Tales From The Vulgar Unicorn

Around them in the charcoal dimness others neither heard nor were overheard. In this place, the trick was not to be overheard. The trick was to talk under everyone else. A bad tavern with a bad reputation in a bad area of a nothing town, the tavern called the Vulgar Unicorn was an astonishingly quiet place.

'Just call me Hanse and stop being all cryptic and fatherly,' the dark young man said. 'I'm not looking for a father. I had one - I'm told. Then I had Cudget Swearoath. Cudget told me all I -all he knew.'

The other man heard; 'fatherly' used to mean 'patronizing', and the flash of ego in the tough called Shadowspawn. Chips on his shoulders out to here. The other man did not smile. How to tell Hanse how many Hanses he had known, over so many years?

'Listen. One night a while ago I killed. Two men.' Hanse did not lower his voice for that statement-not-admission; he kept it low. The shadow of a voice.

'Not men, Hanse. Hawk-masks. Jubal's bravoes. Hardly men.'

'They were men, Tempus. They were all men. So is Hanse and even Kadaki - the prince-governor.'

'Kitty-Cat.'

'I do not call him that,' Hanse said, with austerity. Then he said, 'It's you I'm not sure of, Tempus. Are you a man?'

'I'm a man,' Tempus said, with a sigh that seemed to come from the weight of decades and decades. 'Tonight I asked you to call me Thales. Go ahead, Hanse. You killed two men, while helping me. Were you, by the way? Or were you lurking around my horse that night thinking of laying hands on some krrf?'

'I use no drugs and little alcohol.'

'That isn't what I asked,' Tempus said, not bothering to refute.

Dark eyes met Tempus's, which impressed him. 'Yes. That is why I was there, T Thales. Why "Thay-lees"?'

'Since all things are presently full of gods, why not "Thales"? Thank you, Hanse. I appreciate your honesty. We can -'

'Honesty?' A man, once well built and now wearing his chest all over his broad belt and bulging under it as well, had been passing their small round table. 'Did I hear something about Hanse's honesty? Hanse?' His laugh was a combination: pushed and genuine.

The lean youth called Shadowspawn moved nothing but his head. 'How'd you like a hole in your middle to let out all that hot air, Abohorr?'

'How'd you like a third eye, Abohorr?' Hanse's tablemate said.

Abohorr betook himself elsewhere, muttering - and hurrying. Both Hanse's lean swift hands remained on the tabletop. 'You know him, Thales?'

'No.'

'You heard me say his name and so you said it right after me.'

'Yes.'

'You're sharp, Thales. Too ... smart.' Hanse slapped the table's surface. 'I've been meeting too many sharp people lately. Sharp as...' .

'Knives,' Tempus said, finishing the complaint of a very very sharp young man. 'You were mentioning that you were waiting for me to come out of that house-not home, Hanse, because you knew I was carrying. And then Jubal's bravoes attacked - me -and you took down two.'

'I was mentioning that, yes.' Hanse developed a seemingly genuine interest in his brown-and-orange Saraprins mug. 'How many men have you killed, Thales?'

'Oh gods. Do not ask.'

'Many.'

'Many, yes.'

'And no scars on you.'

Tempus looked pained. 'No scars on me,' he said, to his own big hands on the table. Bronzed, they were still more fair than Shadowspawn's. On a sudden thought, he looked up and his expression was of dawning revelation and disbelief. 'Hanse? You saved my life that night. I saved yours - but they were after me to begin with. Hanse? How many men have you killed?'

Hanse looked away. Hair like a raven, nose of a young falcon. Profile carved out by a hand-axe sharper than a barber's razor, all planes and angles. A pair of onyxes for eyes, and just that hard. His look away was uncharacteristic and Tempus knew it. Tempus worked out of the palace and had access to confidential reports, one of which not even the prince-governor had seen. He wouldn't, either, because it no longer existed. Too, Tempus had dealt with this spawn of Downwind and the shadows. He was here in this murkily-lit tavern of humanity's dregs to deal with him again.

Hanse, looking away, said, 'You are not to tell anyone.'

Tempus knew just what to say. 'Do not insult me again.'

Hanse's nod was not as long as the thickness of one of his knives. (Were there five, or did he really wear a sixth on one of his thighs? Tempus doubted that; the strap wouldn't stay up.)

At last Hanse answered the question. 'Two.'

Two men. Tempus nodded, sighing, pushing back to come as close to slumping on his bench as his kind of soldier could. Damp. Who would have thought it? The reputation he had, this dark surly scary (to others, not the man currently calling himself Tempus) youth from the gutters he doubtless thought he had risen so far above. Tempus knew he had wounded a man or two, and he had assumed. Now Shadowspawn said he had never slain! That, from such a one, was an admission. Because of me he has been blooded, Tempus mused, and the weary thought followed: Well, he's not the first. I had my first two, once. I wonder who they were, and where? (But he knew, he knew. A man did not forget such.

Tempus was older than anyone thought; he was not as world-weary old as he thought, or thought he thought.) Just now he wanted to put forth a hand and touch the much younger man. He certainly did not.

He said, 'How do you feel about it?'

Hanse continued to gaze assiduously at something else. How could a child of the desert with such long long lashes and that sensuous, almost pretty mouth look so grim and thin-lipped? 'I threw up.'

'That proves you are human and is what you did. How do you feel about it?'

Hanse looked at him directly. After a time, he shrugged.

'Yes,' Tempus sighed, nodding. He drained his cup. Raised a right arm on high and glanced in the general direction of the tap. The new nightman nodded. Though he had not looked at the fellow, Tempus lowered his arm and looked at Hanse. 'I understand,' he said.

'Do you. A while ago I told the prince that it is a prince's business to kill, not a thief's. Now I have killed.'

'What a wonderful thing to say to a bit of royalty! I wish you weren't so serious right now, so I could laugh aloud. Do not expect any gentle words from me about the kills, my friend. It happens. I didn't ask for your help - or for you to be waiting for me. You won't do that again.'

'Not that way, no.' Hanse leaned back while whatever-his-name-was (they called him 'Two-Thumb') set two newly-filled mugs between them. He did not take the other two, or wait for payment. 'I think things started when Bourne ... died, and you came to Thieves' World.'

'Thieves' World?'

Again that almost-embarrassed shrug. 'It's what we call Sanctuary. Some of us. Now the whole city's in a mess and a turmoil and I think you have to do with that.'

'I believe you said that.'

'You led me astray, "Thales". That temple or store or whatever it was. It ... collapsed? - erupted, like a volcano? Something. Next the prince-'

'You really do respect him, don't you?'

'I don't work for him though,' Hanse pointed out; Tempus did. 'He impounded the ... the god-weapons? - that place sold, or _ tried to. Hell Hounds paying people for things they bought - or else! Things! New wealth in the city, because some of them had been stolen and now are bought from thieves. People are laughing at dealing with the new changer: the palace!'

Changer, Tempus knew, meant fence in this - city? 0 my God Vashanka - this? A city?!

'Two ships sitting out there in the harbour,' Hanse went on, 'guarded up to here. I know those Things, those dark weapons of sorcery, are being loaded aboard. Then what? Out to sea and straight to the bottom?'