Jimmy the Hand (15 page)

Jimmy knew many
of Radburn’s sneaking spies by sight, and usually, given time,
could guess who was one by their behaviour. But did they know him?

He tried to
dismiss the thought. At the moment he looked respectable, which was
to say, not like himself. And when he spoke—which given his
malady had been infrequently—he’d been careful to speak
like a well-brought-up boy. There was absolutely no reason for anyone
to suspect that he was a Mocker. Flora had had enough gentlemen of
rank in her day to have some practice speaking like a girl of means,
so she hadn’t given him away with street cant; it’d been
‘mister’ and ‘sir’ not ‘deary’
and ‘luv’—and not one obscenity had escaped her
lips—since she’d traded in her whore’s garb for a
modest dress, shoulder-shawl, and hat. Besides, if Coe did know him,
why hadn’t he simply turned him in at the dock, or just chucked
him overboard?

It would have
been easy,
Jimmy thought. Hells and demons, I would have thanked
him for it!

And yet, having
finally introduced himself, the mysterious stranger had disappeared.
Was Coe just a concerned soul who’d been watching to make sure
the young thief didn’t fall overboard? Now that he’d
given Jimmy the cure for his sea-sickness perhaps the man had decided
to retire to the relative comfort of his cabin. Was that suspicious?
Jimmy frowned. Actually, he did find generosity from strangers
suspicious. Useful on occasion, he allowed. Especially if the giver
was naive and easy to manipulate. But Coe didn’t seem the type
one could use. In fact he seemed the type to ream you proper if you
tried: Jimmy could smell that on a man. The young thief exhaled with
a snort of frustration.

Focus,
concentrate,
he commanded himself.

If one of
Radburn’s spies had seen him and knew him for a Mocker, known
what he’d done, which was unlikely—make that
impossible—then without question he would have been arrested
immediately. There was no reason for one of Radburn’s boys to
go following him to Land’s End.

But what if one
of Radburn’s spies was going to Land’s End anyway? Land’s
End was an outpost, near the Keshian border. More accurately, it was
the domain of the Lord of the Southern Marches, Duke Sutherland, but
that office had been vacant for years, due to some politics Jimmy
didn’t understand or care to understand.
Yes, maybe that’s
it,
he thought. Maybe it’s just Guy du Bas-Tyra trying to
extend his reach. Who knew how far the Duke wanted to extend his
power? Jimmy watched the hills of water rise and fall, actually
enjoying the clever motion of the ship as it followed their motion.

As
far as he
can, of course!

He wrestled with
some more notions of what the Duke might be plotting, but grew bored
with it. It was surprising enough as it was that he was interested in
that question at all. Until meeting Prince Arutha he had no concept
of what ruling must be like, but he had spent a fair number of
evenings listening to Arutha, Martin Longbow and Amos Trask talking
about affairs of state. He found it fascinating, and from time to
time wondered if he could make the sorts of judgments they were
forced to consider, decisions that would change the future of
nations.

No, he
reconsidered, he wasn’t bored with the question; he was
frustrated that he had no information upon which to base a reasonable
guess as to what was happening. And that surprised him, as well.
Grinning at a silly notion, he thought:
maybe some day I’ll
get to meet Prince Arutha again.
That would be interesting. He’d
know what Duke Guy was up to and Jimmy could ask him questions about
such things. But until that time, it was no business of Jimmy’s
what the Duke was plotting.

Meddling in the
affairs of the mighty had only brought trouble on him and his kind.
True, he was pleased to think of the Princess Anita as free and safe,
but the cost to the Mockers had been high, perhaps too high. And
while he was sorry for Prince Erland and his wife, saving them was
well-nigh impossible, and even had that not been the case, to do so
would very likely only have made things worse. For which the Upright
Man would not have thanked him.

No, it was time
to get back to looking after Jimmy the Hand, which was something he
did very well. Let them plot and scheme among themselves; it had
nothing to do with him.

