Kay, Guy Gavriel – Sarantine Mosaic 01 – Sailing to Sarantium

As it happened, he didn’t even need to be.

‘Be ready,’ Crispin said inwardly, ‘I believe we have landed our fish.’

‘How very nautical of you,’ Linon replied sardonically. ‘Do we eat him in salt or sauce?’

‘No wit, please. I need you.’

‘Witless?’

Crispin ignored this. ‘I’m sending the girl up now.’

‘Kitten!’ he called out, his voice slurred, too loud. ‘Kitten!’

The girl who had called herself Kasia came over quickly, blue eyes anx­ious, wiping her hands on the sides of her tunic. Crispin gave her a brief, very direct look, then tilted sideways, spilling some more of his wine, as he pulled the room key from his belt.

He’d had, truly, no idea who might fall for the baits he was offering … the unlocked door, the garrulous drunkenness, crude hints dropped over dinner and wine. Indeed, it had been entirely possible no one would suc­cumb. He had no fall-back plan. No brilliant constellations of tesserae. A door left foolishly open, careless words about a purse upstairs … all he’d been able to devise.

But it seemed someone had risen to his lure. Crispin refused to let him­self ponder the ethics of what he was doing when the sullen nephew he’d been watching gave him a too-naked glance and excused himself.

He squinted owlishly up at the girl and pointed an unsteady finger at Erytus of Megarium. ‘Thish very good friend of mine wants to see my Permit. Gesius’s Seal. S’in the leather purse. On the bed. You know the room, ‘bove the kitchen. Go get it. And Kitten …’ He paused, wag­gled a finger at her. ‘I know ‘xactly how much money’s in the purse, Kitten.’

The Megarian merchant was protesting faintly, but Crispin winked at him and squeezed the girl’s rump as she took the key. ‘Room’s not too far for young legs,’ he laughed. ‘Might let her wrap ’em round me, later, too. One of the merchant’s sons let out an alarming giggle before blush­ing ferociously under his father’s swift gaze.

A Karchite at a table across the room laughed loudly, waving his beer at them. Crispin had thought, when he’d first entered the common room, that one of that group might slip away and up. He’d spoken loudly enough for them to hear… but they’d been drinking steadily since mid-afternoon, it seemed, and two of them were fast asleep, heads on the table among the food. The others weren’t moving anywhere quickly.

Erytus’s bored, angry nephew with the thin mouth and long, fidgety hands had said he was going to the latrine. He wasn’t. Crispin was sure of it. He was the fish, and hooked.

If he goes into a room intending to steal, he told himself, he deserves whatever happens. Crispin was utterly sober, however-having spilled, or shared, almost all of his wine-and he didn’t really convince himself. It occurred to him, suddenly, before he could push the thought away, that it was possible that a mother, somewhere, loved that young man.

‘He’s here,’ Linon said, from the room upstairs.

She went up the stairs again, moving quickly this time past the wall torches, her passage making them waver, leaving a casting of uneven brightness behind and below her. She carried a key. Her heart was pound­ing, but in a different way this time. This time there was hope, however faint. Where there has been uttermost blackness a candle changes the world. There was nothing to be seen through the windows. She could hear the wind.

She reached the top, went straight on back to the last room over the kitchen. The door was ajar. He had said it might be. He hadn’t explained why. Only that if she saw anyone in there when he sent her up, anyone at all, she was to do exactly as he told her.

She entered the room. Stood in the doorway. Saw the outline of a star­tled, turning figure in the blackness. Heard him swear. Couldn’t tell who it was, at all.

Screamed, as she had been told.

The girl’s fierce cry ripped through the inn. They heard it clearly, even in the noisy common room. In the sudden rigid silence that ensued, her next frantic shout rang clearly: ‘There is a thief! Help me! Help!’

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