The price of victory- - Thieves World 13 (15 page)

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his belt sheath.

At the same time, Samlor's left arm swept behind him to locate and hold his seven-year-old niece Star. She was with him in this place because there was no place in the world safer for her than beside her mother's brother . . . which was almost another way of saying that there was no safety at all in this life.

Almost, because for forty-three years, Samlor hil Samt had managed to do what he thought he had to do, be damned to the price he paid or the cost to whatever stood between him and duty.

The stranger shouldn't have called him "caravan master." That's what he was, what he had been ever since he had determined to lift his family from poverty, despite the scorn all his kin heaped on him for dishonoring Ordonian nobility by going into trade. But no one in Sanctuary should

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have recognized Samlor; and if they did, he and Star were in trouble much deeper than the general miasma of danger permeating this place. There were people in Sanctuary who actively wished Samlor dead. That was unusual; not because he'd lived a life free from deadly enemies,
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but because fate or the Cirdonian caravan master himself had carried off

most of those direct threats already.

When he bedded his camels at night on the trail, Samlor walked the circuit of the laager prodding crevices and holes with a cornel-wood staff flexible enough to reach an arm's length down a circuitous burrow.

If there were a hiss or an angry jarring of fangs on the staff, he either blocked the hole or, as the mood struck him, teased the snake into the open to be finished with a whip-swift flick of the staff. That was the only way to prevent beasts and men from being bitten when they rolled in their sleep onto vipers sheltering against mammalian warmth.

The caravan routes were a hard school, but applying the lessons he learned there to human enemies had kept Samlor alive longer than would

otherwise have been the case.

Sanctuary, though, was a problem better avoided than solved—and insoluble besides. Samlor had no intention of seeing and smelling the foulness of this place ever again, until the messenger arrived with the

letter from Samlane.

It could have been a forgery, though the Cirdonian script on the strip

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of bark-pulp paper was illegible until it had been wound onto a message staff of the precise length and diameter of the ones Samlor's family had adopted when they were ennobled seventeen generations before. But the hand was right; the message had the right aura of terse presumption that Samlor would do his sister's will in this matter . . .

And the paper was browned enough with age, despite having been locked in a banker's strong room, that the document might well have been written before Samlane died with her brother's knife through her belly and through the thing she carried in her womb.

Samlor couldn't imagine what inheritance could be worth the risk of bringing Star back to Sanctuary, but his sister had been foolishly destruc tive only of herself. If the legacy which would come to Star at age seven were that important, then it was Samlor's duty as the child's uncle to see

that she received it.

It was his duty as the father as well, but that was something he thought

about only when he awakened in the bleak darkness. So he was in Sanctuary again, where no one was safe; and a man he

didn't know had just identified him.

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Star put a hand on her uncle's elbow, to reassure him with her pres ence and the fact she understood the tension.

The trio of punks by the door glanced sidelong with greasy eyes. They were street toughs, too young to have an identity beyond the gang mem bership they proclaimed with matching yellow bandannas and high boots that made sense only for horsemen. They were dangerous, the gods knew, the way a troop of baboons was dangerous. Like baboons, they stank, yammered, and let vicious hostility to outsiders serve in situations where humans would have found intelligence to be useful.

Four soldiers, out of uniform but obvious from the way their hair was cut short to fit beneath a helmet, sat at a table near the bar with a pimp and a woman. The pimp gave Samlor and the situation an appraising look. The woman eyed the caravan master blearily, because he happened to be standing where her eyes were more or less focused.

And the soldiers, after momentary alertness to the possibility of a brawl, resumed their negotiations regarding a price for the woman to go down on all four of them in the alley outside.

There were a dozen other people in the tavern, besides the slope-shoul dered tapster and the barmaid—the only other woman present—who slid between tables, too tired to slap at the hands that groped her and too
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jaded to care. The drinkers, solitary or in pairs, were nondescript though clothed within a fair range of wealth and national origin. They could be identified as criminals only because they chose to gather here.

"I don't need a dagger," said Samlor, releasing Star to free his left hand as his right lifted the wedge of his own belt knife a few inches up in its sheath. "I have my own."

There was nothing fancy about Samlor's weapon. The blade was a foot long with two straight edges. The metal had no ornamentation beyond the unsharpened relief cuts which would permit the user to short-grip the weapon with an index finger over the crosshilt. It was forged of a good grade of steel—though, again, nothing exceptional.

Recently, a few blades of Enlibar steel had appeared. These were forged from iron alloyed with a blue-green ore of copper which had been cursed by earth spirits, kobolds. The ore could be smelted only by magi cal means, and it was said to give an exceptional toughness to sword blades.

Samlor had been interested in the reports, but he'd survived as long as he had by sticking to what he was sure would work. He left the experi ments with kobold steel to others.

"You'll want this anyway," said the stranger, lifting his dagger by its
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crosshilt so that the pommel was toward Samlor.

Not a threat, only a man with something to sell, thought the Cirdonian

•s he sidled away from the stranger to get to the bar. Harmless, almost certainly—but Samlor moved to his left, guiding Star ahead of him so

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that his body was between her and the weapon that the other man in sisted on displaying. The fellow had sized up Samlor as he entered the Vulgar Unicorn, guessing his occupation from his appearance. A con man's trick, perhaps, but not an assassin's.

