Conan The Defender Part 17

Demetrio shivered. "Would it not have been simpler to kill her?"

The hawk-faced lord gave him a glance that was all the more frightening for its seeming benevolence. "A king must think of object lessons. Who thinks of betraying me will think next on Sephana's fate and wonder at his own. Death is much more easily faced. Would you betray me now, Demetrio?"

Mouth suddenly too dry for words, the perfumed youth shook his head.

Vegentius entered the room laughing. "You should have heard their crying and begging. As if tears and pleas would stay our steel."

"They are disposed of, then?" Alba.n.u.s said. "All who were under this roof? Servants and slaves as well?"

The big square-faced man drew a broad finger across his throat with a crude laugh. "In the cesspool. There was one-Leucas, he said his name was, as if it mattered-who wept like a woman and said it was not he, but one named Conan who was to do the deed. Anything to-What ails you, Alba.n.u.s?"

The hawk-faced lord had gone pale. l His eyes locked with those of Demetrio. "Conan. 'Twas the name of he from whom you bought the sword."

Demetrio nodded, but Alba.n.u.s, though looking at him, saw other things.

He whispered, uttering his thoughts unaware. "Coincidence? Such is the work of the G.o.ds, and when they tangle the skeins of mens' fates so it is for cause. Such cause could be murderous of ambition. I dare not risk it."

"It cannot be the same man," Vegentius protested.

"Two with such a barbarous name?" Alba.n.u.s retorted. "I think not. Find him." His obsidian glare drilled each man in turn, turning them to stone with its malignancy. "I want this Conan's head!"

Chapter XI.

Conan poured another dipperful of water over his head and peered blearily about the courtyard behind the Thestis. The first thing his eye lit on was Ariane, arms crossed and a disapproving glint in her eye.

"If you must go off to strange taverns," she said firmly, "drinking and carousing through the small hours, you must expect your head to hurt."

"My head does not hurt," Conan replied, taking up a piece of rough toweling to scrub his face and hair dry. His face hidden, he winced into the toweling. He hoped fervently that she would not shout; if she did his skull would surely explode.

"I looked for you last night," she went on. "Your meeting with Taras is arranged, though he wished no part of it at first. You have little time now. I'll give you directions."

"You are not coming?"

She shook her head. "He was very angry at our having approached you. He says we know nothing of fighting men, of how to choose good from bad.

After I told him about you, though, he changed his mind. At least, he will meet you and decide for himself. But the rest of us are not to come. That is to let us know he's angry."

"Mayhap." Conan tossed aside the toweling and hesitated, choosing his words. "I must speak to you of something. About Leucas. He is putting you in danger."

"Leucas?" she said incredulously. "What danger could he put me in?"

"On yesterday he came to me with some goat-brained talk of killing Garian, of a.s.sa.s.sination. An he tries that-"

"It's preposterous!" she broke in. "Leucas is the last of us ever to speak for any action, especially violent action. He cares for naught save his philosophy and women."

"Women!" the big Cimmerian laughed. "That skinny worm?"

"Yes, indeed, my muscular friend," she replied archly. "Why, he's accounted quite the lover by those women he's known."

"You among them?" he growled, his ma.s.sive fists knotting.

For a moment she stared, then her eyes flared with anger. "You do not own me, Cimmerian. You have no leave to question me of what I did or did not do with Leucas or anyone else."

"What's this of Leucas?" Graecus said, ambling into the courtyard.

"Have you seen him? Or heard where he is?"

"No," Ariane snapped, her face coloring. "And what call have you to skulk about like some spy?"

Graecus seemed to hear nothing beyond her denial. "He's not been seen since last night. Nor Stephano, either. When I heard his name mentioned...." He laughed weakly. "Perhaps we could stand to lose a philosopher or three, but if they're taking sculptors this time as well...." He laughed again, but his face was a sickly green.

Ariane was suddenly soothing. "They will return." She laid a concerned hand on the stocky man's shoulder. "Why, like as not they wasted the night in drink. Conan, here, did the same."

"Why should they not return?" Conan asked.

Ariane shot him a dagger look, but Graecus answered shakily. "Some months past some of our friends disappeared. Painters and sketchers, they were. But two were never seen again, their bodies found in a refuse heap beyond the city walls, where Golden Leopards had been seen to bury them. We think Garian wishes to frighten us into silence."

"It sounds not like the way of a king," Conan said, frowning. "They frighten with public executions and the like."

Graecus suddenly looked ready to vomit.

Ariane scowled at Conan. "Should you not be making ready to meet Taras?" Without waiting for an answer, she turned to Graecus, uttering soothing sounds and stroking his brow.

Disgruntled, Conan tugged on his padded under-tunic and jazeraint hauberk, muttering to himself on the peculiarities of Ariane. As he buckled his sword belt about him, she spoke again.

"Do you need to go so, as if armed for war?" Her tone was biting, her annoyance at him still high. "You'll not have to fight him."

"I have my reasons," Conan muttered.

Not for a sack of gold as big as a cask would he have told her that someone in the city was trying to kill him. In her present mood, she would think he was trying to shift her sympathy from Graecus to himself. Erlik take all women, he thought.

Setting his spiked helm on his head, he said coldly, "Give me your directions for finding this Taras." Her face as she gave them was just as cold.

The Street of the Smiths, whence Ariane's directions took him, was lined not only with the shops of swordsmiths and ironworkers, but also of smiths in gold, silver, copper, bra.s.s, tin and bronze. A cacophony of hammering blended with the cries of sellers to make the street a solid sheet of noise, reverberating from end to end. The Guilds made sure that a man who worked one metal did not work another, but so too did they hire the guards that patrolled the street. No bravos lurked on the Street of the Smiths, and shoppers strolled with an ease seen nowhere else in the city.

As he came closer to the place of the meeting-rooms reached by entering a narrow hall next to a coppersmith's shop and climbing the stairs at its end-the less he wished to enter it unprepared. He had no reason to foresee trouble, but too many times of late someone had tried to put a blade into him.

Short of the coppersmith's he began to dawdle, pausing here to heft a gleaming sword, there to finger a silver bowl hammered in an intricate pattern of leaves. But all the while he observed the building that housed the coppersmith with an eye honed by years as a thief.

A pair of Guild guards had stopped to watch him, where he stood before a silversmith's open-fronted shop. He raised the bowl he held to his ear and thumped it.

"Too much tin," he said, shaking his head and tossing the bowl back on the merchant's table. He strolled off pursued by the silversmith's frenzied imprecations, but the guards paid him no more mind.

Just beyond the coppersmith's was an alley, smelling as much of mold and old urine as any other in the city. Into this he slipped, hurrying down its narrow length. As he had hoped, damp air and mold had flaked away most of the mud plastered over the stones of the building.

A quick glance showed that no one was looking down the alley from the street. His fingers sought cracks amid the poorly dressed and poorly mortared stone. Another might have found such a climb impossible, most especially in heavy hauberk and boots, but to one of the Cimmerian mountains the wide c.h.i.n.ks in the stone were as good as a highway. He scrambled up the side of the building so quickly that someone who had seen him standing on the ground and looked away for a moment might well have thought he had simply disappeared.

As he heaved himself onto the red clay tiles of the roof, a smile lit his face. Set in the roof was a skylight, a frame stretched with panes of fish-skin. It was, he was certain, situated above the room he sought.

Carefully, so as not to dislodge loose tiles-and perhaps send himself hurtling to the street below-he made his way to the skylight. The panes were clear enough to allow some light through, but not for seeing. It was the work of a moment with his belt dagger to make a slit, to which he put his eye.