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your spoggin
business.
By the time they tied up, it was after sundown and the boil along the wharves
had settled to a slow seethe.
Hedivy slipped off the
Tengumeqi as the unlading be-gan and vanished in the crowd. Serroi and
Adlayr (Hon-eydew huddling in his shirt pocket, only the top of her head
visible, her eyes tiny shines) left half an hour later when Phindwe could
spare a sailor to act as guide.
They left the wharves and plunged into a maze of streets and cross-streets,
their guide counting off the turns on his fingers, whispering a mnemonic to
pick his way through buildings like a child s toy blocks, painted neu-tral
colors, dark gray, green drab, and browns. He was a short, bowlegged Shimzey,
with his black hair braided into dozens of six-inch plaits, interwoven with
copper and silver wire, a silent man intent on doing his job without
unnecessary chatter.
Serroi drew her cloak tighter around her. With the ragged clouds overhead,
scattered splatters of rain, the wind scouring between the walls, the lowering
night, she found this place repellent. The few windows visible had iron
grilles on them, the lowest at least fifteen feet from the pavement. Though
the narrow, angling streets were clean enough to show they had to be swept
regu-larly, a faint stench hung over the area, a staleness with a urine bite.
And there wasn t a touch of green anywhere, at least not here in the heart of
Freetown. Every stretch like the one before. No street names. It was no wonder
the sailor had to count on his fingers to find his way.
He stopped finally before an anonymous arch, closed by a two-leaved door
fitted flush with the wall and painted the same color, muddy brown with a
greenish tinge. He slapped the door. This is it. Vusa
Ikala s Inn. He scratched at his chin a moment, slitted black eyes slid-ing
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round to Serroi. Bay s t
west a here. Y get lost, get t harbor, c n hire a guide there. Don t pay n
fore y get where y goin .
He touched a finger to his brow, then went marching off.
Serroi looked up and down the street, empty and silent, filling with webs of
shadow. Does anybody get the feel-ing they don t like foreigners much here?
>>
Hedivy felt eyes on him as he moved through the empty clueless streets. It
wasn t a new feeling here and it didn t mean he d already been spotted by the
Enemy; anyone in the street was game for the taking if he looked ripe. He had
a good memory, so he made the turns with-out hesitation and the watchers kept
watching.
Nehod s room was in a rookery built up against the wall at the inner edge of
Freetown, no questions asked as long as you paid the rent on time, with a mix
of banned Shimzeys, predators down on their luck, seamen whose drunks lasted
too long, travelers trying to scratch up the money for the next leg onward,
and a sprinkling of drab, bland types with no visible interests or
occupation. Un-like most transient lodgings in Freetown, there was no door
in the entrance arch, no concierge in his cage, keep-ing a minatory
eye on entrances and exits. Hedivy went in, ignoring the key-clerk
sleeping beneath a broadsheet by his ranks of hooks and holes, and took the
stairs at a steady pace, deliberately making noise as he walked; most of the
clients of this place would be far more inter-ested in a stealthy creak than
an unconcerned tromp. Those he passed on the stairs, going up or going down,
paid him as little attention as he gave them.
When he reached the fourth floor, he turned onto the landing and tromped
off down the wrong corridor; there was an intersect a hundred feet down
that would take him where he wanted to be.
>>
Like all the rest, Nehod s door was painted a thick, ugly brown, chipped in
places, showing the layers of older paint, ugly on top of ugly. Hedivy
knocked quietly, a double thump, then a wait. He didn t expect anyone to be
there; in his pocket he had a note with a time written in Cadandri glyphs the
hour after midnight, the time when he meant to return.
There was movement in the room, footsteps coming to the door.
Hedivy frowned. He started away, but the door slammed open and he heard a
shot, felt a blow in his left thigh. His knee folded and he went down as men
with guns emerged from another room just ahead of him.
>>
Frowning uneasily; Serroi followed Adlayr up the stairs; there was something
about the concierge that both-ered her, the way his eyes had moved over her
before he took their money and tossed Adlayr the key, the tension and queasy
expectation she felt in him.
Halfway up the second flight of stairs, she stopped. Wait, she said.
Adlayr turned. What is it, Serry?
I don t know. Adlayr, give me the key, go on up high as you can, see if you
can get on the roof.
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