The Sword-Edged blonde

TWO

The streets of Neceda swarmed with activity. Women and children cleaned the walls of the buildings, while men worked to level out the mud in the road so it would dry faster. A few wagons braved the terrain, but most of them ended up stuck, and the horses clearly understood the futility of working too hard to get free. I crossed the road on a plank, and as I walked down the opposite side a voice said, “Excuse me, sir, can you help a poor stranded pilgrim of Eludo?”

I turned. A beggar stood, hand out, under the eave of an apothecary shop. He was middle-aged, with long gray hair in two braids down his shoulders and a neat pointed beard on his chin. His cheeks were smooth. He wore an old cloak tattered at the edges, and his feet were wrapped in rags. On a long chain around his neck hung the symbol of the Eludo religion, a two-headed owl. I said, “You’re not poor. You’re not stranded. And you’re no pilgrim of Eludo.”

He blinked in surprise, sputtered a moment and then began, “Sir, I promise you-”

I held up my hand. “You had a shave this morning. That couldn’t have been cheap with the town in this shape. All the barbers are busy tending the sick and mopping out their shops. If you’ve got gold to waste on personal grooming, then you probably can afford passage out of town, and you’re only stranded because everyone else is. And Eludo pilgrims, as a rule, don’t worry about either shaving or moving; they believe their all-seeing owl god will provide. So now I have a question for you: Why would a wealthy man be begging on the street like this?”

He’d grown progressively paler as I spoke, and now was bone-white. “I have no idea what you mean,” he stammered.

“Let me tell you what you don’t have any idea about,” I said. I grabbed his cloak, jerked him close and used the snarl that once made a young crossbowman wet his pants. “You got the money to afford that expensive shave by finding out who in town would donate to an Eludo pilgrim. When you identified those folks, your pals down the street or around the corner would watch for your signal, follow the mark until the right moment and then induce them to give an even bigger donation, probably at knife-point. That’s your trade, pal, and I understand that, but I don’t care how thick the mud is, you better get your ass out of town before I see you again. Understand?”

He nodded, rapidly and emphatically. He’d retained bladder control, but I still felt I’d made an impression. I let him go.

Something sent a tingle up my spine. I looked behind me in time to see a man duck inside a butcher shop. I got an impression of someone young and well-dressed, which was as out of place in Neceda as a spider on a fairy cake. The first obvious thought was that it was the phony pilgrim’s partner, but I didn’t get the same grubby sense from him. I considered investigating, but it would take time, and I might just be paranoid to think he was watching me. Maybe he just wondered why I was slapping around a pilgrim of Eludo.

My feet splock-splock ed over the mud as I went down an alley and emerged along the dockside road. A big empty flatboat sat moored at the end of one pier, awaiting a cargo commission. Extra lines tied it to the dock, since the current was still raging. Most boats, I knew, wouldn’t even attempt the river at this level.

A barrel-chested, dark-skinned man sat on a chair next to one of the pylons, puffing on a pipe and watching the water. He looked up as I approached.

“Eddie LaCrosse, the town’s favorite blade-basher. Here to enjoy the lovely spring breeze?”

“I need a ride, Sharky,” I said, and draped my saddlebags across the dock’s rail. “Down to Pema. No cargo, just me.”

“That’s not really worth my trouble, is it?” Sharky said. He gestured toward his boat. “Your ass is big, but it ain’t so big it needs a cargo boat. Go down and wait for the ferry like everyone else.”

“The ferry won’t run with the river this high.”

“And you think my boat will? With just a single passenger?”

“I think it will because you’re the best pilot in town, and you and me both know there’s not any cargo to be had. I got three gold pieces with your name on ’em to prove it.” I jingled my pocket for emphasis.

That got his attention, as well as the eye of a shifty character shoveling mud from the back of a nearby house. I turned and faced him, and he quickly returned to his task. Most of the lowlifes in town knew me, and while they certainly didn’t tremble at my name, they had enough sense not to try anything in broad daylight, especially when I had Sharky as back-up.

“Keep wavin’ that money around, somebody’s likely to wave back with something sharper,” Sharky said.

“So come on, just a quick run down to Pema. You don’t even have to wait on me, I’ll rent a horse for the trip back.”

“Why don’t you just buy a horse like everyone else?”

“Then I’d be deprived of your charming company.”

“Huh.” But he stood and gestured mock-grandly for me to step aboard the barge. I took a seat on one of the stools nailed to the deck and usually reserved for the crew.

