The rebel shook his head emphatically. “It was not a message to any eyes but mine. Idris and I have a special code in case …” The momentary eagerness in his face faded to a grim recollection of his loss. “The message said that a Councilfarm overseer named Evan Bollange had approached the sot soon after I left the inn, offering five able-bodied Councilfarm workers whose deaths had been staged. The poor wretches had been smuggled into the city, drugged, and hidden under the boards of a manure cart. A time and place were named for a meeting between Bollange and the sot’s master, a slaver in Salamander’s employ, to discuss terms.
“The sot left the inn, and Idris followed. That’s all I can say with certainty, for he wrote no more in his message. But it seems to me that the sot went to inform his master of the meeting date with Bollange. Salamander was either meeting with the slaver at the time or simply watching him, and Idris got too close. And he was not the only one.
“The sot was a minion, chosen precisely because he would boast—for an organization that is too secret will have no clients. Like all such, he was disposable. He was found yesterday with his throat cut. Such culling is not uncommon among Salamander’s people. The sot had served his purpose for a time, but the slavemaster could not risk leaving so obvious a trail.”
Brydda’s eyes were hard and suddenly purposeful. “Yet, in his arrogance, he made a mistake. He let us find Idris’s body, never knowing there was a message on it, telling the time and place of the rendezvous between Bollange and the slaver. They are to meet before dawn this day, in an inn on the other side of the city. If you will help me, we must leave at once.”
“You are going to spy on the meeting?”
“I have no intention of spying,” Brydda said, his eyes aglitter. “I intend to intercept Bollange and take his place.”
“You would pass yourself off as a Councilfarm overseer?”
He shook his head. “There is every likelihood that the sot described Bollange to his master; therefore, I will be his brother, Arkold Bollange.”
“You must be mad! The slaver will never believe such a far-fetched story!”
“I do not need to convince him for long,” Brydda said calmly. “I doubt he would tell me anything even if he did believe me. But I only need to get close, because you will come with me as my assistant and read his mind. He must know enough about Salamander to reach him at need.”
I gaped at his audacity. “And what if the slaver decides to just kill the overseer’s unlikely brother and his gypsy assistant?”
“That is a risk,” Brydda agreed, sounding as if he were admitting that it might rain. “But I doubt he will do that, even if he is extremely suspicious, because we offer something Salamander wants—slaves.” He stood up suddenly. “Will you help me?”
I sighed, then stood.
“Rushton will be furious. He will like this no more than that I have decided to take your advice and meet with your rebel leaders.”
Brydda’s eyes widened. “Good on both accounts! Opportunities must be seized upon when they arise. We need leaders, truly, but sometimes decisions need to be made on the battlefield, in the heat of the moment. Without those capable of making such decisions, any force might founder. Rushton would appreciate the need and your ability to rise to it and make a decision without consultation.”
“I wonder,” I murmured dryly, pulling on my boots. I went to my chamber, donned a hooded cloak, and plaited my hair.
When we came down into the wagon-repair shed, Gahltha stirred, sending a stern reminder of my promise not to go out without him.
“He insists I ride him,” I told Brydda. “If there is trouble, he is a savage fighter. Jaygar has been trained to fight as well, and he offers to bear you.”
Brydda shrugged. “I had thought to walk, but if we take the horses, we can get away fast if something goes awry.” He signaled his thanks to Jaygar.
I was silent, impressed that the rebel did not simply accept Jaygar’s offer as his rightful due. He genuinely regarded the horses as equals. Though he rode Sallah often, and in fact had stolen her from a Herder cloister, he never took her for granted. Sometimes I was convinced he had so easily accepted my Misfit powers solely because, through me, he had been able to devise a finger-signal language that enabled him to communicate with horses. He had been delighted when the Beastspeaking guildmaster, Alad, had asked to learn the language so it could be taught gradually to all at Obernewtyn who were not beastspeakers and to the beasts themselves.
As we rode out into the early morning, I wondered if Alad was right about Sallah being the lowland beast-leader and, if so, whether Brydda had any idea of it. It would not surprise me at all to find he had allied himself with the equines over his own kind.
The streets were all but deserted at this hour, and we did not see any soldierguards; nonetheless, I was unable to rid myself of the feeling that we were being watched. Certainly we made a strange enough couple, a gypsy boy on a magnificent, if dirty, black stallion and an enormous dark-haired man wrapped in an oil cloak and mounted on a stocky roan.
“I scent no funaga,” Gahltha assured me.
I relaxed fractionally, reporting this to Brydda.
“Nor should there be,” he said quietly. “I am taking us through parts of the city that are virtually deserted except during trading hours.”
Brydda ceased his scrutiny of the streets to look at me for a moment. “As soon as we return, I will send birds off, to let the group leaders know about the meeting with you. It will take a few days for them to reply, though they have birds as well, because they will confer and scheme before responding.”
“Is it wise to let the rebels know in advance that I am to come?” I asked.
“We must ensure that as many rebel leaders as possible come to hear you speak. Otherwise, the report they hear will depend upon the bias of the teller. And even if they were favorably inclined toward you, it is easier to dismiss secondhand reports as exaggeration. I will phrase my message so that every rebel leader feels they will miss out on something vital unless they attend. The rest will be up to you.”
