The Crystal Seas

Chapter FOURTEEN

The towers of Mestron, the capital and chief port of the Empire of Nurn, rose black against the sunset. Blade and Alanyra leaned against the railing of Fox's crow's nest. They watched the setting sun trail orange across the waters of the bay and gild the sails of the coastal shipping sliding in and out of the harbor. The wind had dropped, and Fox once again rocked gently on the waves.

From below, the voices of both Talgarans and Sea Masters rose into the evening air. The Sea Masters were almost submerged, hanging onto lines trailing over Fox's side. They seldom came aboard, but that was more to keep their presence a secret than out of fear of Blade's crew.

The week's voyage from Talgar had done one thing at least. It had taught each people that the other was not necessarily a monster lusting for blood and destruction. Hearing each other call many sea creatures by the same names and swear by the same Goddess had been a new, almost frightening experience for both sides. But slowly they had recovered. Now they still could not exactly be called friends. But they could be called a crew that Blade would trust to do anything he asked of them. That was a good enough start for the mission.

Alanyra turned to Blade. The red sunset light gave her skin a weird pinkish tinge. «Are you waiting for a pilot to take you in?»

«No. We're not going into Mestron, at least not aboard Fox. There's a smaller port to the north of Mestron that Gershon knows like he knows this ship's deck. That's where Fox and the yulon will be staying. There'd be too many prying eyes and wagging tongues around us in Mestron. In Clintrod there won't be so many questions asked, or so many soldiers around to fight if we can't give the right answer.»

«I see. But you will be in Mestron, Blade. You will be in danger all the time, and the rest of us only part of the time. Is that fair?»

Blade shrugged. There was really no better answer to that question.

A big pleasure galley raced past, oars scarring the darkening water with silver foam. On her single, green, triangular sail was a black bull's head.

«Some nobleman's private yacht,» said Blade. Then he leaned over the railing and shouted down to the deck. «Ahoy, Gershon! Set a course for Clintrod.»

«Aye, aye, sir.»

Blade's plan was simple, like any good espionage operation. Complicated schemes in that business had a way of going wrong in the worst way at the worst possible moment. The only thing complicated about Blade's plan was its use of eight Sea Masters and their trained yulon. But that was also something nobody in Nurn would believe even if they saw it. So nobody would be looking for it. Blade hoped things would stay that way until he had finished his work.

That work went slowly at first, slowly enough to have given Blade a few sleepless nights if he had been the type to lie awake worrying. He wasn't. He was painfully aware that the more time passed, the greater his chances of returning to Talgar and finding Svera's head nailed on the Traitors' Beam by the dockyard entrance.

Fox dropped anchor at Clintrod, and Blade and four sailors donned heavy disguises and went ashore. In their chests and bags rode armor and weapons, a good sum in gold, and enough other disguises to make the five men look like forty other ones. The chest also contained two sealed envelopes. One held credentials showing Blade to be an authorized arms purchaser for the Autocracy of Finance of the Sea Cities of Talgar. The other showed Blade to be an equally authorized arms buyer for the Clan Gnyr of the Sea Masters. The arms dealer would not ask any questions once they saw those letters. The arms trade was far too profitable for any dealer to wish to doubt a buyer's word and risk driving him into the arms (or warehouse) of a competitor.

They nearly came to grief even before they entered Mestron. A mile from the North Gate they heard the thunder of fast-moving hooves and the blare of trumpets behind them. Then came shouts of «Way, way for the Duke Tymgur and his household! Way all!» Blade pulled the two pack mules to one side of the road and turned.

A long, cavalcade of men in black and green livery on sleek black horses was coming up behind them. In the center rode a tall, thin man with a close-cropped black beard fringing his pale, bony face. He was flanked by two banner bearers. The banners they carried were green, with a black bull's head on them.

The cavalcade pounded on toward the gates of the City. Blade led his little caravan back onto the road. As he did, he overheard a brief grumbling exchange between two porters staggering along under massive loads of pots.

«Hunh-Tymgur be gettin' much abo' hisself, nae?»

«Yar. No t'Emperor hisself do ride like thot on common roads.»

