18

"Couldn't you feel the way those old graves pulled, Cashel?" Mellie said. She hugged herself and shivered melodramatically, though the smile she gave him was as bright as ever. "Ooh! As if they were trying to drag us in!"

"My skin prickled," Cashel said. "I figured I'd gotten some sun. Is the sun brighter on this side of the island, do you suppose? The air seems drier, that's a fact."

He sauntered down a narrow street whose merchants specialized in coarse leather goods: harness and tack for draft animals, vests and aprons for laborers; hinges and latch cords even in one small alcove. The proprietors sat in front of their shops, ready to help a customer or twitch the sleeve of a passerby; ready also to bar a light-fingered thief.

Some of the shopkeepers tried to stop Cashel; he ignored them, not by plan but because he was so fascinated by the quantities of similar merchandise all in the same location. He supposed that fine goods—rich folks' sandals and gloves; suede cutwork to net milady's hair—were in a separate street, perhaps a separate district. He walked on by, an ox treading slowly through tall grass and completely unaffected by its brushing contact.

The sprite laughed. "I forgot how strong you are," she said. "Well, it wasn't sunburn, it was that nasty tangle of forces there around the tombs. I haven't seen anything like that in a thousand years. The paths back to my plane closed in tangles like that."

"Well," Cashel said, "I didn't want to stay there anyway. Besides, if I was going to leave everything, I had to leave."

He walked with his quarterstaff held vertical and close to his body; occasionally it rapped a sign or the overhanging second floor of a building, but it was as much out of the way as he could manage. Walking in Carcosa was like pushing his way through a thicket after a ewe who'd let greed for ripening berries tangle her in the brambles.

"I've thought of going through an opening like that," Mellie said quietly, lacing her fingers in front of her and gazing at them as she bent them backward at arm's length. "Of course, it wouldn't really be through, just into. I could never find my way home, and there's too many things waiting at the edge of the path now. Better a cat, I think, when it comes to that."

She did a quick aerial somersault, then hopped forward onto her hands. "Or a fox!" she added as she grinned at Cashel upside down.

Mellie's nonchalance about her own death made Cashel uncomfortable. She wasn't careless of herself; but she didn't seem to care, either. Well, she had him now.

The street ahead was almost completely blocked by a deep-bellied box wagon. A gang of muscular men unloaded covered baskets from the wagon and passed them hand-to-hand into a building site where blocks of masonry were already stacked.

An architect in a striped robe watched the work with a critical frown, tapping the long wooden dividers that were the symbol of his office. Orange tunics and rattles for summoning help marked a pair of city marshals who shouted warnings to be careful; workmen grunted and ignored them.

Cashel sneezed. "Quicklime," he said. The builders were preparing to mix cement.

He looked up at the narrow gap of sky between upper stories encroaching from either side of the street. There were more clouds than he'd have wanted to trust not to rain and slake the lime in its baskets before it could be mixed. Folk in the city took risks because they were always in a hurry. Most folk were in more of a hurry than Cashel thought was safe, he knew.

"To make that lime they burned the pillars of a temple that was over a thousand years old," Mellie said. She rolled upright again. "Can you see how it shimmers with power?"

She giggled. "I wonder what kind of a building they're going to put up? I'll bet they get some surprises!"

Cashel watched the laborers a little longer. He could probably find work with the crew if he wanted to; they were strong men, but he could lift as much as any two of them. Still, he had money in his purse, more money than he'd ever dreamed of. And besides . . .

"It's not right to use a temple for cement," he muttered. He supposed it'd been in ruins like so much else of Carcosa. That didn't make it right.

Mellie dropped into a back-bend, touching her heels with her finger-tips. "Humans build and humans tear down," she said. "You folk live very fast."

Cashel waited for two porters carrying a handbarrow and a woman with a large wicker basket of washing to pass the obstruction going the other way. There was room beneath the builder's wagon to creep under, but quicklime seeped through the bottom planks; Cashel might have taken that route if he'd been alone, but not with the sprite on his shoulder.

Three men in dyed tunics tried to follow the washerwoman. They shouted for Cashel to wait. Cashel ignored them and they gave way.

"We're getting close to the harbor," Mellie said. She stuck her tongue out and waggled her fingers from her ears at a cat curled on a stack of canvas dungarees. The cat didn't get up, but its eyes followed Cashel and his passenger down the street. "There used to be dealers here who sold coral and amber and whale-tooth ivory. But that was a thousand years ago."

Even Cashel would have guessed they were in the harbor district. The shops were for the most part open-fronted, selling rugged clothing of the sort the trireme's crew had worn.

Midway in the block was a more substantial business with an outer grate of heavy bars and an inner one of fine-meshed wire to prohibit sneak thieves. The stock displayed was gold jewelry and bright silk sashes—sailors' goods again, but for show on land. Some of the stock was used; the proprietor probably acted as a pawnbroker as well.

