“Nay. Nay. The others flock about them, but not the lordlings. What man would risk the shame of knowing his wife had been bought?
It was true, Conan saw. Each veiled woman was the center of a knot of sailors or dockworkers or tradesmen, but the nobles ignored them, looking the other way rather than acknowledge their existence.
“Try one,” the snake-faced man urged. “One silver piece, and you can see for yourself if she moves beneath you like a noblewoman.”
Conan drank deeply, as if considering. Had he been interested in dalliance, it was in his mind that better value would come from an honest strumpet than from a nobly born woman pretending to be such. The tapster had none of the fripperies of the panderer about him—he did not sniff a perfumed pomander or wear more jewelry than any three wenches—but no doubt he took some part of what was earned on the mats above the common room. He might talk more easily if he thought Conan a potential patron. The Cimmerian lowered his mug.
“It’s a thing to think on,” he chuckled, eying a girl nearby. A true daughter of the mats, this one, in an orange-dyed wig with her face as bare as her wiggling buttocks. “But I seek a friend who was supposed to meet me. I understand he frequents this place betimes.”
The tavernkeeper drew back half a step, and his voice cooled noticeably. “Look around you. An he is here, you will see him. Otherwise … .” He shrugged and turned to walk away, but Conan reached across the bar and caught his arm, putting on a smile he hoped was friendly. “I do not see him, but I still must needs find him. He is called Emilio the Corinthian. For the man who can tell me where to find him, I could spare the price of one of these wenches for the night.” If Sharak was correct—and he always was—Conan had to find Emilio, and what word he had thus far garnered was neither copious nor good.
The tapster’s face became even more snake-like, but his lidded eyes had flickered at Emilio’s name. “Few men must pay for the whereabouts of a friend. Mayhap this fellow—Emilio, did you say his name is?—is no friend of yours. Mayhap he does not wish to meet you. Ashra! Come rid me of this pale-eyed fool!”
“I can prove to you that I know him. He is—”
A massive hand landed on the Cimmerian’s broad shoulder, and a guttural voice growled, “Out with you!”
Conan turned his head enough to look coldly at the wide hand, its knuckles sunken and scarred. His icy azure gaze traveled back along a hairy arm as big around as most men’s legs. And up. This Ashra stood head and shoulders taller even than Conan himself, and was half again as broad with no bit of fat on him. For all the scarring of his hands, the huge man’s broad-nosed face was unmarked. Conan thought few could reach high enough to strike it.
He attempted to keep his tone reasonable. Fighting seldom brought information. “I seek a man this skinny one knows, not trouble. Now unhand me and—”
For an answer the big man jerked at Conan’s shoulder. Sighing, the Cimmerian let himself be spun, but the smile on Ashra’s face lasted only until Conan’s fist hooked into his side with a loud crack of splintering ribs. Shouting drinkers scrambled out of the way of the two massive men. Conan’s other fist slammed into the tall man, and again he felt ribs break beneath his blow.
With a roar Ashra seized the Cimmerian’s head in both of his huge hands and lifted Conan clear of the floor, squeezing as if to crush the skull he held, but a wolfish battle-light shone in Conan’s eyes. He forced his arms between Ashra’s and gripped the other’s head in turn, one hand atop it, the other beneath the heavy chin. Slowly he twisted, and slowly the bull neck gave. Panting, Ashra suddenly loosed his hold, yet managed to seize Conan about the chest before he could fall. Hands locked, he strained to snap the Cimmerian’s spine.
The smile on Conan’s face was enough to chill the blood. In the time it took three grains of sand to fall in the glass, he knew, he could break Ashra’s neck, yet a killing would of a certainty gag the tapster’s mouth. Abruptly he released his grip. Ashra laughed, thinking he had the victory. Conan raised his hands high, then smashed them, palms flat, across the other’s ears.
Ashra screamed and staggered back, dropping the Cimmerian to clutch at his bleeding ears. Conan bored after him, slamming massive fists to the ribs he had already broken, then a third blow to the huge man’s heart. Ashra’s eyes glazed, and his knees bent, but he would not fall. Once more Conan struck. That never-struck nose fountained blood, and Ashra slowly turned, toppling into a table that splintered beneath him. Once the prostrate man stirred as if to rise, then was still.
A murmuring crowd gathered around the fallen man. Two men grabbed his ankles, grunting as they dragged the massive weight away. More than one wench eyed Conan warmly, licking her lips and putting an extra sway in her walk, among them those with veiled faces. He ignored them and turned back to the business at hand, to the tapster.
The snake-faced innkeeper stood behind the bar wearing an expression almost as stunned as Ashra’s. A bung-starter dangled forgotten in his hand.
Conan took the heavy mallet from the slack grip and held it up before the man’s eyes, fists touching in the middle of the thick handle. The muscles of his arms and shoulders knotted and bunched; there was a sharp crack, and he let the two pieces fall to the bar.
The tavernkeeper licked his thin lips. He stared at Conan as if at a wonderment. “Never before have I seen the man Ashra could not break in two wit his bare hands,” he said slowly. “But then, even he couldn’t have … .” His gaze dropped to the broken mallet, and he swallowed hard. “Have you a mind to employment? The job held by that sack of flesh they’re hauling off is open. A silver piece a day, plus a room, food, drink, and your choice of any wench who has not a customer. My name is Manilik. How are you called?”
“I am no hauler of tosspots,” Conan said flatly. “Now tell me what you know of Emilio.”
Manilik hesitated, then gave a strained laugh. “Mayhap you do know him. I’m careful of my tongue, you see. Talk when you shouldn’t, and you’re apt to lose your tongue. I don’t waggle mine.”
“Waggle it now. About Emilio.”
“But that is the problem, stranger. Oh, I know of Emilio,” he said quickly, as Conan’s massive fist knotted atop the bar, “but I know little. And I’ve not seen him these three days past.”
“Three days,” Conan muttered despondently. Thus far he had found many who knew Emilio, but none who had seen the Corinthian these three days past. “That boasting idiot is likely gazing into a mirror or rolling with that hot-blooded Davinia of his,” he growled.
“Davinia?” Tewfik sounded startled. “If you know of her, perhaps you truly do know … .” He trailed off with a nervous laugh under Conan’s icy eyes.
“What do you know of Davinia, Tewfik?”
The innkeeper shivered, so quietly was that question asked. It seemed to him the quiet of the tomb, mayhap of his tomb an he answered not quickly. Words bubbled from him as water from a spring.
“General Mundara Khan’s mistress, bar-, ah, stranger, and a dangerous woman for the likes of Emilio, not just for who it is that keeps her, but for her ambition. ’Tis said lemans have bodies, but not names. This Davinia’s name is known, though. Not two
years gone, she appeared in Aghrapur on the arm of an ivory trader from Punt. The trader left, and she remained. In the house of a minor gem merchant. Since then she’s managed to change her leash from one hand to another with great dexterity. A rug merchant of moderate wealth, the third richest ship owner in the city, and now Mundara Khan, a cousin of King Yildiz himself, who would be a prince had his mother not been a concubine.”
The flow of talk slowed, then stopped. Greed and fear warred on Manilik’s face, and his mouth was twisted with the pain of giving away what he might, another time, have sold.