‘Who the fuck are you?’ one guard asked, incredulous.
Dancer ignored him. ‘Drop the package,’ he insisted. The woman’s hands remained hidden beneath her cloak. Her eyes moved from Dancer to her guards and back. Her black hair was plastered flat to her skull by the rain. Silver earrings glimmered wet and bright in the dark.
‘Is this, like, a dumbass hijack?’ The guard’s tone held a near-laughing note of utter disbelief.
‘Just take him,’ the woman hissed.
‘Stupid bumpkin,’ the guard sighed, and he and his partner shot from beneath their cloaks. In the same instant, Dancer dropped to the ground, rolled forward, and jammed his blades into their thighs. Both grunted their pain and went down to the wet cobbles, clutching their legs. Springing up, Dancer landed before the woman and slashed her cloak open to reveal sewn pouches hung about her shoulders. These he also slashed loose. The woman pulled a knife from the back of her belt but he grasped her wrist and twisted; the knife fell from her numb fingers. ‘Your men require attention,’ he told her.
‘Get him, damn you!’ she grated, glancing back over her shoulder, then froze; the guards behind her also lay prone on the cobbles. She glared murder at Dancer. ‘You are dead right now.’ He threw a piece of the slashed cloak over her head. ‘We will find you and kill you.’ He tied the cloth there like a hood and pushed her down. ‘It’s a damned small island!’
‘Don’t move till you count to fifty.’
‘Bugger you!’
The pouches, he noted, were already gone. He jogged off up the alleyway. Behind, the woman was already up and tearing at the hood. He turned a corner, picking up his pace, and watched, impressed, as the murk of the shadows seemed to thicken all along his path. He wondered where the little fellow was; surely he wasn’t capable of keeping up with him? Watching from his Warren, he decided. Tracing him somehow.
After taking a very long way round, checking that he was not being followed, he returned to the bar whose ridiculous name Wu had refused to change. Smiley’s. Personally, he hated it. Yet everyone on the island knew it by that name and so he had little choice but to go along with the idiocy.
By this time it was close to dawn. He pushed open the heavy front door and shut it firmly behind him, locking it. Crossing the main common room he paused as a sound reached him.
He scanned the gloom of the murky room until he made out someone sitting at a table, a steaming hot drink before her. Their hostess, Surly. He let his hands fall from his baldrics. ‘You’re up early.’
‘And you’re out late.’
‘My morning constitutional.’
‘Or evening rendezvous.’
‘Nothing for you to trouble yourself over.’
‘True.’ She rose, taking her cup with her, and came to stand before him, arms crossed and cup steaming between them. He was a little surprised, and again impressed, to find that she was almost exactly his height. ‘Unless you’re bringing trouble here,’ she continued. ‘Then I’d be upset. Because, you see, we’ve worked hard to find a place here and we wouldn’t want it pulled out from under us.’
‘“We” being you and your Napan friends.’
She took a sip of her tea, watching him over the brim of the cup. ‘That’s right. Do you have any idea how hard it is to be Napan here on Malaz? Of course you don’t. Our two islands have warred for control of the seas for all history. No one will even give us a berth as a damned rower. It’s a goddamned insult.’
He thought of his own youthful attempts to establish himself from Tali to Heng, and the stinging backhanded treatment he had received from everyone – except Wu. ‘Don’t complain to me about how tough it is, okay? Because you have no idea either.’
A corner of the woman’s thin lips twitched upwards. ‘Fine. Let’s agree to disagree. Just be warned. Don’t bring any trouble here. All right?’
‘Just don’t forget who works for who here, all right?’
She blew a plume of steam from her tea. ‘Oh, I won’t. How could I?’
‘Fine.’ He headed for the stairs, but, struck by an afterthought, he turned. ‘Oh – and get that Urko fellow out of the kitchen, okay? He cooks about as well as a Wickan horseman.’
‘Fine. Who should replace him?’
He started up the stairs. ‘Who cares? Why don’t you hire a real cook?’ He added, grumbling, ‘Maybe we’d actually get some real Hood-damned customers in here.’
Closing the door to the office he turned and stopped short, finding the room completely dark. ‘Oh, please,’ he complained, and light blossomed as the thick shadows retreated to reveal the desk lamp flame flickering and Wu seated behind it.
‘Who were you talking to?’ the mage demanded, hunched, his tiny ferret-like eyes darting.
‘Our hostess, Surly.’
Wu straightened, lowering his hands. ‘Oh. Well, never mind then.’
Dancer leaned back against the door and crossed his arms. ‘Actually, there does seem to be more to her than meets the eye.’
Wu was rummaging behind the desk. He pulled up three canvas pouches and set them on the empty surface. Raising a finger, he added, ‘As with us, my friend. As with us.’
Dancer pushed himself from the door, advancing. ‘True.’
Wu examined the leather ties securing the pouches. ‘Nothing special that I can see…’
‘What of Warren-laid traps?’
Wu yanked his hands away. ‘I don’t detect anything … but not my field of expertise.’ He offered one sack to Dancer, who raised his hands high.
‘You’re the mage.’
‘You’re the thief.’
‘Not a thief,’ Dancer corrected.
Wu drummed his fingers on the desk. ‘Semantics.’ He picked up one pouch and examined its tie. ‘Fine. I’ll have you know that I’m the one taking all the risk here.’
‘If it’s a Telas explosion, we’ll both be consumed.’
Wu shrugged. ‘Oh. In that case.’ He pulled on the leather tie and it easily untwined. He upended the pouch. Small items individually wrapped in twists of parchment slid out on to the desk.
Both examined what looked like nothing more than a collection of sweets. Wu picked one up and studied it. ‘Writing on the parchment. Some kind of code.’
‘Seller and buyer?’ Dancer suggested.
‘Perhaps.’
Wu gently unfolded the parchment, revealing the small, hard object at its centre. Both craned forward, breaths held. Wu screwed up his eyes until only one was open. Dancer plucked the object from the wrap to examine it between thumb and forefinger. It was shaped like a pebble, oval, yet curled around itself with a narrow opening, white with tan stripes.
He refocused his puzzled gaze on Wu. ‘It’s a fucking seashell.’
Wu held out a hand. ‘Let me see.’ Dancer dropped it into his palm. Wu held it a hair’s breadth from an eye. ‘Damn. It really is a shell. Not one I know, either.’
Dancer threw himself from the desk. ‘Who the Abyss cares what kind? What is this? A scam? Did you swap these out?’