Part 5 (1/2)

Sixty days, she'd said to Rokka at the customhouse just a day ago. Sixty days before we can return with untainted goods. Sixty days before we can return with untainted goods. The threat led Rokka to accept the unsealed amphorae. But did that, in turn, mean the druids would return sooner, or later? The threat led Rokka to accept the unsealed amphorae. But did that, in turn, mean the druids would return sooner, or later?

Pavek hoped it meant sooner. Sa.s.sel's coins wouldn't last sixty days. He scratched his chin, feeling the stubble of a coa.r.s.e, black beard. Low-rank templars went clean-shaven; high-rank ones wore their hair as they chose. The daily confrontation with rasp and razor was a ritual Pavek would not miss. In a few days no templar would recognize him, not even Rokka... or Bukke.

If Pavek was smart, he said to himself, he'd hire himself out as a day-laborer at the western gate. He knew the gate drill as well as any templar knew a workman's task, he'd see the druids when they returned, and the pay was five bits a day-three after he paid off the regulators and inspectors-but more than enough to keep a man from starving.

Sa.s.sel's coins would last until he was healthy enough to work. The wounds weren't that serious. He flexed his left arm to prove the point to himself, but regretted it. Shooting pain radiated from the joint, which had become bright red and was warm to the touch. He chided himself for sitting too long in the hot sun.

But Pavek's misery owed nothing to the sun. During the next two weeks, while his other injuries healed, his elbow swelled to twice its normal size. The swollen flesh darkened to angry shades of red and purple, shot with oozing streaks of yellow-like the northern sky when acrid dust blew down from the Smoking Crown volcano. Sometimes his arm below the elbow was numb, but mostly it seemed that a colony of fire ants had burrowed under his skin.

The joint itself was exquisitely tender. One night Pavek scavenged a sc.r.a.p of cloth from the market plaza. He bound his arm in a crude sling and continued to hope for the best.

Wage-labor of any sort was out of the question until the injury healed. Pavek grew gaunt from fever and denial; Sa.s.sel's purse grew even thinner. Examining the ugly wound by the cool light of morning-after a night in which the throbbing had never subsided enough for him to sleep-he realized the time had come for desperate measures. If he didn't find a cheap healer, he'd be dead of blood poisoning long before he starved.

He began his search with his former colleagues. Templar life had its own predictable dangers. Each bureau maintained a cadre of healers, any one of whom could have purged the poisons from his wound. They were well-paid for their work, but no templar was above a little side profit. Pavek got as far as the inner gate to the administrative quarter where the templarate bureaus maintained their red-and-yellow edifices.

Then he saw a templar wearing an enameled mask and the mostly-black robe of necromancy striding across the paved courtyard. With the distance, Pavek couldn't tell if it was Escrissar or not, but the risk of exposure had suddenly become greater than the pain warranted.

Pavek headed for the daily market where he spent a whole silver piece on a packet of Ral's Breath powder that shouldn't have cost more than two ceramic bits. Mixed with water, it barely numbed his tongue and did nothing at all for the throbbing in his elbow.

With grim irony Pavek recalled the moment in Metica's office when she marveled about complaints. If he hadn't been a fugitive he would have complained himself: there was a city seal on every packet of Ral's Breath vouching for its purity. Urik had survived for over a thousand years because its seal meant as much as its army and king.

When that seal was worthless, someone, somewhere should care.

A naked-sleeved messenger jostled Pavek while he pondered the decline of his city. Out of sheer habit, he started to upbraid the youth, but the pain soared to new heights, and he slumped against the wall instead. The boy grimaced, eyeing Pavek's sling and suppurating wound. Planting himself unsteadily over his feet, Pavek raised his fists and had new, unwelcome insights about the behavior of mortally wounded animals in the gladiatorial arenas: movement was agony, maybe death, but he'd take that messenger with him, if it was the last thing he did.

”That wants healing, unless you're looking to die,” the boy said in a matter-of-fact, almost friendly tone. ”You'll pay a fortune if one of our healers looks at it, but there's an old dwarf-woman in the northwest corner of the elven market. She's a little crazy-calls on ancient seas for her power-but she's cheap, and reliable.” He dug beneath his robe-it was so new the pleats weren't frayed-and produced an unchipped four-bit ceramic piece, which he laid atop Pavek's trembling fist before walking away.

