Part 6 (1/2)
She withdrew the sword and stepped back. The razzer spun around to glare at her, then crouched to retrieve his puncheon. There was a sigh of displaced air or perhaps of rustling cloth, and a blue uniformed figure landed beside the guard.
Kat stared. A little. Well, she'd never seen a Kite Guard before. Certainly a step up from the razzers she was used to if this one was anything to go by. He was almost handsome in a clean-cut, well scrubbed sort of way. ”What are you doing here?” she asked.
”I was about to ask you the same thing,” he said. ”Some strange bodies have turned up, desiccated and withered, and there's been rumour of a dark creature haunting the nights, so we came to investigate.”
The Guard paying attention to petty murders? Would wonders never cease? ”They're more than just rumours, but that's not what I meant. What are you you, a Kite Guard, doing all the way down here in the City Below?”
He pursed his lips. ”Long story, but you might as well get used to it. You'll be seeing a lot more of us here before long.”
”Really? Have the disturbances finally persuaded someone up-City to pay attention to what goes on around here?”
”Something like that. Now, you still haven't explained who you are or what your business is...?”
”You're Tattooed Men, aren't you?” the razzer in the dun-coloured uniform said. If Kat had been staring at the Kite Guard, this one was gawping at M'gruth and Rel.
”Yes, laddie, we are,” M'gruth replied.
”I've heard of you but never...” His attention darted between M'gruth and Kat. ”Then you must be...”
”A Death Queen, yes,” she said, growing a little tired of such exclamations.
”Death Queen?” The Kite Guard looked alarmed.
”Hey, I didn't choose the name, others did. I just have to put up with it, all right?”
”Fine,” he said with a hint of a smile. ”Sorry.” He looked towards the Watch officer, and she wondered what the two of them would make of all this later. ”You still haven't explained your presence here, standing outside a shattered door,” he said, presumably in an attempt to rea.s.sert some authority.
”We're hunting the same thing you are. Inside you'll find a traumatised woman and what used to be her husband. We're aiming to track down and kill the monster responsible, the Soul Thief.”
The Watch officer sn.i.g.g.e.red. ”The Soul Thief?”
”Yes, and despite what you think you know she's no laughing matter.” In the face of her glare, the sn.i.g.g.e.ring stopped.
The Kite Guard looked thoughtful. ”If what you say is true, perhaps we should join forces and work together.”
Kat stared in astonishment. Had a razzer really just said that? The world was changing, no question about it. Still, if she were ever going to work with a razzer, she could do a lot worse than team up with this one. ”Maybe,” she said. ”But first you'd better check on what I said, hadn't you?” she nodded towards the open doorway. ”And we'd better get back on patrol.”
He looked as if he wanted to argue and insist they waited there, which could prove a little awkward, as Kat had no intention of doing anything of the sort, but in the end he simply nodded. ”All right then. See you around.”
”Yeah, you just might.”
As the three of them hurried away, M'gruth said to her, ”Chavver will be looking for a good explanation as to why we broke the patrol line, but being rousted by a Kite Guard ought to cover it.”
”Reckon so,” Kat agreed. ”Interesting times, hey, M'gruth? Interesting times.”
”Yeah. Aren't we the lucky ones?”
SEVEN.
At Dewar's urging they were up and about early, s.n.a.t.c.hing a hurried breakfast at the inn. Seth was so charming and helpful that Tom found himself regretting his suspicions of the previous evening, which he concluded were just the result of tiredness fuelled by Dewar's a.s.sertions. It all seemed so foolish after a night's untroubled sleep and Tom felt embarra.s.sed at giving such paranoia any credence whatsoever.
Their host was evidently untroubled by their early start and obvious haste, making sure they were well fed on hot oaty porridge with deep-golden honey on the side and great chunks of grainy, still-warm bread which smelt and tasted wonderful. Suitably fortified, they said their goodbyes and set about seeking pa.s.sage upriver.
