Death's Mistress

CHAPTER 5

The ancient city of Tanimura was full of wonders, distractions, and dangers for the unwary. Nicci felt right at home.

She was all business as she made her way into the thick of the city, her mind set on finding a southbound ship and a captain familiar with the port cities in the Old World. From what the witch woman had described, Kol Adair might be far out in the sparsely populated fringe lands, not marked on common maps. But they would find it.

During her years serving Emperor Jagang, when she had been called Death’s Mistress, Nicci had brought many outlying towns under the rule of the Imperial Order. Although Jagang had been intent on conquering the New World, he had little interest in the less populated areas far to the south of his own empire. He had once told her the land did not hold enough subjects or enough wealth to be worth his time.

Despite the distance, Nicci was convinced that those far-flung people also needed to know about Lord Rahl. She would be proud to tell them of their new life without tyrants and oppression, and she relished the challenge. She would do it for Richard.

Future and Fate depend on both the journey and the destination.

As she headed down toward the harbor, the streets were steep and winding. The crowded buildings were stacked haphazardly, two- and three-story structures that filled any spare patch of ground, buildings erected on top of buildings. Some homes and shops were tilted as if trying to keep their balance on the hillsides. Gutters lined the streets, filled with a brownish slurry of rainwater mixed with emptied chamber pots.

Broad-hipped women gathered and gossiped around a well, pulling up buckets of fresh water, which they handed to glum-looking teenagers to carry away. Scruffy barking dogs ran down the streets in pursuit of loose chickens.

Nicci passed through a fabric dyers’ district, where the air was filled with a rich and complicated tapestry of sharp, sour odors. Cloth merchants hung bolts of dripping fabric—indigo, saffron yellow, or stark black—which flapped in the sea breezes as they dried. In the thread makers’ district, boys ran down the street pulling long colorful strands, twisting bobbins to tighten the threads.

The tanning district reeked as leather workers cured and processed hides. Taking advantage of the foul smells, enterprising children ran about offering to sell passersby fistfuls of mint leaves as nosegays. A little girl with black hair in pigtails ran up to Nicci, waving the mint leaves. “Only a copper. It’ll make every breath smell fresh.”

Nicci shook her head. “The smell of death doesn’t bother me.”

The skinny girl could not hide her disappointment. She was dressed in rags, and her face was covered with dust and grime. She looked as if she hadn’t had a good bath, or a good meal, in some time. Noting her industriousness, Nicci gave her the copper anyway, and the girl ran off laughing.

The markets were loud, colorful storms of people, vendors hawking shellfish or live octopus from buckets of murky salt water. Butchers sold slabs of exotic imported meats—ostrich, musk ox, zebra, even a greasy gray steak supposedly from a long-tailed gar—spread out on planks for display, although many of the meats drew more flies than customers. Smoked fish dangled by their tails across wooden racks like succulent battle trophies.

Food vendors sold skewers of spiced meat sizzling over charcoal fires. Bakers offered loaves of knotted brown bread. Two women stirred a steaming cauldron and ladled out bowls of what they called “kraken chowder,” a milky stew with thready seaweed, bobbing onions, and rings of tender suckers that had been sliced from some large tentacle.

Nicci walked at a brisk pace, uninterested in the distractions. Jugglers performed in the streets, gamblers placed bets on a game of shells and cups. A musician sat on an overturned pot eliciting caterwauling sounds from a flexible stringed instrument.

In the spice merchants’ district, men in long green robes haggled over the price of cumin, turmeric, cardamom. A toothless old woman squatted on a curb as she sorted lumpy roots of mandrake and ginger. When an errant breeze whispered along the street, the spice merchants rushed to cover their powder-filled baskets. One man bent over a clay bowl of red pepper, and the breeze feathered some of it into his face, making him cough and retreat, flailing his hands.

Tanimura was a crowded, vibrant city. Every person here was concerned with everyday living, but few of them considered the larger work of building and maintaining the D’Haran Empire. These people weren’t soldiers. They had lived for years under the Imperial Order. They had survived the turmoil of the long, bloody war, and now they might not even realize how fundamentally their existence had changed. If Lord Rahl’s rule endured, these people might never need to concern themselves much about it.

As she worked her way into the older, more crowded district just above the harbor, the streets grew tighter and more tangled. The buildings were tall and dingy, and every street degenerated into an alley. More than once, she found herself at a dead end of brick walls and garbage, forcing her to retrace her steps.

Nicci turned down a wider alley between leaning three-story buildings with cracked and stained walls. The buildings closed into shadows redolent of stagnant water, rats, and refuse. She pressed forward, supposing the passageway would open into a broader thoroughfare, but instead it turned along oddly skewed corners, and the passage narrowed.

Ahead, she heard a frightened shout and the sounds of a scuffle—curses, gruff laughter, the smack of a fist striking flesh, then the more muffled sound of boots kicking. She was already running toward the sounds when an outcry of pain joined what sounded like a little boy’s mocking laughter.

