The Yellow Silk - Don Bassingthwaite [99]
Laera nodded. Li nodded, too. His fingers curled and uncurled around the scabbard of his dao. Tycho shoved against the Eel's painted door.
To Li's surprise, the Eel was as quiet within as the street without. No desperate drunkards, no brass-clad women, no sorrowful gamblers. The place had been cleared out entirely. There wasn't even any sign of Brin-not that the hin's absence came as that much of a surprise. Tycho had reasoned everything out before they left Bakers Lane. Brin will wait for us in the sty behind the Eel. It's where he always does his business.
One figure moved in the dim light of the empty festhall. The big bartender was at his post. He jerked his bald head toward the back of the Eel. Li drew a deep breath. So far it seemed Tycho was right. He hoped that the bard was wrong on his next guess, though.
He'll have us outnumbered. Lander will be there for sure, and likely Serg, Bor, Nico, and Ovel, too. And Black Scratch. With Brin, that will be seven against three.
Tycho had counted Laera to be polite, but not even she believed him. It would be seven to two. A hard fight, hand-to-hand. They would need Tycho's magic-and the magic of the Yellow Silk. Tycho had protested the use of the ancient artifact-they were trying to protect it, weren't they?-but Li had argued him down. His father had entrusted him with the Silk for use in desperate situations. What was this situation if not desperate?
Better to use the Silk than surrender it without a fight, he thought as well, especially when the Silk wasn't the only thing at stake. Tycho hadn't been able to guess at Veseene's condition or circumstances in Brin's grasp.
Li's fingers curled against his dao again. He needed Brin to answer one question for him. And after that…
"Li?" Tycho nudged him. "Are you all right?"
"I'm almost done here, Tycho." He looked down at the bard. "One way or the other, I'll be done. I'll have an answer about Yu Mao. If Brin says he's dead, I can go back to Keelung. If Brin says he's alive somewhere else, I'll be leaving Spandeliyon to find him."
"And if Brin kills us before he gives you an answer?" Tycho asked in Shou.
Li glanced at Laera, but of course the young woman, didn't understand the language. His mouth twitched in a grim smile. "I thought you said no more reassuring talks?" he said to Tycho.
"You're not scared?"
"Witless," said Li, quoting Tycho's own words back at him. "It's the only smart way." He held out his hand in the Western manner. "If Brin kills us, Tycho, then I'm glad to have met you."
Tycho took his hand and bowed over it.
One of the curtains that had previously been drawn at the festhall's rear was pulled aside to reveal a door of rough, black-painted wood. Tycho paused. "Here we go," he said, and opened it. The smell of pigs washed over them, almost suffocating in its strength. Li followed Tycho through the door and into Brin's infamous sty.
Tycho had described it perfectly. The shadowed alley behind the Eel was wide-as wide as a house. Perhaps five paces to the right, it ended in a tall plank fence. An equal distance to the left was a lower, more open fence of rails. Beyond, the alley twisted back out to the street. A heap of wet straw slumped against the wall of the Eel on the rail fence's far side; against the fence and inside the sty were a long trough and a stout table and bench. At the back of the sty, a low roofed shelter had been built against the wall of the neighboring building. Perhaps a dozen pigs were huddled within, all of them staring out with a frightened intensity.
Brin sat on the table with Veseene, a gag in her mouth and her hands loosely bound, beside him. He held a sharp dagger in his right hand. His left rested on the head of Black Scratch. The boar sat like an angry guard dog beside the table, barely restrained by his master's touch. Lander, Nico, and Serg stood arrayed between the table and the door.
They weren't alone. Against the plank fence lounged five