The Yellow Silk - Don Bassingthwaite [28]
Consul of Spandeliyon! The man any ambassador to Spandeliyon would go to see!" He spun around sharply and nodded to the servant who had opened the door. "Get him out of here!" He marched back down the hall toward the stairs. Li stared after him, open-mouthed-and for the first time registered the black-haired man who stood to one side of the hall, watching and listening. Tychoben Arisaenn!
"Wait!" Li called. "Wait!" He pulled against the servants who were trying to haul him back toward the door and managed to get one arm free. He pointed desperately toward Tycho. "He knows me! He knows I was robbed last night. He dug me out of the snow!"
Mard stopped. The servants stopped. All eyes turned to Tycho.
The singer gave Li a single cold glance, his mouth set hard and tight. He turned to Mard Dantakain and raised his eyebrows innocently. "He's mad," Tycho said. "I've never seen him before in my life."
Rage fell on Li like a toppling wall of red-hot iron bricks. He was vaguely conscious of screaming something incoherent at Tycho, of snapping the elbow of his free arm into the face of one servant trying to grab him and stomping down sharply on the shin of the man who was still holding him. Then suddenly he was free as servants shouted and scrambled away. "Mad? Mad? " Li howled and hurled himself at Tycho.
The singer flinched back, raising his hands and opening his mouth. Li had fought spellcasters before, though. He dropped fast and swept out with a leg to knock Tycho's feet out from under him, but Tycho yelped and managed to hop and dance over the sweep. Li bounced up instantly and grabbed a fistful of Tycho's shirt before he could recover his balance. He hauled him in close and smacked him hard across the face. "You lying dog!" he spat in Shou. "You hairy, lying-"
Hands and arms grabbed him from behind. Li lashed out with his arm to the back and right and a lean man with a resemblance to Mard Dantakain went staggering back, one hand clutching his nose. A swift kick straight back should have caught another attacker, but didn't. This time Li caught a glimpse of the Captain of the Guard himself. Mard's face was dark red and angry as he dodged back expertly and closed again with his arms held wide. The Shou shot down, pulling a dazed Tycho over his head to receive Mard's grapple in his place. The impact slammed them all into a pair of doors that gave way under their combined weight and tumbled them into the room beyond.
They found themselves face to face with a beautiful young woman posed seductively on a broad table, a harp in her arms, her dress pulled down to show her shoulders and tucked up to expose her knees.
Li simply stopped, still crouched low, startled more than stunned. Tycho, down beside him, froze and made a strangled noise. Behind them both, Mard froze as well. For a heartbeat, they all just stared at the young woman. She stared back in shock.
Mard Dantakain let out a window-rattling roar, grabbed Li's head with his left hand, Tycho's with his right, and cracked them hard together.
CHAPTER 4
o had been thrown in jail-briefly-many times during his life. He had seen the inside of Spandeli-yon's dockside guard station fairly frequently during his later childhood. After Veseene had taken him as her apprentice, he had seen the inside of many similar jails, from east to west around the Sea of Fallen Stars. It was something of a hazard of the itinerant lifestyle. He had seen jails that were kept fastidiously clean. He had seen jails that made stables look pleasant. He had seen jails that were run with efficient cruelty and those run with casual disorder. In Tantras, he had passed a night in a jail that put each prisoner into their own bare little cell, almost like monks in a monastery. In Raven's Bluff, just down the coast, he had been flung into a prison that was little more than a vast building with one lock on the outer door and prisoners swarming loose within; he had been forgotten there for almost a tenday before Veseene