Song of Time

6

"Og, slow down," Cheyne said panting, catching him by the tattered sleeve. "Here's a bootery."

"I really want the drink first."

"But the bootery is right here. Let's go." Cheyne turned in to the open stall, its well-tanned wares hung from poles that surrounded the owner, who was almost finished cobbling a sole back onto an impatient customer's boot. Cheyne looked around while the man finished, collected his fee, and came to help them.

Every tap of the hammer caused Og's head to pound like the drums of Caelus Nin on the first night of Thanatas. By the time the bootmaker had stopped, Og could hardly see which pair of boots Cheyne handed him, let alone find his feet. He shook his head as if to refuse their style.

The bootmaker nodded as Cheyne found another pair, but when set beside Og's foot, they were plainly far too small. Smiling widely, the bootmaker found them in the right size, but Cheyne grimaced when he held them up. The flourishes that had looked appropriate on the smaller pair suddenly became hideous on the larger one.

Til give you these for twelve kohli. They were ordered by a Fascini who would not believe me when I told him how tasteless the design would become in his extreme size. They have hung uselessly in my shop for two years."

"Not good big." Og frowned, but he tried them on anyway. "Of course, they fit." He grimaced.

"Ten kohli," said Cheyne.

"Deal," said the bootseller.

"He would have taken five," Og wheedled.

Cheyne handed the cobbler his money and they started for Og's drink. Og's furious pace slowed somewhat, his feet unaccustomed to such lavish confinement.

Four streets over, with the raqa shop in sight, another throwing disk sailed silently over Og's head, missing it by a good two feet.

"Riolla must really be angry at you!" cried Og, taking cover in a rug market as the crowd melted instantly from the streets.

"That wasn't meant for me." replied Cheyne, racing down the empty alley where the disk had come from. "Come on, Og."

Og looked mournfully at the raqa shop and dragged his well-shod feet slowly the other way.

When he found Cheyne, the young man had engaged three slowly circling, dark-robed men, their daggers drawn and ready to strike.

"Oh, no…" Og wailed. "This is going to take forever."

A strong hand grabbed him by the scruff of the neck. "Well, come on, then, let's help him!" Claria gasped, her face flushed with the effort from outrunning the thugs. "I'm first in line for him, anyway. This lot isn't going to take my chance at him now," she railed.

"What?" said Og, trying to stall his involvement with the daggers.

"My shop is cinders and my girl has a broken arm." She pointed to Vashki, peeking out from behind a trinket seller's tent. "All I've got in the world now is this."

Claria pulled the musical clock from beneath her robes. "And it's all because of you two. Him, mostly. Him with his sweet smile and pretty manners," she snapped. "Now get in there and keep him from getting killed. That privilege belongs to me."

Og wrung his hands in confusion and, he was sure, the latter, probably fatal, stages of raqa deprivation.

"Well, at least hold this!" Claria raged, handing him the clock. "And if you try to run off with that, I'll hunt you down like a snake. I'm going in."

From her place behind the purple tent, Vashki trained her black, pain-crazed eyes on Og. Og just nodded, rooted to the spot. Claria had accurately guessed his first thoughts upon seeing the bundle, but his feet had too many new blisters to run anyway. And he had run from Vashki before. Broken arm or not, she was fast.

Whooping a strange war cry, Claria threw off her cloak, drew the brass combs from her hair, and charged into the fray, catching one of the assassins above the eye with the combs' flashing teeth, instantly bringing him down.

Surprised at her courage and amazed at her quickness, Cheyne took his opening, stepped back, and threw a head-high kick with one foot, catching the first assassin's nose, then followed with the other foot, knocking the hooked dagger from the man's hand. The second assassin went down, yowling in pain as Cheyne's elbow rammed him under the ribs. The first one, his nose crushed and bloodied, sprang from behind, trying to rake his knife across Cheyne's exposed neck, just below the left ear. His face in tatters, the third assassin had risen and moved to Cheyne's right, preventing the young man's attempt to drop and roll, and pinning him by the right arm.

Claria found her breath and went for that one again; she'd heard the sound of breaking bones once already today. With a rake of her boot heel down the assassin's shin and a ferocious stamp of her foot on his instep, she broke his concentration before he could break Cheyne's arm, brought her comb across his ear, and the thug dropped to the ground, his foot giving way under him, his eyes blind with blood.

Cheyne broke free and fell away in a somersault while the knife meant for his throat caught the third man in the center of his chest. Claria whirled around, looking for the next opponent, but the others had faded into the shadows, leaving not so much as a footprint on the sandy cobblestones.

"Phantoms?" said Claria as Cheyne picked himself up from the gritty street.

"No," said Og. "They belong to Riolla. They can move like the wind. But they were real."

He made his painful way to the fallen man and turned over the body cautiously. Taking the jeweled dagger from the dead man's hand, he flicked away the dark hood with his new boot. Og stood over him, studying his face and the rose-colored tattoo of two crescents, their horns aligned but not touching, now visible just behind the undamaged ear.

Vashki came up, clutching her arm, to stand with the others.

"The clockmaker," said Cheyne. "The one who told me to go and see Riolla."

The assassin bowed deeply, the pain nearly unbearable for an instant as the blood rushed to the slashes on his face. He thought of ten particularly horrible ways to kill the digger and the girl before he brought his head up again.

