Emperor's Edge Republic (44 page)

Basilard’s mouth had dropped open farther and farther as Maldynado spoke. Was he being offensive? He just didn’t know why all these perfectly capable men were lacking in confidence. Sure Basilard had those scars, but he had won an event in the Imperial Games, and now he was a highfaluting diplomat. Finding a girl should
not
be a problem.

A one-handed,
I am
not
shy,
was Basilard’s only response.

“Do you want me to ask the little flower if she likes you?”

Basilard dropped a hand like a steel vise onto Maldynado’s forearm and shook his head firmly. He released Maldynado—though probably only because he needed his fingers for signing.
Do not bother her with your crude innuendoes. She is a professional woman and, as I said, the chief’s daughter. She has traveled and studied in other nations. She is not a little flower or anyone to be... bothered with silliness.

Maldynado lifted his hands. “All right, all right, I won’t bother her, but courting isn’t silly. It’s part of being a human. One of the better parts, I should think.”

Basilard glared.

“Here’s an idea,” Maldynado said. “I’m planning a dinner party to help Sespian and Mahliki get comfortable together, seeing as she’s shyer with him than I expected from her, and he’s... waiting for a clue to fall out of a tree and hit him on the head. Why don’t you and your translator come? We’ll make sure the wine flows freely, and when her tongue loosens up, maybe she’ll lean close to you and whisper some...
unprofessional
words in your ear.”

Maldynado couldn’t remember seeing anyone shake his head firmly and look wistful at the same time, but Basilard managed it.

“It’ll be after all this is over.” Maldynado waved in the direction of the plant-besieged harbor. “And we’ll invite some other couples, too, so your lady won’t feel like she’s in the center ring. Just a casual dinner party. What could go wrong?”

Will
you
be cooking?

Maldynado grimaced, thinking of the
last
time he had tried to cook for someone. “I’ll arrange for it to be catered. Although if you wanted to impress her, you could play a role in the cooking. You have quite the gift for that. Perhaps you could contribute the dessert? Oh, but don’t use any of those pee-soaked weeds you’ve been known to pluck from alleys. Just because something is edible doesn’t mean it should end up on the plate.”

I do not pick the pee-soaked ones
, Basilard signed.
As for the rest... perhaps... I will consider it. If she’s interested. She finds Turgonians brutish and violent, though she’s too polite to say so. I don’t know if she would care to spend a whole evening with them.

“Mahliki isn’t Turgonian,” Maldynado pointed out. “Not really anyway. We can put her on your lady’s right—oh, and you should tell me her name at some point. It makes filling out place cards easier. Redheaded Mangdorian Woman is a bit much to write on there with calligraphy.”

Basilard hesitated, then made a motion Maldynado interpreted as a woman combing her hair.

“That’s... your gesture for her?”

She does it a lot. When she’s nervous.

If she did it a lot around Basilard, that might be a good sign. So long as he made her nervous in a he’s-cute-and-I-wonder-if-he’s-interested way rather than an I-hope-the-brute-doesn’t-kill-me-if-I-don’t-translate-well way. “Woman Who Braids Her Hair When Nervous. That’ll be even harder to put on the name cards.”

Basilard snorted.
I’ll write it down for you when—

“What are you two shovel heads doing over there?” came the familiar—and grating—holler of the foreman. The barrel-chested man rolled toward them, black bags under his bloodshot eyes, the cigar clamped between his teeth more macerated than the most popular stick in a dog kennel. “Do you see how far behind we are? Quit yammering, and get your slagging butts over there and unload those I-beams.”

He snatched the shovels out of their hands and threw them into the rack. They banged against others and fell down, knocking several down with them. Already walking toward—and yelling at—the next pair of idlers, he didn’t notice.

“Guess we’re not digging today,” Maldynado said and headed in the direction the foreman had indicated. He hadn’t truly intended to do work, merely wanting to observe and investigate, but allowed that they would be less conspicuous this way.

He didn’t seem concerned that I’m not on an employee roster,
Basilard signed.
Or that he’s never seen me before.

“As distraught as he looked, I bet he would try to put the president himself to work if he showed up next to the shovel rack.”

