The Yellow silk r-4 Read online

  The people closest to the sound moved back a pace out of sheer surprise. Tycho stepped forward. He wasn't a tall man and most of the mob gathered outside the tavern stood a good head above him. Physical size, however, wasn't the only measure of a person's presence. "A dark night for dark deeds, friends," Tycho called. Pitched to carry, his voice rang out in the night. He walked on and the crowd parted before him, giving way before the simple force of his confidence. Tycho met the glance of each man and woman with a somber look. "A man who turns on his friends is no man at all. A man who would kill his friends is a monster."

  He pushed the bow across a different string. The howling storm turned into a haunting moan, a forlorn wail that slid up and down in pitch as Tycho shifted his fingers on the strilling's neck. More than one head in the crowd looked up at the body hanging from the tree. Tycho paused under it and looked up as well. "Ardo, you stupid bugger," he murmured under the music. The dockside of Spandeliyon was not a good place to fall on the wrong side of rumor. The voice of the strilling changed again and soared up into the night before fading away. In its wake, the mob-no, the crowd-was silent. Even Lander and his men, Tycho saw with a satisfied glance, were quiet.

  He let the silence hold for just moment longer then sent his bow dancing across the strilling's strings once more. This time, though, he rattled out a wild tune. Something to get feet tapping and put minds in memory of happier things-like Muire's ale. He'd had enough of the cold. "Now who'll join me in drinking to Ton?" he called. "A murdered soul needs the company of a toast or two from the people who loved him best!" He took a turn through the crowd, giving people a nudge in the direction of the Ease. "He was your friend, Det." Tycho elbowed someone else. "And you, Rana. Brenal, I remember you and Ton hoisting more than a few together!"

  He worked the edges of the crowd like a herding dog. Slowly, people began to move back into the tavern. The ground was a treacherous churned surface in their wake, but Tycho danced back and forth across it, bow on strilling keeping perfect time. His calls turned into a patter, rolling off his tongue. "Ervis. Pitch. Blike. Come on, inside with all of you. Drink one for Ton and remember an old mate. Sing a song for him. Umbero, you were his friend. You, too-" Tycho turned around one more time and found himself face to chest with a dark-red tunic. He looked up to the raw-boned face above it and finished smoothly "-Lander."

  The thug smiled like a shark. "Oh yes," he said. "Like two peas in a pod we were." A couple of the men who stood with him laughed.

  Tycho returned the smile. "Like two dice in a cup," he added, "or two fish in a net." His bow paused for a moment on the strilling. "No, forgive me. Two fish in a net would have been Ton and Ardo."

  Lander's eyes narrowed. "You want to watch what you say about dead people."

  "I never say anything ill of the dead." Tycho's smile narrowed as well. "The living, on the other hand, are another matter." He sent new sound rippling from his instrument and spun around to usher the last of the crowd back into the Wench's Ease. "Come in and drink, Lander," he called back. "You owe Ton that."

  He didn't wait to see if Lander took up the gauntlet, but just followed the stragglers through the door and into the tavern. Warm air embraced him like a lover and he gasped with relief. The crowd had already settled back into their familiar places, filling the Ease almost completely. Many already had more ale in their hands and Muire's serving women were scrambling to keep up with the demands of those who didn't. Tycho let the strilling slide down from his shoulder and wove his way through to the bar. "There you go, Muire," he said, tugging open his coat and loosening his scarf. "Your customers are back again and drinking. Now how about a hot one?"

  On the other side of the smoke-darkened wood counter, Muire grunted and turned to draw a tankard of ale from a cask. "You've got the gift," she admitted grudgingly.

  "What was that, Muire?" asked Tycho in a mock shout over the noise of the tavern's patrons. "I didn't quite catch it."

  "Don't try me, Tycho. Just because you've been traveling doesn't make you a wit. I still remember when you were just another Spandeliyon dock rat, squeaking out songs for a copper and getting into trouble." The tavern door opened again, letting in another gust of cold air. Muire glanced up and her gaze hardened. "Some things don't change."

