‘I’ll see your money first,’ the tavern-keeper replied in a bored tone of voice.
I fumbled around in the pocket of my shabby smock and produced a Tolnedran half-penny. The tavern-keeper took my coin and brought me a tankard of definitely inferior beer.
Then I looked around. Olgon wasn’t too hard to pick out. He was far and away the best-dressed man in the tavern, and his face was locked in that arrogant expression that all Honeths are born with. He was holding court at a large table near the back wall, and he was surrounded by thieves and cutthroats. His face had that pouchy look that only comes after years of serious dissipation. ‘All you have to do is say that you saw her in the street, Strag,’ he was patiently explaining to an evil-looking fellow with a purple scar on the side of his face.
‘What good will that do?’ Strag retorted.
‘If he doesn’t get some kind of information that she’s still in Tol Honeth, he might take his money to Tol Borune - or even up into Arendia. We could lose him altogether.’
‘I don’t know about you, Olgon,’ Strag replied, ‘but I value my own skin. I’m not going to lie to a Dagashi and then take his money for it.’
‘You’re a coward, Strag,’ Olgon accused.
‘Maybe so, but I’m a live one. I’ve seen what the Dagashi do to people who cross them. Get somebody else to do your lying for you - or do it yourself.’
Olgon sneered. ‘All right,’ he said to the other scoundrels at the table, ‘who wants to earn a silver half-mark?’
He didn’t find any takers. Evidently the reputation of the Dagashi was well-known in this shabby society.
Olgon glowered around at his hirelings, and then he let the matter drop. That little snatch of conversation revealed worlds about his character. I couldn’t for the life of me understand how a Dagashi could possibly put any faith in anything Olgon told him.
It was about ten minutes later, and I’d been nursing that tankard of lukewarm, watered-down beer for about as long as I cared to, when the tavern door opened and a shaved-headed man wearing a Nyissan silk robe came in. He went directly to Olgon’s table. ‘Have you anything for me?’ he asked abruptly.
‘I’ve got everybody out looking,’ Olgon replied a bit evasively. ‘This is costing me a great deal of money, Saress. Can you see your way clear to give me a little bit of an advance?’
‘Asharak doesn’t pay in advance, Olgon,’ the man in the silk robe said with a sneer. ‘He only pays on delivery.’
Olgon muttered something, and the other man leaned over the table. ‘What was that?’ he asked ominously. Since he was bent over, I could clearly see the outline of the triangular-shaped object he had nestled against the small of his back under that robe.
‘I said that this Asharak of yours is a cheapskate,’ Olgon retorted.
‘I’ll pass that on to him,’ Saress replied. ‘I’m sure he’ll be charmed.’
‘I’m not asking for the whole sum, Saress,’ Olgon said plaintively, ‘just enough to cover my expenses.’
‘Look upon those expenses as an investment, Olgon. If you can produce the woman Asharak’s looking for, he’ll make you rich. If you can’t, you’ll just have to stay poor.’ Then he turned on his heel and left the tavern.
Something wasn’t right here. They were all just a little too obvious. I knew that my disguise was impenetrable, but it was entirely possible that Olgon and the fellow in the Nyissan robe had recognized one of the Drasnian or Tolnedran agents here and that what I’d just seen had been carefully staged to deceive them. I started to get very suspicious about this whole business at that point. I waited for another few minutes, and then I stood up and dumped my tankard out on the floor. ‘That’s enough of this swill,’ I announced loudly. ‘If I want a drink of river water, I can go down to one of the wharves and drink my fill without paying for it.’ Then I stormed out of the place. I kept my disguise in place until I was certain that I wasn’t being followed. Then I stepped into another alleyway, resumed my own form, and went back to the Drasnian embassy as evening settled over Tol Honeth.
‘Have any of your people actually seen Asharak?’ I asked Kheral.
‘Not yet, Ancient One,’ the ambassador replied. ‘We’ve tried to track that Dagashi back to his employer, but he always manages to evade us.’
‘I’m not surprised. That’s no run-of-the-mill Dagashi. He’s carrying an adder-sting. He bent over a table in that tavern, and I saw the outline of the thing under his silk robe.’