For all the man’s bluster, Maldynado didn’t think the building could be that far behind schedule. Starcrest and Sespian might not have the construction site at the top of their priority list at the moment, but an impressive amount of progress had been made in the few days the crew had been working. The foundation had set, and the steel framework was already going up. The equipment operators and more experienced workers seem to be in charge of that; the “shovel heads” were dragging, pushing, and lifting materials around the site. Maldynado and Basilard joined one of those groups.

After exchanging a few meaningless comments and grunts with the natives, Maldynado asked, “Any more accidents on the site since the boiler blew up?”

Most of the people ignored him, though a beefy fellow grew loquacious enough to say, “No.”

“Any plants pop up out of the sewer line that team is excavating?”

“No.”

Maldynado shrugged at Basilard and told himself it was
good
that nobody else had been hurt and that no more equipment had been damaged, but he wanted to catch the culprits, and that would be easier if they were doing something... catchable.

Obeying someone else’s points and grunts, Maldynado and Basilard picked up bags of mortar mix and carried them over to a forklift next to a parked lorry loaded with pallets of bricks. Nobody had started laying bricks yet, but this was going to be the station apparently. Maldynado took the opportunity to stick his head under the lorry and the forklift to see if any of Sarevic’s timing devices had been placed under them. Best to catch a booby trap before it went off...

While he lay on his back under the lorry, wishing the cloudy afternoon sky offered more light, a pair of boots came into view on the opposite side. They didn’t look like Basilard’s footwear.

A throat cleared. A grumpy throat.

Maldynado rolled out from under the lorry as the foreman walked around to his side of the vehicle. “I would guess you were taking a nap,” the man said, “but I don’t think you’re stupid enough to sleep under a moveable two-ton machine.” He slapped his palms together, no doubt to indicate the degree of flatness a man might experience during such a nap.

Maldynado glanced around, wondering why Basilard hadn’t warned him of the foreman’s approach. He had been dragged off to help fasten a winch cable to a beam.

“I am happy to declare that this vehicle seems to be free of booby traps,” Maldynado announced.

“Is that so? You know, you’re awfully suspicious. If I hadn’t seen you jabbering with Savarsin yesterday... who
are
you, anyway?”

“I’m Maldynado, of course.” Given that he was still disowned and that his family had been portrayed poorly in the newspapers that winter, he doubted sharing his surname would help him here, so he went with the addition, “Friend of emperors, presidents, and ladies everywhere.”

“Friend of the president. Right.”

“He’s the one who gave me this job.”

“If he gave you this job, you’re not his friend. This is the job he gives to convicts.” The foreman thrust a hand toward a knot of workers unloading a lorry. They weren’t in shackles and Maldynado didn’t see a guard, but they wore gray and red prison smocks, and more than one had a gang brand on the back of his hand. “To rehabilitate them.” The foreman’s smirk was anything but friendly. “Maybe he thought you needed rehabilitation.”

“I...” Maldynado hardly thought that was the case—he had
asked
for employment, after all—but a witty riposte didn’t come to his tongue.

The foreman gave him a shove and said, “Stop pissing around, and get back to work,” before walking off again.

Maldynado rarely fantasized about causing evil things to happen to his enemies, but he did find himself wishing the foreman would end up being the one sabotaging the site and that Maldynado could escort him to the magistrate personally. Basilard returned before his mind traveled too far down this path.

Are you all right?

Maldynado was still on the ground, so he stood and brushed himself off. “Yes.”

What’s next?

“What’s the matter, Bas? Not enjoying the work? I know you’re a fancy diplomat now, but this isn’t anything worse than we had to do for Sicarius.”

The work doesn’t bother me. As for the rest... I haven’t had much of a chance to practice diplomacy on anyone yet, so I’m not sure how fancy I can be considered. The president saw me and wrote down my people’s concerns, but I think he’s too busy with local matters to worry about international relations right now.

Maldynado found himself gazing at the prisoners again. How long had they been working on the site? Might one of
them
be tempted to perform sabotage? Especially if they were being paid or bribed somehow by men in green robes?

“I may have an opportunity for you to practice diplomacy right now,” Maldynado said.

