Well, that was over. If he were his sister instead of himself, Leemay and the whole town would pay more than they might’ve believed possible in revenge. Cashel wasn’t like Ilna in that way or many ways. Funny how different twins could be.
He crossed River Street to the wharfs along the bank. There were still people out, but they seemed to be hastening home. Though Soong was a big place, it pretty much shut down at nightfall the same as country villages did. In Valles the traffic didn’t stop from dawn to daybreak, hooves and iron-tired wagons crashing along the cobblestone streets.
Wooden piers reached out into the sluggish river from a stone-faced embankment which ran the length of the waterside. Some of the boats had places for more oarsmen than Cashel had fingers, but most were relatively small—flat-bottomed and blunt on both ends.
A man was untangling his nets in the belly of a skiff midway down a nearby pier. Cashel walked out, keeping his feet over the stringers. Even so his weight made the structure sway and squeal.
The fellow looked up—and up—when Cashel stopped beside him; the water was a double pace below the level of the pier. “Yeah?” he said.
“Sir, I’d like to rent your boat for the night,” Cashel said. “You don’t know me—”
“You’ve got that right!” the local man said. “And I’m not going to rent you the boat I need to put food on my family’s table. Maybe—no, I don’t know anybody who’d rent a boat to a stranger.”
As the man talked, Cashel tugged out the purse he wore on a neck thong. “Sir,” he said, “could you buy another boat for three silver pieces?”
“Huh?” said the fisherman. “Three Ships? You don’t mean three coppers?”
“These don’t have ships on them,” Cashel said, holding up the coins so they’d gleam in what wan moonlight filtered through the fog. “There’s a man on a horse, I think. But they’re silver, and I’ll pay them to you for the use of your boat tonight.”
The fisherman clambered onto the pier like a monkey. He snatched the coins and held them close to his eyes. Cashel didn’t guess the fellow could see much—in this light you couldn’t even tell the coins were silver—but they were coins and metal of some kind for sure.
“A deal?” Cashel said.
The fisherman clutched the coins close to his chest. That was fine with Cashel; he didn’t want the money back, and if the fellow turned and ran away with it—well, he’d leave his boat behind, wouldn’t he?
“You just want the boat?” the man said. “You aren’t going to take my net and tackle?”
“The boat and the oars,” Cashel said, figuring he’d better make it clear about the oars. “And I hope to give them back when I’m done, but you may have to go search where I left them.”
The fisherman nodded in excitement. He hopped into the skiff—water sloshed out to all sides, but his aim and balance were perfect—and grabbed his gear up with one hand, using his left arm as a pole to drape the net on. His left hand wasn’t going to let go of the coins for any reason.
Cashel had guessed that values here were the same as back home, where twenty coppers would buy a dory fit to fish out of sight of the land. Thirty coppers—only a few people in Barca’s Hamlet would have the amount in silver, even in a good year—was enough to make the owner want to close the deal fast before the buyer came to his senses.
The fisherman climbed to the pier again and started for the quay. “A good evening to you, sir,” Cashel called to his back. If the fellow replied, Cashel didn’t hear it.
He stepped down into the skiff. It was small, but the way its owner jumped in and out proved it was sturdy and well designed. Cashel slipped his quarterstaff under the single thwart, laying it over where the keel would’ve been if the flat-bottomed vessel had one. He set the oars into rowlocks of willow root, untied the frayed painter, and shoved the skiff out into the river with his hand against a piling.
The moon gave Cashel light to row by. There were enough snags drifting down the river that he hoped he’d pass unremarked in the fog, but that was a chance he had to take.
He was going into the Temple of the Nine to find Tilphosa. He wasn’t sure what he’d do then, but he knew he wasn’t going to leave the girl to be fed to the fish or whatever they did in Soong. By going in by the back he hoped to avoid trouble; but he was going in.
A peasant without land of his own does a little of everything to keep body and soul together. Cashel had rowed dories in bad weather; he wouldn’t call himself a good oarsman, but he could make this skiff serve his purposes easily enough.
A fish slapped the water, nearby but unseen. Apart from that, he seemed to have the river to himself. A few lamps glimmered on shore; Soong must stretch quite a way up and down the river. The lights were blurs in the fog, and an occasional bay of deep laughter was the only human sound that reached him.
Cashel deliberately went out into mid-channel before he angled the skiff back toward the island on which the temple stood. He checked over his shoulder regularly as he rowed, but the lightless temple was completely hidden. Cashel trusted his sense of direction. He figured that if he had to, he could find the place blindfolded.
The skiff grounded sooner than expected. Cashel probed with an oarblade to be sure that he’d actually reached the island instead of colliding with a floating tree. A sheet of mud, glistening a little brighter than the river proper, stretched a long stone’s throw up to a dimly glimpsed low wall.
Cashel stepped out and hauled the skiff its own length to a stump around which he wrapped the painter. The muck squelched ankle high, an unpleasant sensation but not a new one. He took his staff into his hands and started toward the wall.
Apparently the temple had an enclosed court behind it. That might even be better for concealment…. There was a gate in an archway, but Cashel didn’t bother to try it. He set his staff firmly at the base of the wall and reached up with his left hand. He could reach the top, and it was smooth stone with no spikes or sharp flints set into the coping.
He swung himself up, his right arm thrusting against the staff and his left lifting by the wall itself. On top he paused, listening intently. Something plopped in the river behind him, but he heard nothing from the garden. The temple beyond was completely dark. Moonlight showed a tall, narrow door, but there were no windows.
The garden was planted with unfamiliar broad-spreading shrubs, though Cashel couldn’t tell a lot in the foggy darkness. A path meandered through them, going from the gate in the wall to the temple’s back door.
Cashel swung his staff around, butted it inside the wall, and let himself down by reversing the motion that took him atop the wall. He thought he heard something from the river again, but it didn’t matter now.
The ground inside the courtyard was much firmer than the mudflats. Cashel started for the temple, following the path as it wove between the trees. Nuts hung in clusters at the tips of the spiky branches. If Cashel had gone straight ahead, he’d have had to hunch, but the path followed living arches that would have let someone even taller walk upright.
He smiled; well, of course. The Nine were much taller than he was.
In the center of the garden was a large, mossy clearing. The path led to it and then away toward the temple on the other side. He stopped, stretching out his right foot to touch the moss with his big toe. The surface beneath quivered like jelly; it was neither soil nor water.
Cashel grinned. Things had been too easy thus far. He couldn’t believe he was the first man to wonder what really went on in the temple, nor that the Nine were so innocent that they had nothing to hide. If he hadn’t found a trap, it just meant that the trap was still waiting for him.
As another trap might be, of course.
Cashel backed two steps, then sprang forward. He slammed his staff into the firm ground at the edge of the bog and vaulted with seven feet of hickory as his pivot. He bent over as he came down on the other side so that he wouldn’t tumble back. He’d cleared the trap by more than arm’s length.