A single lamp wick burned in the side room where Metron made his final preparations and Vascay waited. The litter of flaking plaster, packing materials, and unglazed potsherds here in the front of the shop gave no hint of the business which had once been carried on in it.
“The Protectors’re probably waiting for us to come out to grab us all,” Ademos said, glaring around the circle of his fellows. “If they could wait for us when we didn’t know where we were going to land the boat, they’ll sure know we’re sitting here beside the Spike!”
“Metron said he was going to hide us from the Intercessor,” Hame said. He held four equal-sized lengths of bamboo, the ends coned male and female to lock into a continuous rod twenty feet long. He’d loosened the cord binding them so that his fingers could shift one rod over another repeatedly, as though he were plaiting cords into a rope.
Hame was as brave as the next man even in this company, but he knew his cropped ears marked him for execution if he were caught for a second time. That fear was working on him, though he’d volunteered to be one of the pair who waited at the base of the wall for Garric and his companions to return
“Metron said,” Ademos sneered. “Metron! You trust him?”
Garric reached out. Ademos tried to jerk back but wasn’t quick enough: Garric grabbed him by the throat.
“It could be that the world will end in the next moment, Ademos,” Garric said pleasantly. At his side Tint growled like a saw cutting stone.
Garric wasn’t squeezing hard, but he knew the red-haired bandit could feel the fingers around his throat trembling with the emotions in Garric’s blood. “It will surely end for you if you mouth any more silliness about what the Intercessor will do, or what Metron can do, or any other things of which you know absolutely nothing. Do you understand?”
Ademos nodded, his eyes wide. Garric released him.
“We Brethren don’t fight amongst ourself,” Halophus muttered toward a wall from which the shelf pegs had been pulled.
“Shut up, Halophus,” Toster said; not angry, but not expecting an argument either.
Halophus didn’t give him one. He forced an embarrassed smile and buffed the curve of his signal horn with a piece of cloth.
“By the Shepherd, I wish we was done with the business,” Hakken said. As he spoke, his fingers checked the knots of the rope ladder to have something to do.
Red wizardlight bloomed, faded, then vanished in the side chamber. The flash seemed bright for the moment, but it didn’t dim the vision of Garric’s dark-adapted eyes. Vascay came out of the room, holding Metron’s pendant by its silver chain.
“Here it is,” Vascay said. Garric couldn’t see his face with the light behind him, but his voice sounded tired. “You’d better get moving.”
Garric stepped forward and took the pendant. Within the crystal was the tiny figure of Metron. He held his athame in one hand; with the thumb and forefinger of the other, he pinched what could only be the sapphire ring.
“Quickly!” squeaked a voice that Garric heard only in his mind. The image of Metron gestured with his athame. “I can only remain conscious outside my body for a limited time!”
Garric hung the chain around his neck, his face impassive. The mount was in the shape of a spider whose legs encircled the crystal. The design repelled Garric, but he wasn’t wearing it for the looks of the thing.
“Yes, let’s go,” he said.
Mortised shutters gripped by interlocked iron rods closed the front of the shop. Toster at the pedestrian door put his hands to his mouth and squalled like a cat. Prada, on watch from the rooftop, squalled back a moment later.
Hame slipped out, carrying his rods in one hand and a hog’s bladder of narcotic dust in the other. Garric followed with Tint pressing close to his side. In the street he glanced over his shoulder. Beyond Toster and Hakken, he saw Vascay waiting before he returned to watch over the wizard’s soulless body in the other room. The chieftain bent slightly forward to massage his stump above the wooden leg.
The shop faced a well-travelled street, but only an alley separated the side from the Spike’s ten-foot outer wall. The spot Garric and Vascay together had chosen looked the same in reality as it had when Metron formed the image. The stonework was still solid, but the stems of the wisteria climbing it were strong enough to allow even a clumsy man to reach the top. The vines couldn’t hide a man by daylight, but at night they’d break up the outline of Hame and Toster as they waited for Garric’s party to return.
Toster laced his hands into a stirrup. Garric stepped into the cup. Toster straightened like a catapult arm, lofting Garric knee high to the top of the wall. He caught himself by his hands, then curled his feet under him and waited.
Tint sprang to Garric’s side with a rustle of foliage. She sniffed the garden below, and said, “Bad place, Gar. We leave now?”
Garric heard the piping voice of the wizard in his amulet, chanting words of power that rang as cold as starlight in his mind: “Dabathaa soumar soumarta max….”
Hakken came up the wisteria, without Toster’s boost but not as easily as Tint had. He looked over his shoulder, then lifted the bladder and bamboo rods by the thin cord tied to his leather belt.
The moon wouldn’t rise for another quarter of the night, but stars in the clear sky gleamed from the tower and outlined the garden’s varied plantings. Tint gripped Garric’s shoulder with her right hand. With the other startlingly long arm she pointed into the clump of giant bromeliads directly beneath them. Her fingers gripped like a stonemason’s tongs.
“Gar!” she said. “Gar! There, teeth!”
A funnel of red wizardlight formed in the air, pointing down into the bromeliads. For a moment Garric thought the light was the threat Tint warned of; then he realized it was Metron’s wizardry duplicating what the beastgirl’s nostrils and keen ears had already uncovered.
“A creature waits there,” Metron squeaked. “It heard you on the other side of the wall. Strike it down before you enter the garden.”
Garric reached over his shoulder and touched the hilt of his sword. He wore it across his back tonight, the scabbard’s upper set of rings fastened to the top of a bandolier and the lower set lashed tightly to his belt. It was the way Carus had worn his blade on raids and in sea fights, where a scabbard hung in the ordinary fashion might have tangled with his legs….
“Don’t be a hero, Gar,” Hakken said sourly. He was fitting the bamboo rods together, balancing the whole on his knees as he squatted. “That’s what we got this along for.”
“Gar go?” Tint said.
Garric lifted her fingers from his shoulder. He’d have bruises in the morning. “We’re going to climb that tower, Tint,” he said. “We can’t go till we’ve gotten Lord Thalemos out of the tower.”
He’d have bruises if he were alive in the morning. What would happen to the soul of Garric or-Reise if the body of Gar the Monkey Boy died here this night?
“Help me hold this,” Hakken directed. He’d put the four rods together and now was binding the hog’s bladder onto one end with a twist of sinew. “I’ve never used this from up in the air like this. It’s not heavy, but the length makes it seem more.”
“Where do you get the poison?” Garric said, holding his right arm out like a branch for Hakken to lay the bamboo across. The thin tube’s leverage made it feel like a tree bole.
“Dust from cave mushrooms on the east of the island,” Hakken muttered as he adjusted the weapon. “Bloody rare, and bloody dangerous to gather, let me tell you. We took this bag from a District Commander of the Protectors. What he used it for I don’t know, but he didn’t need it after Hame cut his throat.”