'Now, that's good!' Bourne's brows tipped up and his lips pursed, a rather obscene spectacle between the bushiness of brown moustache and beard. 'And how do we do that? You going to trade this Hanse another halter for it?'
She looked long at him. Coolly, brows arched above blue-lidded eyes. 'What's that in your hand. Guardian; Hell Hound so loyal to His Highness?'
Bourne regarded the dagger in his big hairy hand, looked at Lirain, and began to smile.
*
Though hardly beloved nor indeed particularly lovable, Hanse was a member of the community. Though a paid ally, the customs inspector was not. Hanse heard from three sources that Cusharlain had been asking after him, on behalf of someone else. After giving that thought, Hanse traded with a grimy little thief. First Hanse reminded him that he could easily take the five truly fine melons the boy had been so deft as to steal, all in an afternoon. The boy agreed to accept a longish, stiffish piece of braided gold thread, and Hanse gained four melons. With his hilt and then thumb, Hanse made a nice depression in the top of each. Into each he tucked a nice pearl; four of his thirty-four.
These he set before the hugely fat and grossly misnamed Moonflower, a S'danzo who liked food, melons, pearls, Hanse, and proving that she was more than a mere charlatan. Many others were. Few had the Gift. Even the cynical Hanse was convinced that Moonflower had.
She sat on a cushioned stool of extra width and sturdy legs. Her pile of red and yellow and green skirts overflowed it, while disguising the fact that so did her vast backside. Her back was against the east wall of the tired building wherein she and her man and seven of their brood of nine dwelt, and wherein her man sold ... things. Hanse sat cross-legged before her. Looking boyish without his arm sheaths and in a dusty tunic the colour of an old camel. He watched a pearl disappear under Moonflower's shawl into what she called her treasure chest. He watched the melon disappear between her lavender-painted lips. Swiftly.
'You are such a good boy, Hanse.' When she talked, Moonflower was a kitten.
'Only when I want something, passionflower.'
She laughed and beamed and tousled his hair for he knew that such talk pleased her. Then he told her the story. Handed her, disguised in carefully smudged russet, a strip of silken cloth: two straps and two cupped circles bearing many thread-holes.
'Ah! You've been visiting a lady in the Path of Money! Nice of you to let Moonflower have four of the pearls you've laboriously sliced off this little sheath!'
'She gave it me for services rendered.' He waved a hand.
'Oh, of course. Hmm.' She folded it, unfolded it, fondled it, drew it through her dimple-backed hands, sniffed and tasted it with a dainty tongue-tip. A gross kitten at her divining. She closed her eyes and was very still. As Hanse was, waiting.
'She is indeed a c- what you said,' she told him, able to be discreet even though in something approaching a trance. 'Oh, Shadowspawn! You are involved in a plot beyond your dreaming. Odd - this must be the Emperor I see, watching from afar. And this big man with your - acquaintance. A big man with a big beard. In a uniform? I think so. Close to our ruler, both. Yet ... ahh ... they are his enemies. Yes. They plot. She is a serpent and he a lion of no little craft. They seek ... ah, I see. The Prince-Governor has become faceless. Yes. They seek to cost him face.' Her eyes opened to stare wide at him, two big garnets set amid a heavy layer of kohl. 'And you, Hanse my sweet, are their tool.'
They stared at each other for a moment. 'Best you vanish for a time, Shadowspawn. You know what becomes of tools once they are no longer needed.'
'Discarded,' he snarled, not even bemoaning the loss of Lirain's denuded bandeau, which Moonflower made vanish within a shawl-buried vaster one.
'Or,' she said, keeping him fixed by her gaze, 'hung up.'
Lirain and her (uniformed?) confederate were tools then, Hanse reasoned, prowling the streets. Prince Kadakithis was nice to look at, and charismatic. So his imperial half-brother had sent him way out here, to Sanctuary. Now he wanted him sorely embarrassed here. Hanse could see the wisdom of that, and knew that despite what any might say, the Emperor was no fool. So, then. They two plotted. Lirain gained enough knowledge of Hanse to employ Cusharlain to investigate him. She had found a way to effect their meeting. Yes; though it hurt his ego, he admitted to himself that she had made the approach and the decisions. So now he was their tool. A tool of tools!
Robbing Kadakithis, however, had been his goal before he met that cupidinous concubine. So long as she helped, he was quite willing to let her think he was her dupe. He wanted to be their tool, then - insofar as it aided him to gain easy entry to the palace. Forewarned and all that. There was definitely potential here for a clever man, and Hanse deemed himself twice as clever as he was, which was considerably. Finally, being made the tool of plotting tools was far too demeaning for the Hansean ego to accept.
Yes. He would gain the wand. Trade it to the Prince-Governor for gold - no, better make it the less intimidating silver - and freedom. From Suma or Mrsevada or some place, he'd send a message back, anonymously informing Kadakithis that Lirain was a traitor. Hanse smiled at that pleasant thought. Perhaps he'd just go up to Ranke and tell the Emperor what a pair of incompetent agents he had down in Sanctuary. Hanse saw himself richly rewarded, an intimate of the Emperor ...
And so he and Lirain met again, and made their agreement and plan.
A gate was indeed left open. A guard did indeed quit his post before a door of the palace. It did indeed prove to be unlatched. Hanse locked it after him. Thus a rather thick-waisted Shadow-spawn gained entry to the palatial home of the governor of Sanctuary. Dark corridors led him to the appointed chamber. As the prince was not in it, it was not specifically guarded. The ivory rod, carved to resemble rough-barked wood, was indeed there. So, unexpectedly enjoying the royal couch in its owner's absence, was Lirain's sister concubine. She proved not to have been drugged. She woke and opened her mouth to yell. Hanse reduced that to a squeak by punching her in the belly, which was shockingly convex and soft, considering her youth. He held a pillow over her face, sustaining a couple of scratches and a bruised shin. She became still. He made sure that she was limp but quite alive, and bound her with a gaiter off her own sandal. The other he pulled around so as to hold in place the silken garment he stuffed into her mouth, and tied behind her head. He removed the pendant from one ear. All in darkness. He hurried to wrap the rod of authority in the drape off a low table. Hitching up his tunic, he began drawing from around his waist the thirty feet of knotted rope he had deemed wise. Lirain had assured him that a sedative would be administered to the Hell Hounds' evening libation. Hanse had no way of knowing that to be the truth; that not only had one of those big burly five done the administering, he had drunk no less than the others. Bourne and company slept most soundly. The plan was that Hanse would leave the same way he had entered. Because he knew he was a tool and was suspicious unto caution, Hanse had decided to effect a different exit.
One end of the rope he secured to the table whose drape he'd stolen. The other he tossed out the window. Crosswise, the table would hold the rope without following him through the window.
It proved true. Hanse went out, and down. Slipping out westwards to wend his way among the brothels, he was aware of a number of scorpions scuttling up and down his back, tails poised. Evidently the bound occupant of His Highness's bed was not found. Dawn was still only a promise when Hanse reached his second-floor room in the Maze.