The captain glared around until he spotted Kalam. 'Aren?'
'Aye.'
'Damned quiet.'
'We're in an alley that winds through a necropolis.'
'How pleasant,' Minala remarked. She gestured at the buildings flanking them. 'But these look like tenements.'
'They are ... for the dead. The poor stay poor in Aren.'
Keneb asked, 'How close are we to the garrison?'
'Three thousand paces,' Kalam replied, unwinding the scarf from his face.
'We need to wash,' Minala said.
'I'm thirsty,' Vaneb said, still astride his horse.
'Hungry,' added Kesen.
Kalam sighed, then nodded.
'I hope,' added Minala, 'a walk through dead streets isn't an omen.'
'The necropolis is ringed by mourners' taverns,' the assassin muttered. 'We won't have much of a walk.'
Squall Inn claimed to have seen better days, but Kalam suspected it never had. The floor of the main room sagged like an enormous bowl, tilting every wall inward until angled wooden posts were needed to keep them upright. Rotting food and dead rats had with inert patience migrated to the floor's centre, creating a mouldering, redolent heap like an offering to some dissolute god.
Chairs and tables stood on creatively sawed legs in a ring around the pit, only one still occupied by a denizen not yet drunk into senselessness. A back room no less disreputable provided the more privileged customers with some privacy, and it was there that Kalam had deposited his group to eat while a washtub was being prepared in the tangled garden. The assassin had then made his way to the main room and sat himself down opposite the solitary conscious customer.
'It's the food, isn't it?' the grizzled Napan said as soon as the assassin took his seat.
'Best in the city.'
'Or so voted the council of cockroaches.'
Kalam watched the blue-skinned man raise the mug to his lips, watched his large Adam's apple bob. 'Looks like you'll have another one.'
'Easily.'
The assassin twisted slightly in his chair, caught the drooped gaze of the old woman leaning against a support post beside the ale keg, raised two fingers. She sighed, pushed herself upright, paused to adjust the rat-cleaver tucked through her apron belt, then went off in search of two tankards.
'She'll break your arm if you paw,' the stranger said.
Kalam leaned back and regarded the man. He could have been anywhere between thirty and sixty, depending on his life's toll. Deeply weathered skin was visible beneath the iron-streaked snarl of beard. The dark eyes roved restlessly and had yet to fix on the assassin. The man was dressed in baggy, threadbare rags. 'You force the question,' the assassin said. 'Who are you and what's your story?'
The man straightened up. 'You think I tell that to just anyone?'
Kalam waited.
'Well,' the man continued. 'Not everyone. Some people get rude and stop listening.'
An unconscious patron at a nearby table toppled from his chair, his head crunching as it struck the flagstones. Kalam, the stranger and the serving woman – who had just reappeared with two tin mugs – all watched as the drunk slid down on grease and vomit to join the central heap.
It turned out one of the rats had been just playing at being dead, and it popped free and clambered onto the patron's body, nose twitching.
The stranger opposite the assassin grunted. 'Everyone's a philosopher.'
The serving woman delivered the drinks, her peculiar shuffle to their table displaying long familiarity with the pitched floor. Eyeing Kalam, she spoke in Dhebral. 'Your friends in the back have asked for soap.'
'Aye, I imagine they have.'
'We got no soap.'
'I have just realized that.'
She wandered away.
'Newly arrived, I take it,' the stranger said. 'North gate?'
'Aye.'
'That's quite a climb, with horses yet.'
'Meaning the north gate's locked.'
'Sealed, along with all the others. Maybe you arrived by the harbourside.'
'Maybe.'
'Harbour's closed.'
'How do you close Aren Harbour?'
'All right, it's not closed.'
Kalam took a mouthful of ale, swallowed it down and went perfectly still.
'Gets even worse after a few,' the stranger said.
The assassin set the tankard back down on the table. He struggled a moment to find his voice. 'Tell me some news.'
'Why should I?'
