yes be seen.
He watched for a cloak he might buy or steal, but saw few with hoods and none large enough to avoid looking ludicrous on his broad shoulders. There was no point in drawing eyes by looking the clown when the purpose was to avoid them. As quickly as he could without gaining attention for his speed, pausing at every street crossing to look for guardsmen, he moved toward the harbor. Or tried to. Three times he was forced to turn aside by the sight of City Guardsmen, and once he barely had time to duck into a shop selling cheap gilded jewelry before half a score of guardsmen strode by. He was going north, he realized, parallel to the harbor district, and certainly not toward it.
Guardsmen’s spears above the heads of the crowd before him turned him down a side street packed with humanity. Away from the harbor, he thought with a curse as he pushed through the crowd, then cursed again when shouts for the way to be cleared indicated the soldiers had entered the same street. They gave no sign that they had seen him, but that could not last for long, not with him standing a head taller than the next tallest man on the street. He lengthened his stride, then almost immediately slowed again. A score of spear points, glittering in the sunlight, approached from ahead.
This time he did not waste breath on curses. An alley, smelling strongly of offal and chamber pots, offered the only escape. As he ducked into it, he realized that he had been there before, in company with Hordo during his first days with the one-eyed man’s band of smugglers. Stairs of crumbling brown brick, narrow yet, even so, all but filling the width of the alley, led to the floor above a fruit vendor’s stall. Conan took them two at a time. A stooped man in robes of brown camel’s hair jumped as the Cimmerian pushed open the rough wooden door without knocking.
The small room was sparsely furnished, with a cot against one wall and an upright chest with many small drawers against another. A table that leaned on a badly mended leg sat in the middle of the bare wooden floor, a single stool beside it. A few garments hung on pegs in the walls. All seemed old and weathered, and the stooped man was a match for his possessions. Sparse white hair and olive skin blotched with age and wrinkled like often-folded parchment made the fellow seem able to claim a century. His hands were like knobby claws as they clutched a packet of oilskin, and his dark eyes, hooded and glaring, were the only part of him that showed any spark of vitality.
“My apologies,” Conan said quickly. He wracked his brain for the old man’s name. “I did not mean to enter so abruptly, Ghurran.” That was it. “I fish with Hordo.”
Ghurran grunted and bent to peer fussily at the packets and twists of parchment atop the rickety table. “Hordo, eh? His joints aching again? He should find another trade. The sea does not suit his bones. Or perhaps you come for yourself? A love philtre, perhaps?”
“No.” Half of Conan’s mind was on listening for the soldiers below. Not until they were gone could he risk putting his nose outside. “What I truly need,” he muttered, “is a way to become invisible until I reach the harbor.”
The old man remained bent over the table, but his head swiveled toward the big youth. “I compound herbs, and occasionally read the stars,” he said dryly. “You want a wizard. Why not try the love philtre? Guaranteed to put a woman helpless in your arms for the night. Of course, perhaps a handsome young man like you does not need such.”
Conan shook his head distractedly. The parties of guardsmen had met at the mouth of the alley. A thin murmuring floated to him, but he could not make out any words. They seemed in no hurry to move on. All of this trouble, and he did not even know why. A Vendhyan plot, those he had overheard had said. “May their sisters sell for a small price,” he muttered in Vendhyan.
“Katar!” Ghurran grunted. The old man lowered himself jerkily to his knees and fumbled under the table for a dropped packet. “My old fingers do not hold as once they did. What was that language you spoke?”
“Vendhyan,” Conan replied without taking his mind from the soldiers. “I learned a little of the tongue, since we buy so much fish from Vendhyans.” Most of the smugglers could speak three or four languages after a fashion, and his quick ear had already picked up considerable Vendhyan as well as smatterings of several others. “What do you know of Vendhya?” he went on.
“Vendhya? How should I know of Vendhya. Ask me of herbs. I know something of herbs.”
“It is said that you will pay for herbs and seeds from far lands, and that you ask many questions of these lands when you buy. Surely you have purchased some herbs from Vendhya.”
