At last Imaya-the lady Imaya Rennsdaughter, if truth must be told- gave it up and left. By now fully as awake as she, Cusharlain latched the door after her.
A better man would escort her home, he mused. Down to the street, at least. Absently scratching his thigh, he realized that he was still naked. He regarded his clothes, forlornly strewing the floor. Then, one eyebrow up, he looked at the window. Of course it was open, but after all! It wasn't as if this room was on the first floor!
Naked, he padded to the window and looked out. He saw nothing; only other buildings and the dark alleys and streets among them; only Sanctuary, tired and snoozing in the moonlight. He looked down, then, down three flights, leaning out a bit with his hands on the sill, and then up. A little shiver ran over him and he ignored it. He twisted his head to cast thoughtful glances to either side.
Cusharlain straightened, sighing. "Damn," he muttered aloud.
This room was inaccessible save by the locked door, and it had still been locked when she'd thought to check it while he shook the bedsheet for the third time. He remembered the same as she did. After one of those pretty earrings had pricked his arm during their horizontal em- brace, she had removed them both. He had watched because he liked the way her bare breasts moved when she lifted her arms to her ears. He had seen her; she had laid them on the little table right there, just beside her side of the bed.
And we made love, and drifted off, he mused, staring at the open win- dow. And while we were sleeping someone came in that window and took those earrings, not to mention what I chose not to tell her: the moneypouch sewn into my leggings! Except that no one in Sanctuary could possibly do such a thing. No one's good enough.
One man was able; one man had both the climbing skill and the stealth to have accomplished this impossibility. He could have done it. but he's gone; left quite a while back. Over a year? Yes, by all the gods; well over a year ago.
Nevertheless someone came in thai window and took her earrings and my purse, while we were right here sleeping!
Damn! The little bastard's back in town!
"I'm a carpenter, Spellmaster. Was." The man with the hound-dog face held up his hand to display its severely restricted use, especially to a carpenter.
Strick showed the fellow a compassionate expression. All his recent weight loss accounted for the droopy aspect of his face; long-stretched skin still hung in the memory of former jowls and "plump" cheeks.
"Wints told me before you came in that you are a better than good carpenter, Abohorr, and that you've recently lost fifty or so pounds. He did not say that you had also lost your thumb."
"Want to hear how I lost it?" "No," Strick said, regarding the still upraised hand and its thumbless state. He knew of the occupational hazards of carpenters and woodcut- ters, and was not interested in particulars doubtless both gory and overlong in the telling. "That is, telling me would be of no value to either of us. And I have to tell you at once that I can't do a thing about that thumb, Abohorr."
Abohorr heaved a big sigh. He nodded. "Figured that. The-the point is, Spellmaster ... I don't want to carpenter no more. Tired of it. I mean I was even afore this happent to m'thumb, I swear by Anen's beard I was. I know you have a lot of contacts and a real name for helping people, and so ..."
The formerly fat Maze-dweller waved that maimed hand while he looked sadly yet hopefully at the very big man behind the desk draped in rich blue. The man who had already made such a change in Sanctuary and its troubled, surely damned people. A foreigner with an odd accent, come here from up north somewhere!
"My abilities don't extend to-to ... hmm. I'm not sure what it is you want of me, Abohorr." Strick's pronunciation of "want" rhymed with "font" or his extreme shortening of the o in "lost."
His visitor rose swiftly. Even standing, he maintained his deferential aspect, so that he didn't seem to be looking down upon the seated man in his plain blue tunic.
"I'd do anything for you, Spellmaster. I'll pay you for yer time, too, 'f I'm wasting it. Just-well, just let me know if you hear of anything; a job I might fill. I'm big, and strong, and a damned good worker, Spellmaster. I'm used to a lot of work. You've got a lot of contacts and everybody's talkin' about all the people you've helped, Spellmaster- If you hear of anything ... well, Wints-yer helper Wintsenay, I mean-knows where to find me."
Strick nodded. "Wintsenay suggested that you come?" "I don't want to get him in no trouble ner nothing, Spellmaster. We was talking, an' he sort of did, just sort of."
"Urn." The spellwright's expression did not change, which took effort. "Uh, well, anyhow, uh-what do I owe you, Spellmaster?"
