Of these, perhaps only the last would be of use in tracing whoever had hired those soldiers. Vargos, for want of a better idea, decided to head for the harbour and spend a few coins in some of the rougher cauponae. He might overhear something, or someone might offer information. The patrons there would be slaves, servants, apprentices, soldiers watching their copper folles. An offered drink or two might be welcome. It did occur to him there might be some danger. It didn’t occur to him to alter his plan because of that.
It took him only part of a morning to discover that Sarantium was much the same as the north or the Imperial Road in one thing, at least: men in taverns were disinclined to answer questions posed by strangers when the subject was violence and a request for information.
No one in this rough district wanted to be the one to point to someone else, and Vargos wasn’t skilled enough with words or subtle enough to steer anyone casually around to the topic of last night’s incident in the Blues’ compound. Everyone seemed to know about it-armed soldiers entering a faction’s quarters and being slaughtered there was an event of note even in a Jaded city-but no one was willing to say more than the obvious, and Vargos received black looks and silence when he pushed. The six dead soldiers had been on leave from Calysium: duties along the Bassanid border. They’d been drinking around the City for some days, spending borrowed money. More or less what soldiers always did. That much was commonly known. The issue was who had bought them, and as to that no one knew, or would speak.
The Urban Prefect’s men had already begun nosing about the district, Vargos gathered. He began to suspect, after someone deliberately knocked over his ale in one sailor’s bar, that they’d learn as little as he was. He wasn’t afraid of getting into a fight, but it certainly wouldn’t achieve anything if he did. He’d said nothing, paid for the spilled ale and continued on, out into the early-afternoon sunshine.
He was halfway along another narrowing, twisty lane, heading towards the noise of the waterfront, where the masts of ships were leaning in the crisp breeze, when he received an idea, along with a memory from Carullus’s army camp.
He would describe it that way, afterwards, to himself and to the others. Receiving the thought. As if it had been handed to him from without, startling in its suddenness. He would attribute it to the god, and keep to himself a recollection of a grove in the Aldwood.
He asked directions of two apprentices, endured their smirks at his accent, and duly turned towards the landward walls. It was a long walk through a large city, but the boys had been honest with him and not mischievous, and in due course Vargos saw the sign of The Courier’s Rest. It made sense that it was near the triple walls: the Imperial riders came in that way.
He’d heard about this inn for years. Had been invited by various couriers to come by if ever he was in the City, to share a flask or three with them. When he’d been younger, he’d understood that a drink with certain of the riders would likely be followed by a trip upstairs for some privacy, which never did hold any appeal for him. As he grew older the invitations lost that nuance and suggested only that he was a useful and easygoing companion to those enduring the steady hardship of the road.
He paused on the threshold before going in, his eyes slowly adjusting to the closed shutters and the loss of light. The first part of his new thought hadn’t been especially complicated: after the experiences of the morning it was obvious he had a better chance of learning something from someone who knew him than by continuing to ask questions of sullen strangers near the harbour. Vargos had to admit that he wouldn’t have answered any such questions himself. Not from the Urban Prefect’s men, not from an inquisitive Inici new to the City.
The deeper idea-the thing given to him on the street-was that he was now looking for someone in particular, and thought he might find him here, or receive word of him.