Fires of Scorpio by Alan Burt Akers Page B

you were to turn me away he would be most wroth, believe me.”
    Palando nodded. “I remember the way you put those three Durkin brothers out. Nasty customers. Oh, I believe you. But he is away—”
    “Just tell me where his house is.”
    “But he is not there.”
    I looked at the counter. I looked at the low ceiling. I studied the rows of flagons and bottles and glasses. I saw the amphorae in their tripods in the area beyond the bar. Many were stacked against the wall all leaning like the drunks they might make. I looked back at the counter, where Palando the Berry swiped with a cloth.
    I said, “I may have to start at the beginning and go to every house in Lower Squish Street. I should find the right house then. But it would be easier — do you not think, landlord, it would be easier? — if you told me which house.”
    “Would you care for a refill? Your glass is—”
    I did not grasp the landlord. I did not touch him. Nor, for that matter, did I blow up. I said, “Ashti — leave that Rapa’s bucket alone—”
    Too late.
    The Rapa, swabbing at the floor with his mop, let out a yell. The bucket spilled. Bloody water swilled across the clean floor. Ashti laughed delightedly.
    I took a breath.
    “Palando the Berry. Tell me. Where does Pompino live? I ask for the last time.”
    He said: “I will tell you before that little she-pinki destroys my tavern and my relationship with my servants.”
    Ashti laughed as a Rapa coming in the door slipped on the blood and skidded into a table and so brought that down on his head. Truth to tell, Ashti hadn’t done anything yet. I would promise Palando Ashti’s full resources of mischief if he didn’t cooperate.
    But, in the end, he said: “The fourth house along. You can’t miss it, it has a red door.”
    “Oh? Why red?”
    “I thought you said you knew Pompino?”
    “Maybe his fondness for red is something new.”
    Ashti was red now, the hem of her dress, where she was banging the bloody froth. I bent down and hoicked up the squealing, kicking, struggling handful — the reason I hadn’t pulled her out of it before. There would be a stern contest of wills in the immediate future between clean dresses and having further mucky fun.
    “Well, he did have that front door repainted when he came back from one of his excursions, recently, I’ll say that. It always used to be a decent blue.”
    Having at least wormed out the secrets of Pompino’s whereabouts from his fellow Khibil, and having sorted out all I could in the way of Ashti’s dress, and not being in the frame of mind to hang about in the Swod’s Revenge any longer, I hoicked up the struggling handful and said the remberees and started off along Lower Squish Street.
    Eventually I had to let her run ahead. And then I noticed that although she wanted to get down and run, freely, off, she didn’t go over far. She ran and played within easy distance. She, as it were, kept her radius of action located on where I happened to be. I own I felt highly perked up at that, and, also, dismayed.
    The fourth house along stood within what was obviously a pleasant evening stroll down to the Swod’s Revenge. Pompino was not one to miss a trick like that. The house looked charming, white-walled, freshly painted, with two stories and with highly polished windows. The roofs were blue slate. That was probably imported, for Tuscursmot had a busy trade, and was a clear indication of conspicuous wealth. If the jungle folk could use honest leaves for roofs what was the need to import slate? Well, there are ways among men and women not explicable by logic.
    The area before the house was set out as a gravel garden. The gimmick — no, that is the wrong word — the art in a gravel garden is not to let anything grow. It is all stone and gravel and chipped flints, split rocks to yield a fascinating spectrum of colors. The suns bring out the shine and the glitter of mica and the fleck of semi-precious stone. Cunning sculptors earn vast