Conan laughed disparagingly and lied. “Can you not tell me more than is known on every street corner? Why, I’ve heard strumpets resting their feet wager on whether the next bed Davinia graces will be that of Yildiz.” He searched for a way to erase the doubt that still creased the tavern-keeper’s face. “Next,” he said, “you’ll tell me that as she chooses her patrons only to improve herself, she must risk leaving her master’s bed for her own pleasures.” How else to explain Emilio, and this Davinia so clearly a woman intent on rising?
Manilik blinked. “I had no idea so much was so widely known. It being so, there are those who will want to collect what the Corinthian owes before Mundara Khan has him gelded and flayed. He had better have the gold he has bragged of, or he’ll not live to suffer the general’s mercies.”
“He mentioned gold, did he?” Conan prompted.
“Yes, he … .” The heavy-lidded eyes opened wide. “Mean you to say it’s a lie? Four or five days, he claimed, and he would have gold dripping from his fingers. An you are a friend of the Corinthian, warn him clear most particularly of one Narxes, a Zamoran. His patience with Emilio’s excuses is gone, and his way with a knife will leave your friend weeping that he is not dead. Narxes likes well to make examples for others who might fail to pay what they owe. Best you tell him to keep quiet about my warning, though. I’ve no wish for the Zamoran to come after me before Emilio finishes him.”
“I will tell him,” Conan said drily. Manilik was licking his narrow lips, avarice personified. As soon as he could, the tavernkeeper would have a messenger off to this Narxes. Whether it was Narxes or Emilio who survived, Manilik would claim it was his warning that tipped the balance. But Conan did not mean to add to the Corinthian thief’s troubles. “So far as I know, the gold will be his, as he claims.”
The innkeeper shrugged. “If you say it, then I believe it, stranger.” But his voice carried a total lack of conviction.
Conan left with a wry smile, but just outside he stopped and leaned against the doorjamb. The lowering sun was a bloody ball on the rooftops. Moments later a slender, dark-haired serving wench darted from the inn, pulling a cloak of coarse brown wool about her. He caught the girl’s arm, pulling her aside. The wench stared up at him, dark eyes wide and mouth hanging open.
“You are the one Manilik is sending to Narxes,” he said.
She straightened defiantly—she came no higher than Conan’s chest—and glared. “I’ll tell you naught. Loose me.”
Releasing his grip, he half pushed her toward the street. “Go then. Never before have I seen anyone run to have her throat slit.”
The girl hesitated, rubbing her arm and eying the passing carts rumbling over the cobblestones. Sailors and tradesmen thronged between the high-wheeled vehicles. A quick dash and she could be lost among them. Instead she said, “Why should Narxes wish to harm me? I’ve never had a copper to wager at his tables. The likes of me’d never get past the door.”
“You mean you don’t know?” Conan said incredulously. “That alters matters.”
“Know what? What matters?”
“I heard Manilik say he was sending a girl to Narxes for … .” He let his voice trail off, shaking his head. “No, it’s no use. Better you do not know. You couldn’t escape, anyway.”
She laughed shakily. “You’re trying to frighten me. I am just to tell Narxes that Manilik has word for him. What did you hear?” Conan was silent, frowning as if in thought, until she stepped closer and laid a trembling hand on his arm. “You must tell me! Please?”
“Not that it will do you any good,” Conan said, feigning reluctance. “Narxes will find you no matter how far you run.”
“My parents have a farm far from the city. He’d never find me there. Tell me!”
“Narxes has been selling young girls to the Cult of Doom for sacrifices,” he lied, and invented some detail. “You’ll be strapped to an altar, and when your throat is cut the blood will be gathered in a chalice, then—”
“No!” She staggered back, one hand to her mouth. Her face had a greenish cast, as if she were about to be sick. “I’ve never heard that the Cult of Doom makes such sacrifices. Besides, the use of freeborn for sacrifices is forbidden by law.”
“How will anyone ever know, once you’re safely dead and your body tossed to the sea?” He shrugged. “But if you do not believe me, then seek out Narxes. Perhaps he will explain it to you on your way to the compound of the Cult.”
“What am I to do?” she moaned, taking quick steps first in one direction then another. “I have no money, nothing but what I stand in. How am I to get to my parents’ farm?”
Sighing, Conan dug a fistful of coppers from his pouch. Emilio would repay him, or he would know the reason why. “Here, girl. This will see you there.”
“Thank you. Thank you.” Half-sobbing, she snatched the coins from his outstretched hand and ran.
Not even a kiss for gratitude, Conan thought grumpily as he watched her disappear down the teeming street. But with luck Manilik would not discover for at least a day that his plans had gone awry. A day to find Emilio without worrying about finding him dead. The story he had concocted for the girl had sounded even more convincing than he had hoped. With a satisfied smile he started down the street.
In the dimnesses that foreshadowed dusk he did not notice the shaven-headed man in saffron robes, standing in the mouth of an alley beside the inn he had just left, a man who watched his going with interest.
V
Night filled the ivory-walled compound of the Cult of Doom. No dimmest flicker of light showed, for those of the Cult rose, worked, ate and slept only by command. No coppers were wasted on tapers. In an inner room, though, where Jhandar met with those who followed him most faithfully, bronze lion lamps illumined walls of alabaster bas-relief and floors mosaicked in a thousand colors.
The forty saffron-robed men who waited beneath the high vaulted ceiling knelt as Jhandar entered, each touching a dagger to his forehead. “Blessed be Holy Chaos,” they intoned. “Blessed be disorder, confusion, and anarchy.”
“Blessed be Holy Chaos,” the mage replied perfunctorily. He was, as always, robed as they.
He eyed the lacquered tray of emerald and gold that had been placed on a small tripod table before the waiting men. His hands moved above the two-score small, stone bottles on the tray, fingers waving like questing snakes’ tongues, as if they could sense the freshness of the blood within those stoppered containers.