Kushiel's Avatar - Jacqueline Carey [71]
In time, between us, we roused the Count to full-blown anger. It took some doing, for he was a large man and stolid with it, secure in his holdings and misliking this sudden insistence on the part of the King's Consul. But he was a proud man, too, and the implications of our news cut him to the quick.
"Carthaginians," Count Fernan rumbled, switching to Caerdicci, a tongue we all held in common. "What do you say, Captain Vitor? Do we harbor Carthaginian slavers in Amílcar?"
Vitor Gaitán, Captain of the Harbor Watch, shrugged his shoulders. He was a lean man, with cheeks pitted by a childhood pox. "The lady's Tsingani may say so, but Tsingani lie. Give me your leave, my lord Count, and I will tell you ere daybreak."
"My leave." Count Fernan pounded one massive fist on the table. "My leave! By Mithra, you have my leave to turn Amílcar upside down!"
So it was done.
We rode out, that night, to see it done. Nicola, reckoning it folly to observe the rude proceedings, would have no part in it—and I did not blame her. It was an unpleasant business. Still, I had set it in motion, and I felt I should bear witness to it. Let us see, I thought grimly, how much bitter truth there is in the words of the lady's Tsingani; mayhap the Aragonians will not be so quick to condemn Hyacinthe's folk one day. We went with Lord Ramiro and an escort of his guards, as well as Jean-Richarde and Donan, the men-at-arms of Verreuil.
It was a night streaked with torchlight and steel, the air filled with the tang of salt water and the protests of desperate men. Captain Vitor's troops were ungentle, travelling in mass, rousting ship after ship in the harbor, turning out the inhabitants of dockside inns and flophouses and putting them to question at sword's-point.
I sat astride my steady mare, shuddering as three members of the Harbor Watch took to clubbing a poor Carthaginian sailor about thehead and shoulders with the pommels of their swords on suspicion of lying. "My lady!" he shouted with a blood-reddened mouth, catching sight of me. "Gracious lady, I cry you mercy!"
Would that I had not understood the pidgin Aragonian he spoke— but I did. My ear was good enough for that. I turned my head and looked away, murmuring to Lord Ramiro, "Can they not question him more gently?"
To his credit, the King's Consul looked ill, though not so ill as Luc. "I've invoked Count Fernan's aid, Comtesse. I must let him proceed as he sees fit." He raised a silver flask and took a healthy swig of brandy, then passed it to me. "Here. It helps."
So we watched, and the methods of Captain Vitor and the Harbor Watch, brutal though they were, proved effective. One rumor, gasped from a split-lipped Carthaginian mouth, led to another. Under duress, an unspoken code of silence crumbled. Members of the Watch converged from every vector, bearing blood-stained scraps of gossip and hearsay. There was a man—no, two men, or three—who rented lodgings in the mean alleys, Carthaginians, yes, of a surety, eking out rent in copper coins, known to have met with the Menekhetan slaver Fadil Chouma, yes, known to buy opium in significant amounts . . .
Among all of us, I daresay it was Joscelin who bore the investigation with the most composure. While I averted my eyes and Luc leaned over his mount, retching, and the men of Verreuil breathed hard and grew pale, and Lord Ramiro gulped at his flask, Joscelin's features were set with Cassiline stoicism.
I had seen him look thus in the early days, when he escorted me to assignations.
By the time dawn broke sullen and grey, the smiling dolphins breaching in the harbor, blowing spume from their blowholes, Captain Vitor Gaitán had his answer. He grinned like a wolf as he led his men through the twisting alleys, his eyes gleaming above his pock-marked cheeks. A blowsy woman emerged on a second-story balcony, shrieking