  Tycho twisted around to follow her glare. The Ease's door was just closing behind Lander and his men. The thugs began making their way around the outside of the room to a table-hastily vacated by the customers who had been occupying it-close to the big stone fireplace. Lander gave Tycho a harsh stare. The curly haired man just turned back to Muire. "No," he said, "I guess they don't."

  "What did you say to him?" asked Muire.

  "Nothing that he'd understand," Tycho told her with a crooked grin.

  Muire shook her head. She took a stout iron from a rack over a brazier and plunged it into the tankard of ale. The iron hissed and the ale seethed briefly. Muire passed the tankard across the bar. Tycho shifted strilling and bow into one hand and raised the warm drink with the other. "To Ton and Ardo," he said quietly. Muire retrieved a tankard of her own and clacked it against his.

  Tycho barely had a mouthful of ale down his throat, though, before there was a shout from the tavern floor. "Hoy, bard! How about a song? " Tycho gave Muire another crooked grin.

  "No, things don't change, do they?" He set his tankard down and shrugged out of his coat then turned around, settling his strilling back against his shoulder. "All right, Rana, you want a song?" He rubbed his bow against the strings of the strilling. "Here's one I learned in Suzail, all the way west in Cormyr-"

  "No fussy western songs!" Rana pounded her fist on the table. "Play us a proper Altumbel tune! Something we can sing along with!" More shouts joined hers. lycho smiled.

  "Fine with me, Rana. If you sing, people will throw me coin to drown you out!" Laughter washed around the room and Tycho sang out. "Old Raren had a daughter fair, a pretty maid with golden hair, and her heart was full of good until she met-"

  "— the king of piiiirrates!" bawled the crowd. Tycho laughed and began to play.

  Partially obscured by a veil of cloud and silvery streams of snow blowing down from on high, the moon cast pale light across the shacks, storehouses, and tenements of the Spandeliyon waterfront. The silhouettes of taller houses and a solid fortress stood a short ways inland, away from the stinking docks, but the town was quite obviously an unplanned jumble. Its buildings were like driftwood cast up on shore by the near-constant sea wind, ready to be scoured away by the next storm.

  How Spandeliyon managed to survive storms was, in fact, almost puzzling-from farther out on the Sea of Fallen Stars, the whole of the peninsula of Altumbel presented a profile not that dissimilar to a barely submerged reef.

  Kuang Li Chien drew the heavy quilted wool of his waitao coat more tightly around himself and watched the docks of the town draw closer. The small crew of the fat little ship on which he had taken passage scrambled around him, making the ship ready for docking. Up near the bow, the captain was shouting at the shore. After a moment, a door opened in one of the shacks on the dockside. A stout figure emerged in a flood of warm light and stumped up to the edge of the dock to squint into the dark and shout back. Li narrowed his eyes and listened, picking out the foreign words.

  "Steth? Steth, is that you, you old-" The trade language of the west was simple enough, but some of it still gave Li difficulty. He couldn't quite understand the phrase that the dockmaster used, but he guessed that it was not very flattering. "What are you doing? Daylight not good enough for you or have you gone back to your old habits?"

  The ship's captain replied with a rapid string of curses, most of which Li also missed. He understood the captain's final words well enough, though. "-passenger who wouldn't let me rest until we docked!"

  "A passenger for Spandeliyon? " asked the dockmaster. "At this time of year?" Captain Steth's response was another incomprehensible rattle of blasphemy that sent the dockmaster running into his shack. He emerged wi
th a torch, shouted back at the captain, and began lighting lanterns at the dockside. The ship turned, slowing to a glide in the icy black water. Li swayed with the heavy bump as it nudged against the dock. A rope was thrown down to the dockmaster, who looped it around a mooring post, and the ship swayed out then shifted back, restrained. More ropes were thrown down and made fast, and slowly the ship settled into a gentle rise and fall beside the dock. A port in the ship's rail was swung open and a gangplank run out. Li picked up his pack and made his way over to the plank and down onto the dock. None of the crew got in his way.

  Steth was already down and talking to the dockmaster. Both men looked up as Li stepped into the lantern light. The dockmaster's eyes went wide then narrow, and he shot a glance at the captain. "You didn't say he was an elf! Bringing an elf-blood to Spandeliyon? You are mad!"