There was no sign of Brydda’s earlier shattered disorientation; the big man was shielding himself from the pain of Idris’s loss by concentrating on plans and schemes.
I said nothing, knowing he would have to deal with his pain eventually and that no words would ease it. I remembered how deep the hurt of Jik’s death had cut into me. Words had not helped then—and sometimes I had longed for silence as much as forgetfulness. Time had abated the immediate wrenching sorrow I had felt at the boy’s death, yet even now the thought of it sometimes made a dull ache in my chest, like a long-healed scar echoing its birth.
Suddenly Brydda signaled Jaygar to stop.
“Idris’s message said Bollange had been told to seek out the street of five inns,” the rebel said, looking about. “We are almost there, so we will wait here to intercept him.”
“Do you know what he looks like?”
He shook his head. “I am confident he will come this way, and there will be few enough people about at this time. But you will know for sure when he comes,” he added, touching his head to indicate that he meant me to use my farseeking powers.
It seemed a vague sort of plan. But then, Brydda had an uncanny intuition—he called it a “knack”—so I held my tongue and let him lead the way into a narrow lane between two high buildings. We dismounted, and the horses moved deeper into the lane to wait.
“What am I to do when I have him?”
“You must turn him back,” Brydda said softly. “Can you do that so that he will not know what has happened?”
I sighed. “I will try, but his mind might be—”
“Someone/funaga comes,” Gahltha sent urgently.
I froze, and at once we heard a quick, light step. It was a woman carrying a basket, and a few minutes later two boys ran by. Then, on the third sound of footsteps, I sent my mind flying out and breathed a sigh of incredulous relief to find the wiry little man coming
down the street was indeed the very person we were waiting for. Best of all, his mind was wide open to me.
Gently, I riffled through his memories before coercing him into forgetting why he had come out. In the gap left by what was erased, I took an older memory of a rousing night’s drinking from his memories and reestablished it as the memory of the previous night. I pinched a nerve and gave him a headache to match, then sent him around the next corner and back to his lodgings bewildered and disorientated.
“It’s done,” I said aloud. “He has forgotten everything about this meeting and believes he has been out carousing. I have made him forget about the slaves, too. He now thinks they really did die in an accident. You will have to free them, though.”
“You know their location?”
“Of course.”
“Good,” Brydda said grimly. He cast a look at the sky. “We had better go on. The instructions said the overseer must stop at the public trough and drink, to identify himself.”
We left the horses to wait and made our way onto the street of five inns. There was a dirty-looking trough about halfway along, and Brydda stopped at it and cupped his hands to scoop some of the brackish water to his mouth. I let my mind loose, but I could detect no watcher. It made my skin creep to think that Salamander might be somewhere about us, watching from a window or a pool of shadow.
A ragged boy stepped out of a doorway, and I gasped in startled fright. His lips were blue, and he was shivering violently. His eyes slid to me uneasily, then back to Brydda. “There was to be one man walking alone.”
“It is none of your affair,” Brydda growled. “What are the words you have been told to say to me?”
The boy seemed reassured by Brydda’s roughness. “You are to go to the last inn on this street and ask for the man in the best room.”
He turned and darted away down a lane.
“He was frightened,” I murmured, but Brydda had begun to walk again.
The last inn proved to be a cheap roominghouse with a den attached for casual drinking. I grimaced, for the frowsy Good Egg had been positively luxurious in comparison. A rank smell assailed us at the door, rising from piles of stinking refuse to one side.
I gagged at the stench as Brydda knocked, wondering what had possessed me to agree to such a mad scheme. My powers would do us no good at the moment, because I could feel that the wretched place was constructed of rock lightly tainted with Beforetime poisons. Fortunately, this would not matter once we were inside the walls—as long as they did not lie between the slaver and ourselves.
“I/Gahltha am here. I will kick the wall down if you do not return,” the black horse sent stoutly. I felt slightly less afraid, knowing the fierce equine meant exactly what he said.
A man with yellow-stained teeth opened the inn door a crack and squinted out at us. Brydda drew a little scrolled note from his pocket and handed it through the opening. “Give this to the man in your best room.”
The innkeeper grunted in derision, but he took the note in his grimy fingers before slamming the door shut. “What was in it?” I asked.
“A note from my brother, Evan, introducing me as his proxy. And now we can do no more than wait and keep our sword hands free.”
We waited in silence, and I spent the time adopting various creative ways of breathing in an effort to filter out the foul stench of the place.
The door opened again, and the man indicated that we were to enter. Brydda gave me an encouraging pinch as I preceded him. If possible, the smell inside was worse, and it was all I could do not to vomit. The rebel seemed completely impervious to it. I gulped and was glad I had an empty stomach.
The innkeeper brought us to a room with a brown door and held out a dirty paw. Brydda dropped a coin into it, then knocked, and the innkeeper scuttled away as if he did not want to be there when the occupant appeared.
This made me very nervous.
The door opened a slit.
“Enter,” a papery voice rasped, and a shiver ran up my spine at the sound of it.