«Maybe Tymgur ha' dreams o'-«

«Hssssh!»

Blade kept that exchange and the Duke's face very much in his mind as they rode on into Mestron. A small bribe to the sentries got them the names of several reliable inns that catered to arms buyers and other merchants. Blade chose one called the Inn of the Seven Cats.

There were a good many more than seven cats underfoot as he entered, but the place was tolerably clean, and the landlord asked no more than the usual number of questions. Blade settled his party in two adjoining rooms and gave them a quick lecture on disguises and a longer lecture on keeping their mouths shut. «Never mind what good wine or willing girls you find. If you can't handle them and keep your tongue from flapping too, then leave them alone! Flapping tongues have been known to slit their owners' throats or stretch their owners' necks.»

The next morning Blade went out into the city and down to the waterfront warehouses, to begin his career as an arms buyer.

The first few days were almost straight espionage work. The city was strange, the streets reeked of fish and horse droppings, and the policemen carried swords and crossbows instead of pistols. But it was the same sort of painstaking, careful work that Blade had done for the first twenty years of his career, in Prague and Ankara and Tokyo. However, he was too experienced ever to let himself assume that something was completely routine. That assumption might eventually take the edge off his alertness and his head off his shoulders.

So he was alert as he made the rounds of one stuffy warehouse after another, talking with one greasy bearded armorer's representative after another, inspecting one barrel or crate of weapons after another. He had been advised to bargain ruthlessly, sneering freely at the quality of the weapons offered him. Blade knew medieval and other primitive weapons as well as he knew the guns and explosives of the twentieth century. He put all that knowledge to use now. He found more often than not that he didn't have to pretend at all to sneer at the quality of the weapons he was usually offered.

He always broke off the dealings just short of making an agreement. If he had not done that, the merchant would have asked what his ship was and where it was. An awkward question, particularly when Blade had just finished discussing an order for spears and armor that would have sunk three ships the size of Fox. It was a question he was very careful to see never got asked.

He was also careful to never show up on the waterfront in the same disguise two days' running. He had hair dye to give his hair eight or nine different shades, false beards and mustaches, and a dozen complete changes of clothing with accessories. He also had enough skill in using all of these to make the job of picking out the one man under all the disguises nearly impossible even for someone who was deliberately looking for him. As long as nobody was doing that, he was even safer.

Each night Blade would return to the Inn of the Seven Cats. He usually had aching feet, a head splitting from the musty air of the warehouses, and a throat half raw from the endless bargaining. A sailor would bring him a cup of wine and help him off with his boots, clothing, false beard, eyepatch, and the rest. Then Blade would sit down and write out his report of the day's events. He wrote in a Sea Master code, using the Sea Master's slightly acid ink, on the greased fishskin they used for paper. Such a message could be sunk a mile deep in the crystal seas and then brought up a year later, fully legible.

Usually it was a short report that nothing had happened, plus a set of numbers-a coded location. One of the sailors would take the message, put it in his pouch, and head out of the Inn. He would cover the ground at a good clip, although not fast enough to attract attention.

An hour or so beyond Mestron's walls, the message-bearer would angle down to the sea. He would pull out a small fish-oil lantern, light it with his flint and steel, and wave it in a complex pattern. Then he would wait until out on the dark waves the same pattern was repeated.

A few minutes later one of the Sea Masters would appear in the waves offshore, stride up the beach, and take the message from the sailor. Unseen but always there, two of his comrades would be lurking in the waves, crossbows aimed at the beach. The Sea Master would return to the water and swim out to rejoin his comrades. As the land-messenger made his way homeward, all three Sea Masters would swim still farther out into the sea. They would swim to where the yulon was tethered, release the tether, mount up, and head north.

«A yulon can cover the distance from Mestron to Clintrod in three hours without straining itself,» Blade had explained it to Alanyra. «One of the Sea Masters himself could never do it. But fortunately your people tamed the yulons. They are faster than any ship afloat. Using them, we've got an almost perfect solution to one of the oldest problems any spy faces.»

«What problem is that?» she asked.

