The Vondish Ambassador

"Oh," Emmis said, feeling his guts twist.

"They might," Lar said. He and Emmis exchanged glances.

"Then you'll need to talk to a magician yourselves about some protective spells," the guardsman said.

"That would be reasonable," Lar agreed.

All three fell silent for the next few blocks, in fact none of them spoke again until they turned onto Through Street.

When they rounded the curve, though, Emmis said, "Oh."

Lar said something long and nasty-sounding in Semmat.

The guardsman gri

It wasn't really much of a mob, Emmis thought. There were only a little more than a dozen people standing in the street in front of the yellow house, and only four or five of them had torches.

"In the name of Azrad VII, overlord of the city and triumvir of the Hegemony of the Three Ethshars, what's going on here?" the guardsman bellowed, striding forward. Lar and Emmis hastened to follow him.

A dozen voices replied at once as the entire mob surged toward him. The guardsman held up a hand for silence, then chose a man in the crowd. "You," he said. "What's going on?"

"We don't know!" the man answered. "Earlier today someone came ru

At this point he was interrupted by several voices as various people pointed at Emmis and Lar and shouted, "Those two!" or "There they are!" or similar phrases.

"I'm the landlord," someone else said, stepping forward, and Emmis was relieved to see that it was their landlord, and not some further complication. "We thought one of my tenants might have been murdered, or kidnapped."

"We searched the house," the first speaker said, "but we didn't find anyone in there, or any blood or anything, so we talked it over and sent someone to fetch a guardsman from the Palace, and then we were waiting for you, and here you are."

"Except I didn't come from the Palace," the soldier said. "These two found me on Games Street." He turned and looked at the house.

The front door was still standing open. Emmis wondered how many of Lar's possessions had disappeared so far. His own, of course, were probably all gone, left on the floor of the Crooked Candle.

"That's the place?" the guardsman asked.

"Yes," Emmis said.

"Show me what happened."

Emmis nodded. He borrowed a torch from one of the neighbors, since of course no one had lit any candles, and led the soldier inside.

"I was right here when they came at me," he said, pointing. "I slammed the door behind me, and ducked, and the man's stick hit the wall…"

He held up the torch, illuminating a small gash in the plaster of the wall, right at head-height.

"Then I ran into him, and got up and ran out the back, and around through the alley, and then I went to find Lar."

The guard looked at the damaged plaster, then at the floor. He bent down and picked up a black wooden cylinder with a silver cap on one end; it was split lengthwise on one side, a narrow crack that was still fresh, judging by the color of the wood. "What's this?"

"That's off his walking stick," Emmis said. "It hid the blade on the end. It must have come off when it hit the wall."

"He didn't retrieve it? Sloppy."

Emmis turned up an empty palm.

Just then there were shouts from the street; Emmis and the guardsman turned and peered out the door.

Two more guards had just arrived, accompanying one of the neighbors, a woman Emmis vaguely recognized from the courtyard. Lar and the landlord were going to greet them.

"Well," the soldier from Games Street said. "We're all here now, I'd say. Shall we have everyone in for a cup of tea?"

Chapter Thirteen

It was almost midnight by the time the last question had been answered and the last visitor herded out the door. The three soldiers had all read Lar's credentials with interest, and shown him great respect thereafter. Lar had declined their offer to post a guard overnight, on the grounds that no one would be stupid enough to try again after all this fuss, but he had closed the shutters very firmly, and checked the locks on the doors very carefully. He had also unpacked his sword from the bottom of a trunk, and inspected it carefully before sheathing it and hanging the scabbard on his belt.

Emmis had been interested to see that this was not a fancy nobleman's sword intended for display; it was a serious, workmanlike weapon, with a blade of smooth gray steel and a simple black leather grip.

Finally everything was secured, leaving only Lar and Emmis in the house, looking at one another.

"I'm going to bed," Lar said.

"What about the protocol?"

"It will have to wait until tomorrow. I'm exhausted."

"And what happened in the Wizards' Quarter today? Did Kolar give you your answer?"

"That can wait until tomorrow, too. Good night, Emmis."

"Good night, sir."

He watched as the ambassador shuffled wearily to his room, entered, and closed the door behind himself. Then he stood in the hallway by the head of the stairs, listening to the faint sounds of the city outside – even at this hour, it was not entirely silent.

This was his city, even if it wasn't Shiphaven. This was still Ethshar of the Spices. People here did not casually hire assassins to kill their enemies, and then admit it to strangers. What kind of place was Lumeth, or Ashthasa, that those foreigners would even consider assassinating someone who had done them no harm? What kind of people were they, that A

Emmis wasn't a fool, and he didn't consider himself particularly naive. He knew that people sometimes murdered each other in Ethshar. He had seen a few of them hanged for it. He knew that thieves sometimes stabbed people to death in dark alleys, that burglars sometimes killed victims who woke up at the wrong time, that the poor homeless beggars in the Hundred Foot Field sometimes killed one another over nothing, that drunken brawls sometimes ended in a death or two, that feuding magicians sometimes went too far, that even lovers' quarrels could turn lethal.

But to hire a team of killers because someone talked about apprenticing his grandson to a warlock – that was insane.

At least he knew he hadn't imagined it – the neighbors had seen his attackers, and there was the mark on the wall, and the broken cap from the sword-stick. The guards had believed him. They took word back to their superiors at the Palace and in Camptown. They would look for A

And it might help get Lar his appointment with the overlord. This incident would demonstrate that the ambassador was someone important enough to worry about.

He still hadn't written that protocol, of course.

He would write it tomorrow. Emmis frowned slightly; what would he do, while Lar was writing that thing? Did he need to stay around, to correct Lar's Ethsharitic? The ambassador usually seemed capable enough with the language.

Emmis paused. Did he need to stay around at all? He hadn't signed on to fight off assassins. He could just quit, and go back to Shiphaven, and work on the docks. He could find another room somewhere.

But all his belongings were lost; landlords would look on that with great suspicion. He could get his sisters and neighbors to vouch for him, but still, it wouldn't look good.

Besides, what would happen to Lar if he did that? And the Vondishman paid better than any shipowner or merchant who had ever hired Emmis.