Faces of Deception by Troy Denning Read Free Book Online Page B

then stepped to the rear of the wagon. Half of them drew their sabers and stood ready to attack. The others began to drag Bharat’s carpets out of the cargo bed, unrolling each one and tossing it into the middle of the muddy road.
    “What are you doing?” Bharat exclaimed. “That is my whole fortune!”
    “A little dirt will do no harm to a good carpet,” the leader replied.
    “But why is it necessary to unroll them all?” Bharat demanded, growing genuinely angry. “If your devil and his servants had rolled themselves up inside my carpets, surely men as astute as yours would notice the bulges!”
    “This is a very clever devil. We do not know what he can do,” the leader said, and gave Bharat a cockeyed sneer, showing a single gold tooth. “Perhaps you are even this devil in disguise.”
    The implication was clear enough. Too much protesting could be taken the wrong way. Bharat watched in silence as the searchers spread his carpets across the road, then started on his provisions and personal belongings. They looked inside everything, even water-skins, and felt inside the pockets of his extra clothes. They opened his food bags and ran their filthy hands through his rice and barley, and they drained his oil jar into a cooking pot.
    Bharat could only shake his head. “This devil’s magic must be very powerful,” he said, “if you think he can breathe cooking oil.”
    “Very powerful indeed,” the leader assured him. “He can fight four men at once and command ogres to do his will, and several Ffolk have seen him walk on air. Queen Rosalind herself told me he knows things no man should know.”
    Truly?” Bharat asked.
    The leader nodded, and the corners of his mouth turned down in a self-impressed scowl. “She said we must catch him, or there will be Ysdar to pay.”
    When the searchers had finally emptied the wagon, they began to crawl around the cargo bed on their hands and knees, rapping the floor and walls with the hilts of their daggers. Bharat watched nervously.
    “Are you not satisfied yet?” he demanded. “You have delayed me too long already, and I am expected in Borobodur.”
    The leader only grinned and waited, and it did not take long before one of the searchers located the hollow sound of the wagon’s secret compartment.
    The leader grinned. “A smuggler’s hole?”
    “A merchant’s friend,” Bharat countered. “Used only to protect honest profits from road thieves and not for any other purpose.”
    “Then, as you are only now on your way to market, I expect it would be empty.”
    “Not exactly.”
    “I see.” The leader looked to the men at the back of the wagon. “Perhaps we should open it.”
    Three more guards clambered into the crowded wagon, their swords at the ready. When they could not figure out how to open the compartment, another soldier stepped around to retrieve the axe from under Bharat’s seat.
    Bharat placed a restraining hand on the fellow’s arm. “Wait,” he said. “I will open it for you.”
    The leader nodded his permission. Bharat slipped a hand behind the seat and tripped a hidden lever, then reached back and motioned the guards to pry up the center of the floor. Underneath lay a foot-deep compartment just large enough to hold a man. At the moment, the space contained nothing but a leather rucksack, so new that its beeswax waterproofing was still shiny and slick. The searchers opened the top and turned it upside down, but nothing fell out.
    “That is all?” the leader demanded. “Why would a carpet seller be hiding a new rucksack?” Bharat shrugged. “It seemed a good place to store it.” The leader narrowed his eyes suspiciously, then rode around to the back of the wagon and peered inside. When it grew obvious that the cart held no more secrets, he shook his head in puzzlement. He motioned his men to their ponies and looked back to Bharat.
    “Apologies for troubling an honest merchant such as yourself,” the leader said, speaking from the back of