Tom had been looking forward to visiting the wharves, yet it proved a vaguely unsettling experience. He'd lived much of his life in the shadow of somewhere similar the City Below's counterpart. The Blue Claw's territory ran from market square to docks, and pilfering goods from the warehouses around the latter had been regular practice. So he expected to feel wholly at ease here. In reality, Crosston's wharves proved a mix of the familiar and the strange, just as the Four Spoke Inn had been.
Even at this hour, the docks were busy. The hustle and bustle, the noise and underlying sense of organised activity that teetered on the verge of tipping over into complete chaos at any moment, were all things he recognised. As he watched, a huge crate was being lifted from a river barge similar to the one they'd arrived on; hoisted high in a web of ropes controlled by a crane a broadbased contraption of metal and wood that looked far too frail for the job but presumably wasn't, the whole controlled by a man in a raised cabin, his face creased in a frown of concentration as he wrestled with a series of long levers. Behind stood a team of four broad-shouldered oxen, which were harnessed to the mechanism and, in a manner Tom couldn't quite fathom, appeared to be providing much of the actual lifting power for the crane. A second man stood by the animals, directing them via clutched reins, a switch, and shouted commands. The system struck Tom as crude when compared to the great cogs and chains of Thaiburley's fully mechanised hoists.
Once lifted from the boat, crates were then loaded onto a series of horse-drawn carriages, one per cart, which stood in line awaiting their turn. And here was another major difference. Horses were virtually unknown in the City Below Tom had never even seen one before all such draught work being conducted by oxen. He found the great carthorses with their huge feathered feet s.h.i.+fting restlessly, tails twitching and breath snorting, oddly intimidating.
”What's the matter, boy?” Dewar asked.Tom shook his head. ”I don't know; this is all just so different.”
”What, missing the stench of rotten fish, sewage and stale smoke, are we?”
There was that, too, Tom had to admit.
The big barges didn't tend to venture any further than Crosston, though Tom was never entirely clear whether this was because the going became too shallow for their laden holds further upriver or it was for purely economic reasons, with this being where the Thair met the great trade road. Whatever the truth, their group was forced to seek pa.s.sage on smaller cargo vessels; something which was proving frustratingly difficult, much to Dewar's obvious annoyance.
”What's the matter with these brecking yokels?” he muttered at one point. ”Aren't they interested in earning some honest coin?”
Tom tried to hide his sense of satisfaction at seeing the man so agitated, sharing a smirk with Mildra when Dewar's back was turned.
Once or twice, Tom had the feeling that they might have found pa.s.sage were it not for Kohn's presence, but each time a captain hesitated as if in consideration, their gaze would flick to the Kayjele, lips would purse and then would come the familiar shake of the head.
In the s.p.a.ce of an hour they'd walked the length of the docks asking at every opportunity, but had failed to secure the berths they were after, and even Dewar was forced to admit that the river was closed to them for now.
Nor did the man have any more success when it came to buying horses a prospect which Tom was none too keen on in any case. For all that their self-appointed leader claimed he was primarily interested in beasts of burden to carry the group's provisions, Tom still was still far from disappointed when the dock master, whom they'd consulted on the subject, shook his head in a manner they were getting increasingly used to.
”But there must be a horse trader somewhere in a town of this size,” Dewar insisted.
”Used to be,” the bewhiskered local confirmed, knocking out his briar pipe against the stanchion of an idle crane. ”Beaman and Sons.” He then set about refilling the pipe from a small cloth bag, evidently paying their party only minimal attention. Dewar looked fit to explode. ”Shut up shop some three years gone,” the man continued, apparently oblivious to any impatience. ”Not enough demand, you see. Most folk who come to Crosston are just pa.s.sing through, and they tend to bring their own horses with them.”
”So what do the locals do when they want a horse? Buy them from pa.s.sing merchants?”
The dock master shrugged. ”Some might. Most'll find what they're looking for at the horse market.”
Dewar stared at the man with the sort of look that Tom hoped would never be directed towards him. ”You have a horse market.” The words emerged as cold as ice.
”Once a month, every month.”
”And the next one is...?”
”Oh, not for a good few days yet.”
”Of course it isn't,” Dewar muttered.