Rose's yelling stopped with a smack so loud we heard it back in the tunnel.
"Against the wall," I said. They held onto me. I ripped the paper spell open. Two seconds later four guys with swords galloped into the tunnel, ready for anything. They looked around and didn't find it.
One yelled, "Ain't nothing in here."
I didn't hear the reply. They withdrew.
"What now?" Morley breathed.
"As long as we move slowly and don't make any noise or any sudden moves, they won't see us or know where we are. We'll slide out and see what's going on."
What was going on was that the two thugs I knew from the striped-sail ship, with a woman who appeared to be in charge, and seven other men, had my folks lined up against a wall in the storage basement where the tunnel began. Marsha they kept contained with a ballista almost as heavy as a field piece.
In half a minute their questions made it obvious they were after a specific person, but didn't mind trampling a few others along the way. My folks just looked at them, baffled, except Rose, who put on a great crying act. I gathered that Tinnie's was the hand that had reddened her cheek.
"Well?" Morley whispered. "We can take them if Doris gets that ballista."
"We don't need any blood in it. We'll bluff. You go over there and yell for everybody to freeze when Doris busts up the ballista. I'll put a knife to the lady's throat. Take these." I gave him a couple of throwing stars from my collection of un-Garrett-like weapons.
He needed no further explanation. He told Doris what to do. We parted. I drifted toward the lady commander, no doubt the woman about whom Master Arbanos had been so dubious. Dojango had begun yammering at her, explaining that everyone else in the several parties that had gone out of the city had been killed by unicorns or vampires.
"What the hell was that?" asked one of the men at the ballista, whirling around. "Skipper, is this place haunted?"
A ballista went up in the air and shattered against the joists supporting the floor above.
Morley yelled, "Everybody freeze!"
I laid the edge of my knife on the woman's throat and whispered, "This is your friendly spook. Don't even breathe fast. Good. Now, I suggest you have your boys put down their tools."
Doris pounded three or four men out of sheer youthful exuberance. Morley tripped and head-kicked Ugly One when he took a notion to turn on me.
The lady gave the order. And added, "You're interfering with royal business. I'll have your—"
"Not at all. I have a damned good idea what you're looking for and I'll be happy to help you find it. I just don't want my people getting chewed up while you're getting your man. Do you have some way to pick him out of a crowd?"
"Pick who out?" Oh, she wanted to play coy.
"Are you the only person ever born with a brain? This is your stalking horse talking. I figured your crowd out a month ago," I lied. I backed her up a careful five steps and in plain voice vented the moment's inspiration. "I also figured out that Big One there is on the other side. He tried to kill me in Leifmold, which would have just ruined your whole scheme."
Big One started moving toward the nearest weapon.
Two throwing stars hit him, followed in an instant by a grollish fist.
The woman said, "That explains one hell of a lot. I thought we were snakebit. All right. What do you want, Garrett?"
"For me and mine to be left the hell alone. Take your man if you can pick him out. I'm all for that because I don't like what he's got planned for me. Hell. I'll narrow it down for you. I've been working on it. I know who he's not. If he's anybody. He could have been killed out there. A lot of men were."
I gave orders. The women, Saucerhead, Dojango, and Marsha, the latter three lugging Kayean and Valentine, moved to one side. I said, "Do your shopping among what's left."
"Will you let me go?"
"Why not? You don't seem to be a suicidal lady."
"You're going to find out if you call me lady one more time."
Morley snickered. "You've made a friend for life, Garrett."
What she had to say to him does not bear repetition. She asked me, "What's in those bundles?"
"What I came after." I turned her loose.
Morley was flickering around the edges because of too many hasty movements. So was Doris. I had stayed slow, though, so I figured I was still good. I tiptoed after the woman who was not a lady.
She examined the crop, dipped a hand into a pocket, brought out an amulet built around a piece of amber with an insect embedded.
Spiney Prevallet went from somnolent indifference to explosive fury so suddenly I would have been astounded if I'd had time. He knocked the amulet away with one hand and seized the woman's throat with the other.
I pricked the wrist of that hand with my knife, sliced his cheek, then got back out of the way because that—pardon the expression—lady was going to work.
I found a part of me glad the villain had not been Vasco.
Spiney ran for it. The woman snagged her amulet and raced after him. Her minions—those still upright—did nothing because they weren't sure what we would let them do.
"Fade," Morley suggested.
"Yes."
Dojango was many things, some of them things I didn't like, but he was not stupid. The moment he saw some folks preoccupied, he started getting other people out of there.
Spiney tried for the exit himself and ran head-on into a grollish fist. The woman jumped him immediately, forced the amulet into his mouth while he was still groggy.
He began to change.
I have heard that a shapeshifter has no true shape of its own. That it does not even have a sex as we know it, but just splits into unequal masses when it comes time to reproduce. I don't know.
Spiney changed into the major, then into a character who looked vaguely piratical, then into a woman vaguely familiar, apparently regressing through identities assumed in the past.
Everyone else was out. I wasn't curious enough to stay and see the ultimate form the Venageti agent assumed. I had no reason to presume any excess of good will on the part of the striped-sail people.
52
It was a dawn-threatening hour when we reached the inn. I had let the soldiers go their ways, betting they would be so happy to get back alive that they'd cause no immediate grief. Morley and I had an argument. He thought we should have fed them to the striped-sail gang, who would have kept them busy answering questions while we got out of town.
A brief interview with the innkeeper confirmed my suspicions in that direction. He had kept our quarters open and had maintained our gear intact at the behest of the striped-sail crowd, who had hoped we would come back so they could catch our trail again. Which they had done with Dojango's visit.
I slept like the dead for five hours, then went out looking for transportation home. My luck was limited. I went back and announced, "First ship with room enough for all of us doesn't leave till day after tomorrow. The Glory Mooncalled situation has the fainter-hearted civilians heading north. The scow I did find is a garbage pail, but the next best chance means waiting more than a week." I did not mention that even this sleaziest of transports had stretched my remaining expense money to its limit. We'd all get hungry if it was a very long passage home.
I sat beside Morley. "I'll never take another job that takes me out of TunFaire, even if there's a hundred thousand in it for me."
"Speaking of money, when are we going to get paid? It's not critical to me because I didn't sign on for the pay. But the triplets did and they're starting to wonder."
"It'll have to wait till I can corner Tate and gouge him again. I committed what I had left to getting us home."