“There’s no attack, Lord Timeon,” Conan said hastily “At least, not here. But I was attacked in the city.”
Timeon glanced at the girl. He seemed to realize he had been far from heroic before her. Straightening abruptly, he tugged at his robe as if adjusting it, smoothed his thinning hair. “Your squabbles with the refuse of Ianthe have no interest for me. And my pretty Tivia is too delicate a blossom to be frightened with your tales of alley brawls, and your gory blade. Leave, and I will try to forget your ill manners.”
“Lord Timeon,” Conan said with forced patience, “does someone mean you harm, well might they try to put me out of the way first. Count Tiberio is dead this last night at an assassin’s hand. I will put guards at your door and in the garden beneath your windows.”
The plump noble’s water blue eyes darted to the girl again. “You will do no such thing. Tiberio took his own life, so I heard. And as for assassins —” he strode to the table where his sword lay, slung the scabbard into a corner and struck a pose with the weapon in hand—“should any manage to get past your vigilance, I will deal with them myself. Now leave me. I have …” he leered at the slender girl who still attempted unsuccessfully to cover herself, “matters to attend to.”
Reluctantly Conan bowed himself from the room. The instant the door was shut behind him, he growled, “That tainted sack of suet. An old woman with a switch could beat him through every corridor of this palace.”
“What are we to do?” Machaon asked. “If he refuses guards … .”
“We guard him anyway,” Conan snorted. “He can take all the chances he wants to with us to protect him, and he will so long as there’s a woman to impress, but we cannot afford to let him die. Put two men in the garden, where he can’t see them from his windows. And one at either end of this hall, around the corners where they can hide if Timeon comes out, but where they can keep an eye on his door.”
“I’ll see to it.” The scarred warrior paused. “What’s that you’re carrying?”
Conan realized he still had the bronze, wrapped in its sack, beneath his arm. He had forgotten it in the mad rush to get to Timeon. Now he wondered. If the men who had attacked him had not been trying to open a way to the baron—and it now seemed they had not—perhaps they had been after the statuette. After all, two others had been willing to kill, and die, for it. And they had thought it worth gold. It seemed best to find out the why of it before giving Machaon a gift that might bring men seeking his life.
“Just a thing I bought in the city,” he said. “Post those guards immediately. I don’t want to take chances, in case I was right the first time.”
“First time?” Machaon echoed, but Conan was already striding away.
The room Conan had been given was spacious, but what Timeon thought suitable for a mercenary captain. The tapestries on the walls were of the second quality only, the lamps were polished pewter and brass rather than silver or gold, and the floor was plain red tiles. Two arched windows looked out on the garden, four floors below, but there was no balcony. Still, the mattress on the big bed was goose down, and the tables and chairs, if plain varnished wood, were sturdy enough for him to be comfortable with, unlike the frail, gilded pieces in the rooms for noble guests.
He tossed the rough sacking aside and set the bronze on a table. A malevolent piece, it seemed almost alive. Alive and ready to rend and tear. The man who had made it was a master. And steeped in abomination, Conan was sure, for otherwise he could not have infused so much evil into his creation.
Drawing his dagger, he tapped the hilt against the figure. It was not hollow; there could be no gems hidden within. Nor did it have the feel or heft of bronze layered over gold, though who would have gone to that much trouble, or why, he could not imagine.
A knock came at the door while he was still frowning at the horned shape, attempting to divine its secret. He hesitated, then covered it with the sack before going to the door. It was Narus.
“There’s a wench asking for you,” the hollow-cheeked man said. “Dressed like a doxy, but her face scrubbed like a temple virgin, and pretty enough to be either. Says her name is Julia.”
“I know her,” Conan said, smiling.
Narus’ mournful expression did not change, but then it seldom did. “A gold to a silver there’s trouble in this one, Cimmerian. Came to the front and demanded entrance, as arrogant as a princess of the realm. When I sent her around back, she tried to tell me her lineage. Claims she’s noble born. The times are ill for dallying with such.”
“Take her to Fabio,” Conan laughed. “She’s his new pot girl. Tell him to put her peeling turnips for the stew.”
“A pleasure,” Narus said, with a brief flicker of a smile, “after the way her tongue scourged me.”
At least one thing had gone well with the day, Conan thought as he turned from the door. Then his eye fell on the sacking covered bronze on the table, and his moment of jollity faded. But there were other matters yet to be plumbed, and the feeling at the back of his neck told him there would be deadly danger in doing so.
4
&nbs
p; The sly-faced man who called himself Galbro wandered nervously around the dusty room where he had been told to wait. Two great stuffed eagles on perches were the only decoration, the amber beads that had replaced their eyes seeming to glare more fiercely than ever any living eagle’s eyes had. The lone furnishings was the long table supporting the leather bag in which he had brought what he had to sell. He did not like these meetings; despite all the silver and gold they put in his purse, he did not like the woman who gave him the coin. Her name was unknown to him, and he did not want to know it, nor anything else about her. Knowledge of her would be dangerous.
Yet he knew it was not the woman alone who made him pace this time. That man. A northlander, Urian said he was. From whencever he came, he had slain five of Galbro’s best and walked away without so much as a scratch. That had never happened before, or at least not since he came to Ophir. It was an ill omen. For the first time in long years he wished that he was back in Zingara, back in the thieves’ warren of alleys that ran along the docks of Kordava. And that was foolish, for if he was not shortened a head by the guard, his throat would be slit by the denizens of those same alleys before he saw a single nightfall. There were penalties attached to playing both sides in a game, especially when both sides discovered that you cheated.
A light footstep brough him alert. She stepped into the room, and a shiver passed through him. No part of her but her eyes, dark and devoid of softness, was visible. A silver cloak that brushed the floor was gathered close about her. A dark, opaque veil covered the lower half of her face, and her hair was hidden by a white silk headcloth, held by a ruby pin, the stone as large as the last joint of his thumb.
The ruby invoked no shreds of greed within him. Nothing about her brought any feeling to him except fear. He hated that, fearing a woman, but at least her coin was plentiful. His taste for that was all the greed he dared allow himself with her.
With a start he realized she was waiting for him to speak. Wetting his lips—why did they dry so in her presence?—he opened his bag, spread his offerings on the table. “As you can see, my lady, I have much this time. Very valuable.”
One pale, slender hand extended from the cloak to finger what he had brought, object by object. The brass plaque, worked with the head of the demon that so fascinated her, was thrust contemptuously aside. He schooled his face not to wince. Leandros had labored hard on that, but of late she accepted few of the Corinthian’s forgeries. Three fragments of manuscript, tattered and torn, she studied carefully, then lay to one side. Her fingers paused over a clay head, so worn with age he had not been certain it was meant to be the creature she wanted. She put it with the parchments.
“Two gold pieces,” she said quietly when she was done. “One for the head, one for the codexes. They but duplicate what I already have.”