“’Tis all unclear, an you ask me of it.” Conan muttered.
“It becomes less clear. For instance, here the color yellow is indicated as of great importance.”
“The gold—”
“—is of small import, no matter your feeling on it. And there is more danger tied to this than to the gold.”
The big Cimmerian ground his teeth audibly. “There is danger to breathing, to hear you tell it.”
“I can well believe it so, to look at this chart. As to the rest, the number thirteen and the color red are of some significance, and are linked. Additionally, this alignment of the Monkey and the Viper indicates the need of acting quickly and decisively. Hesitate, and the moment will be lost to you. And that will mean your death.”
“What will come, will come, old man,” Conan snapped. “I’ll not be affrighted by stars, gods, or demons.”
Sharak scowled, then pushed the silver piece back across the table. “If my reading is so distasteful to you, I cannot take payment.”
The muscular youth’s anger dropped to a simmer instantly. “’Tis no blame of yours whether I like the reading you give or no. You take the money, and I’ll take your advice.”
“I am four score and two years of age,” the astrologer said, suddenly diffident, “and never in all that time have I had an adventure.” He gripped his knobbly staff, leaning against the table. “There is power in this, Cimmerian. I could be of aid.”
Conan hid a smile. “I’ve no doubt of it, Sharak. An I need such help, I will call on you, have no fear. There is one thing you might do for me now. Know you where I might find Emilio at this hour?”
“That cankerous boaster?” Sharak said disdainfully. “He frequents many places of ill repute, each worse than the last.” He reeled off the names of a dozen taverns and as many brothels and gaming halls. “I could help you look for him, if you really think he’s needed, though what use he could be I do not know.”
“When you finish supping, you can search the hells.”
“I would rather search the brothels,” the old man leered.
“The hells,” Conan laughed, getting to his feet. Sharak returned grumbling to his stew.
As he turned toward the door, the Cimmerian’s eyes met those of a man just entering, hard black eyes in a hard black face beneath the turban-wrapped spiral helmet of the Turanian army. Of middling height, he moved with the confidence of a larger man. The striping on his tunic marked him as a sergeant. Ferian hurried, frowning, to meet the dark man. Soldiers were not usually habitués of the Blue Bull.
“I am seeking a man called Emilio the Corinthian,” the sergeant s
aid to Ferian.
Conan walked out without waiting for the innkeeper’s reply. It had nothing to do with him. He hoped.
IV
Conan entered the seventh tavern with never sc much as a wobble of his step, despite the quantity of wine and ale he had ingested. The large number of wenches lolling about the dim, dank common room, rouged and be-ringed, their silks casually disarrayed, told him that a brothel occupied the upper floors of the squat stone building. Among the long tables and narrow trestle-boards crowding the slate floor, sailors rubbed shoulders with journeymen of the guilds. Scattered through the room were others whose languid countenances and oiled mustaches named them high-born no less than their silk tunics embroidered in gold and silver. Their smooth fingers played as free with the strumpets as did the sailors’ calloused hands.
The Cimmerian elbowed a place at the bar and tossed two coppers on the boards. “Wine,” he commanded.
The barkeeper gave him a rough clay mug, filled to the brim with sour-smelling liquid, and scooped up the coins. The man was wiry and snake-faced, with heavy-lidded, suspicious eyes and a tight, narrow mouth. He would not be one to answer questions freely. Another drinker called, and the tapster moved off, wiping his hands on a filthy apron that dangled about his spindly shanks.
Conan took a swallow from his mug and grimaced. The wine was thin, and tasted as sour as it smelled.
As he eyed the common room, a strangely garbed doxy caught his gaze. Sleek and sinuous, she had climbed upon a trestle-board to dance for half a dozen sailors who pawed her with raucous shouts, running their hands up her long legs. Her oiled breasts were bare, and for garb she wore but a single strip of silk, no wider than a man’s hand, run through a narrow gilded girdle worn low on the roundness of her hips, to fall to her ankles before and behind. The strangeness was that an opaque veil covered her from just below her hot, dark eyes to her chin. The sisterhood of the streets might paint their faces heavily, but then never covered them, for few men would take well to the discovery that their purchase was less fair of visage than they had believed. But not only was this woman veiled, he now saw no less than three others so equipped.
Conan caught the tavernkeeper’s tunic sleeve as he passed again. “I’ve never seen veiled strumpets before. Do they cover the marks of the pox?”
“New come to Aghrapur, are you?” the man said, a slight smile touching his thin mouth.
“A short time past. But these women?”
“’Tis rumored,” the other smirked, “that some women highly born, bored with husbands whose vigor has left them, amuse themselves by disporting as common trulls, wearing veils so those same husbands, who frequent the brothels as oft as any other men, will not recognize them. As I say, ’tis but a rumor, yet what man will pass the chance to have a lord’s wife beneath him for a silver piece?”
“Not likely,” Conan snorted. “There would be murder done when one of those lords discovered that the doxy he’d bought was his own wife.”