Tirros's judgement was always apt to be poor. When he'd been drinking, it got poorer. He'd been buying—the tavern wasn't crowded and as usual he had money—and when he bought a round, he naturally included himself in.
In most respects his ability to hold his liquor—wine, actually—was good. He wasn't given to staggering or slurring or loud singing. But his judgement, or more properly his slyness, deteriorated notably with the third drink. Just now he was on his fourth. His ambitions had been taking a beating lately, and he intended to get drunk.
At the moment though, his attention was on a young woman with quite an ordinary fece, as Hrummeans went, but outstanding physical development. He was sure she'd given him the eye. The young fisherman with her hadn't noticed, besides which he was somewhat smaller than Tirros. And anyway people tended to give way to him because he was the mirj, though in law, in a place like the Red Mare, he had no more rights than the next man.
Tirros nudged Karrlis Billbis. "What do you think?" he asked. "Is she interested? How do you read her?"
Karrlis leaned toward Tirros, swinging his torso in an arc to murmur near the mirj's ear. He was on his fourth, too, and more susceptible than his companion. "She knows you've been looking at her," he said, "but she isn't ready to dump her friend yet. He's a good screw."
"Huh! She doesn't know what a good screw is! Want to see me move in?" He'd had to raise his voice a bit; the three musicians had begun to play and sing another song, and several people had started dancing.
Karrlis's head moved from side to side as if he were trying to look around a tree. Tirros told himself his friend was getting drunk. "Sure," Karrlis said. "But be careful; he thinks he's pretty good in a fight."
"Shit! Won't have to fight. And anyway, I could whip his ass in a minute." The mirj got up and walked over to the couple. "Excuse me, sailor," he said. "I'm looking for someone to dance with." He held out a silver coin. "Why don't you take this crown and buy yourself the best drink in the house. And keep the change. I'll bring her back when the music's over."
The fisherman looked at the coin, then at his girl friend. She nodded. "It's 'The Bosun's Slowdance,' " she said. "It's short."
His expression was distrustful, but he nodded, and Tirros led the girl onto the dance floor.
"I'm the mirj," Tirros said.
"That's what I told Tarrni when we came in. That's the mirj, I told him." She smiled up at Tirros. "He wasn't much pleased at it."
"Why not?"
" 'cause you've got a reputation."
Tirros grinned, first at her, then at the watching fisherman whose expression was distinctly surly. "A reputation for what?"
"The girls are supposed to go for you." She looked up at him coyly. "I don't know why."
"How'd you like to find out why?"
"Tarrni wouldn't like that."
Tirros grinned again. "Makes no difference whether Tarrni likes it or not. You'd like it. All we need to do is dance our way over near the back door. Then out we pop and run up the alleyway. There's always a hansom on the block. We'll hop in and be gone before he can decide which way we ran."
She giggled. "Sounds like fun."
In half a minute they'd come even with the door. Abruptly he stopped dancing, and with her hand in his, slipped through it; it should take a few seconds before the fisherman reacted. Still holding hands, they ran across the back utility area and down a dark alleyway to its narrow opening onto the street.
Where Tarrni stood with his hands clenched into knuckly balls. Tirros almost ran into him. The fisherman threw a knobby fist that caught him on the nose and knocked him into the wall, then missed with a followup. Tirros kicked at him, his foot striking the man's shin; an elbow took the mirj in the side of the face. He grabbed wildly, trying to throw Tarrni to the paving stones, but the fisherman had hold of his shirt, which ripped down the back from collar to tail as Tirros himself went down. A stoutly-shod foot struck his hip before onlookers pulled his assailant back.
"Leave be," said one. "You don't want to go to the lockup."
"Right," said another. "Come on in. I'll buy you a drink."
The cluster of men began melting back toward the door and in. The girl hesitated, then followed them. Tirros sat on the concrete holding his nose, from which blood had flowed onto his trousers and ruined shirt.
One of the working men paused and looked back at him. "You gonna be all right?" he asked.
Tirros nodded, and the man followed the others inside. He'd get that sonofabitch Tarrni, Tirros told himself. Feed him to the fish, like he had the little foreigner.
Karrlis had watched from near the door. Now he came over and offered Tirros a hand, hoisting him to his feet. "Let's go down to the wharf," he said. "Take a swim. Sober us up and wash the blood out of your clothes before it sets."
Tirros didn't answer, but followed along, still pinching his nose. He didn't give a damn about his clothes; he had plenty at home. What was worrying him was something his father had said the last time he'd been in a tavern brawl: "If you like to fight so much, the next time I'll take you to the recruiter and we'll see how you like the army. As a common foot soldier!"