“Wait a minute,” he said, and stepped off the boat. I watched the tan-colored, opaque river as it slid by, its passage marked by foam and debris. When I turned, Sharky was leading two horses onto the boat, along with a sleepy-eyed boy of about ten.

“You need them?” I said.

“That’s exactly what I asked him,” the boy yawned.

“Not you, Kenny. Them.” I despised horses, which was why I didn’t own one.

“Have you looked at the river?” Sharky said. “Yes, I need them, and I need this worthless manure pile… ” He smacked Kenny on the back of his head, not brutally but almost with affection. “… to guide them while I steer the boat. I ain’t poling this thing back upstream against this current.” Horses and mules were common sights when the Gusay was at its normal depth, hauling flatboats upstream along the riverfront roads. Sharky dropped two long coils of rope beside me that would be used to tie the horses to the boat. “You’re getting a bargain here at any price; don’t give me a hard time.”

“Fine,” I said, making no effort to hide my disgust. I caught the eye of one of the horses, a jet-black mare with two white socks. She regarded me with cool contempt, something all horses held for me.

Well, not all. I suddenly recalled one horse, in a forest a long time ago, who had a completely different look in her eye. I hadn’t thought about that horse in years, or about the woman in the cottage I met soon after. I shook my head and made myself return to the present, and the task at hand.

Sharky cast off the ropes and shoved the flatboat away from the dock. The water, as thick as syrup with mud and debris, carried us slowly into the middle of the stream. When the current finally caught us it nearly knocked me off my seat. The horses, old hands at this, adjusted their balance with a minimum of hoof-clopping. Kenny curled up like a cat and went back to sleep.

“Can’t promise you a smooth ride,” Sharky said, “so be ready for anything. And I hope you can swim.”

“Can you?” I asked, bracing myself as best I could.

“Hell, no,” he cackled. “That’s why I won’t let my boat sink. But it also means I can’t rescue your sorry ass if you fall off.”

Sharky stood at the rudder, and Neceda receded in our wake. I thought I glimpsed the same young, well-dressed man suddenly appear at the foot of the dock, then turn and rush away. But I hadn’t really seen him clearly before, so I couldn’t say for sure it was him now. Maybe it was just some guy needing his corn shipped to market.

I took the engraving from my pocket and tried to memorize it; I didn’t think I’d have time to hold it next to the face of every ready-to-go girl I’d meet. I looked into her eyes, and tried to get inside her head.

Fifteen was awfully young to jump the wall and run off, especially for a princess of the House of Balaton. What would induce her to do such a thing? Despite her palace isolation, I couldn’t believe the girl in this picture would be susceptible to such naive daydreams. And even accepting the engraver’s artistic liberties, there was real intelligence in the rueful set of her smile, the way her eyes didn’t have that popped-open blankness of so many royal children. She had to know that most border raiders were not romantic ruffians, that they’d have her bent over the nearest fence rail at the first opportunity and most likely leave her dead in a ditch soon after.

“Who’s the doll?” Sharky asked from behind me.

“Runaway,” I said, and put the picture away. “Daddy wants her back.”

“Never figured you for a baby-sitter.”

“Never figured you for a busybody.”

He clutched his heart in mock-offense. “Oh, you wound me, Eddie.” Then he scowled at something on the bank. “But if I wasn’t a busybody, I wouldn’t have noticed that.”

I followed his discreet little nod with an equally surreptitious glance. A lone rider traveled the towing road that ran parallel to the river. He was far enough back that I couldn’t see his face, but his demeanor told me it was the same man who’d watched us at the dock. “Following us?” I said.

“Yep. With the river this high, I can’t ride the main current, and we ain’t exactly makin’ record time. He could’ve passed us a while back if he wanted.”

“You owe anybody money?” I asked.

“Sure. But nobody who’s that desperate to get it.”

There was no way to lose our new shadow, so I simply put him aside until we reached the border. I returned my thoughts to the emotions of a beautiful spoiled fifteen-year-old, pondering what could make her run away like that. I pulled out one of the coins and idly turned it in my fingers. Like most money, it had the king’s profile on one side, and I perused it to get insight into the kind of father King Felix might be. Was he so strict his daughter fled his discipline? Or so perverted she ran from his embrace?

