The Mercenaries - Ed Greenwood [22]
Brindra was on her feet "Lead me to the bottles. Fve always wanted to choose some really good, expensive wine, and have a handsome man serve it to me."
"Why, thank you, old barrel," Rings said airily. "I'd be-"
"I was referring," she growled, giving him a wintry look, "to Master Belmer."
The little man was looking at the ceiling. He sighed theatrically, and murmured, "Hundreds of pirates in Tharkar, and I had to hire these…"
Everyone except Kurthe and Sharessa chuckled at that. Belmer waved his hand at the cabin door. "It's not locked."
"So," Sharessa asked softly, as Brindra strode to the indicated door, "who among us do you suspect of being a spy? And for whom?"
Chapter 7
The Rats Come Out
Belmer waved a finger at Sharessa. "Not yet-we haven't had those drinks yet, and there's something more we have to do before I'll give you answers to such queries."
"And that is-T
"Search the entire ship together," the little man told her, "so that you all know, from your own seeing, we've no stowaways nor captive Blackfingers nor hidden loot aboard, before we start in flapping our jaws. Drinks first."
They did as Belmer had suggested-and if Rings thought that the powder that the little man stirred into his drink was a slightly different hue from what he put into theirs, he frowned and said nothing.
As Belmer and the Sharkers prowled around, watched by the puzzled Tharkaran crew, no one could fault the thoroughness of the little man's search. He peered behind every board that could be made to move, and lifted and looked under every moveable thing. In each room he paused and politely asked a different Sharker, "Are you betraying the whereabouts of this ship to anyone not on board, by any means?"
Each pirate answered no, in differing tones and degrees of defensive detail, as befitted their characters. Along the way, they all saw that Belmer had nothing on board but the clothes he stood in, a single change of clothing and a cloak, a dagger and some waxed cord, and a mirror to shave by. There were certainly no hidden rooms and no captives or gold. Their search ended back where it had begun: in the Sharkers' cabin.
"Why all this, anyway?" Kurthe growled.
"Despite the fact we've nothing worth taking, someone is after us, in the ship we've seen twice," Belmer replied. "Someone able to follow us-and with all the changes in course I've made, I'd say they've magic to trace us. It's either a spell cast by someone on board, or an enchantment already on some thing on our ship."
He looked around at them all, in the suddenly tense silence that followed, and added, "I've a means of knowing if a person bears an enchantment on their body. None of you, or the Tharkarans, are so afflicted, either yourselves or what you wear and carry. There's little else that we've brought aboard, beyond a little food, and-"
He stopped suddenly, and frowned down at the chest that lay, open and empty, under his boot. Then, slowly, he bent to peer at it.
As the Sharkers watched, Belmer raised one open hand. Anvil knew what that gesture meant, and handed the fat little man a sword.
Their employer ran the blade delicately in under the chest and slowly levered it up, to look at its bottom. It was a stout and well-worn assembly of dirty planks; nothing out of the ordinary.
"Not even a copper piece did Blackfingers leave us," Belmer murmured slowly as he looked at the cabin floor where the chest had rested, ran a hand lightly over its boards, and then gently lowered the chest back down to the floor.
He looked inside again, and then slid his borrowed blade down to touch the inside bottom of the chest, bringing a finger and thumb up to grasp it level with the top of the chest. Drawing the sword out, he laid it against the outside of the chest.
The watching Sharkers nodded; Ingrar gasped. The sword point was a good three fingerwidths from the bottom of the chest. The carrychest bought