“That’s all the money I have!” It was a young man’s voice.

Nicci rounded the corner to come upon three muscular men and a wiry boy, all bunched around a young man of perhaps twenty years. It took her only an instant to gauge the tableau, identify the predators, the victim. The young man cornered by these thugs didn’t look like a Tanimuran. He had long ginger hair and pale skin covered with freckles; his hazel eyes were wide with fear.

He swung at his attackers, but the three larger men pummeled him with their fists. It was like a game to them, and they seemed in no hurry. The boy, no more than ten years old, pranced from one foot to the other, clutching a small sack of coins in his hand, obviously stolen from the victim.

One of the thugs, a heavyset man with short but extraordinarily muscular arms, planted a solid kick on the meat of the victim’s thigh. The red-haired young man went down, sliding against the slimy, stained wall. Even as he fell, he kept his arms up in an attempt to fend them off.

Nicci said, “Stop what you’re doing.” It wasn’t a shout, but hard enough to draw their attention like an unexpected slap.

The three men spun to look at her in surprise. The curly-haired boy’s eyes went as wide and bright as coins, and he bolted down the winding alley, disappearing as quickly as a cockroach revealed by the light. Nicci ignored the child and faced the three men, the real threat.

The thugs turned toward her, ready for a fight, but when they saw only an attractive blonde in a black dress, their expressions changed. One let out a guffaw. They spread out so they could come at her from different directions.

The squat heavyset man called after the boy, who had disappeared down the alleys. “There’s no need to run, you little bastard. It’s just a woman.”

“Let him run, Jerr—we’ll find him later,” said a second man. He was swarthy with a round face and bloodshot eyes that probably resulted from long familiarity with alcohol, rather than lack of sleep.

“We don’t want the little brat to see what we’re going to do with her anyway,” said the third man, with greasy brown hair tied back in a ponytail. “He’s too young for that kind of education.”

The ginger-haired victim tried to get up. He was bleeding from his nose, and his shirt was torn. “They stole my money!”

The man with bloodshot eyes smacked him hard across the face. The young man’s head hit the alley wall hard.

Although she felt coldness rise within her, Nicci didn’t move toward them. “Perhaps you didn’t hear me. I told you to stop.”

“We’re just getting started,” said Jerr, the leader. In unison, the three men drew their knives. Apparently, beating the young man wasn’t enough entertainment, and they had something else in mind for Nicci. Such men usually did.

Leering, they came toward her. The man with the ponytail slid around to cut off her retreat—but she had no intention of retreating. They obviously expected her to run in fear, but that was not something Nicci did.

“Nice black dress,” said Jerr, holding up his knife. “But we’d rather see you without it. Makes things easier.”

The young redhead tried to scramble to his feet, pressing a hand to his bruised thigh. “You leave her alone!”

The man with bloodshot eyes snarled at him. “How many teeth do you want to lose before this day is out?”

Nicci regarded the three of them with an icy gaze. “It has been several weeks since I had occasion to kill a man.” She looked from one to the next. “Now I have three in one day.”

The thugs were startled by her boldness, and the heavyset Jerr laughed. “How do you expect to do that? You don’t even have a weapon.”

Nicci stood with her hands loose at her sides, her fingers curled. “I am the weapon.” From within, she summoned her magic. She had countless ways to kill these men.

The redhead finally managed to stand, and he foolishly lurched toward them, calling out to Nicci. “I won’t let them hurt you!” He dove at the legs of the man with the ponytail, knocking him to the ground.

Bloodshot Eyes raised his knife and advanced toward Nicci, waving the point back and forth in the air in front of her, as if she was supposed to be intimidated. Jerr called out, “Cut her, Henty, but don’t hurt her too bad—not yet. I don’t want her blood all over me when I get between her legs.”

Nicci could have unleashed wizard’s fire and incinerated the three of them in an instant, but she might also kill the young man, as well as start a fire that could rage through the old town. That was unnecessary. She had other means.

Nicci created a wall of air that slammed into Henty, and he looked as if he had blindly smashed into an invisible tree. As he stood momentarily stunned, Nicci used the magic to fling him up and back fifteen feet above the ground. She was not gentle—she had no reason to be.

Bloodshot Eyes slammed into the high wall, and the impact crushed his head like one of the dark melons in the farmer’s oxcart. A splash of red painted a broad round splatter on the already stained wall; then the body traced a long uneven smear as it slid two stories down to the ground.

Unable to believe what he had just seen, Jerr also came at Nicci with a knife. She used her powers to crush his larynx so he couldn’t scream; then she pulped the bones in his neck for good measure. The leader’s eyes bulged, bursting with a sudden web of red hemorrhages, and his head flopped to one side. When his knees gave out, he sprawled forward.