There was no reason to take chances.

"When are we going to sleep, uncle?" asked Star with a thin whine on the last syllables which meant she was really getting tired. That was understandable, but it meant she was likely to balk when she needed to obey-She might even call him "Uncle Samlor" despite having been warned that Samlor's real name would make both of them targets.
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Star was an unusual child, but she was a child nonetheless.

"Two mugs of blue John," said the Cirdonian, loudly enough for the tapster halfway down the bar to hear him. They already had the attention of the fellow, an athlete gone to fat but still powerful. He was balding, and his scars showed that he had been doing this work or work equally

rough for many years.

If something had cost him his left thumb during that time—he was still

the one walking around to tell the tale, wasn't he?

'7 want—" Star piped up

"And two beers to wash it down," Samlor said loudly, cutting her off. As his left hand reached down for his belt purse, he let it linger for a moment where Star's hood covered the whorl of white hair that was the source of her name. She quieted for the moment, though the touch was

gentle.

Star's mother had immersed herself in arts that had ultimately killed

her—or had led her to need to die. Her child had terrifying powers when
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necessity and circumstances combined to bring them out.

But Samlor hil Samt had no need of magic to frighten anyone who knew him as well as the child did. He would not cuff her across the room;

not here, not ever. His rage was as real as the rock glowing white in the bowels of a volcano. The Cirdonian's anger bubbled beneath -a crust of control that split only when he chose that it should, and he would never release its destruction on his kin, blood of his blood ... his seed.

Star was old enough to recognize the fury, and wise enough to avoid it even when she was fatigued. She patted her protector's hip.

The coin Samlor held between the middle and index finger of his left hand was physically small but minted from gold. It was an indication to the sharp-eyed tapster that his customer wanted more than drink, and a promise that he would pay well for the additional service. The man behind the bar nodded as he scooped clabbered milk from a stoneware

jug under the bar.

There was no drink more refreshing than blue John to a dusty traveler,

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tired and hungry but too dry to bolt solid food. It was a caravaner's drink

—and Samlor was a caravaner, obvious to anyone, even before he or dered. He shouldn't have been surprised at the way a stranger had ad dressed him.

Samlor wore a cloak, pinned up now to half-length as he would wear it for riding. When he slept or stood in a chili breeze, it could cover him head to toe. The fleece from which it was tightly woven had a natural blue-black color, but it had never been washed or dyed. Lanolin remain ing in the wool made the garment almost waterproof.

The tunic he wore beneath the cloak was wool also, but dyed a neutral russet color. Starting out before dawn on the caravan road, Samlor would wear as many as three similar tunics over this one, stripping them off and binding them to his saddle as the sun brightened dazzlingly on the high passes.

The bottom layer against his skin was of silk, the only luxury Samlor allowed himself or even desired while he was on the road.

He was a broad-shouldered, deep-chested man even without the added bulk of his cloak, but his wrists would have been thick on a man of half again his size. The skin of his hands and face was roughened by a thou sand storms whipping sand or ice crystals across the plains, and it was darkened to an angry red that mimicked the tan his Cirdonian genes did
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not have the pigment to support.

When Samlor smiled, as he did occasionally, the expression flitted across his face with the diffidence of a visitor sure he's knocking at the wrong address. When he barked orders, whether to men or beasts, his features stayed neutral and nothing but assurance rang in his chill, crisp tones.

When Samlor hil Samt was angry enough to kill, he spoke in soft, bantering tones. The muscles stretched across his cheekbones and pulled themselves into a visage very different from his normal appearance; a visage not altogether human.

He rarely became that angry; and he was not angry now, only cautious and in need of information before he could lead Star and her legacy out of this damnable city.

The clabbered milk was served in masars, wooden cups darkened by the sweaty palms of hundreds of previous users. As the tapster paused, midway between reaching for the coin now or drawing the beer first, Samlor said, "I'm trying to find a man in this town, and I'm hoping that you might be able to help me. Business, but not . . . serious business."

That was true, though neither the tapster nor any other man in this dive was likely to believe it.

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Not that they'd care, either, so long as they'd been paid in honest coin.

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"A regular?" asked the balding man softly as his hand did, after all, cover the gold which Samlor was not yet willing to release.

"I doubt it," said the Cirdonian with a false, fleeting smile. "His name's Setios. A businessman, perhaps, a banker, as like as not. Or just possibly, he might be, you know , . , someone who deals with magic. I was told he keeps a demon imprisoned in a crystal bottle."

You could never tell how mention of sorcery or a wizard was going to strike people. Some very tough men would blanch and draw away—or try to slit your throat so that they wouldn't have to listen to more.

The tapster only smiled and said, "Somebody may know him. I'll ask around." He turned. The coin disappeared into a pocket of his apron.

"Uncle, I don't like—'

"And the beers, friend," Samlor called in a slightly louder voice. There was little for a child to drink in a place like this. Star didn't have
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decades of caravan life behind her, the days when anything wet was better than the smile of a goddess-The beer was a better bet than what ever passed for wine, and either would be safer than the water.