Jimmy stopped to
look around, as he and Flora stood on the dockside at Land’s
End, their scant baggage at their feet. The first street facing the
harbour was broad and cobbled, but the cobbles were worn nearly flat
by hooves and iron-rimmed wheels and sledges; the bowsprits of a row
of ships ran over it, above the heads of stevedores, sailors and
passengers. Teamsters moved wagons close to receive offloaded cargo
and quickly transport it to shops or warehouses nearby, and the usual
assortment of riffraff lingered at the fringes. Jimmy instantly
spotted two lads who were probably pickpockets and one who was the
most obvious lookout Jimmy had ever seen—maybe looking to see
if someone special came off the ship, or if a particular cargo was
unloaded, ready to signal someone probably lingering half a block up
the street or watching from an adjacent window. Jimmy kept his smile
to himself; if this was the best Land’s End had to offer, he
might not return to Krondor, but rather stick around and take over.

Gulls made a
storm overhead—always a sign of a thriving port, with plenty of
offal. Green-blue water lapped at the sides of ships, at the black
weed-and-barnacle-covered timbers and pilings of dock and seawall, a
chuckling undertone to the clamour of voices and feet and iron on
stone.

‘Not
nearly as big as Krondor,’ Jimmy said stoutly.
I’m
from the big city,
he thought.
This is the sticks.
‘Or
as well-sheltered a harbour.’

The largest
ships here weren’t as big as those you saw in Krondor’s
harbour, either—the tubby
Krondor’s Lady
was about
as large as they came; more of them were Keshian, too. The dock-side
street was hedged on its landward side by warehouses, two or three
storeys high, with A-frame timbers jutting out from their gables to
help hoist freight. Some came down via block and tackle as he
watched, a load of pungent raw hides. Streams of dockwallopers were
trotting up and down gangplanks, with sacks and bales and boxes
bending them double; cloth, thread, bundled raw flax, dried fruit,
cheeses, blacksmith’s iron, copper pots . . . Heavier cargo
swung up on nets slung from the end of the yards that usually bore
sails.

Beyond the
warehouses, buildings rose up steep streets on the hills surrounding
the harbour; they could get a few glimpses of the city walls, gates,
and the pasture and forest beyond. Jimmy stared for a moment,
realizing he could see farms up on the highest hillsides, tiny
thatched houses with meadows and fields around them. He had never
seen a farm before.

‘It’s
bigger than I’d thought it would be,’ Flora said, her
voice sounding small.

Jimmy was glad
she’d said it because it was exactly what he’d been
thinking. He snorted. ‘It’s not a patch on Krondor,’
he said. He straightened and threw back his shoulders. ‘And we
did just fine there.’

Flora touched
his arm with a grateful smile. Then she looked out at the town,
uncertain once more. She sighed. ‘I have no idea where to
begin.’

‘Well, you
know his name and what he does, or,’ he shrugged,
‘did
for a living, right?’ He’d intended to talk with her
about this on board, but he’d been too sick most of the way and
too hungry for the rest of it.

‘Yes,’
Flora said. ‘He was a solicitor and his name was Yardley
Heywood.’

Oh, that’s
not good,
Jimmy thought. If her grandfather was a court solicitor
he had represented his fair share of criminals. Which meant he was
all too likely to guess what his long-lost granddaughter had been
doing to survive these last few years, no matter what she said.
Worse, he’d be able to guess what Jimmy did.

‘Yardley
Heywood,’ he said aloud. ‘That sounds like a rich man’s
name.’

Flora laughed.
‘It does, doesn’t it?’

Picking up his
bag decisively, and one of hers to maintain the illusion of his being
well brought up, Jimmy gestured toward the town. ‘First thing
we should do is head for solid ground. I can feel this dock moving up
and down and it’s making me nervous.’

‘It’s
not the dock, lad,’ Jarvis Coe said with a smile.

Jimmy blinked in
surprise. Twice: because he couldn’t imagine how the man had
managed to get that close without him noticing; and because of a
subtle change. Coe’s clothes were just a bit more prosperous
than they’d seemed aboard ship, perhaps because he’d
added a horseman’s high boots and a long dark cloak with a
hood, plus a flat cloth cap that sported a peacock feather. More
probably because he wore the sword that Jimmy had suspected would be
his to wear: a plain, narrow blade with a curled guard in a
workmanlike leather sheath, matched with a dagger on the other side—a
fighting dirk nine inches long, not the ordinary belt-knife people
carried for everyday tasks like cutting bread or getting a stone out
of a horse’s shoe.

Coe still didn’t
look rich, or conspicuous; but he did look like a gentleman of sorts.
He pulled off the cap and bowed slightly to Flora, who bobbed him a
curtsey in reflex.