"Thank you, Saelin. Well done. Await my further orders from the outer room. Help yourself to the tray."

Saelin left the beaded curtain clinking before Riolla finished her sentence, the strings of ruby glass swinging together in his wake.

"Saelin?"

Riolla looked up and shrugged, then untied the red ribbon on the map to lay the parchment scroll out before her. It was an exquisite map, unquestionably worth even the cost of a dead assassin. The route Og had chosen was plainly marked where he had touched the clean parchment with his dirty fingers. Riolla shook her head in disdain. "He never takes the easy way…" she muttered. Then she paused over the map, noticing a certain familiarity about those particular locations.

"He's going to Rotapan's temple? The selkies' forest? Even to the Borderlands… by the broken face of Nin-he's not only going on the caravan route, he's after my ring-stones! That little wart! Who would have thought he had any gumption at all left in him, that broken down, raqa-wailing, dive-singing, flat-toned, honk-nosed vermin," she ranted, crumpling the map's corners.

"Saelin!" The assassin had just brought a shirrir-laced cake to his lips. "Take that garbage out of your mouth and get back in here! At the end of this, you can finish what you started in the alley. Get the horses. No, wait-have the men get my chair; it could be a long trip. We can't try to feed animals on this trail. We'll have to leave sooner than I hoped. They probably have a good start on us already," Riolla fumed, pinning her red mane up into a cooler style.

"We'll go as soon as I have spoken with the prince," she added, already formulating what she would tell Maceo.

Saelin shoved the entire cake into his mouth, put three more into his deep pockets, and thought how far more sweet would be his next kill.

"All right, Cheyne, or whoever you really are, let us have a few important words concerning the state of my business," said Claria as she snatched the bundle back from Og's trembling hands.

Cheyne dabbed at a cut on his lip with the sleeve of his tunic.

"Oh, here." She pulled a kerchief from her pocket and threw it at him. Too flimsy to reach him, it unfolded and fluttered to the ground delicately in front of Cheyne's feet. As he bent to pick it up, she continued her tirade.

"In one day I get that entire filthy mess cleaned up, throw out the vagrants and the lowlifes who used to trade with my uncle, hope to find a few new clients-"

"Like the one in the sedan who fled your establishment just before we got there?" countered Cheyne. "I think you'll remember that I've already run into him myself. Unpleasant business all around."

"You leave the prince out of this! He wasn't there for my work," she shouted, her cheeks reddening far beyond the exertion of the other fight.

"Oh?" said Cheyne softly, his smile crooked because of the swelling lip.

"You are impossible!" Claria snarled.

Og cleared his throat. "What exactly happened, Claria? Why were Riolla's thugs chasing you?"

She turned to him and began a long ramble about how they had burst in after he and Cheyne had left, looking for them, demanding to know their destination, then they torched the shop and chased her into the alley where they were now. Vashki had made it out the back door when Claria drew them after her. She had managed to take the clock, apparently her uncle's most prized possession, but the rest of the shop was currently going up in smoke, taking the entire street with it, right now, right over there. She ended by pointing a long finger to a large black cloud building above the Barca.

"I thought I sine I led the smoke of a burning map shop," said Og. Cheyne marveled silently that he could distinguish that odor from all the others which continually assaulted them in the Barca. But then Og held his nose up to sniff the air again, and Cheyne remembered the beggar's outstanding advantage for such discernment.

"What, Claria, do you want me to do about all this?" asked Cheyne. "I don't know why Riolla wants to kill me, except that I refused to sell her the totem I found out at the site. But I have need of that myself. I thank you for helping me with the assassins, and I am truly sorry for what her henchmen did to your shop and your helper. I had no idea she was still after me, or even knew I was back in the city."

"Men! You think a little 'I'm so sorry' just fixes everything and you get to go on your fine proud way without cleaning up the mess you made. Well. I don't think so, not this time. I helped you-so you can help me. You're a digger. You're bound for the Borderlands. You can just jolly well take me with you on your journey, and we will divide the profits of your adventure as compensation for my damages. You'd think that with all this attention from Riolla that you have found the Clock."

Cheyne's eyes went wide with surprise. "What do you know about the Clock?"

"I know that the Schreefa of the Mercanto would never be so determined to catch you unless it had something to do with money. Since you are a digger, you must have found something valuable. Or know where it is. What else around here is valuable but the Clock?" She swept her hand upward, taking in the abundant squalor of the Barca, and narrowed her fiery golden eyes at him.

Cheyne said nothing, his face falling at the prospect of his quest becoming a full-fledged treasure hunt.

"You have found it, haven't you?" she said softly, all sarcasm gone from her voice.

"No. And I do not search for it," Cheyne answered firmly.

Og raised a hand in immediate protest. "Now, now, let us not speak so. We don't know that the Clock isn't within your grasp even now. But, Claria, 1 have already made an agreement with Cheyne for half of his profits. Why should we split the treasure of the Clock yet another way?"

Claria slid her bright gaze toward them and raised one side of her mouth in a sly smile.

"Because," she motioned to Cheyne's torn pack, the parchment roll missing from its pocket, "you may be a guide, Muje Rifkin, but I'm the only one who knows how to get there."