Strick showed his visitor a very small smile and a small shake of the big head that was covered to midforehead, midcheek on each side, and the base of his nape by the snug cap of leather dyed dark blue. No one had seen this man's bare head, or a sign of hair. They saw the cap, and the strangeness of deep blue tunic over matching leggings. Strange, and dull. The medallion, a plugged gold piece he always wore, did little to alleviate the severity of his attire. Oddly, the medallion nearly matched his large and droopy mustache.
"I've done nothing for you, Abohorr. You owe me nothing. You're sure that you don't want to fight back and cope-to be the best one-thumbed carpenter Sanctuary ever saw or heard of? That I can help you with!"
"I just don't want to go back to carpenterin', Spellmaster," the poor fellow said, and with several expressions of thanks and apologies, he left the office of the man from Firaqa.
Strick waited a minute or so to allow him time to get down the steps and to the door of what he referred to as "my shop" before shouting,
"Wints!"
The man formerly described as "an overage street urchin" was much less than a minute in making an appearance. Wintsenay was a changed man, now, with good steady employment and the blue livery of Strick tiFiraqa.
"Sir!"
"You suggested to your friend Abohorr that he come see me," Strick said grimly, fixing the other man with a stem face and a pointing finger bigger than any of those of the carpenter or ex-carpenter who had just departed. "You know bloody well I can't do anything about a lost thumb, Wints! I wish you'd never learned my curse-that I have to help or try;
can't not help to try, especially when I'm asked."
Wintsenay started to expostulate, to deny. He broke that off and looked down at the nice carpet someone of wealth had recently presented his master. Like the medallion, it was another expression of gratitude for another of the white wizard's services.
"I'm sorry, master. He's a good man, Ab is. Used to be so fat and strong and jolly all the time, you know. Now he looks like somebody's huntin' dog that's been run hard for a solid week of nights. He sure needs and deserves somebody's help."
"You play tricks with me, sirrah Wintsenay, and so will you need somebody's help. Now get your treacherous butt out of here and take the rest of that ugly corpus with it."
Wints understood the first part well enough, and acted on it. He was setting his slow brain to the working out of the rest of his master's meaning as he departed, touting at speed.
Strick sighed, shook his head, and slapped an inordinately big hand down on the fine cloth covering his desk: a large piece of deep blue velvet that trailed gold tassels on the side facing the visitors' chair. After a moment he spoke, loudly but not shouting as before.
"Avneh?"
A girl in her teens bustled in, also in the distinctive blue of Croy:
Strick's color. Former streetgirl, former hangerout at the low dive called Sly's Place, former alcoholic, former aspiring whore. Now she was recep- tionist and devoted servant of the man who had rescued her. Servant, as in acolyte of a god. He called her niece and enforced her calling him "uncle" in self-defense: the grateful teenager had wanted to give herself to him in every way. She had also just outgrown one tunic ofCroyite blue and had to have a new one to accommodate her steadily plumpening body.
"What can I get you. Uncle StrieeEEEE!"
She was staring past him when she broke off to emit that loud, pro- longed e sound- Her seated "uncle" astonished her by the speed with which he rose, pounced three feet sidewise, and whirled. An obscenely long knife had appeared in his hand. He and Avenestra stared at the intruder while the latter stared at the big man and the ready blade nearly as long as a sword.
He was dark, lean and rangy at medium height. Jet black of hair and the eyebrows that almost met above a falcate nose. His eyes were nearly as black as his hair. He wore a plain green tunic, nicely tanned leather leggings, short buskins, and several knives. They included one that was a mate to Strick's outsized blade. Lifting his gaze to Strick's blue eyes, he elevated his arms a bit as well.
"Mother Shipri have mercy. Hansel" Avenestra said. "Only you could have gotten in here 'thout being seen by Frax 'n' Wints 'n' me! But when did you get back in town? I thought maybe you was dead!"
" 'Were' dead, Avenestra, damn it," Strick said without turning or looking at all away from the intruder, "and get out of here. Tell Frax and Wintsenay to be still, and hold visitors for a few minutes."
"That's really Avenestra?" the intruder said a few seconds later. "She sure looks better'n she used to. Even working on getting fat' Yours?"
"My 'niece,' assistant, and sometime cook, and that's all. I told Ahdio what you said: that you hadn't taken the red cat, but that it followed you, even out on the desert."