Tales From The Vulgar Unicorn

'The very best place for them,' Tempus said, turning and slowly turning his glazed earthenware mug. This one was striped garishly in yellow waves.' Believe it. There is too much power in those devices.'

'Meanwhile some "enforcers" from the mageguild have been trying to get hands on them first.'

That Tempus also knew. Three of the toughs had been eliminated in the past twenty hours, unless another or two had been slain tonight, by local Watchmen or those special guardsmen called Hell Hounds. 'Unions will try to protect their members, yes. No matter what. A union is a mindless animal.'

'You paid me well -fair, to fetch you the diamond wand-things that woman wears in her hair. I did, and she has them back. You gave them back.'

Cime. Cime's diamond-rods in her fine fine wealth of hair. 'Yes. Did I?'

'You did. And strange things are happening in Sanctuary. Those . were soreerous weapons those hawk-masks used against you and me. A poor thief tried to snatch a woman's bracelet the other night, down in - never mind the street. She shouldn't have been there. The bracelet turned into a snake and killed him. I don't know what it did to him. He's dead and they say he weighs about twice as much as he did alive.'

'It solidified his bones. It was obtained this morning. And when didn't strange things happen in Sanctuary, my friend?'

'That is twice you have called me that.' Hanse's words had the sound of accusation about them.

'So I have. I must mean it, then.'

Hanse became visibly uncomfortable: 'I am Hanse. I was ... apprentice to Cudget Swearoath. Prince Kitty-Cat had him hanged. I am Shadowspawn. I have breached the palace and because of me a Hell Hound is dead. I have no friends.'

And you slip and call him 'Kitty-Cat' when you think of your executed mentor, do you? Not seeking a father, eh? Do you know that all men do, and that I have mine, in Vashanka? Ah Hanse how you seek to be enigmatic and so cool - and are about as transparent as a pan of water caught from the sky!

Tempus waved a hand. 'Save all that. Just tell me not to be your friend. Not to call you friend.'

A silence fell over them like a struck ba

'Yes,' Tempus said, considerately-cleverly changing the subject. 'What old whatsisname Torchholder yammers about is true. Vashanka came, and He claimed Sanctuary. His name is branded into the place, now. The very temple of Ils lies in rubble. Vashanka created the Weaponshop, from nothing, and-'

'A pedlar-god?'

'I didn't think much of the lactic myself,' Tempus said, hoping Vashanka heard him while noting how good the youth was at sneering. 'And the Weaponshop destroyed the mage the governor imported to combat him. Vashanka is not to be combated.'

Hanse snapped glances this way and that. 'Say such things a time or two more in Sanctuary, my friend, and your body will be mourning the loss of its head.'

The blond man stared at him. 'Do you believe that?'

Hanse let that pass, while he rowed into the current of other conversations in the tavern. A current restless as a thief on a landing outside a window, and conversations just as stealthy and dark. He tuned it out again, stepping out of the flow yet flowing with it. Quietly.

'And how many of those fell Things do you think are still loose?'

'Too many. Two or four? You know our job is to collect them.'

'Our?'

'The Hell Hounds.'

'Who's your bearded friend, Hanse?'

The speaker stood beside the table, only a bit older than Hanse and just as cocky. Older in years only; he had not benefited from those years and would never be so much as Hanse. Self-consciously he wore self-consciously tight black. Oh, a brilliant thief! About as unobtrusive as hives.

Hanse was staring at Tempus, who was pink and bronze of skin, gold and honey of hair, lengthy and lengthy of legs, and smoothshaven as a pair of doeskin leggings. Hanse did not take his dark-eyed gaze off the Hell Hound, while his dark hand moved out to close on the (black-bracered) wrist of the other young man.

'What colour would you say his beard is, Athavul?'

Athavul moved his arm and proved that his wrist would not come loose. His arrogance and mask of cocky confidence fled him faster than a street girl fled a man revealed poor. Tempus recognized Athavul's chuckle; nervousness and sham. Tempus had heard it a thousand or a million times. What was the difference? He reflected on temporality, even while this boy Athavul temporized.

'You going blind, Shadowspawn? You think myself is, and testing he and I?' With a harsh short laugh and a slap with his other hand on his own chest, Athavul said, 'Black as this. Black as this!' He slapped his black leather pants - self consciously.

Tempus, leaning a bit forwards, elbows on the little table, big swordsman's shoulders hunched, continued, to gaze directly at Hanse. Into Hanse's eyes. His face looked open because he made it that way. Beardless. -

'Same's his hair?' Hanse said, and his voice sounded brittle as very old harness-leather. His eyes glittered.

Athavul swallowed. 'Hair...' He swallowed again, looking from Hanse to Tempus to Hanse. 'Ah ... he's your, ah, friend, Hanse. Let go, will you? You twit him about his ... head if you want to, but I won't. Sorry I stopped and tried to be civil.'

Without looking away from Hanse, Tempus said, 'It's all right, Athavul. My name is Thales and I am not sensitive. I've been this bald for years.'

Hanse was staring at Tempus, blond Tempus. His hand opened. Athavul yanked his arm back so fast he hit himself in his (nearly inexistent) stomach. He made no pretence of grace; with a dark glance at Hanse, he betook himself elsewhere, sullenly silent.

'Nicely done,' Tempus said, showing his teeth.

'Don't smile at me, stranger. What do you look like?'

'Exactly what you see, Hanse. Exactly.'

'And ... what did he see?' Hanse's wave of his arm was as tight as he had become inside. 'What do they see here, talking with Hanse?'

'He told you.'

'Black beard, no hair.'

Blond, beardless Tempus nodded.

Neither had taken his gaze off the other's eyes. 'What else?'

'Does it matter? I am in the employ of that person we both know. What you people call a Hell Hound. I would not come here in that appearance! I doubt anyone else would be in this room, if they saw me. I was here when you came in, remember? Waiting for you. You were too cool to ask the obvious.'

'They call me spawn of the shadows,' Hanse said quietly, slowly, in a low tone. He was leaning back as if to get a few more centimetres between him and the tall man. 'You're just a damned shadow!'

'It's fitting. I need your help, Shadowspawn.'

Hanse said, enunciating distinctly, 'Shit.' And rising he added, 'Sing for it. Dance in the streets for it.' And he turned away, then back to add, 'You're paying of course, Baldy,' and then he betook himself elsewhere.

Outside, he glanced up and down the vermiform 'street' called Serpentine, turned right to walk a few paces north. Automatically, he stepped over the broken plank in the boardwalk. He glanced into the tucked-in courtyard that was too broad and shallow to be dangerous for several hours yet. Denizens of the Maze called it variously the Outhouse, Tick's Vomitory., or, less seriously. Safe-haven. From the pointed tail of the shortcloak on the man back within that three-sided box, Hanse recognized Poker the Cadite. From the wet sounds, he made an assumption as to Poker's activity. The man with the piebald beard glanced around.