The Yellow Silk - Don Bassingthwaite [64]
Li sat down on his own blankets, his saber close to hand, and raised an eyebrow. "Tycho," he said seriously, "can we really trust Brin? If we get him the beljurils, is he really going to let me talk to him and let you go in peace?"
"I don't know." The bard looked up at the net-draped ceiling. "Brin has a kind of twisted honor. When he says he's going to do something, for better or worse you know he's going to do it."
"He said you had until tomorrow to get him the beljurils, but he came after you tonight." Li spread out his blankets and crawled between them. "That doesn't sound like any kind of honor to me."
Tycho stashed the glowing key in a pocket of his coat, smothering its light. The magic would fade by morning. The darkness in the shed was complete-eyes open or eyes closed, he still saw nothing. "It's no kind of honor at all," he admitted. "But Brin's up to something, I can feel it. If you can think of another option besides trying to get the beljurils back from the Hooded, I'd like to hear it because I can't think of a better one."
"I don't mind facing down the Hooded. I'd just like to know what Brin wants with us."
Us.
Tycho sat up sharply. "Li, Brin was looking for both of us! Veseene's message said the same thing. I'm the one he blames for losing his beljurils. What does he want with you? You're nothing to him. His men beat you up and robbed you." He drew a breath and his eyes narrowed. "The rubies you had hidden in your coat. Could Brin have found them? Could he be looking for more?"
"I looked at the coat when I fought the man wearing it." Li's voice drifted in the darkness. "It hadn't been torn. The rubies are still sewn up in it."
Tycho cursed and lay back down slowly. "Then what interest could he have in you?"
Li was silent for a moment before he answered.
"Yu Mao," he said. "He knows I'm looking for Yu Mao."
***
He knows I'm looking. The thought washed through Li's mind, relentless as the waves in the dark. Tycho drifted off to sleep; his snores were soon grating on the air. Li lay awake, staring into the darkness. Turning that thought over in his head. Remembering the hin's one-eyed gaze in the Wench's Ease. He knows I'm looking. Brin wanted him.
And yet for the first time since he had heard Brin's name mentioned in Telflamm, he didn't want Brin.
He flexed his left arm and felt the reassuring tightness of the hidden Yellow Silk, token of his father's trust and testament to the desperation of his journey. Soon, he promised himself. It would all be over soon. He closed his eyes. ‹
Lander stared morosely at the floor of the Eel's gambling room. Brin had ordered the room closed as soon as they had returned from the Wench's Ease. Lander and his men had found themselves waiting on the halfling's pleasure while he took Black Scratch out to the sty. The boar's snout had been scorched by whatever magic had prevented the animal from pursuing Tycho and Mard Dantakain's daughter out of the Ease. He glanced around at his men. Ovel was trying to stretch around and rub ointment onto his burned back. Serg winced every time he flexed his abdomen. Nico was surreptitiously touching his groin as if making sure all of his bits were still there. And Bor… Bor was holding a rag filled with snow to a blackened eye-Lander had inflicted that on the idiot himself for staying outside the Ease when he should have had the brains and guts to get in and join the fight.
And a black eye is going to be nothing compared to what Brin will do to us all, he thought. The halfling couldn't be happy that Tycho and Li Chien had slipped through their fingers. A happy fantasy flitted through Lander's mind: kill Brin and seize control of his operations. He shook his head to dislodge the idea. Not that he didn't like it. He just didn't like the thought of what might happen if he failed.
A door banged closed and a moment later the curtains across the gambling room entrance twitched aside. Brin walked in. Lander-and Ovel