One of the men on foot ran to the fallen officer and knelt down beside him, then looked up. “The lieutenant’s dead, chief. He must have hit his head real hard.”
“Frig! That’s all we need.” The chief turned back to me.
There were a few more questions, but no one had seen anything but the horse stumble and the officer pitch forward. In time I managed to slip back to where Lyonyt and Fuast were waiting. “We need to walk farther along the round.”
“Be a good idea. Lieutenant said we weren’t to get in their way.” Lyonyt looked at me, then murmured, “Friggin’ scripties . . . don’t have to live with the mess they leave behind.”
Fuast looked from Lyonyt to me and back again, opened his mouth, and then shut it.
Lyonyt looked to the junior patroller. “Really a shame those scripties can’t ride as well as they think. If he hadn’t been trying to hurt an old woman, nothing would have happened.” He paused and looked at Fuast. “Would it?”
“Ah, no. No, sir.”
“Terrible accident,” Lyonyt went on. “Sometimes they happen, but like the lieutenant said, we leave ’em alone, and they make their own mistakes.”
That might be, but I had to hope that no one took out the death on the taudis-dwellers, although it was clear that no one but me, and perhaps Lyonyt or Fuast, had seen anything of what had really happened, and even they hadn’t seen much.
Dichartyn would have said that I shouldn’t have interfered, but the way the lieutenant had been swinging that baton, the old woman would have been dead, or crippled for the rest of a short and miserable life. And for what? The old woman had been trying to get out of his way, and the boy was far too young to have been a conscription evader.
For the next two glasses, we just kept walking, circling one way around our section of the taudis and then back the other. Although a section of the Avenue D’Artisans was part of the round, it hadn’t been cordoned off. Even so, word had gotten around, and there were far fewer people there, as well. Several of the shopkeepers and bistro owners couldn’t be happy with fewer customers, either.
For a time, I dropped back behind the other two, scanning the taudis closely, trying to get a sense of what might be happening inside the cordon.
That was when I caught some of Lyonyt’s low words to Fuast.
“. . . good thing Master Rhennthyl was there . . . might help us later . . .”
“What did he do?”
“. . .never ask . . . things happen to folks who cross imagers . . . all you need to know is that it was an accident . . . even if the captain asks . . .’sides, frigging scriptie deserved it . . . white-haired old Pharsi not that good, but never hurt anyone . . .”
At least Lyonyt felt I’d done the right thing. But had I? Probably not, in Master Dichartyn’s eyes, were he to know. According to him, from what I’d seen and heard, I should have let the lieutenant beat and possibly kill an old woman, rather than involve an imager, because it might reflect badly on the Collegium. In Dichartyn’s eyes, the old woman should have suffered, and I couldn’t accept his arrogance or the dead lieutenant’s. Yet that, too, was arrogance on my part . . . but I knew it, and the lieutenant hadn’t cared that he’d been arrogant. Master Dichartyn? That was another question.
We kept walking, but everything was quiet, and I heard and saw nothing from the Temple of Puryon, even though I had the feeling that, locked up as it was, it was anything but empty. By the time we finished the last round, I was dreading returning to the station.
Fortunately, for the moment, anyway, neither Captain Haraff nor Lieutenant Warydt happened to be in sight. I didn’t exactly rush in helping Lyonyt with the round report and signing off with him and Fuast, but I didn’t dally either. I was out of Third District station in less than a quint after fourth glass.
Once I walked down Fuosta a block, I stopped to think. I wished I’d been able to think more quickly with the lieutenant, but there hadn’t been time, not if I wanted to save the old woman. But I had very bad feelings about what would happen on Vendrei. Even if the scripties-and it was hard to think of them in other than derogatory terms after seeing their tactics and my encounter with the Navy lieutenant-didn’t blame the taudis-dwellers for the lieutenant’s death and saw it as an accident, they’d still be resentful and looking for targets. And I couldn’t help shivering slightly as I recalled the flash image of the Temple exploding. Was that truly farsight . . . or just what I feared? How would I ever know?
Still . . . I had to do something.
I turned east at the next alley and stepped into the late-afternoon shadows, waiting, then raising concealment shields before walking slowly up the low rise of battered and cracked paving stones. Three blocks later, I reached the cordon. No one looked in my direction, not that they should have, as I walked as close to the midpoint between two marines as I could, some five yards from each, then continued up the alley and into the taudis, the west quarter. After a block I dropped the concealment shields. On top of regular full shields, holding them was an effort. Not a great one, but still an effort.
Coming as I was from the west, I took a little longer to find Chelya’s house, and I didn’t see any of Horazt’s toughs along the way. Once I stood on the stone stoop, I drew back the patroller’s blue cloak to reveal my grays, then rapped.
No one answered.
I rapped again.
Finally, the door opened. Through the narrow crack, I could see Chelya’s eyes widen as she saw me.
“Shault’s fine. I need to find Horazt. Now. There’s going to be more trouble.”
She looked at me. “He might be at the red house on Weigand near the corner of the crooked lane.”
“If I don’t find him there, I’ll be back.”
She kept looking at me, then offered a melancholy smile. “He will be there.”
“Thank you.”
The door closed before I could step back. I turned and began to walk the three or so blocks to Weigand, trying to ignore the growing soreness in my feet and lower back. I was glad the sun had not set, although it had dropped behind the roofs to the west, when I reached Weigand, because none of the row houses had numbers, all looked similar. The “red” house was more like faded burnt umber, but no other dwelling was painted any reddish color.
Once more I stood on a stone stoop and rapped, this time with a tarnished brass knocker that wobbled when I lifted it. There was a long silence before the peephole in the door opened. Then it closed. I was ready to rap again when the door opened and Horazt stepped out. He was barefoot, and his shirt was untucked.
“Master Rhennthyl . . . you friends with the scripties to get in the taudis?” His voice was sardonic.
“No. I had to use imager skills to get past them, but I needed to see you. The Tiempran priests are planning something, probably tomorrow. If . . . if they leave the Temple . . . or if you see them away from the Temple, and you can capture them and hold them for me, I’ll give you five golds.” I paused, then fumbled with my wallet, and handed him the gold I’d been carrying for days. “Here’s what I owe you.”
He took the gold, fingered it. Then it disappeared. “You don’t want much, do you?”
I shrugged. “Something else. If there’s anyone you like, keep them away from the Temple for the next few days. No matter who’s there.” I forced a grin. “But it wouldn’t hurt if someone enticed Saelyhd to be there.”
Horazt spat to one side. “Why are you telling me this?”
“Shault is one reason. He doesn’t want anything to happen to you. When the Collegium tried and executed Youdh, he was terrified that someone might come after you.”
That stopped his half-open mouth from uttering anything . . . for a moment, anyway.
“Another reason is that the Collegium and the Civic Patrol can probably work with you and Jadhyl, but not Saelyhd. A third reason is that I don’t like the Tiempran priests using our taudis-dwellers as expendable weapons against the Council. I don’t like the kind of toughs Youdh and Saelyhd use, and I don’t want to see another riot between the taudis and the Patrol or the scripties. You’ll get hurt, and the scripties will use it as an excuse.”