The Spider nodded cautiously. ‘Delighted to make your acquaintance, Master Maker,’ he said, in a voice still sounding cultured. By now the three youngsters had stopped working in order to listen, and Gryllis turned and cuffed the nearest Fly boy irritably. ‘Dirty your hands, you little parasites. Don’t think the arrival of one Beetle-kinden’s cause for a holiday!’
‘So what in the wastes brings you all the way back here?’ Hokiak asked Stenwold. ‘I figured you’d made tracks once this place came under new management.’
‘I thought you might have done the same.’
The old man shrugged. ‘Ain’t got nowhere to go, me. Besides, don’t matter who you are, everyone needs the services of an importer-exporter now and then. Matter of fact, the Black Guild business is better than ever.’
The Black Guild was Lowlander parlance for smuggling, although it never approached anything like a genuine guild’s unity. ‘You’re shifting goods for the Wasps now, are you?’ Stenwold asked him, a little uneasily.
Hokiak grinned at him, an appalling sight. ‘Now you know it ain’t like that. I just shift for them that asks. I ain’t never one to nail my heart to a flagstaff, and no mistake. So if you got some business you ain’t keen for them stripeys to figure, you came to the right place.’
Stenwold nodded. It could be a bad mistake, of course, to trust this old villain. He could find himself in the cell next door to Che’s in no time, if she was still even in this cursed city. Still, his options were fast running through his fingers like grains of sand.
‘Let’s just say,’ he replied, ‘that I want to meet some people the Wasps aren’t too anxious for anyone to meet.’
Hokiak nodded sagely. ‘Not dealings I’d want to see in an establishment like mine. You’d better help me hide my eyes.’
Stenwold placed two coins on a crate in front of him, gold, stamped each with a winged sword and the words ‘Central Mint of Helleron’. Hokiak whistled when he picked them up.
‘Centrals, no less. Your coin’s good, Stenwold. These’re harder than the Empire stuff these days. In that case, I’d advise you to go straight into the back-room bar and get yourself and your lad here a drink. I’ll join you there presently. Gryllis, you can watch the shop for me.’
‘I’m sure I can manage,’ replied the Spider laconically.
As well as the hidden contraband store, there was a liquor house at the back of Hokiak’s, and there had been long before the Scorpion had lent his name to this place. They found seven drinkers there already, and none of them looking the type to stare at too closely. Stenwold registered a pair of Ants of a colour he did not recognize and a trio of Fly-kinden gamblers with knives laid out on the table to indicate theirs was a closed game. There was a female Beetle with a tremendous scar down one side of her face and one hand on a big under-over double-armed crossbow, whom Stenwold thought was probably a game hunter. There was even a Wasp-kinden man in repainted armour, who must surely have been a mercenary or even a deserter. Behind the bar stood a Mynan woman, one of that local strain that seemed to be a stable half-breed of Ant and Beetle, and for a couple of small coins she handed out clay beakers of an acrid clear liquid.
‘Don’t drink it,’ Stenwold warned Totho as they found a table.
‘I have tried drink before, sir,’ the artificer said stiffly.
‘Not drink like this. The first time I tried this stuff I was left blind for a day.’ Stenwold realized that he had chosen his seat to face the door. Old habits were coming back to him.
‘How much do you trust that old man?’ Totho inquired.
‘I wish I knew.’ Stenwold sighed. ‘I wish I knew. I don’t think he’d go out of his way to hand us in, but it’ll be different if there’s a reward out. Just be ready to jump if it all falls over.’
Totho nodded, and Stenwold looked up to see Hokiak poling his way over with the help of his stick. With a wheezing sigh the old man lowered himself into a chair at their table.
‘Don’t you look at me like that, Maker. I still got years left in me,’ he said, between ragged breaths.
‘You’ll outlive the pair of us,’ said Stenwold, hoping it wasn’t true. ‘Tell me, your deputy-’
‘Partner,’ Hokiak corrected. ‘Old Gryllis is the soul of discretion. He ain’t the kind to draw attention to himself. Used to be a player, way down south, and got enemies still on the look-out for him. He likes a quiet life now, same as all of us.’ He produced a squat clay pipe and lit it, sending a worm of smoke that trailed across the width of the table. ‘Mind, you seem to be looking for a mite more noise in yours. You’re after the Red Flag lot.’
‘Am I?’
‘That’s what they’ve gotten to callin’ ’emselves these days — on account of what they leave behind at the scene. You sure you want to mix with them? Don’t get me wrong. They’re good customers of mine. Always on the look for me to get ’em things in, or people out sometimes. Still, they ain’t what you’d call nice boys and girls.’
‘Living under the Wasp boot will do that to you,’ Stenwold observed. ‘Anyone left over from my time?’
‘A few, just a few,’ Hokiak confirmed. ‘Mind, it’s the young bloods what run it now, mostly. You get me a handful of those Centrals and, sure, I can get you where you’ll meet ’em. I just got to warn you, you mayn’t like it when you do.’
‘I’ll take that chance,’ said Stenwold. ‘I need their help. Maybe I can even help them in exchange. How many’s a handful, Hokiak?’
The old man gave him a carious smile. ‘Blast me, but it’s been a long while. You used to have always that madcap lot with you, din’t you? That Spider-kin who was such a looker, and there was your Mantis feller what did the prize-fighting that year. I won a parcel and a half on him. If’n you was new, Maker, I’d have bigger hands, but seeing as you remember an old man after all this time, call it a dozen and we’re happy.’
It was a lot of money; for Totho, more money than he had ever seen in one place. Still, he saw Stenwold count it out willingly and without regret.
The old Scorpion had made the arrangements and then given them directions, which had led them by moonlight to a dark square. Stenwold kept his gaze steady, his breath rising as a slight plume in the night air. There were many such faded locations, away from Myna’s centre and its main thoroughfares and the grotesque wart of the governor’s palace. This had been a rich area of the city before the conquest. The surrounding houses here were three-storeyed, many of them, and some still sported empty iron hanging baskets where flowers had once been kept, or the peeling traces of ochre or dark blue where the lintels had been painted about the doors and windows. Many windows were shutterless now, and others had them hanging precariously off one hinge. Stenwold guessed that half of these houses were abandoned now, and such occupants as remained were not those families that had originally held court here.
Hokiak had directed him here, though. They would meet here.
Totho, beside him, had Scuto’s repeating crossbow in his hands, with a full magazine slotted into the top. Stenwold was beginning to wish he had brought a crossbow himself, and not just his sword. If the Scorpion had betrayed them this would be a poor place to get trapped by Wasp soldiers.
‘Master Maker,’ Totho whispered a warning.
Stenwold started and turned to see two tall men in yellow shirts and black breeches passing into the square. One held a staff, and the other a lantern. They pointedly paid no attention to the two foreigners, instead lighting two braziers with exaggerated care before moving on. The dim red light lent the scene little warmth, however. Stenwold and Totho had seen many such men — and women — in Myna, standing guard at markets or patrolling the streets. They were substitute soldiers, brought in for the inferior tasks that the Imperial Army disdained, having been conscripted from elsewhere in the Empire. Stenwold thought they were probably Grasshopper-kinden from Sa, which was far enough from Myna that they would not be tempted to rebel or defect. Auxillians, they were called: slave soldiers of the Empire.