Domes of Fire

‘Where have you been? My wife’s got people out looking for you.’

‘Yes. I saw them blundering around out in the streets. I had to go visit Platime in the cellar.’

‘Oh?’

‘He picked up something he thought you ought to be aware of. You know those unauthorised bandits in the hills near Cardos?’

‘Not personally, no.’

‘Funny, Sparhawk. Very funny. Platime’s found out that somebody we know is sort of directing their activities.’

‘Oh? Who’s that?’

‘Can you believe that it’s Krager? You should have killed him when you had the chance, Sparhawk.’

CHAPTER 3

The fog drifted in from the river not long after the sun went down that evening. The nights in Cimmura were always foggy in the spring when it wasn’t raining. Sparhawk, Stragen and Talen left the palace wearing plain clothing and heavy traveller’s cloaks and rode to the southeast quarter of town.

‘You don’t necessarily have to tell your wife I said this, Sparhawk,’ Stragen noted, looking around with distaste, ‘but her capital’s one of the least attractive cities in the world. You’ve got a truly miserable climate here.’

‘It’s not so bad in the summer-time,’ Sparhawk replied a little defensively.

‘I missed last summer,’ the blond thief said. ‘I took a short nap one afternoon and slept right through it. Where are we going?’

‘We want to see Platime.’

‘As I recall, his cellar’s near the west gate of the city. You’re taking us in the wrong direction.’

‘We have to go to a certain inn first.’ Sparhawk looked back over his shoulder. ‘Are we being followed, Talen?’ he asked.

‘Naturally.’

Sparhawk grunted. ‘That’s more or less what I expected.’

They rode on with the thick mist swirling around the legs of their horses and making the fronts of the nearby houses dim and hazy-looking. They reached the inn on Rose Street, and a surly-appearing porter admitted them to the inn yard and closed the gate behind them.

‘Anything you find out about this place isn’t for general dissemination,’ Sparhawk told Talen and Stragen as he dismounted. He handed Faran’s reins to the porter. ‘You know about this horse, don’t you, brother?’ he warned the man.

‘He’s a legend, Sparhawk,’ the porter replied. ‘The things you wanted are in the room at the top of the stairs.’

‘How’s the crowd in the tavern tonight?’

‘Loud, smelly and mostly drunk.’

‘There’s nothing new about that. What I meant, though, was how many of them are there?’

‘Fifteen or twenty. There are three of our men in there who know what to do.’

‘Good. Thank you, Sir Knight.’

‘You’re welcome, Sir Knight.’

Sparhawk led Talen and Stragen up the stairs.

‘This inn, I gather, isn’t altogether what it seems,’ Stragen observed.

‘The Pandions own it,’ Talen told him. ‘They come here when they don’t want to attract attention.’

‘There’s a little more to it than that,’ Sparhawk told him. He opened the door at the top of the stairs, and the three of them entered.

Stragen looked at the workmen’s smocks hanging on pegs near the door. ‘We’re going to resort to subterfuge, I see.’

‘It’s fairly standard practice,’ Sparhawk shrugged. ‘Let’s get changed. I’d sort of like to get back to the palace before my wife sends out search parties.’

The smocks were of blue canvas, worn and patched and with a few artfully-placed smudges on them. There were woollen leggings as well and thick-soled workmen’s boots. The caps were baggy affairs, designed more to keep off weather than they were for appearance.

‘You’re going to have to leave that here,’ Sparhawk said, pointing at Stragen’s rapier. ‘It’s a little obvious.’ The big Pandion tucked a heavy dagger under his belt.

‘You know that there are people watching the gate of the inn, don’t you, Sparhawk?’ Talen said.

‘I hope they enjoy their evening. We aren’t going out through the gate, though.’ Sparhawk led them back down to the inn yard, crossed to a narrow door in a side wall and opened it. The warm air that boiled out through the doorway smelled of stale beer and unwashed bodies. The three of them went inside and closed the door behind them. They seemed to be in a small storeroom. The straw on the floor was mouldy.

‘Where are we?’ Talen whispered.

‘In a tavern,’ Sparhawk replied softly. ‘There’s going to be a fight in just a few minutes. We’ll slip out into the main room during the confusion.’ He went to the curtained doorway leading out into the tavern and twitched the curtain several times. ‘All right,’ he whispered. ‘We’ll mingle with the crowd during the fight, and after a while, we’ll leave. Behave as if you’re slightly drunk, but don’t over-do it.’

‘I’m impressed,’ Stragen said.

‘I’m more than impressed,’ Talen added. ‘Not even Platime knows that there’s more than one way out of that inn.’

The fight began not long after that. It was noisy, involving a great deal of shouting and pushing and finally a few blows. Two totally uninvolved and evidently innocent by-standers were knocked senseless during the course of the altercation. Sparhawk and his friends smoothly insinuated themselves into the crowd, and after ten minutes or so, they reeled out through the door.

‘A little unprofessional,’ Stragen sniffed. ‘A staged fight shouldn’t involve the spectators that way.’

‘It should when the spectators might be looking for something other than a few tankards of ale,’ Sparhawk disagreed. ‘The two who fell asleep weren’t regular patrons in the tavern. They might have been completely innocent, but then again, they might not. This way, we don’t have to worry about them trailing along behind us.’

‘There’s more to being a Pandion Knight than I thought,’ Talen noted. ‘I may like it after all.’

They walked through the foggy streets towards the rundown quarter near the west gate, a maze of interconnecting lanes and unpaved alleys. They entered one of those alleys and went through it to a flight of muddy stone stairs leading down. A thick-bodied man lounged against the stone wall beside the stairs. ‘You’re late,’ he said to Talen in a flat voice.