«The problem of getting his information out. Look. I could get into the Emperor's private council chamber and sit under his table while he discusses his plans. I could learn everything I ever wanted to know about them, and more. But if I got caught and killed before I could get out of the palace and tell any of you, it wouldn't do any good. All the information would die with me.»

«I see.»

Blade couldn't help being slightly proud of his using unfamiliar tools to so thoroughly solve a very familiar problem. He would have been even prouder if there had been any useful information to send out. But night after night, all he could send out was a report of no progress and the code for the next night's rendezvous.

This went on for two weeks. A good chunk of the gold was gone. Even more disturbing, one of the sailors came in one evening to report what he had heard in a tavern on the waterfront.

«They say there be a yulon a-runnin' off the coast, like none ever heard of before.»

«Could it be one wandering in from the sea?»

«I doubt it much, Cap'n. The times when they say it's been seen are too much like the comins' and goins' o' ours.»

«Damn!» said Blade. All they needed now was for all the sailors and small boats in Mestron to turn out to hunt down a rogue yulon. His cherished message system would be up the creek-or rather, down to the bottom of the sea.

That night he almost did find it hard to sleep.

But the next morning, after two weeks of sifting sand, he found his first nugget. He found it in the course of an argument with an arms merchant.

«You're charging twenty silver bits apiece for these-these pieces of junk?» Blade sneered, pointing at a stack of crossbows. «I ought to-«

«Oh, ten thousand devils take all you damned bloodsucking buyers!» stormed the merchant. «You want finished crossbows at the price of scrap iron! If you want something that cheap, go to Duke Tymgur's armorers! They can afford to give away their work. The Duke pays them enough, curse them!»

«You're telling tales,» said Blade sourly. «Nobody's that rich or that foolish.»

The merchant threw his hands into the air, dislodging the wig from his bald and sweaty head. «So you don't believe me? All right, then waste your money. I give up!» He turned away decisively and began rummaging in his desk for a ledger.

Blade would have liked to ask a few more questions but didn't dare risk it. Not here and now, at least. He couldn't afford word getting around too soon that he was unnaturally interested in Duke Tymgur's strange business practices. If it did, his disguise might not be enough to save him. The word might go out to watch for any man asking about Tymgur, and possibly also to follow such a man back to his lodgings. That would be fatal. But for the first time in weeks, Blade allowed himself a small bit of hope as he left the dark warehouse for the glaring sun of the streets.

His hopes were justified. Over the next three days, he was able to pick up a good deal of information by casually dropping Duke Tymgur's name. So casually, in fact, that only a well-trained observer could have detected anything unusual in Blade's words. He had to hope that there were no well-trained observers listening to him or watching his comings and goings.

Gradually he began to build up a picture. As each piece of that picture fell into place, he sent it off in the night's message. Duke Tymgur was pouring much of his immense wealth into subsidizing arms sales to both Sea Masters and Sea Cities. He had begun doing this about the time the war between the two sea peoples became particularly violent. He had a large force of armed retainers on his estates to the north of Mestron, almost a private army. He had immense influence among the nobles and among the officers of the imperial fleet and army, being openhanded with both patronage and money. He was not popular among the arms merchants, whom he constantly undersold.

Blade began to meet with some of those merchants by night, slipping gold into their hands. They said to him things they would not have dared to say in daylight. It did not take long for Blade to finish his picture of what was going on in Nurn and send the last detail of it off to the people waiting aboard Fox at Clintrod.

The last message he sent from the Inn of the Seven Cats read:

I am going tonight to a dealer reputedly in the service of the Duke himself. This is dangerous, but I must visit at least one such before I finish my work here.

There may be a trap laid for me. In case there is, I am having the four sailors move in disguise tonight to another inn. They will wait for me there. If I do not rejoin them or send word that I am safe within a day, they will head north and go aboard Fox. You will not wait for me after they appear, but set sail at once for Talgar. My disappearance will be the final proof that Duke Tymgur is behind the plot to embroil Talgar and the Sea Masters with each other, to his advantage.

The Goddess be with you. Blade

Blade did not particularly enjoy the prospect of sticking himself up like a lightning rod and seeing what Duke Tymgur would throw at him. But he couldn't see that he had much choice.