51

Dojango waited until afternoon to return. His report was exactly what I wanted to hear. Nobody in Full Harbor was the least interested in a band of nosies from TunFaire. Nothing unusual had taken place while we were away. All the talk was about Glory Mooncalled and the epic dust-up taking shape down south. Our things were still at the inn, being preserved by an innkeeper who felt kindly disposed because we had left him the clothing and possessions of those thugs we’d thrown into the streets mother-naked.

“Or so he says,” Dojango editorialized. “Actually.”

“We’ll watch him. Let’s get it packed up. I want to hit that tunnel as soon after dark as we can. Did you make the other arrangements?”

“No trouble. They’ll be delivered to the back door of the inn. They should be waiting when we get there.”

“What about shipping complications?”

“Shouldn’t be any, actually. It’s done all the time. Every ship headed north carries a few for families that can afford it. Strictly routine, actually.”

“Good. Morley. One problem left, and tonight would be the time for it to make itself apparent.” We wandered away from the others slowly, keeping our backs toward them.

“You have any candidate in mind?” he asked.

“Pressed, I’d have to call Vasco’s name. But he’s the only one I know well enough to know he’s not acting normal. And he’s got good enough reasons.”

“You have a move in mind? A test?”

“Right after we come out of the tunnel. I want Dojango, Marsha, and Saucerhead to go through first. You and me and Doris will bring up the rear. If we load the rest down with what has to be carried, they’ll be surrounded and have their hands full when it happens.”

“You could go to work for the kingpin, scheming like that.”

“I’ve got to bring it off before it’s any good. This isn’t some stupid kid we can pluck like some ripe pear. He’s going to have moves and plans of his own.”

“We wouldn’t have it any other way, would we?”

We ventured back. During the afternoon’s course we passed the word on the night’s festivities. Though some were not pleased with my dispositions, they were all realistic enough to understand that I would put people I trusted most where they would do the most good.

That was the disposition we assumed when we broke camp, except for having the grolls take turns pulling the wagon. I told Saucerhead he could ride until we neared the wall, but he insisted that he had healed enough to hike. Vasco and the wounded soldier also hoofed it, saying they wanted to keep loose. Morley and I trudged along eating everybody’s dust.

A time or two I moved up to make sure Kayean’s wrappings were holding. After the second check I dropped back and said, “I’ve noticed you haven’t done anything to keep your prize from starving.”

Kayean threw up almost everything I gave her. When I unwrapped her, I had to make certain her hands and feet were bound. I had clipped her claws first chance after we had come out of the nest. She still had her teeth and the hunger was upon her, though when she was rational she was game enough in battling the disease.

“You also notice he’s gone into the long sleep that gets them when they’re starving. He’ll last till we make TunFaire. And that’s all I need.”

Much as I disliked the deed itself, I now suspected that Morley had done the best thing by killing Clement. Clement’s death had freed Kayean.

Without a word having been exchanged I somehow understood that she had marched through the doorway to hell only because that was the pathway her husband had taken and she was a wither-thou-goest kind of lady. For his part, I think Clement made his move sixty percent out of conscience and remorse, forty percent out of spite. Kayean wasn’t wearing white because she was his bride. One of the masters had taken her from him.

I hoped she hadn’t been forced to bear one of their soulless brats. I didn’t believe any woman could recover from that.

It all went perfectly, with rescuees carrying our prizes into the tunnel. It was spacious enough for the wagon, but I didn’t want to be found roaming the streets with army property I couldn’t explain having. We could hire something on the other side.

Morley and I were fifty feet from the tunnel’s end, with Doris behind us, when it happened.

Up ahead Marsha started booming his lungs out.

“Damn it!” Morley swore. He translated, “Ambush. Nine men, one woman. Striped-sail bunch. They must have made Dojango while he was in town.”

“I wanted to hold on to this forever,” I said, dipping into a boot. “Grab on to me. Tell Doris, too.”

Beyond the tunnel’s end Rose started yelling. “Garrett! Help! Morley!”

Morley muttered, “Shut up, you stupid bitch.”

“Stupid? She figures she just solved her whole problem for nothing.”

Rose’s yelling stopped with a smack so loud we heard it back in the tunnel.

“Against the wall,” I said. They held onto me. I ripped the paper spell open. Two seconds later four guys with swords galloped into the tunnel, ready for anything. They looked around and didn’t find it.

One yelled, “Ain’t nothing in here.”

I didn’t hear the reply. They withdrew.

“What now?” Morley breathed.

“As long as we move slowly and don’t make any noise or any sudden moves, they won’t see us or know where we are. We’ll slide out and see what’s going on.”