At first, I thought the chamber completely unlit, but it was simply that Brydda’s bulk had blocked the light of a cheap lantern, which was shaded to throw its light toward us, leaving the rest of the room in darkness. The windows, if there were any, had been blacked out.
The only thing I could see clearly was the pitted surface of a wooden table and two enormous scarred hands with thick, powerful wrists resting on it. Between the hands was a curved dagger, carved with odd symbols, and the little scrolled note Brydda had sent in.
The atmosphere of threat in the room was almost palpable, and my heart began to gallop as Brydda stepped forward. “I am Arkold Bollange, sirrah.…”
“You do not resemble your brother,” the man said, his skepticism patently obvious.
“Different fathers, sirrah,” Brydda said, and it was all I could do not to goggle at him in astonishment. In the blink of an eye, without the benefit of even changing his shirt, the rebel had transformed himself into a self-important fool whose pompous facade barely concealed the sniveling coward lurking beneath.
I did my best to shape myself into the sort of cringing nitwit that I imagined such a man would choose as a servant. At the same time, I loosed a probe. It moved sluggishly because of the taint in the walls and floor. The first thing it told me was that the man seated behind the table was not alone. There were three others standing against the wall behind him.
I bent my mind upon one of them and learned that he and the man next to him were hired killers. The third was known to them only as the slaver’s assistant. The two hirelings carried knives, unsheathed, and had instructions to kill instantly after a certain combination of words.
I tried the slaver’s assistant, but his mind was shielded.
“Why did not your brother come himself as was arranged?” the slaver was asking Brydda.
“As he wrote in that note, sirrah, Evan feared he was being followed and sent me in his place. I am here only as an emissary to discuss, ah, price.”
“Who is this gypsy?” The slaver’s voice cracked out like a whip, and I jumped.
The two men with knives tensed, and so did I. “My servant,” Brydda blustered. “You could not expect a man of my stature to go about in an area like this without even a body servant? I can’t very well use my own people. You need not worry about him, though. He is defective except for a peculiar strength with his hands and feet that make him a useful guard in spite of his small stature.”
Again the silence, and I prepared myself to coerce the two with knives if the slave supplier gave the signal to kill.
“Very well,” he said at last in his sibilant voice. “But I do not want him brought again. I do not like gypsies, full or half-bloods. They are trouble and are carriers of disease.”
“Of … of course, sirrah,” Brydda babbled.
The slave supplier became businesslike as he spoke of the price he would pay for each slave and how this would increase with the number of slaves offered. The men in the shadows relaxed.
“How will I reach you if there is a problem before collection?” Brydda asked.
“There will be no problem,” the slaver said with chilling finality.
“Of course not,” Brydda babbled idiotically. “I understand perfectly.”
The slave supplier stood, and even his hands were swallowed up by the shadows. A moment later, a bag of coins fell onto the table.
“This is an advance on the payment for the five. You will get the remainder when I get the slaves and make certain they are sound-limbed and not defectives.”
“I assure you …,” Brydda blustered.
I swiftly summoned a coercive probe, realizing I had been so busy listening to the interchange that I had forgotten what I was there for. Sending the probe to the slave supplier, I was flabbergasted to find my way barred by another farseeking probe. Wrapped delicately around the slaver’s mind, the alien probe had taken on the shape and feel of the host mind and in some places was indistingu
ishable from it.
Unwilling to disturb the probe until I knew its purpose, I cast about until I found its source. It was the man in the shadows whose mind I had been unable to read. The slaver’s assistant was a Talented Misfit!
I hovered uncertainly, my mind reeling with shock. I had promised Brydda to get what information I could about Salamander, which meant getting past the othermind.
I clenched my teeth and readied myself to attack.
“Collection of the slaves will take place in two days,” the slave supplier was saying. “Here is a map. The shed where you are to bring the slaves is marked on it. When you hear a knock thus …” He rapped in a sequence. The movement brought him into the light for a fleeting second, and I glimpsed bad skin, dark-brown eyes, and a vicious slash of a mouth before he moved back into the shadows. “Then you will open the door. Do you understand?”
I braced myself for a battle and let an aggressive coercerprobe fly toward the slaver’s assistant. To my complete astonishment, I met no resistance. The othermind opened to me—and I recognized it!
20
WHEN WE CAME outside, the sky arching above was a deep, icy blue, and there were few stars, for the sun was near to rising. We could only have been inside the inn a short while. I felt as if we had been in there for years.
Gahltha whinnied a welcome, and I stroked his neck in mute affection, realizing unexpectedly that whatever the enigmatic stallion felt for me, I loved him.
“What did you find?” Brydda asked as we mounted.
“Another mindprobe,” I said. “Wrapped around the slaver’s mind.”
Brydda turned to stare at me. “Are you saying there was a Misfit among those who skulked in the shadows of that room? Protecting him?”
“Not just a Misfit. A Talent. And not protecting, though that is what I thought at first. He was trying to get into the slaver’s mind, too. I traced the mindprobe back to its owner. Do you remember Daffyd, who brought Dragon to Obernewtyn when I was ill?”
“The Druid’s armsman? The probe was his?”