The Paladin Part 36

Impatient. Worried. Eyes darting to every movement in the room. He reached out and nudged her leg.

"Easy."

She drew an audible breath. "Time," she said in that guttural mutter that was her public voice.

"We're doing fine."

A dart of worried eyes. He imagined the rest of the expression, the thrust of the lip.You're lying, masterShoka.

He put a leg over the back side of the bench. "Come on, boy. Let's take a walk. -You fellows stay close here. Finish your lunch. Get some sleep."

"Where are we going?" Taizu asked as they walked the twisting stone street, past tea-shops and pepper-vendors and shops with hanging poultry and strings of garlic. People jostled past. War was in the offing, but business went on. Wives were stocking larders. Men were carrying past sacks of rice. The prices whitewashed on the boards outside shops were predictably outrageous.

"The camp-take a-" He saw her eyes dart to a pa.s.sing cart. "For G.o.ds' sake, what's the matter with you? Stop jumping at everything!"

"I'm not jumping!"

"You're nervous as a-"Virgin in a wh.o.r.ehouse , the expression ran. "Calm down,dammit."

Another dart of the eyes, a man with a load of lumber. "I'm sorry."

"Just take it easy. You want questions? I don't."

"There's too d.a.m.n many people!"

He looked her way, grabbed her by the shoulder and hurried her across the street, dodging the yellow streams that ran between the pavings. "That's what makes a city. Doesn't it?" The panic was infectious. It was a weakness in her he had never reckoned on. d.a.m.n, she had never been in a town larger than Ygotai; they had touched no more than the edge of Anogi, ahorse and bound out of it as fast as they dared. On the road she had watched the people with that kind of attention, eyes checking every movement. Crazy-dangerous, people would think.

It was everything he had taught her in the forest, tracking every move and every sound that came strange to her, but everything was strange here and there was too much of it, too fast, all at once.

"Shut your ears," he said. "Be blind. Trust my eyes. You're watching too much, too hard. Just wait for my cues, all right? Like in practice. Don't react."

"Yes," she'said quietly. Her stride changed, became easier.

"Just a lot of people. Civilized people. They don't jump at you. Not in broad daylight. Just a lot of racket on these d.a.m.n cobbles, covers a lot of sound. Echoes off the walls, plays h.e.l.l with your sense of where things are. New place, new senses. You'll get used to it."

You'dbetter , he thought.d.a.m.n fast.

Take her back to the tea-house, leave her with Chun and the rest- She can't handle this. She's going to make a mistake. First man who startles her, she II jump- Berserker. That's what she gives off. Taizu in the dark, naked shape among the bandits, blade flashing- Everyone's her enemy but me. All the way from Hua-hiding and running-and two years learning to hear a leaf drop-learning my footstep in the dark, on the dirt, on the porch- Anyone else-anyone she can't identify-dead. She's that fast. And react is all I've taught her.

This is a mistake, her being here is a mistake, we ought to turn around now and go back- Hors.e.m.e.n were coming down the street at their backs. She did not turn and look. She was settling, he thought. Of course she was settling, she had never failed, not in any move he had taught her.

Walk her around, let her see the bridge, get the feel of the town, ask a few questions, go back to the teahouse for a drink and have a talk with her in the room. That was the sensible thing to do.

The air smelled of the river before they got as far as the market, and the masts of river-craft, spa.r.s.e as they were, stood against the pale gray of the water.

A girl from Hua had to stop and stare when she saw it. A boy from Yiungei had done the same thing, contemplating riding that great span on horseback.

Later the youth, learning the marvels of its building, how many workers had died, swept away in the current, how many attempts had failed, how often the footings had given way and wrecked the effort, and how the Imperial Engineers under the then-prince's direction had spanned the treacherous currents first with a pontoon bridge and then with stone carried by barge, to the one favor nature gave them, the subsurface island in the center, and across again, building the stone sections and filling them with rubble-until the great Hisei flowed docilely through stone arches, whole boats able to pa.s.s beneath.

"The old Emperor wanted to bridge all the rivers," Shoka said, "but in these times-G.o.ds know if it's wise."

"Two carts can pa.s.s on that thing!"

"That they can. With room between."

"What are we going to do?" There was an edge of panic in her voice.