Gasping with astonishment, he nearly dropped the coin. What was happening to his city? Had he sunk so low that a messenger messenger was offering him advice and charity? Had he ever, in his messenger days, offered four precious bits to the rabble? He couldn't answer his first question and didn't want to answer his second, but the answer to the last was no, although he'd given as much and more to Dovanne. was offering him advice and charity? Had he ever, in his messenger days, offered four precious bits to the rabble? He couldn't answer his first question and didn't want to answer his second, but the answer to the last was no, although he'd given as much and more to Dovanne.

The boy messenger disappeared into the maw of the war bureau. He'd have to harden if he wanted to wear that yellow' robe and survive, just as he and Dovanne had hardened. Pavek pushed the coin into Sa.s.sel's purse and headed for the elven market. A cheap healer, even a crazy dwarf, sounded as good as he was likely to get.

Pavek found the healer right where the messenger predicted. She was the oldest dwarf he'd ever seen, sitting cross-legged on a sc.r.a.p of cloth that might once have been green. A begging bowl half-filled with water and a few dirty coins balanced on her ankles while she chanted eyes-closed prayers to forgotten oceans.

She looked up when Pavek's shadow blocked the sun. One eye was clouded with a cataract, the other was a radiant blue, as clear as the day she was born. She a.s.sessed his elbow with a single glance and named her price: one silver piece.

It was cheap; and it was Sa.s.sel's last silver piece. Pavek squatted down to put it in her bowl, inadvertently giving her a close look at his face.

With a hiss and a scowl, she put her hand over the bowl before he could dunk the coin and rose to her feet with commendable agility for one so ancient. She rolled up her mat and led Pavek around a corner.

No word was said until they entered a cramped lean-to behind an active forge. The air s.h.i.+mmered with the heat. Pavek was grateful when she pointed to a tripod stool.

”You are the one they call Pavek the Murderer? The one for whom they're offering ten gold coins?” she demanded, looking down on him with her good eye.

He could imagine how far ten gold coins could go in this benighted quarter of Urik, but he, himself, had gone too far for lies. ”I'm no murderer,” he answered, not denying his name and morbidly eager to know how she'd recognized him.

”You are a marked man with powerful enemies, Pavek. Very Very powerful enemies. They have visited every healer in the city. Even me. Even poor Josa who wors.h.i.+ps what's been lost. They told Josa to watch for a man with gouges on his cheek. They promised Josa she would share your fate if she made you whole again.” powerful enemies. They have visited every healer in the city. Even me. Even poor Josa who wors.h.i.+ps what's been lost. They told Josa to watch for a man with gouges on his cheek. They promised Josa she would share your fate if she made you whole again.”

Pavek had a raw instinct for enemies, a rudimentary mind-bending talent that the old and undoubtedly crazy healer did not arouse. Though the instinct had failed him before, most notably with Dovanne, he trusted it with the dwarven crone. ”I have enemies because I saw things done in the templarate that our king would not tolerate. I saw Laq-”

The healer cut Pavek off with a wave of her hand. ”Whatever you saw, whatever you think-it is of no concern to Josa. I will not turn you over to your enemies. No healer will. Think what you will of that, that, Pavek the Murderer: Wonder why, and be grateful. But I dare not make you whole.” Pavek the Murderer: Wonder why, and be grateful. But I dare not make you whole.”

”I'm not asking you to treat what Ela-”

Josa silenced him again, this time with a whiff of spellcasting. ”It is of no concern to me. It can be of no concern. Your enemy who marked your face marked you well. I cannot heal a mere part of you. He will sense any spellcraft wrought on you within the city walls. He will sense Josa.”

Pavek could name no spell that produced the effect Josa described, but he did not disbelieve her on that account. The archives existed because magic was an evolving art. Escrissar, a mind-bender as well as a master of necromancy, might have spelled something new. Or that halfling alchemist might have coated his master's fas.h.i.+onable talons with yet another nefarious solution.

