“Only the lucky ones,” Miz said. The thief looked levelly at him. Miz shrugged, spread his hands. “You didn’t hear where they keep them.”
The thief drank the second cup of trax, then flicked the last of the spirit out onto the rough table top. He spat into the little cup, wiped round the bowl with the hem of his hide waistcoat, then leant across the table to Miz, holding up the cup in his hands as though it was some jewel. “Drink?” he said, putting his other hand on the bottle.
Miz shoved the tankard over to the other man, took the bark cup and let the other man fill it. Miz knocked the trax back in one go. It was rough; he tried not to cough. The thief drained the tankard, then leant back, stuck his head out through the curtain and shouted something.
The serving girl came back through the curtain with another cup and two tankards full of beer. She looked at the thief, who looked at Miz.
Miz said, “Oh, no, please, allow me,” and dug for more coins in his jerkin.
He paid the girl roughly what the thief had let her keep the last time. She still looked pleased.
“So,” said the thief. “What was it you wanted?”
Miz supped his beer. “I might be interested in exporting some ethnic artifacts,” he said.
“Apply to the castle,” the thief told him.
Miz shrugged. “The ethnic artifacts I’m interested in…” Miz put his head to one side, looking up at the ceiling beyond the open-roofed booth, “… aren’t actually for sale. But I’d pay a good price to somebody who might help me come into possession of them.”
The thief swirled his beer round in his tankard. “What things are you talking about? Where are they?”
“Could be almost anything,” Miz said. “Some of them…” He imitated the thief, swirling his beer around in his tankard, “… might be in the castle.”
The thief looked into his eyes. “The castle?” he said, flatly.
Miz nodded: “Yes. How practical do you think it might be to have something from the castle fall into one’s hands?”
The thief nodded, seeming to look away. He stood slowly, holding the tankard. “Wait here,” he said. “I have somebody who might be able to help you.” He backed out of the booth through the dull, heavy curtains.
Miz sat alone for a moment. He drank his beer. He looked round the grubby booth. The place reeked of sweat, spilled drink, possibly spilled blood, and something Miz suspected was beer gone badly off. The Eye and Poker; he’d heard more inspiring names for inns. This one was in the less reputable part of Pharpech town, down the steep side of the hill from the castle and out to the east in an area of creakily tumbledown tenements that housed stinking tanneries and bone-meal works. Even with a gun in his pocket and a viblade in his boot he’d felt vulnerable walking in here.
He looked up at the top edge of the booth wall, a metre above his head and a metre below the yellow-stained ceiling of the bar. He was sure he could see little brown stalactites on the ceiling.
He turned his attention to the bark wall behind him. Now he looked carefully, there was a distinct line of greasy blackness at about scalp height, where countless unwashed heads of probably inhabited hair had left their mark over the years. Miz tutted, disgusted, and felt the back of his head. He altered his position in the seat, lifting his feet up and sitting sideways on the bench, his head against the side wall of the booth.
The noise from the bar seemed to have faded. He turned his head, frowning.
The heavy curtains jerked. Three crossbow bolts thudded into the bark at the back of the booth, neatly into the lower part of the greasy line he’d looked at a few seconds earlier, where his head had been.
He stared at them. Then he pulled his gun from his pocket and pushed the beer tankard over so that it spilled beer across the table and down spattering onto the stained floor; the puddle spread to the hem of the booth’s curtains, where it would be visible from the bar outside.
Miz got up on his knees and swung quickly and silently across to the trestle bench on the other side of the table. He sat on the table, feet on the bench, to one side of the booth. It was still very quiet outside; just a few whispers and the noise of a chair or two being scraped across uneven floorboards. There were three little tears in the heavy curtains where the quarrels had entered. The holes let in tiny beams of smoky light.
He waited, gun ready, heart pounding.
The curtain moved millimetrically; the light from one of the three holes blinked out.
He thrust an arm through the divide in the curtains and grabbed the man outside by the neck as he threw himself forward and out. He landed crouching, his back to the narrow bark divide between two booths, his arm tight round the neck of the man he’d grabbed, who thudded sitting onto the floor. It was the thief he’d first spoken to; Miz rammed his gun in just under the man’s right ear.
The bar had cleared almost entirely; only a haze of smoke and a few unfinished drinks on the tables showed that the place had been packed a few minutes earlier. Standing with their backs to the bar itself were three men holding crossbows. One of them had reloaded, one was about to fit the bolt into its groove, and the other had frozen in the act of pulling the crossbow taut again.
The one with the loaded crossbow was pointing it at him. Miz forced the thief’s head to one side with the barrel of the laser. The thief smelled rancid; he struggled a little but Miz pulled his arm tighter round his neck, never taking his eyes off the man with the crossbow. The thief went still. He wheezed as he breathed.
There were a couple of other men still in the bar, near the doorway; they both held heavy-looking pistols, but they seemed to be backing off towards the doors. Miz was more worried about the booth next to his. He thought he glimpsed its curtain move out of the corner of his eye. He shifted across the floor so that his back was to the curtains of the booth he’d been in.
“Now, boys,” Miz said, grinning at the man with the crossbow. “Let’s just take this sensibly and nobody’ll get hurt.” He stood up slowly, keeping the thief between himself and the three men with the crossbows. “What do you say?”
Nobody said anything. The thief in his arm went on wheezing. Miz could feel the man trying to swallow. He loosened his grip just a little. “Perhaps our friend here has something he’d like to contribute.”
The two men near the doors slipped outside. Miz prodded the thief with the gun again. “Say something calming.”
“Let him go,” gasped the thief. Still no reaction.
These bozos are waiting on something, Miz thought. He heard a noise somewhere behind him in the booth. They’d gone over the top! There was a squelching noise from the floor behind him. He whirled round, taking the thief with him. A long thin blade flashed out of the curtains and thudded into the thief’s torso just under the sternum, the glistening point appearing out of his back through the hide of his tunic. He made a grunting noise.
Miz had already ducked, dropping and turning. The crossbow bolt smacked into the back of the thief’s skull, sending his body jack-knifing forward through the curtains and into the man holding the knife, forcing him to fall backwards over the table.
Miz’s gun made a crackling, spitting noise. The man who’d fired the crossbow shook as the beams hit his chest, flames licking round the edges of the little craters on his jacket. He dropped the crossbow and hung his head. He stood like that for a moment, while Miz moved away from the booth where the man with the knife was still trying to extricate himself from the curtains and the body of the thief. Then the crossbow man fell slowly back, whacking his head off the bar and crumpling to the floor. Blood sizzled against the flames flickering on his jacket.
The other two crossbow men looked at each other. The one who had now loaded his quarrel smiled nervously at Miz. He nodded at Miz’s gun, swallowing.