"Don't worry about the bridge right now. It's not the important thing. It can't be, yet. Just stay calm." He walked her on, where the bridge street gave out on the old market, familiar enough ground ahead for a farmer-girl, he thought. The camp was on their left, towering walls of buff stone that closed off the esplanade as far as the river-edge. Not yet for that, he thought, looking down the aisles of tents, dislodged from those grounds, rilled the paved esplanade where jugglers and trinket-sellers and artists had made carnivals in peacetime, amid a host of sit-down drink-sellers and pastry-makers. Not nowadays. The whole bazaar had been displaced. Best just wander around a little, get the temperature of the place.

If there was anyone desperately worried these days, it was surely the merchants with bored, off-duty foreign mercenaries walking among their displays. He and Taizu got looks-rough-looking, the dust washed off while they had been up surveying the rooms, but even a washing-down had failed to get the cracks between the plates and weavings of the armor; and the armor-robes had gone to a kind of dimpatina of dirt and grease.

-"Better we clean up a little," he had said to the company. "Get a little trail dust off."

Which the company had known how to understand. Only Taizu's bandages had escaped washing-and Taizu with her filthy sheepskin coat, her topknot and her bandages was easily the worst, the latter by now stained with food, trail dirt, an appalling amount of old blood and a small circle of new-Eidi had contributed that this morning as they were setting out, to make the wound seem recent, for fear someone might question it otherwise.

But the looks it drew here gave him second thoughts -a ghastly wound, a soldier from off a fighting front. People shied from it and stared for more than fear of pilferage, and doubtless whispered after they had pa.s.sed.

War-jitters here too, the same as on tannery row. And alot of soldiers on guard by the bridge.

What are we going to do?he imagined Taizu's question. She felt steadier, as if her focus had come back. There was noise and confusion on all sides as they walked the quayside. Someone chopped a chicken close by them and Taizu glanced that way-but any soldier might. At the next aisle a wh.o.r.e importuned them. Taizu stared.

"No," Shoka snarled, and the wh.o.r.e yelled out something about boy-lovers as he pulled Taizu past.

A sweetmeat at a booth in mid-market, a cup of wine in an area that smelled less of the fish and poultry-sellers. Taizu sipped through her bandages, returned the cup to the vendor.

Hors.e.m.e.n came through,not mercenaries. Banner of Angen, red circle on black.

Gitu.

Taizu went completely still. Not a twitch. Then she moved again naturally, put the cup up.

"Through?" A male hand reached for it, four, five soldiers moving up to the drink-vendor. Shoka drew in his breath, heart speeding, but Taizu nodded calmly, and before he could get her out: "Where you in from?" one asked.

"South," Shoka said, edging in, trying to catch Taizu's expression past the bandages, with the panic feeling that she might just, if he got tied down in the first chance they had had to find out vital information-walk off down the row and vanish in the crowd. He put his hand on her shoulder, and felt the tension. "Up from Taiyi."

The mercenaries were all attention. "Bad down there?"

"d.a.m.n b.l.o.o.d.y awful." With a shrug. "Lost half the company."

"Buy you a drink," the one said, and threw out half the contents of his cup, put it back, and indicated the edge of the market square, the sit-down wine-shops. Meaning he and his wanted the rumors.

"Lost all our money," he said over a cup of hot wine, too worried to feel the alcohol he had at lunch andafter, thank the G.o.ds he hadhad the lunch. It was Taizu he was worried about; but if worry burned it out of him, Taizu had enough going in her, he reckoned, to burn off twice her capacity, and she was steady as he could ask-not a tremor in the hand that carried the cup, no gulping down the wine, just measured sips.

"I've been twenty years hereabouts," Shoka said. "Not this recent stuff. I hired on to a lord, personal. I was just a kid, Juni's age, here. Traveled with a caravan, got to Ygotai, I thought I'd seen a city." Not too much confidence too fast. He spilled the bits and pieces he had cobbled together, reason for a mercenary to speak the language and forget his own. "h.e.l.l, Lungan in those days-I came up looking for hire, I mean, in those days, there weren't that many places you could get, but I got a post with this old gentleman-just watch his horses. And pretty soon I was in the house guard. Ten years with that old gentleman. Then this. Captain killed, no d.a.m.n pay-So I get up here, h.e.l.l, I report what I know. Do I get any d.a.m.n pay for risking my a.s.s? I should've cut out down to Mandi, get the h.e.l.lout , before this whole d.a.m.n thing comes down-"

"What's the story down there?"