Kheral whistled.
‘What’s an adder-sting?’ Cerran asked.
‘It’s a triangular throwing knife,’ Kheral replied. ‘It’s about six inches across and razor-sharp. The tips are usually dipped in poison. Only the most elite among the Dagashi use them.’
‘It doesn’t make sense,’ I fumed. ‘Those elite Dagashi are very expensive. Why would Asharak pay that much for an errand boy? I’m starting to get a strong odor of rotten fish here. Somebody’s paying a lot of money to get us to believe that Asharak’s here in Tol Honeth, but until somebody actually sees him, I won’t be convinced.’
‘Why would Asharak go to all the trouble and expense to do something like this?’ Cerran seemed baffled.
‘Probably because he wants me to believe that he’s here when he’s actually someplace else,’ I replied. I didn’t say so, but I was fairly certain that I knew where Chamdar really was. ‘Well,’ I said then. ‘Two can play that game. I’m looking for Chamdar, and he’s looking for somebody else. I think I can come up with a way to make him come back to Tol Honeth at a dead run.’
‘What are you going to do, Ancient One?’ Kheral asked me.
‘Chamdar’s got people out looking for Polgara. I’m going to make sure that they find her - several times a day, actually, and right here in Tol Honeth. Let’s go to the palace. I need to talk with Ran Borune.’
The three of us went to the imperial compound and were admitted into the emperor’s private quarters almost immediately.
‘Good evening, gentlemen,’ Ran Borune said, laying aside the lute he’d been strumming. ‘I gather that something’s come up.’
‘I need a favor, your Majesty,’ I told him.
‘Of course.’
‘This Chamdar you’ve been hearing about is a Grolim priest who does a lot of Ctuchik’s dirty work for him.’
Ran Borune’s eyes narrowed. ‘He’s more significant than we thought, then. What’s he doing in Tolnedra? I’d have thought that what happened at Vo Mimbre would have completely demoralized the Grolims.’
‘It probably did, your Majesty, but Chamdar’s no ordinary Grolim. Ctuchik gave him an assignment a long time ago, and Chamdar’s a dogged sort of fellow. My daughter’s protecting something that’s important, and Chamdar’s been trying to find her for years now. He’s so obsessed with locating her that I don’t think he even noticed Vo Mimbre.’
‘Why’s he looking here, then? Your daughter’s not in Tolnedra, is she?’
‘Not at the moment, no, but I don’t think Chamdar is, either. This whole business with that renegade Honethite’s a trick to lure me into thinking that he is. He definitely wants my attention locked on Tol Honeth. Now I’m going to turn the tables on him and see to it that he comes running back here where Kheral can keep an eye on him for me.’
‘How do you plan to manage that?’
‘Kherel’s going to have his people start letting some false information filter through to this Olgon fellow. I’d appreciate your having your agents do the same. Tell them to be very careful about it, though. Chamdar’s people aren’t Murgos now. He’s using the Dagashi instead. Murgos aren’t bright, and they’re easy to pick out of a crowd. The Dagashi are very clever, though, and they’re almost impossible to recognize.’
‘Who are these Dagashi?’
‘They’re members of a semi-religious order based in the Araga Military District in southwestern Cthol Murgos, your Majesty. They’re primarily assassins, but they’re also very good spies. They can cause us a lot of problems, because they don’t look like Murgos.’
‘How did they manage that?’
‘Interbreeding. The Nyissans sell them slave women from all over the world, and the male children those slave women produce are trained and then admitted to the order. They’re fanatically loyal to their elders, and they’re very dangerous, since to all intents and purposes, they’re practically invisible. Now we get to that favor I was talking about.’
‘What can I do for you, old friend?’
‘I’d like to see a new ladies’ hair-style become fashionable.’
He blinked. ‘Have we suddenly changed the subject?’
‘Not really. You’ve met my daughter. Would you be willing to concede that she has a striking appearance?’
‘You won’t get any argument from me there.’
‘What’s the first thing you notice about her?’