Someone brushed Cashel from behind with a murmur he took for apology. He turned his head, saw a pair of willowy, dark-skinned men in brown robes. He stepped into an alcove selling wool caps and sweaters; the proprietor, an old woman knitting on a stool, barely raised her eyes to acknowledge him.

The two men—Cashel assumed they were men, though their bun of hair and long robes gave no real indication of sex—trotted past at just short of a run. Their faces were impassive but tense. More than a dozen rough-looking young townsmen followed them closely.

"Serians," Mellie said. "They live around the coast of an island far to the southeast. A different sort of folk live in the Highlands."

As Cashel watched with narrowing eyes, one of the toughs shouted "Go worship your devils someplace else, dirt!" and threw a stone. It bounced off a Serian's shoulder. The victim staggered and lengthened his stride. He and his fellow tried to duck into the fancy-goods shop. The potbellied shopkeeper slammed a grille across his doorway and stood behind it grinning.

The mob of toughs poured past Cashel, forming a semicircle around the trapped foreigners. Proprietors up and down the street dropped their shutters. The old woman continued to knit with an impassive expression.

A tough grabbed the hem of one long robe and pulled it up. The cloth shimmered in the light: it was fine silk brocade. Ilna would be interested. . . .

Cashel grimaced. "Mellie, hop off, there's a love," he said. He tapped the nearest tough on the shoulder and asked, "What's happening here, master?"

The man, a youth with a tattooed cheek and wiry muscles, turned and snarled, "Do I look like an oracle, sheep-dip? Get out of here or you'll find something you didn't want!"

He turned. Cashel turned him back with the hand that didn't hold his quarterstaff. "In Barca's Hamlet we answer strangers' questions politely," he said.

"Hey, boys, we got another!" the tough shouted as his hand flicked into the opposite sleeve and came out with a knife as Cashel had expected him to do.

Cashel hit him in the face with the fist wrapped around the quarterstaff, a short punch that would have stunned a draft horse. The lightly built tough flew into the mob of his fellows, giving Cashel the space he needed. The second stories were closer than the ground floors. Cashel turned sideways and spun the staff like a grindstone as he crab-walked through the locals.

A man's forearm snapped with a sharp crack; he screamed and the club fell from his fingers. Another tough dropped when the quarterstaff grazed his skull and broke his shoulder; he wouldn't thank his attacker when he awakened, but the blow would have killed him if Cashel hadn't deliberately altered the line of rotation.

A tough flung his knife blindly and ran, forcing his way past fellows who didn't yet know what was happening. The fine-goods shop had a wooden sign on a horizontal pole crossing the street. Cashel couldn't step under it with the staff still spinning, so he judged his distance and struck the pole near its base. Iron-shod hickory met pine with a whack that sent the heavy sign flying onto the remnants of the mob.

The toughs still able to run did so, leaving a trail of weapons behind. One man bled from a severe thigh wound that was none of Cashel's doing.

Rattles sounded from both ends of the street, but Cashel noticed that no city marshals entered until the last of the thugs had disappeared around a corner. He looked around him, panting like a blown horse.

Four locals were down, two of them groaning and one the yellow-white color of raw wool as he tried to get his breath. Cashel vaguely remembered kicking him in the pit of the stomach; a lifetime's calluses from rocky soil had done a job hobnailed boots couldn't have bettered.

"Ooh, you were great!" Mellie cried from his shoulder, clapping her hands in glee. She'd ignored his order to get down. "Of course, I knew you would be."

The orange-clad marshals approached gingerly. Both officers were in their late fifties. One gripped the truncheon that was his only weapon, but the other had better sense. Cashel supposed he could run, but he wasn't going to. He'd done what he'd done; he'd take the consequences of it.

The Serians stepped out of the alcove that had become a trap instead of a refuge. One of them bowed to the marshals and said, "Pardon, sirs, but I don't think there's any business here for you."

"When I want to hear dirt's opinion on—" a marshal said. His eyes focused on the Serian's outstretched hand. "Ah?"

The Serian turned his hand palm-up and opened his fingers. Two silver coins winked on the swarthy skin.

The other marshal said in a worried tone—worry at losing the bribe, Cashel was sure, "Look, there's been damage. . . . Them don't matter—"

He toed a groaning tough.

"—but . . ."

"I seen it all," the old woman knitting said unexpectedly. "The sign blew down in the dumdest whirlwind I ever seen."

She grinned toothlessly at the marshals. "If I was you fellows, I'd take my money and get out afore you meet another of them winds."

Cashel had his breath back, or near enough. He picked up the sign and carried it to the door alcove. The fat proprietor watched through the grate, no longer smiling.

Cashel leaned the sign against the shopfront. "Do you have a problem with anything that's happened here?" he asked in his usual calm, slow voice.

The proprietor stared at the quarterstaff. Blood from a tough's torn scalp was crawling down the shaft and had almost reached Cashel's hand. Instead of answering, the man slammed the solid door panel closed behind the grating.

