Sergeant Loris,' the older man replied.
Ah, one of those, Doranei thought. Insists on his rank even though he's just a fucking guard. And Loris? Good Litse name that one, but his looks don't back it up. The guard had a thick face and small features: thin lips and small hooded eyes. All cheeks and forehead, this one, like a child's head that got inflated.
'So, Sarge,' Doranei continued, maintaining a harmless grin, 'know the city well, d'you?'
'Well enough,' he grunted.
'So what would you say to this job I've been offered? I'm to buy two bags of Queen's Favour — whatever in Ghenna's name that is — from a house near here. I talked one of his drivers into a good deal and he reckoned I could do it twice.'
'Queen's Favour? I've heard of it,' Loris said cautiously. 'It's a herb, gathered from the mountain slopes.'
'So it's just a medicine? No problem then-'
Loris grinned at Doranei's naivete. 'Not exactly "no problem", son. Witches and whores Use it to kill babies in the womb, get rid of the unwanted. Gathering or buying Queen's Favour is banned, so he better be paying you well for the risk you're taking.'
Yanai returned carefully carrying a smouldering taper. Doranei handed them each a cigar, cut off the tip of his with his knife and lit up. 'Man's been sent to buy Queen's Favour,' Loris said to his colleague. He rested his halberd against his shoulder and bit off the tip of his cigar and spat it out. He brought the taper to it and drew deeply until it was glowing, then raised it in a toast and gave Doranei an appreciative nod. 'Good smoke, this. Thanks, friend.'
'Queen's Favour, eh? Bad game that one,' said Yanai, trying to copy the deft way Doranei had prepared his smoke. 'So what're you doing 'ere?'
'This is where I was sent to buy it.' Doranei indicated the blue door Legana had told him about.
'Nah, not in Coin,' Yanai said with a laugh. 'You wanna go to Burn for that shit. These parts is respectable; a man don't last long peddlin' Queen's Favour 'ere.'
'This is where he sent me,' Doranei insisted. 'Said to ask for Nai the Mage, funny'looking man with odd-sized feet.'
Neither name nor description elicited anything from either man.
'Mage, eh?' Loris puffed out his cheeks. 'Didn't realise it had a use in magic too.'
"ere, reckon thass why that bloody kid was 'anging round 'ere?' Yanai said to Loris suddenly. 'Some brat checkin' out the square coupla times a night for the last week now,' he explained to Doranei.
'Could be watchin' out fer customers mebbe, or pr'aps be in the pay of one o' the Burn gangs that sells Queen's Favour and don't like the competition.'
'And tonight?'
'Came past, mebbe an hour ago? Don't 'ang around long when we're 'ere, she knows she'll get a beatin' if we grab her. Just 'ad a look up the windows on that side and carried on past.'
Doranei nodded. The inhabitants of Coin wouldn't appreciate a potential thief being allowed to case the houses here, but the guards weren't going to waste too much time catching a girl if they didn't think she was going to cause a problem. 'Be back tonight?'
'Fair chance — you c'n only be sure she'll be 'ere at sunset though, she's always through round 'bout then.'
Might be worth, my while to catch her then, even if you two can't be bothered, Doranei thought, drawing long on his cigar.
Tobacco was a spy's friend. King Emin had told him that, years back. He didn't much care for the habit himself, but he recognised its importance and smoked just enough to ensure he didn't look out of place with pipe or cigar. Soldiers were the same the Land over: simple men, more often than not, with too much time on their hands. They'd rarely refuse the offer of a smoke, and once their guard was down they'd gossip worse than any knitting circle.
The King's Men of Narkang didn't have to play court games; King Emin had aristocrats to do that. The information Doranei got came from footmen, guards and kitchen-hands. He'd spent half a year when he was twelve winters getting slapped from one end of The Light Feathers' kitchen to the other, and that experience had served him well countless times since. As Sebe put it, make friends with a cook who doesn't know anything useful and you still get a meal for your trouble.
Monkey-faced little bugger will do anything for food, he added to himself, smiling inwardly.
He raised the cigar in a sort of half-salute to the two guards. 'Right, I best be clearing off. Don't want people to think I'm messing in anything illegal, don't sound like the regiments have much sense of humour these days.'
'Aye, you're right enough there,' Loris agreed. 'Glad we're well out of it over here. The city's going to shit so fast Kiyer herself can't wash the streets fast enough. Take the bastard's money and find yourself a pretty young tart for the night instead. You clear out of sight and he won't bother doing much about it, and the regiments will care about as much as a magistrate.'
Doranei grinned. 'You could be right there. I left my stuff with the wagon'inaster, but six quarters will sort that out with change to spare. Teach him for being a crap judge of character.'
He made his excuses and left; the guards didn't mind — talking to a passing stranger to ensure he wasn't going to cause trouble was one thing, gossiping for too long smacked of shirking duty. Doranei made his way back to a crossroads he'd scouted out earlier: anyone coming from Burn would pass this junction, even if they were taking an oblique route. He didn't think he'd need much luck to identify the young girl Yanai had been talking about, but he would need to avoid a scene — she was certain to be armed, with so many bored soldiers and mercenaries on the streets.
'She comes only after sunset,' he mused as he watched the glistening frost on the rooftops. 'Looking for Mikiss or Nai, or Zhia herself? Can't be an informant for the duchess or she'd be watching the door all day too.'
He was leaning against the trunk of an ancient creeper that covered a high courtyard wall and reached up the wall of the adjoining house to the rooftop. Though leafless, the ragged mess of tangled stems made a curtain dense enough to make Doranei near-in visible as he waited.
At the end of the wall, on the corner of the main street, a dozen or so long strips of white ribbon tied to the creeper fluttered in the brisk evening breeze — small offerings to Sheredal, Spreader of the Frost, he guessed. The owner of the house was probably elderly, and with this chill wind the ground in winter would very quickly become icy, a real threat to the elderly and infirm. However good High Priest Antil and his portly band of healers might be, a bad fall could easily be fatal. From what Doranei had seen on his travels, ribbons on a wall was as close to a shrine as Sheredal ever got, and the only image he had even seen of Asenn's gentle Aspect was part of a carved frieze in Narkang. King Emin had commissioned it: a strange collection of minor Gods and Aspects that summed up the king's whimsical nature perfectly; the image of Sheredal was a bent old woman with jagged, spiky hair and long, crooked fingers. She had looked sad and lonely, stuck between more noble Gods, but as far as Doranei knew, she was entirely the product of the artist's mind.
But that doesn't matter, not now. That's how half of Narkang imagines the Spreader of the Frost these days. 1 think he commissioned the piece to give some of us a lesson in the power of belief.
Doranei's vigil didn't last long. None of the few passers-by noticed him standing there. He spotted a hunched figure trudging up the road, bundled up in a tatty sheepskin coat made for someone much larger, and realised immediately this was the girl the Yanai had spoken of.
He'd taken the precaution of filling a pocket with small stones earlier. He flung one at the girl as she reached the centre of the square and it thwacked harmlessly against the coat, stopping her dead, just as he'd intended. She looked around in puzzlement. The street was empty in both directions, and she had been so intent on watching where she was going that she'd not seen him emerge from the ivy to throw the stone.