Basilard followed his gaze.
I had hoped not to have to practice that sort of diplomacy any more. As you noted, my people are peaceful. They wish their representative to be peaceful as well.

“Who said anything about not being peaceful? Just because they look brutish doesn’t mean we can’t have a friendly conversation with them. Maybe you can offer to cook them something.”

A pee-soaked weed?

“I thought you didn’t use those.”

Not in
most
people’s dishes.

“Basilard, if you tell me you’ve gotten Sicarius to eat something doused by a dog, I might just kiss you.”

Basilard’s cryptic smile wasn’t a solid confirmation, so Maldynado held back on a physical display of affection. He was, however, grinning like a birthday boy in a whore house when he sauntered up to the prison crew. This caused them to glower with suspicion.

He tamed his smile and offered a congenial wave. “Afternoon, gentlemen. The foreman said for us to help you.”

Most grunted and ignored him. One said, “That street licker.”

“He’s the one who ought to be in prison, eh?” Maldynado picked up the corner of a crate two men were struggling with. Basilard got into line to receive a bundle of rods from a prisoner pushing things out of the back of the lorry.

“That’s the truth,” the talkative man said. He had a beard divided into six intricate braids that extended to his belt. The sign of someone with a lot of time on his hands.

“We don’t get paid enough to put up with him,” Maldynado said, hoping to establish some common ground with the men by complaining about the boss. That was an age-old tradition for the working class, wasn’t it?

Braids glared at him. “
We
don’t get paid at all.”

Oops, so much for common ground. Maldynado walked back to the lorry to help with another crate. He caught Basilard’s eye, wondering if he had any ideas for diplomacy. Basilard tilted his chin toward the worker unloading the vehicle bed. He wore the same unappealing uniform as the others and had a nondescript face. Tattoos ran up the backs of his hands, disappearing beneath his sleeves, but that wasn’t uncommon in the group. A cigar dangled from his lips.

Maldynado shrugged at Basilard, wondering what he was thinking. Basilard pursed his lips. At first, Maldynado read that as a kissing gesture, but he realized it was more of a blowing smoke motion. The cigar. Maldynado took another look.

“Say,” Maldynado said to Braids—they had grabbed a second crate to carry together, “if you fellows don’t get paid at all, how did the man in the lorry get that cigar? It’s a Bridgecrester, isn’t it? That’s an expensive smoke.”

“None of my business.” Braids squinted at him. “None of
your
business, either.”

Maldynado caught the man in the lorry bed eyeing him. He wondered if his hunches had led him to the right place, or if this was simply someone who engaged in prison yard bartering. For all he knew, the man had received the cigar in exchange for taking someone’s shift out here. Of course, Bridgecrest cigars cost enough that none of the other workers here were likely to buy them, either.

“You boys been working here all week?” Maldynado asked.

“You talk a lot,” a new man said, walking over to block Maldynado’s return to the lorry. He possessed all of Maldynado’s height and breadth, plus an extra fifty pounds of fat he could throw into a fray. Neither the man or his heft concerned Maldynado, but he took it as a sign that he had been prying. How did Amaranthe get so much out of people without them
knowing
she was getting it out of them?

“Yes, I do,” he said. “Some find it endearing.”

“We don’t.”

“Why don’t you head back over there, buddy?” the first man asked, pointing toward the pallets of bricks.

Maldynado hated to leave before he had more thoroughly investigated these men, but maybe he would have to observe from afar. With eight of them around the truck, picking a fight wouldn’t be wise—besides, the foreman would probably blame
him
for starting it.

Maldynado lifted his hands in surrender. “Whatever you say.” He nodded toward Basilard, then turned away from the big fellow.

Gravel crunched behind him, the only warning he got. He spun back, throwing up an arm in a block. When he spotted a thick board swinging toward his face, he changed his mind, ducking instead of blocking. The board swished past overhead without knocking his hat off.

He lunged at his attacker before the man had finished the swing. Maldynado threw his weight into a punch to the kidney. He didn’t hold back, striking with enough force to send the brute tumbling backward. Aware of all the other men, he didn’t follow the man to finish him. He expected more attacks to come in from both sides—he wasn’t disappointed. Fortunately, Basilard had thrown himself into the burgeoning fray.