”Outside the city walls then? I've got to find a healer. Does your order practice outside the walls? Is there someone you can recommend in the villages?”

”There is Josa, and Josa only.” The crone seized Pavek's right hand and held it palm upright. ”You will not leave the city,” she said with deliberate air of prophecy. ”You have been marked, like Josa. You will stand alone against your enemies.” She twisted his wrist expertly, propelling the much larger man toward the gap in the wall that served as a door.

”I need need help,” Pavek protested, petulant and desperate. help,” Pavek protested, petulant and desperate.

”Buy Ral's Breath; your enemies have not visited the apothecaries. Make a paste of it and smear it over the wound.”

The mere thought made Pavek cringe. ”Ral's Breath is useless,” he sputtered, but her spellcraft still hung in the air and though he thought of Laq, the word did not find its way to his lips.

”Take your coin to Nekkinrod the apothecary. His stock is old; it will serve. Ask the smith, he'll point the way. Tell him Josa is wise.”

Josa released Pavek's hand, and he stumbled back into the light. The smith, another dwarf, looked daggers at him when he asked the way to Nekkinrod's, but his tongue loosened when he added Josa's name and wisdom. Pavek followed a centuries-old dirt path through the core of the elven market, where no templar went alone, until he came face-to-face with an apothecaries's paste-board. Nekkinrod was at least as old as Josa and wreathed in the fumes of cheap rice wine. He took Pavek's silver piece in exchange for a Ral's Bream packet that was dingy with dust In the day's second unexpected burst of charity, Nekkinrod offered water from his own cistern for the paste and, figuring that he was as safe in the middle of the elven market as he'd be anywhere else in the city, Pavek accepted.

He tasted a few grains of the bright yellow powder. They were breathtakingly bitter and numbed his tongue to its root. Slathering the paste over his elbow was every bit as painful as he'd feared, but the joint deadened almost at once.

”It works! It's going to be all right,” he sighed and allowed himself a glimmer of hope.

”One won't be enough. Not for that. Three more,” the drunken elf insisted, holding up four ringers.

Pavek's heart sank. With the messenger's charity and every ceramic chip left in Sa.s.sel's purse, he couldn't buy another packet. ”Credit? I'll pay you when I can work again.”

The elf doubled with laughter, reeling and staggering through his stock in the process. A roof board collapsed, revealing rust-colored sky. Between Josa and Nekkinrod, Pavek had lost the entire afternoon in the elven market. The palace bell would ring soon, signalling the moment when the gates closed. He hadn't eaten yet and the breadth of Urik lay between him and the squatters' quarter where his moonlit silhouette was no longer so intimidating.

”If I come back tomorrow with silver, do you have have four packets of Ral's Breath? four packets of Ral's Breath? Old Old packets like the one I just bought.” packets like the one I just bought.”

Nekkinrod caught his breath with a rheumy cough. ”Four times four, and all as old as you,” he said before succ.u.mbing to another gale of laughter.

Pavek didn't wait for a more coherent answer. He bought a loaf of bread before leaving the elven market. It was slaves' bread, more sand than flour, and crunched loudly as he chewed; no wonder slaves were toothless by the time they were thirty-if they lived that long.

If he he lived that long. lived that long.

His elbow tingled as the astringent Ral's Breath did its work, leaching the poisons from his blood. It was a start, but not a healing, and the poultice would only make the infection worse if he didn't scrounge up four silver pieces. Scrounge.

Pavek shook his head ruefully. There was no way he'd scrounge scrounge four silver pieces; he'd have to steal them-one-armed and seedy with fever. His chances were nil and none, but he blended into the foot traffic milling toward the gates, hoping to target a prosperous, careless farmer returning home after a successful market day. four silver pieces; he'd have to steal them-one-armed and seedy with fever. His chances were nil and none, but he blended into the foot traffic milling toward the gates, hoping to target a prosperous, careless farmer returning home after a successful market day.

But mekillots would fly before prosperity and carelessness were linked on the streets of Urik. He reached the southern gate as poor as he'd been in the market.

At least the regulators and inspectors on duty at the gate didn't recognize him.