  Li's jaw tightened. His smooth skin, fine features, and tapered eyes had earned him this reaction elsewhere in the west, though not with this hostility. The captain saved him from having to explain himself-he dealt the dockmaster a sharp blow to the back of his head. "He's not an elf!" he hissed. "Haven't you ever seen a Shou before, Cul?"

  The dockmaster managed to look startled once more. "From Thesk? Like one of those eastern Tuigan horde riders?"

  Li drew a sharp breath, stood straight and returned the dockmaster's gaze. "I am not a barbarian," he said, forming the thick syllables carefully. "I come from the Great Empire of Shou Lung." More eastern, he added silently, than your uncivilized mind could possibly comprehend and far greater than you could believe. "I require directions. I need to find a wine shop."

  "What?" Cul glanced at Steth once more, but this time the captain shrugged and shook his head. The dockmaster looked back to Li and licked his lips. "No wine shops here," he said slowly and with great volume as if that would make him easier to understand. "No wine shops. There is a wine merchant in-"

  The dockmaster used a word Li didn't recognize, but pointed in the direction of the tall houses and fortress Li had seen from the ship. The wealthier part of Spandeli-yon. A wine merchant for the rich people, Li guessed. He frowned.

  "No," he said. He spoke clearly, but kept his voice at a normal pitch. Let this old goat sound like a backward fool if he insists, he told himself, but I will not! "Not a wine shop." He searched his memory for the proper word. "A taven."

  "A taven? " The dock master blinked. "Oh, a taverril The man tried to hide an unpleasant smile and failed miserably. Li frowned again. He swept the wide sleeve of his waitao aside and undipped the scabbard that hung at his belt. He held it loosely, casually, but making certain that Cul could see both it and the protruding hilt of the heavy, curved dao within. If the man's empty eyes had gone wide before, they practically bulged out of his head now. His hand twitched for a knife sheathed at his belt, but Steth caught his arm.

  "Yes," said Li calmly. "A tavern."

  The captain answered for the dockmaster. "You could have asked me," he growled. Li just gave him a blunt glance. Steth grunted. "Fine." He nodded to his left. "Go that way and you'll find the Eel." He nodded right. "That way is the Wench's Ease."

  There was an unspoken warning in his voice: both taverns were dangerous places. Li wouldn't have expected any less. "Which one is most close?" he asked. Steth shrugged.

  "Both about the same."

  A cautious man lets his weapon precede him, Li thought. He gestured with his sword hand-to the right. "This one, this 'wencheese'-how will I find it?"

  "Wench's Ease," the captain corrected him. "Walk until you find a tree. It's the only one in dockside. There's a sign."

  "I don't read your language."

  Cul found his voice. "Don't need to. There's a picture of pretty wench on the sign," he said in a greasy tone. "You'll see that."

  "If I don't," Li told him, "I will come back and you can guide me yourself." He turned right and began to walk.

  Behind him, he heard the dockmaster mutter, "Arrogant bastard, isn't he? "

  "Cul, you don't know the sweet chum half of it," answered the captain.

  Li didn't look back, but just stared into the shadows ahead and let their voices fade behind him. His scabbard he kept out and ready. The cramped streets seemed empty, but that could change all too quickly. Spandeliyon was so far proving itself to be nothing more than he had expected-nothing more than he had been warned to expect. He clenched his teeth. The surface of the street under his boots was barely frozen mud, treacherous in the thin moonlight. He should, he supposed, be grateful for the cold. It killed whatever stench might have oozed out of the mud in warmer weather and kept the people of the town indoors by their smoking fires.

  In that, at least, he actually found himself envying them. A fire would be a blessing. As, he thought, would a torch. He should have demanded one of the sniveling dockmaster. But then again, he should also have asked more about the picture on the sign he sought. "Wench," he murmured to himself, trying to puzzle out the meaning of the word.

  The snow was beginning to fall more thickly by the time the street opened up into a small courtyard and Li spotted the tree the captain had mentioned. It was actually much larger than he had been expecting, an old giant stripped naked by winter. A small knot of figures clustered around its base, two of them holding up a third. Li almost called out to them for directions before one of them shifted and he saw what they were doing. The third man had been hung from the tree's branches-the other two were busy stealing his boots. And his stockings. And his pants. Li sucked in a sharp breath of disgust.