What was going on was that the two thugs I knew from the striped-sail ship, with a woman who appeared to be in charge, and seven other men, had my folks lined up against a wall in the storage basement where the tunnel began. Marsha they kept contained with a ballista almost as heavy as a field piece.

In half a minute their questions made it obvious they were after a specific person, but didn’t mind trampling a few others along the way. My folks just looked at them, baffled, except Rose, who put on a great crying act. I gathered that Tinnie’s was the hand that had reddened her cheek.

“Well?” Morley whispered. “We can take them if Doris gets that ballista.”

“We don’t need any blood in it. We’ll bluff. You go over there and yell for everybody to freeze when Doris busts up the ballista. I’ll put a knife to the lady’s throat. Take these.” I gave him a couple of throwing stars from my collection of un-Garrett-like weapons.

He needed no further explanation. He told Doris what to do. We parted. I drifted toward the lady commander, no doubt the woman about whom Master Arbanos had been so dubious. Dojango had begun yammering at her, explaining that everyone else in the several parties that had gone out of the city had been killed by unicorns or vampires.

“What the hell was that?” asked one of the men at the ballista, whirling around. “Skipper, is this place haunted?”

A ballista went up in the air and shattered against the joists supporting the floor above.

Morley yelled, “Everybody freeze!”

I laid the edge of my knife on the woman’s throat and whispered, “This is your friendly spook. Don’t even breathe fast. Good. Now, I suggest you have your boys put down their tools.”

Doris pounded three or four men out of sheer youthful exuberance. Morley tripped and head-kicked Ugly One when he took a notion to turn on me.

The lady gave the order. And added, “You’re interfering with royal business. I’ll have your—”

“Not at all. I have a damned good idea what you’re looking for and I’ll be happy to help you find it. I just don’t want my people getting chewed up while you’re getting your man. Do you have some way to pick him out of a crowd?”

“Pick who out?” Oh, she wanted to play coy.

“Are you the only person ever born with a brain? This is your stalking horse talking. I figured your crowd out a month ago,” I lied. I backed her up a careful five steps and in plain voice vented the moment’s inspiration. “I also figured out that Big One there is on the other side. He tried to kill me in Leifmold, which would have just ruined your whole scheme.”

Big One started moving toward the nearest weapon.

Two throwing stars hit him, followed in an instant by a grollish fist.

The woman said, “That explains one hell of a lot. I thought we were snakebit. All right. What do you want, Garrett?”

“For me and mine to be left the hell alone. Take your man if you can pick him out. I’m all for that because I don’t like what he’s got planned for me. Hell. I’ll narrow it down for you. I’ve been working on it. I know who he’s not. If he’s anybody. He could have been killed out there. A lot of men were.”

I gave orders. The women, Saucerhead, Dojango, and Marsha, the latter three lugging Kayean and Valentine, moved to one side. I said, “Do your shopping among what’s left.”

“Will you let me go?”

“Why not? You don’t seem to be a suicidal lady.”

“You’re going to find out if you call me lady one more time.”

Morley snickered. “You’ve made a friend for life, Garrett.”

What she had to say to him does not bear repetition. She asked me, “What’s in those bundles?”

“What I came after.” I turned her loose.

Morley was flickering around the edges because of too many hasty movements. So was Doris. I had stayed slow, though, so I figured I was still good. I tiptoed after the woman who was not a lady.

She examined the crop, dipped a hand into a pocket, brought out an amulet built around a piece of amber with an insect embedded.

Spiney Prevallet went from somnolent indifference to explosive fury so suddenly I would have been astounded if I’d had time. He knocked the amulet away with one hand and seized the woman’s throat with the other.

I pricked the wrist of that hand with my knife, sliced his cheek, then got back out of the way because that—pardon the expression—lady was going to work.

I found a part of me glad the villain had not been Vasco.

Spiney ran for it. The woman snagged her amulet and raced after him. Her minions—those still upright—did nothing because they weren’t sure what we would let them do.

“Fade,” Morley suggested.

“Yes.”

Dojango was many things, some of them things I didn’t like, but he was not stupid. The moment he saw some folks preoccupied, he started getting other people out of there.

Spiney tried for the exit himself and ran head-on into a grollish fist. The woman jumped him immediately, forced the amulet into his mouth while he was still groggy.

He began to change.

I have heard that a shapeshifter has no true shape of its own. That it does not even have a sex as we know it, but just splits into unequal masses when it comes time to reproduce. I don’t know.

Spiney changed into the major, then into a character who looked vaguely piratical, then into a woman vaguely familiar, apparently regressing through identities assumed in the past.

Everyone else was out. I wasn’t curious enough to stay and see the ultimate form the Venageti agent assumed. I had no reason to presume any excess of good will on the part of the striped-sail people.