‘It’s
the way everyone feels coming off a ship. In a day or so you’ll
get your land-legs back, as the sailors say. Where are you headed?’

Both the young
Mockers frowned at him.
I don’t like this,
Jimmy
thought.
This man alters his appearance too easily, just by
donning a new cloak and by changing the way he holds his head.

Coe chuckled: ‘I
suppose it’s none of my business,’ he said. ‘But if
you’re looking for a clean, cheap place to stay I can recommend
a few.’

Jimmy and Flora
looked at one another. Generosity from strangers, especially this
close to Great Kesh and its slavers, was somewhat suspicious.

Coe looked at
them and nodded thoughtfully. ‘All right, then. I can see
you’ll be all right on your own. Just, if I may,’ he
nodded at a dockside inn, ‘avoid The Cockerel.’ He put a
finger beside his nose and winked. ‘Just a word to the wise.’
Then he was gone with a swirl of his dark cape.

‘Who’s
he?’ Flora whispered. ‘I never talked to him on board.’

‘His
name’s Jarvis Coe,’ Jimmy said. ‘But who he is I
don’t know.’

He pulled at the
bracelet on his wrist until the leather strap came undone. Then he
studied it carefully. The slight pressure he’d felt against his
wrist had been provided by a small pebble glued to the leather. The
pebble looked ordinary enough, still . . . He tossed it into the
water. Who could tell what might or might not be magic, or what that
magic might do?

‘What was
that?’ Flora asked.

‘Something
he gave me for the seasickness. It worked. It might be magic.’

‘Well that
was nice,’ she said dubiously.

Jimmy glanced at
her. Flora was looking into the water and frowning, then she stared
down the dock. Following her example, Jimmy saw that Coe had
vanished; not hurrying, just walking away and blending in like a wisp
of mist. Something a Mocker knew the way of.

‘Well,’
he said, ‘let’s find a place to stay and stow our gear.
Then we can start looking for your family.’ He jerked a thumb
over his shoulder with a grin. ‘But what do we do about The
Cockerel? It might turn out to be the safest place in town.’

Flora picked up
her bag and started walking. ‘That’d be a first for a
dockside tavern,’ she said.

Jimmy nodded,
then stopped. ‘Wait!’ he said.

Flora looked at
him enquiringly; he said nothing as he squatted beside their baggage,
untying the cloth wrapped around a long narrow bundle.

The rapier came
free, and Jimmy unwrapped the belt from the sheath and swung it
around his hips. The tassets that the scabbard went through—a
slanted row of loops on a triangular patch of leather sewn to the
belt—kept the chafe—the metal reinforcement at the bottom
of the scabbard—from tapping on the ground, if he walked with
his left hand on the hilt. He wouldn’t have to worry about that
in a few years when he reached his adult growth, but right now he was
a bit shorter than most swordsmen.

‘Is that
wise?’ Flora said.

‘It’s
a mark of respectability,’ Jimmy said. ‘Or at least that
you’re nobody to be trifled with!’

And there’s
no Upright Man in Land’s End,
the young thief thought.
Demons and gods, but I’m sick of being pushed around!

They set out,
walking slightly uphill along what Jimmy suspected would turn out to
be the town’s main thoroughfare to the docks. He assumed there
would be a large town square somewhere up ahead, and near there a
reputable inn. His eyes wandered and again he studied the distant
farms and wondered what it must be like up there. From what townsfolk
said about farmers, their lives were pretty boring.

The girl looked
up as her mother spoke.

‘When
you’ve finished with that,’ Melda Merford said to her
daughter Lorrie, ‘I want you to get the flax out of the pond.’

‘Mother,
please!’ Lorrie protested.

She turned from
where she’d been sweeping out the farmstead’s
kitchen-hearth, wiping at her eye where a drop of sweat stung. She
used the back of her wrist because her hands were black, but still
she got a smudge on her cheek. The fine flying ash drifted up her
nose, smelling dusty, like old wood smoke, and she sneezed: cleaning
the hearth wasn’t a heavy chore, but it was disagreeable.

‘I was
going to hunt today.’

She certainly
hadn’t planned on pulling slimy bundles of flax out of the
stagnant pond where it lay retting. Never a pleasant job, it would be
more irksome still when her mind was fixed on a pleasant jaunt in the
cool of the forest.