Ponytail kicked his way free of the scrappy redhead, who had tackled him, and slashed his knife across the empty air, trying to cut the young man, who ducked out of the way. Then, the last thug turned to snarl at Nicci.

She stopped his heart, and he dropped to the ground like a felled bull.

The young redhead looked around the carnage. “We’re saved!” His face had gone pale, which made his freckles even more prominent. He gaped at the three dead men lying in the garbage in the alley. “You killed them! Sweet Sea Mother, you—you killed them. You didn’t have to do that.”

“Maybe not,” Nicci said, “but that was the most convenient solution. They made the decision for me. Those men would have preyed on others, robbed others—and eventually they would have been caught. I was saving time and effort for the magistrate and the hangman.”

The distraught redhead couldn’t decide what to do. His lip was bloody, his face puffy and bruised. “It’s just—they took my money, but I doubt they were going to kill me.”

Nicci ran her gaze up and down his lanky form. The young man wore a loose homespun shirt dyed brown and sturdy canvas pants of the kind worn by sailors. He didn’t have any weapons she could see, not even a knife at his side. “You don’t think they were going to kill you? That is not a gamble I’d choose to make.”

He swallowed hard, and she was struck by how innocent and foolish he seemed. If even the bruises and the loss of his money purse had not taught him the necessary lesson, then Nicci would not waste further time on him. “If you keep walking these alleys, unarmed and unaware, you will soon have another opportunity to learn whether or not the thieves around here intend to kill you.” She turned to walk away. “Don’t count on me being here to help next time.”

The young man hurried after her. “Thank you! Sorry I didn’t say that soon enough—thank you. I was raised to show gratitude to those who do good things for me. I appreciate it. My name is Bannon … Bannon—” He paused as if embarrassed. “Bannon Farmer. I’m from Chiriya Island. This is my first time in Tanimura.”

Nicci kept walking. “I guessed that much, and it may be your last time in Tanimura if you don’t stop being such a fool.”

Bannon followed, still talking. “I used to be a cabbage farmer, but I wanted to see the world, so I signed aboard a sailing ship. This is my first time in port—and I came to buy a sword of my own.” He frowned, and patted his hips again, as if he somehow thought he had only imagined the robbery. “They took my money. That boy—”

Nicci showed neither surprise nor sympathy. “He bolted off. You’ll never find him. That child is lucky he ran, though—I would have disliked killing a little boy, even if he was a thief.”

Bannon’s shoulders slumped. “I was looking for a swordsmith. Those men seemed nice, and they told me to follow them, led me down here.” He shook his head. “I guess I should have been more suspicious.” He brightened. “But you were there. You saved me. Are you a sorceress? I’ve never seen anything like that. Thank you for rescuing me.”

She turned to face him. “And shame on you for needing to be rescued. You should possess more common sense than to let yourself become a victim. I have no mercy for thugs and thieves, but there would be no thieves if there weren’t fools like you to prey upon.”

Bannon’s face turned a bright red. “I’m sorry. I’ll know better next time.” He wiped at the blood coming from his lip and nose, then smeared it on his pants. “But if I had my own sword I could’ve defended myself.”

He leaned against the alley wall and struggled to pull off his left boot. “Maybe I have enough coins left, though.” When he upended the boot, several coins rained out, two silvers and five coppers. He held them in his palm. “I learned this trick from my father. He taught me never to keep all your money in one place, in case you get robbed.” He looked forlornly down at the coins in his hand. “It isn’t enough to buy much of a sword. I had hoped for a fine blade with a golden hilt and pommel, intricate workings. The coins might be enough, though. Just enough…”

“A sword doesn’t have to be pretty to be effective at killing,” Nicci said.

“I suppose it doesn’t,” Bannon replied as he replaced the coins in his boot, and stomped his foot back into place. He looked back down the alley at the bodies of the three thugs. “You didn’t need a sword at all.”

“No, I don’t,” Nicci said. “But what I do need is a ship sailing south.” She began to walk back out of the alley. “I was on my way to the harbor.”

“A ship?” Bannon hurried after her, still trying to adjust his boot. “I’m from a ship—the Wavewalker, a three-masted carrack out of Serrimundi. Captain Eli is due to set sail again as soon as his cargo is loaded. Probably with the outgoing tide tonight. He’d take passengers. I could put in a good word for you.”

“I can find him myself,” Nicci said, then softened her voice, realizing that the young man was just trying to help. “Thank you for the recommendation.”

Bannon beamed. “It’s the least I could do. You saved me. The Wavewalker is a good ship. It’ll serve your needs.”

“I will ask,” Nicci said.

The young man brushed himself off. “And I’m going to buy my own sword so I won’t be helpless next time I get in trouble.” With an inappropriate display of conscience, he stared at the dead thugs in the alley shadows. “But what shall we do about them?”

Nicci didn’t bother to look back over her shoulder. “The rats will find them soon enough.”