not. Up I went, rapidly, silently, wondering if I was making a fool of myself. But one does not ordinarily find dead Fristle women in cellars unless there is something seriously amiss...

I kicked the door open and leaped through the opening, ducking away and to the side and colliding with a fellow about to open the door. He looked more surprised than I was. He carried a big sword — I say big, the thing was like a falchion, curved and single-edged, and he instantly slashed at my head.

The trident caught the sword. I twisted. If I made a mistake I could only take comfort in the thought that he might mistake me for one of the desperadoes causing the mischief. I put my left fist into his mouth and nose and knocked him over. He was an apim and went flying back.

Farther along the passage, which was paneled in light woods and with rush matting upon the wooden floor, two men appeared from the corner. They were armed and armored. They carried tridents not unlike the one I wielded. They wore brown tunics trimmed in silver.

They rushed on and then halted, staring in perplexity at my trident. The brown breechclout might not show much silver; enough did show to slow them down.

Now, therefore, I was certain.

“Hai!” shouted the first fellow. He wore a large black beard, and I say wore for it looked false to me. “Hai! In the name of Lem the Silver—”

He did not finish, for my trident took him in the throat. He pitched back, spraying blood. His companion shrieked and rushed, slaying-fury in his eyes. My sword snicked out, I slipped his first thrust and then the thraxter slid between his ribs. He sank down, gasping.

The stink of spilled blood gusted up.

I do not slay wantonly. The man at my back, his face a bloody mask, tried to stab me. I slashed back, and he fell.

The noise must have attracted attention by now.

Nothing else for it... A straight bash on, sword whirring, a hefty charge into whatever lay around that far corner...

What lay around that corner and through the doorway was a tableau. There were four of them, an apim, a Brokelsh, a Rapa and another fellow whose race I did not then know. They brandished weapons and wore leather jerkins studded in brass. Their faces were mean. The Rapa’s feathers bristled around his beak. The thick body hair of the Brokelsh gave him that particular spiky bristly Brokelsh look.

The apim said: “Stand still!”

I stood still.

In a chair sat a Khibil woman of exceptional grace. She was quite clearly in a long-gone state of fright. But she held her head erect, her foxy features composed, and her hands were folded in her lap. There was a bruise beside her cheek, near her mouth, and her white dress was torn from one shoulder. She looked at me without expression.

I saw her — and then I saw past her and past the legs of the four hulking ruffians. Another white dress showed there, and two twinkling feet, and Ashti ran out, through their legs, yelling.

“Jak! Jak!”

I said, “You are the lady Scaura Pompina?”

She nodded. I do not think she could find the spit to moisten her mouth to speak.

The big apim with the whiskers and the scar down his left cheek snarled at me again as I went to move forward.

“Stay there, unless you want to see this woman dead.”

“I do not know who you are,” I said, and I kept my voice down, kept it even, kept it un-Dray Prescot-like. “I have no quarrel with you.” This was not true. “Just let the lady go and walk away, and we may consider this thing finished.”