A Painted Goddess by Victor Gischler

ordinary man.
    He tapped into the spirit.
    He had a tattoo that gave him the strength of a mountain troll, another that made his skin hard as iron. He didn’t need handholds. He could make his own. He jammed a fist into the stonework two feet above his head, pulled himself up. He kicked a foothold and kept going. It might take him all night, but he’d get there.
    Slowly but surely, Ankar climbed.

    Darshia didn’t want to know how Stasha Benadicta had gotten the information out of Giffen, but she could imagine. Giffen had never struck Darshia as a particularly courageous man. She doubted he’d held out long if Bune and Lubin had been their usual persuasive selves.
    The first piece of information they’d extracted had been the password. Fire toad . She supposed it had been chosen for the fact it was unlikely anyone would utter such words accidently. The second bit of information was the name of the man she was supposed to meet. A man of southern-island blood called Harpos Knarr. In Klaar, a man with the dark skin of the southern islanders should be fairly easy to spot.
    The final bit of information had been the location of the rendezvous.
    The statue of the First Duke stood in what had once been Klaar’s main square before the second castle was built. Although in fairness the first castle wasn’t much of a castle. More like one of the great wooden halls favored by the northern chieftains from whom the First Duke was a descendent. The king of Helva had made him a duke as part of a treaty—the settling of some long-forgotten dispute—and had granted him the lands of Klaar. The great hall and the first buildings had been erected ten years before construction of the Long Bridge.
    A century later, another duke built a proper castle in an attempt to dispel the widely held notion the citizens of Klaar were rustic, backwoods bumpkins barely a step removed from the barbarians of the north.
    It hadn’t worked.
    Darshia considered the bronze statue of the First Duke. He did look every inch a barbarian. Broad shouldered, hair and beard wild and shaggy. He wore heavy furs and had been posed heroically, a huge battle-axe held aloft in one hand. An eye patch over his left eye. The stories of how the First Duke had lost the eye ranged from the dull to the outlandish. The cumulative effect of his appearance made him seem striking, imposing, and virile.
    I seriously doubt he ever had to pay for sex .
    The old town square was in a reasonably good neighborhood, where the patrols still lit the street lamps. Most of the shops were closed at this hour—tailor, glassmaker, apothecary—but it was reasonably cheerful with the warm glow of lantern light in the windows, and a small chapel to Sharine, the moon goddess, across the square. Most people worshipped Dumo, of course, but the moon chapel did a fair bit of business this time of the evening. All in all, the square was far from deserted, but it certainly wasn’t crowded either.
    Which means Knarr wants to do his business in public . . . but not too public .
    Darshia circled the statue again, scanning the square as she strolled. Knarr hadn’t shown the first night, and she was about to give up on him now. He was nearly an hour past the agreed time. A few more minutes and she’d call it quits.
    A man in heavy blue robes emerged from the moon temple, walking rapidly toward the statue of the First Duke. His hood was pulled forward, hiding his face, but even in the dim illumination of the street lamps, Darshia could see the hands clasped in front of him were a dark brown. Darshia didn’t need to move to intercept him. He was walking right toward her.
    And then passed her without so much as a glance, continuing on to the statue in the middle of the square.
    “Fire toad,” Darshia said in a low voice.
    Harpos Knarr froze in his tracks. Slowly he turned to look at her, eyes gleaming from the darkness within his hood.
    “Did I say it wrong?” Darshia asked.
    “Forgive my reticence.