  The thieves must have heard him. One looked up, yelped at the sight of an armed man, and slapped his partner. Both fled, leaving the dead man turning slowly in the cold air, pants dangling loose around his knees. Li averted his eyes as he passed.

  Only one of the buildings around the tree bore any sign at all. Not that a sign seemed truly necessary-light and song seeped through gaps around the door. Some of the light splashed across the sign above as well, revealing a lurid painting of a laughing woman so buxom she almost spilled out of her bodice. Li guessed that he had found out what "wench" meant. He averted his eyes again, shifting his gaze to the ground, apparently the only safe place to look.

  It wasn't. The snow and muck between tree and tavern had been churned up, as if by many feet. The hanged man's killers had emerged from under the sign of the wench. His hand squeezed the scabbard of his dao and he glanced up briefly at the corpse dangling from the tree. "May the Immortals grant me better luck in this place than they did you," he said. He reached out and opened the tavern door.

  There was nothing better than a good song to loosen hearts-and more important, Tycho thought, throats. He grinned to himself as he sawed his bow across the strilling. The dark ale of the Wench's Ease was flowing as smooth as bait on a hook. Even Lander and his men were drinking and singing along with the tavern regulars. Muire and her serving maids were busier than they had been in a tenday and if Muire was happy enough at the end of the night, there might even be a little extra coin for him. All he needed to do was keep the mood up. "How about another?" he bellowed over the din.

  A cheer came back to him. Tycho sent a ripple of music dancing out from the strilling then scraped the bow slowly, drawing the crowd's attention to him. "Ahhh," he rasped sadly as his audience fell quiet, "the wizards of Thay, they have a way with magic and with spells. They shave the hair on their head and they dress all in red, and they're dour like clams in their shells."

  The bow scratched a string for emphasis. A few people laughed and Tycho flashed them a smile. "But there's a reason they're bald-ed, and dress like they're scalded and all have the humor of rocks." He paused and the crowd leaned forward in anticipation. "That isn't a pimple…" He winked at one of the serving maids. "… you see on their… dimple…"

  "It's pox!" he yelled and the crowd joined in, banging tables and singing lustily. "It's pox, it's pox, they've got the Thayan pox!"

  Tycho strutted out into the middle of the floor and spun around to the shouts
of the crowd, playing fast and hard. "Well, there's Thayan pox in every port, in sailor's shack and prince's court-"

  "The pox, the pox, they've got the Thayan pox!"

  "When'ere you see a wizard itch, you know what is that makes 'em twitch!"

  "The pox, the pox, they've got the Thayan pox!"

  In Tycho's head, the trickle of coins that Muire usually doled out at the end of the night was turning into a small flood. He laughed. "Even temples aren't safe anymore," he sang, "you never know who walked through that door!" He swept out his arm and pointed his bow at the Ease's own rickety portal — which opened.

  For one moment, the slightest fraction of a heartbeat, the crowd-and Tycho-paused. Framed in the tavern doorway was a tall man dressed in a long quilted coat of blue wool. Snow clung to his shoulders and to the fur-edged cap that he wore. If the snow bothered him, however, there was no trace of it in his travel-tanned, fine-boned face. He stood straight as a mast, stern and dignified.

  For a moment.

  "The pox!" howled the crowd in perfect time. "The pox! He's got the Thayan pox!"

  The stranger's mouth drew a thin line across his face.

  It wasn't clear who in the crowd laughed first. It simply started and spread, sweeping through the tavern like a storm until everyone was hooting and guffawing. Tycho tried to fight it off but couldn't. Laughter rose from his belly and forced its way out of him. He barely managed to get his bow back to the shilling and scratch out the last bars of the song before doubling over in helpless mirth.

  The only people in the place not laughing were the stranger and Muire. The stranger stepped into the tavern, slamming the door shut behind him, and stalked over to the bar. Muire gave Tycho a fierce look. The bard swallowed a laugh and reached out to the stranger as he passed. "Olore, friend," he choked. "Welcome to the Wench's Ease." He couldn't hold back a crooked smile. "The merriest tavern in Spandeliyon."