His proud, piggish face gave me no answers. But suddenly a new thought struck me: maybe I was looking at it backwards. I took the drawing from my pocket and held it up beside the coin. Had I stumbled onto something crucial in this father-daughter relationship? What if she hadn’t run away at all?

We arrived at Pema in the dark and docked at the torch-lit wharf only long enough for me to disembark. Sharky immediately moved his horses off the boat for the trip back to Neceda. It took three solid kicks to awaken Kenny, who sleepily went to his duties. Sharky had made enough money off me that he’d still turn a nice profit, so I didn’t feel too bad about putting him to so much trouble and making him return to Neceda in the dark.

In contrast to Neceda, Pema was a jumping little burg that had escaped almost all flood damage behind its solid levee. Situated on the line between Muscodia and Balaton, its border-town vibe attracted people the way dogs drew fleas. Folks shipping goods up or down the river had to stop here to get their papers authorized, and legal travelers had to go through the security checkpoints for both countries. The town itself was wide open, and everything was for sale. That is, once you got through customs.

Balaton understood the old adage that good fences made good neighbors, and if you were caught without properly authorized papers, you could be executed on the spot. I was willing to risk a lot for the amount of gold King Felix provided, but not my head. I’d go through the official channels.

Unfortunately, at this time of night only one of the ten customs gates was open, creating a total bottleneck of people who’d arrived on passenger boats. These low-riding craft, all delayed by the flood, had arrived at the same time instead of on the normal staggered schedule. The passenger line extended down the hill to the docks, and I got there just ahead of a whole boatload of imported Fechinian well-diggers. They were herded into line by a pair of big, scarred foremen who liberally applied a sharp sword poke when one of the Fechinians acted up. I was behind a family from Ocento who appeared to be veteran travelers; between the three of them they had four bags and a wooden box slung beneath a carrying pole.

“Bowie, will you be still?” the Ocentian woman said as she fumbled for her traveling papers. The toddler squirmed in her arms like a minnow avoiding a fish-hook and whined at a pitch that could probably be heard back in Neceda. She shrugged apologetically at the rest of us. “I’m sorry, he just went through his purifying ritual and it’s got him all jumpy.”

Considering that the standard Ocentian “purifying” ritual involved male genital mutilation, I didn’t wonder. I noticed the father had the sad, haunted look I’d seen on other men from Ocento, and he made no move to help his wife. She clearly carried the mace and shield in the family.

Once their pass was stamped, they moved with the precision of a military operation. The husband picked up three of the four bags and one end of the pole, and his wife got the other end and the remaining bag. Bowie crawled up onto his mother’s shoulders like a trained monkey, and started yanking on her hair with a happy giggle. She did not react.

At last it was my turn. The little gate was manned by a fat woman with way too much face paint, and hair that towered higher than the plume on a Dromelier cavalry helmet. A bored guard stood behind her, one hand on the hilt of his sword.

“And where are you from, friend?” the woman asked me. Her tone belied the friendliness of her words.

“Neceda. Up the river.”

She propped her chin on one meaty palm. “I hear the flooding was pretty bad there.”

“Bad enough.”

She looked me over skeptically. I kept my face neutral. “And what brings you here?” she sighed, bored.

“I’m looking for a wife, and I hear the best place to meet one is right at the border.”

She started to smile, then couldn’t decide if I’d insulted her or not. “What the hell does that mean?”

“It means I’m too damned tired to barter with you,” I said in a low voice. “Tell me how much you want, and I’ll pay it and we can all get on with our lives.”

“Are you offering to bribe me?” she demanded, her voice loud with false outrage. The Fechinians behind me began to murmur, and the customs guard looked up, suddenly interested at the possibility of action.

I just looked at her. She was only the latest in a lengthy roll of corrupt minor officials I’d encountered, and I’d learned long ago that the best thing to threaten them with was a break in the routine that would mean more work and uncomfortable explanations. Finally she scratched her forehead with two fingers, and I put two coins down when I bent to sign my pass. She stamped it with a wax seal, palming the money in the same motion. “This is good for three days. If the sun rises on the fourth day and finds you here, you’ll be subject to arrest and immediate death by hanging.”

“If I’m still here in four days, I’ll hang myself,” I said, and pushed through the narrow opening past the guard. He tried to trip me, but instead I locked his ankle with my own and threw him off-balance. He didn’t fall, but he stumbled back into the fat woman who snapped in annoyance, “Harry, will you watch it, please? My hair.”