After a couple of blocks, the bleeding seemed to have stopped. Shrugging out of his shirt, he threw it into a trash station at a public latrine. His left eye was swelling, but not alarmingly, and his nose didn't seem to be broken. He didn't even have a split lip; the blood he'd been spitting was from a cut inside his cheek. If the eye didn't get too discolored, and if he kept out of his father's way, he might escape without even a tongue-lashing. A little powder on his scratched forehead had gotten him by at supper.
They swam for about half an hour, then sober he walked home, approaching by a back way and scaling the garden wall where he'd be sheltered by a tree from the eyes of house-guards. From there he kept to the shadows of shrubs and trees and climbed a familiar, well-used vine to the balcony outside his room.
All's well that ends well, he told himself.
* * *
Next morning his mirror showed him how discolored his eye was—bad enough that his mother would surely mention it to his father. Bad enough that the house servants would talk. It wouldn't do to go down to breakfast.
And the crowd at the tavern would be talking about him, about how someone inches shorter had bloodied him and knocked him down. The man had taken him by surprise, he told himself. Otherwise things would have gone differently. But that's not how they'd tell it. Wait till he was the emperor's regent; he'd see what tune they'd sing then.
That reminded him that the small foreigner was dead, and he hadn't figured out how to get at Brokols, get into the ambassador's favor. Leverage. He needed leverage.
He looked in his purse: not much there, two gold coins and a few silver. The porcelain bowl on his dressing table held miscellaneous coins, including gold.
He donned traveling clothes and belted on his shortsword, then emptied the bowl into his purse. It was time to get away for a few days, out of town into the countryside. Till the swelling in his eye went down and the color faded, and he'd come up with some way to get close to Brokols. It would worry his mother, too.
In the stable, he put bridle and saddle on his kaabor himself, then rode out, headed for the back gate. As he stopped his kaabor before it, the gateman came out of the gatehouse less than ten feet from him, with a sergeant of police and a constable. The police moved quickly, the constable reaching for the bridle as the sergeant opened his mouth to speak. Leaning, Tirros slashed the constable across the face with his crop, and the man let go, covering his stricken eyes, while Tirros turned the kaabor toward the sergeant and reined sharply back, so that the kaabor reared, striking with its forefeet, knocking the sergeant on his back.
Tirros drew his shortsword and shouted at the gateman: "Open for me or I'll cut you down!"
Instead the man ducked back into the gatehouse and slammed its heavy door. Cursing, Tirros jumped from the saddle and struck with his shortsword at the constable who was stepping forward again to grapple with him. His blade caught the man's shielding arm, sending him staggering back to fall with a quavering cry. Tirros turned the gate bar on its pivot, then vaulted into the saddle, and forcing the kaabor against the gate, pushed it open. He crowded through, galloped out into the street and was gone.
* * *
Travvos Disotto was with the amirr when an excited guard interrupted to report what had happened at the gate.
"My men," Disotto asked, "how badly hurt are they?"
"One's arm was sliced to the bone," he said, showing on his own forearm where the wound was. "That's the constable. He's lucky it was an angled blow, or it would have been lopped off, but it's an awful wound. The sergeant's up and walking, but I think his arm is broken."
The inspector had more than the man's words to go by; as he'd talked, Disotto had seen the mental images beneath them. "Your Eminence," the inspector said, "I must go to the gate and see what I can scan."
The amirr nodded and went with him. At the gate was a psychic mass of pain, anger, a stink of murderous fear, but he could find nothing to tell him where the mirj planned to go.
"Inspector," said the amirr, "we'll mount no manhunt for my son."
Disotto turned sharply, as if to argue.
"Find the scoundrel who was in this with him," the amirr went on, "and question him. Probably the one the ambassador mentioned to you. Find out who Tirros might run to, to hide, and capture him that way."
"Your Eminence, he is mounted. He could easily leave the city, flee the district."
"If he does . . . but he won't. He has too little self-control to fend for himself. He needs others to take care of him, and he knows it. We'll find him hiding in the home of one of his low-life associates, perhaps the Vencurrio's."
For a moment the inspector seemed unsure, then he nodded. "Yes, milord. By the ambassador's description, we believe your son's associate was a Karrlis Billbis. I'll take some men there at once, and question him." He turned then and strode off.
The amirr blew through rounded lips. The wait was over, the wait he hadn't consciously known he was waiting. Looking back, something like this had been inevitable. Now the suspense was over, though the waiting wasn't.