Shoka took a breath, shook his head. "I know too much."

"Like what?"

"I can't. Can't talk." He put a leg over the bench, gathered up his sword. "Come on, Juni. We'd better get back."

"You're drinking our money, you sit down. What've you heard?"

"It's not heard, man, it'sseen ." He settled back again, leaned confidentially across the table. "That's what they don't want spread. . . . And not a d.a.m.ncopper for it!"

Heads leaned forward. Shoka looked around him.

"The whole south's coming up here. Every d.a.m.n province has come in with the rebels, and they're moving , they've gathered up more men than you'd think wasin the south-I've seen them. I've seen things-" He dropped his voice and looked around, as a waiter pa.s.sed. "We're sitting in the middle of this d.a.m.n city-you know who this Saukendaris? "

"Warleader. On the outs with the Regent."

"He was d.a.m.n popular. These aren't happy people. I'm telling you, twenty years in this country, and I know something, I know something scares h.e.l.l out of me, sitting here in this town. This whole d.a.m.n country's boiling up around us-that's what I'm feeling, all these d.a.m.n streets and every window just watching-I was in the riots back in P'eng. ..."

They shifted on the benches.

"It started over a cart in the street. The people up in P'eng, I saw them kill this poor sod of a regular with pitchforks-"

They were weaving when they walked away. Shoka kept a hand on Taizu's shoulders, but two drunks could hold each other up. "You did fine," he said, squeezing hard. "You did fine, boy."

"I didn'tdo anything-"

"That was the fine part." A second squeeze of her shoulders. "Good. I'm proud of you."

"I'm all right."

"I know you are. We're going back to quarters, try not to get picked up for drunk and disorderly."

"Do we get him tonight?"

"Ill have a look at it after dark."

"We."

"No 'we.' You're too d.a.m.n easy to spot. I'll handle it, I'll map everything out for you. You'll be along when it's the real thing."

"I don't trust you!"

"What kind of talk is that?"

"You're the best liar I know of."

He was still thinking about that, along the row of booths and along by the back way, among the restaurants, decidedly the best way for two drunken soldiers to slip back into the city streets.

Straight on down the row and around the corner, face to face with a foreign-looking man in a fur-trimmed cap. Whose eyes widened.

"No, you don't!" Shoka grabbed the man and shoved him up against the wall, holding him by a fistful of expensive Shin brocade, thinking about murder, just a dagger in the gut and silence thereafter-no matter he had drunk this man's tea and shared his fire.

Master Yi was evidently thinking about that too. He was shaking, his teeth chattering. "I don't know you," he said, "I swear, I don't know you!"

He was a fool not to kill the man. He knew that. A d.a.m.ned fool with thousands of lives riding on him.

But it was an old man, a scared man, who pried weakly at his hands and looked as if he was going to die of shock.

He jerked the trader into the shadow of a wagon, less in the way of witnesses. Master Yi was gasping for air, and it was not even a close grip he had on him.

"Master Yi!" Taizu said, female voice, whisper gone too high.

"I never saw you!" Master Yi protested. "I don't know a thing, I swear, I don't want to know anything-" "What's my name?" Shoka asked him. "Tell me myname , Master Yi!"

A shake of the head, vehement. "I swear, I don't know!"

Someone came near, decided otherwise about going down that particular aisle.

"You know, Master Yi."

"Are we going to kill him?" Taizu asked.

"No, no, no," Master Yi said. "I swear, I swear!"

Shoka fingered the gilt braid and the fur on Master Yi's coat. Master Yi stood absolutely still.

"You know we can't afford to have you spreading lies," Shoka said. "What's my name, Master Yi? I'm sure you followed us. I'm sure you noticed a sudden dearth of bandits. We did you a favor. Now you spread gossip about us."

"I gave you hospitality!"

"That might be worth something. The truth might. You're a trader. I trust you know when the market's changed."

"Yes, m'lord!"

"Who?"

"Whatever you want me to call you, m'lord." A dart of the eyes .from him to Taizii and back again. "I'm a subject of his majesty of Shin. I don't involve myself in politics-"

Shoka took a good pinch of expensive fur. "You've heard the rumors. Haven't you? You've heard all the rumors. Let me tell you, foreigners aren't going to fare well here, not at all. You know what's across that bridge?"

A shake of the head, widened eyes.

"An army, Master Yi. -And do you know what'sthis side of the bridge?"