The first marshal shrugged. "Accidents happen," he said. He took the coins from the Serian's palm and flipped one to his partner. The marshals walked back in the directions from which they'd come.

The Serians talked in low voices. Their heads were together but their eyes followed Cashel. He returned to the knitwear stall and said, "Mistress? Thank you. Could I do something . . ." He didn't know if he ought to offer her money or what.

The old woman cackled. "Oh," she said, "if I was thirty years younger, laddie, there'd be something you could do for me all right. Nowadays I'll take it as pleasure enough to have seen you move."

She looked past him toward the Serians, who now waited with their fingers tented for Cashel to finish. Her hands continued to knit with the detached constancy of a brook purling.

"Besides," she said in a gentler tone, "I used to live with a Serian more years ago than I care to remember. He was a devil worshipper, right enough, but he never beat me—which is more than I could say about certain Haft gentlemen who never missed a midweek sacrifice. Now, you go on before I decide I'm maybe not too old for you after all!"

Cashel turned and faced the Serians. They nodded to him; one pointed toward the end of the street and said, "Sir? Might we speak to you in other surroundings, please? There's a park of sorts this way."

Shop shutters were beginning to open. One of the toughs looked ready to stand up, though Cashel doubted he'd be much threat to anyone for a while. "All right, masters," he said.

Cashel walked between the Serians to the head of the block, where a pipe-fed fountain in the center of a cobblestone square provided water for the surrounding streets. A marble trumpeter with his horn raised vertically to his lips stood in the center of the basin; water bubbled from the bell. The open sky was a relief after so many narrow streets.

"My name is Frasa," the first Serian said; he bowed. Cashel couldn't have told the two apart with any degree of certainty. They looked like identical masks carved from a block of mahogany.

"And I am Jen," said the other, bowing in turn. "We would like to hire you, sir. We will pay more than your present employer."

"Ah," said Cashel. He wondered if he ought to bow. "I'm Cashel or-Kenset. Ah, I'm a shepherd."

"Shepherd!" Mellie giggled from his shoulder.

"We are merchants, Master Cashel," Frasa said. "We have a cargo here in Carcosa. You have noticed that passions are running high against members of our religion. Perhaps you share those passions?"

"I never met a Serian before just now," Cashel said uncomfortably. "If you want to worship devils, I guess that's your business."

Jen blinked, then broke out with a startled guffaw—the first sign of emotion Cashel had seen from the still-faced pair.

"We don't think of what we do as worshipping devils, Master Cashel," Frasa said, "but as you imply, that's neither here nor there. We need a shepherd of sorts; a strong man to shepherd us through the dangers of a hostile city until we can sell our cargo."

"Our faith prevents us from harming another human being, sir," Jen said. "What another person does on our behalf is between him and his gods, however, and we pay well. Highlanders from the interior of Seres protect our ships from pirates, but it wouldn't be practical to bring them out of the compound with us."

"They're cannibals who file their teeth," Mellie said, caressing the lobe of Cashel's right ear. "Some of them can see my people. They eat us, too."

Cashel found listening to three people at the same time meant he didn't understand what any of them were saying. He heard the words; he just couldn't connect them in his mind with anything real. "Look," he said. "You need guards. I'm just . . ."

He glanced back toward the street of clothiers, feeling embarrassed. "Look," he repeated, "I don't want you to think I do this a lot. I just, well . . ."

He couldn't not have acted, any more than he would've let seawolves ravage somebody else's flock. He didn't know how to explain that. Back home, of course, he wouldn't have had to explain, because everybody felt the same way.

About sheep, at least. Maybe not about wooden-faced strangers.

"We're aware that we could hire professional men of violence," Frasa said. "Though perhaps not easily, given the way Count Lascarg is using"—he smiled coldly—"devil worshippers as a scapegoat for social turmoils. In any case, we would prefer to contract with a person whose first concern was justice rather than money. Though we'll willingly pay your price—say, three Haft silver pieces a day?"

"Four," said Jen decisively. "We couldn't hire any two men to do what we were privileged to watch Master Cashel do just now. And of course, we'll pay you for today, sir, whatever your decision as to further employment."

Cashel tried to imagine that kind of money, counting on his fingers. Ilna would be thrilled—

Ilna wouldn't know. He might never see his sister again.

He cocked his head to look at Mellie. The sprite went up on tiptoe, joining her fingers above her head as if she was preparing to dive from his shoulder.

"Oh, don't worry about me, Cashel," she said with a grin. She was too perfectly beautiful to be real; and of course she wasn't real in the human sense. "Highlanders don't bother me. Rats are much worse, and if there's Highlanders there aren't any rats—"

She did a handstand, placing her fingertips exactly where her toes had been a moment before.

"—unless the Highlanders are fed really well."

The Serians waited. Cashel shrugged and said, "Well, I guess we can try it for a while."

He stuck out his right hand to seal the bargain. Jen and Frasa bowed instead, and Frasa took a well-filled purse from beneath his robe.

The stone trumpeter blew joyous ripples in the sunlight.