“All plants have uses, but the men who bring them to me rarely know those uses. I must try to draw the information from them, asking all they know of the country from which the herbs or seeds came in order to sift out a few grains that are useful to me.” The old man got to his feet and paused for breath, dusting his bony hands on his robes. “I have bought some trifles from Vendhya, and I am told it is a land full of intrigue, a dangerous land for the unwary, for those who too easily believe the promises of a man or the flattery of a woman. Why do you wish to know of Vendhya?”
“It is said in the streets that a prince has been slain, or perhaps a general, and that Vendhyans hired the killing done.”
“I see. I have not been out the entire day.” Ghurran chewed at a gnarled knuckle. “Such a thing is unlikely at this time, for it is said that wazam of Vendhya, the chief advisor to King Bhandarkar, visits Aghrapur to conclude a treaty, and many nobles of the royal court at Ayodhya visit as well. Yet remember the intrigues. Who can say? You still have not told me why you are so interested in this.”
Conan hesitated. The old man provided poultices and infusions for half the smugglers in Sultanapur. That so many continued to trust him was in his favor. “The rumor is that the assassin was a northlander, and the City Guard seems to think I am the man.”
The parchment-skinned man tucked his hands into the sleeves of his robe and peered at Conan with his head tilted. “Are you? Did you take Vendhyan gold?”
“I did not,” Conan replied. “Nor did I kill a prince, or a general.” Assuredly no man he had faced that day had been either.
“Very well,” Ghurran said. His lips tightened reluctantly. Then he sighed and took a dusty dark-blue cloak from the wall. “Here. This will make you somewhat less conspicuous than the one you wear now.”
Surprised, Conan nonetheless quickly exchanged his white cloak for the other. Despite the dust and folds of hanging, perhaps for years, the dark-blue wool was finely woven and showed little wear. It was tight across the Cimmerian’s shoulders, yet had obviously been made for a man bigger than Ghurran.
“Age shrinks all men,” the stooped herbalist said as though he had read Conan’s mind.
Conan nodded. “I thank you, and I will remember this.” The sound of the soldiers had faded away while he was talking. He cracked the door and peered out. The narrow street was jammed with people, but none were guardsmen. “Fare you well, Ghurran. And again, my thanks.”
Without waiting for the other man to speak again, Conan slipped out, descended the stairs and melded into the crowd. The harbor district, he thought. Once he reached that, there would be time to consider other matters.
CHAPTER III
The patrols of guardsmen were a nuisance to the young Turanian who made his way out of the harbor district and into an area that seemed favored, as nearly as he could tell, solely by beggars, bawds and cutpurses. He avoided the soldiers deftly, and none of the area’s denizens favored him with a second glance.
A Corinthian mother had given him features that were neither Corinthian nor Turanian, but rather simply dark-eyed and not quite handsome. Clean-shaven at the moment, he could pass as a native of any one of a half a score of countries and had done so more than once. He was above medium height, with a rawboned lanky build that often fooled men into underestimating his strength, several times to the saving of his life. His garb was motley, a patched Corinthian doublet that had once been red, baggy Zamoran breeches of pale cotton, well-worn boots from Iranistan.
Only the tulwar at his side and his turban, none too clean and none too neatly wrapped, were Turanian, he thought sourly. Four years gone from his own country and before he was back a tenday, he found himself skulking about the dusty streets of Sultanapur trying to avoid the City Guard. Not for the first time since leaving home at nineteen, he regretted his decision not to follow in his father’s footsteps as a spice merchant. As always, though, the regret lasted only until he could remind himself of how boring a spice merchant’s life was, but of late that reminding took longer than it once had.
Turning into an alley, he paused to see if anyone took notice. A single footsore trull began to flash a smile at him, then valued his garb in her mind and trudged on. The rest of the throng streamed by without an eye turning his way. He backed down the stench-filled alley, keeping a watch on the street, until he felt a rough wooden door under his fingers. Satisfied that he was still unobserved, he ducked through the doorway into darkness.