Part 5 (1/2)

Suddenly he realized he was out of the Desert, near the Sign of the Bull Dancer, on the Street of the Silver Fish. A tree-lined sward of gra.s.s ran down the center of the broad avenue. Slave-borne sedan chairs vied in number with pedestrians, and there was not a beggar in sight.

This place was far from the Desert, yet he had friends-or at least acquaintances-here. The tavern h.o.a.rding, a slender youth in a leathern girdle, vaulting between the needle horns of a great black bull, creaked in the breeze as he went in.

Taverns, Conan reflected as he searched for a certain face, were much alike, in the Desert or out. Rather than footpads and cutpurses, plump merchants in purple silk and green brocade occupied the tables, but only the methods of stealing were different. In place of a coiner was a slender man holding a pomander before his prominent nose. He did not make the money he pa.s.sed, rather buying it through the back door of the king's mint. The panderers dressed like n.o.blemen, in scarlet robes, with emeralds at their ears, and some of them were indeed n.o.blemen, but they were panderers no less. The prost.i.tutes wore gold instead of gilt, rubies instead of spessartine, but they were just as naked, and they sold the same wares.

Conan spotted the man he wanted, Ampartes, a merchant who cared little if the king's duties had been paid on the goods he bought, alone at a table against the wall. Whatever happened in Shadizar, Ampartes soon knew of it. The chair across the table from the plump merchant groaned in protest as Conan's bulk dropped into it, a sound not far from that which rose in Ampartes' throat. His oily cheek twitched as his dark eyes rolled to see who had noted the Cimmerian's arrival. He tugged at his short, pointed beard with a beringed hand.

”What are you doing here, Conan?” he hissed, and blanched as if in fear the name might have been overheard. ”I have no need of... of your particular wares.”

”But I have need of yours. Tell me of what happened in the city last night.”

Ampartes' voice rose to a squeak.

”You... you mean the palace?”

”No,” Conan said, and hid a smile at the relief on the merchant's face.

He grabbed a pewter goblet from the tray of a pa.s.sing serving girl, a hand's breadth strip of crimson silk low on her hips her only garb, and filled it from Ampartes' blue-glazed flagon. The girl gave him a coy smile, then turned her blonde head with a snort and hurried on sulkily when he did not give her a second glance. ”But anything else unusual.

Anything at all.”

For the next two hours the merchant babbled in his relief that Conan was not involving him in the palace theft. Conan learned that on the night before in Shadizar a dealer in rare wines had strangled his mistress on discovering her with his son, and a gem merchant's wife had put a dagger in her husband's ribs for no reason that anyone knew. A n.o.bleman's niece had been taken by kidnappers, but those who knew said her ransom, to come from her inheritance, would pay her uncle's debts.

Thieves had entered the homes of five merchants and two n.o.bles. One n.o.ble had had even his sedan chair and the robes from his back taken on the High Vorlusian Way, and a slave dealer's weasand had been slit outside his own auction house, some said for the keys to his strongbox, others for not checking the source of his merchandise, thus selling an abducted n.o.blewoman into Koth. A merchant of Akif, visiting a most specialized brothel called The House of the Lambs of Hebra, had ....

”Enough!” Conan's hand cracked on the tabletop. Ampartes stared at him open-mouthed. ”What you've told me so far could happen on any night in Shadizar, and usually does. What occurred out of the ordinary? It doesn't have to do with gold, or theft. Just so it's strange.”

”I don't understand what you want,” the oily man muttered. ”There's the matter of the pilgrims, but there's no profit there. I don't know why I waste my time with you.”

”Pilgrims?” Conan said sharply. ”What was unusual about these pilgrims?”

”In Mitra's name, why would you want to know about....” Ampartes swallowed as Conan's steel blue eyes locked his. ”Oh, very well. They were from Argos, far to the west, making a pilgrimage to a shrine in Vendhya, as far to the east.”

”I need no lessons in geography,” Conan growled. ”I've heard of these lands. What did these pilgrims do that was out of the ordinary?”

”They left the city two full gla.s.ses before c.o.c.k crow, that's what.

Something about a vow not to be inside a city's walls at dawn, I understand. Now where's your profit in that?”

”Just you tell me what I want to hear, and let me worry about profit.

What sort of men were these pilgrims?”

Ampartes threw him an exasperated look. ”Zandru's Bells, man! Do you expect me to know more about a mere band of pilgrims than that they exist?”

”I expect,” Conan said drily, ”that on any given day you'll know which n.o.bles lost how much at dice, who slept with whose wife, and how many times the king sneezed. The pilgrims? Rack your brains, Ampartes.”

”I don't....” The plump merchant grunted as Conan lay his left arm on the table. The forearm sheath was empty, and the Cimmerian's right hand was below the table's edge. ”They were pilgrims. What more is there to say? Hooded men in coa.r.s.e robes that showed not a hair of them. No better or worse mounted than most pilgrims. The bodies of five of their number who'd died on the way were packed in casks of wine on camels.

Seems they'd made another vow, that all who started the pilgrimage would reach the shrine. Mitra, Conan, who can say much of pilgrims?”

Five bodies, Conan thought. Five dancing girls. ”There were fighting men with these pilgrims? Armed men?”

Ampartes shook his head. ”Not so much as a dagger in evidence, is what I heard. They told the sergeant at the Gate of the Three Swords that the spirit of their G.o.d would protect them. He said a good sword would do a better job, and wearing a soldier's boots wasn't enough.”

”What about a soldier's boots?”