Thieves' World: Enemies of Fortune (15 page)

The household was eating better and spending less money—because Dace was not only a better bargainer than the old woman, he didn’t skim padpols for his own indulgence. Chersey had to tell him to keep a coin or two for himself. Youths his age needed a few padpols and she needed to assuage her guilt.

Like some high-born lady, Chersey consulted with her cook while the family ate breakfast.

“Any ideas for tonight’s supper?”

Dace looked up. He was chopping last night’s leftovers into the stockpot. Dace wasn’t a handsome youth. His grin was lopsided, as if whatever had crippled his right leg had touched his face as well, but his eyes were lively and his gaze was direct as he said, “Depends on what I smell along the Processional.”

Chersey laughed. “If I didn’t know better, I’d say you were looking for a finer kitchen than this one.” When Dace shook his head, Chersey continued in a more serious tone: “Really, you need to be careful—”

“The Processional’s there for everyone, Governor’s Walk, too. The guards don’t hassle me and if the nabobs don’t want me sneaking their recipes, they should tell their cooks to close the doors.”

“The guards aren’t there to protect you, not on the Processional. You’d be wiser to take the Shambles bridge—the way is shorter and if you smell anything around here, we can afford the spices.”

“Ser Perrez says not to worry, we’ll be rich soon.”

Perrez was the only household name Dace hung a handle on. He’d learned that flattery was the way to deal with Bezul’s younger brother, Gedozia’s favorite son. Chersey had watched Perrez grow from a dreaming youth into a scheming manhood and was wise to his dreams. She wished she could bestow that wisdom on Dace, but there was no putting old heads on young shoulders. If the youth’s wits were as sharp as his nose, he’d uncover the truth about Perrez soon enough with no help from her.

T
he morning chill had vanished long before Dace made his last purchase. Chersey had given him an uncut shaboozh because it was Shiprisday and on Shiprisday, Dace bought extra bread and cheese. The mistress didn’t demand a precise accounting of expenses and wouldn’t have raised an eyebrow if Dace had come home without a padpol. She was generous that way, and trusting—totally unlike the family Dace had left behind.

The changing-house folk didn’t pry into Dace’s past, and he was grateful. His kin weren’t worth remembering, though Dace hadn’t managed to forget them … yet. A year ago he’d
seen
a shaboozh clutched tightly in his uncle’s hand, but he’d never held one, much less spent it all in a single morning.

Dace took his responsibilities to heart. Gedozia had taught him to bargain, though, truth to tell, Gedozia was sharp and bitter and lacked the friendly patience that yielded the best prices. Dace had memorized each farmer’s name, his village and his welfare. He bantered as he bargained, shaving a padpol off the asking price or gaining an extra onion as his reward. Today hadn’t been a good day for bonus produce, but he’d wound up with three leftover padpols.

The broken black bits were knotted securely into a pouch he wore inside his trousers where it wouldn’t come loose or attract unwanted attention—not that three padpols bouncing on the Processional’s cobblestones would attract attention. Folk on the Processional didn’t stoop for padpols. They scarcely stepped aside for a cripple in secondhand homespun.

Dace sated his curiosity about Sanctuary’s richest and best-fed families with quick sniffs and glances. Someone had dropped a coin at the feet of a juggler who was putting on a show outside the whitewashed mansion of Lord Noordiseh. Dace stood on tiptoe—a stance both awkward and painful—at the crowd’s fringe. He caught glimpses of the bright-clad sailor swirling five knives between his rapidly moving hands.

He’d seen jugglers on the streets before, but none who’d added the element of danger to their routine. Each time the juggler caught a knife, there was the chance he’d grasp the flashing blade. Dace couldn’t tear away from the spectacle. His ears were deaf to the commotion at the mansion’s door until it was too late—

“Make way! Make way!” burly retainers shouted as they shoved through the crowd.

The juggler caught his knives without trouble; Dace was not so fortunate. Already unbalanced on his tiptoes, he crashed to the cobblestones when someone jostled into his crutch. More mindful of his purchases than his bones, the youth clutched his bulging sack to his chest as he fell. His crutch flew and he landed on his back, not hard enough to break anything, but hard enough that he lay motionless, waiting for his body to become his again.

The crowd had vanished like smoke on a windy day.

“Damn insolence! Move him out of the way!”

Dace turned toward the sound and snagged eyes with Lord Noordiseh himself, resplendent in billowing silk and an equally billowed silk-and-feather hat. Three thoughts burst into Dace’s mind. The first two—
Find your crutch
and
Get yourself away from here!
—were wise choices, but the third
—He’s wearing a fake beard—
was more compelling, at least until one of the burly retainers reached for Dace’s sack.

“The little thief’s got enough food here to feed an army—”

Dace flailed and found his crutch. With a desperate heave and a measure of luck he lurched to his feet without surrendering the sack. “No army, ser, just my household.”

“What family?” the retainer demanded. “Where do you live?”

Dace saw the crack of doom looming before him. He should have listened to Chersey, should have stayed away from the Processional, but bad as things were, they’d be worse if he lied. “Wriggle Way, ser. The house of Bezulshash the Changer.”

The retainer wasn’t impressed, but Lord Noordiseh showed unexpected mercy: “Let him go.”

And Dace went, as fast as his gimpy leg allowed. His heart didn’t stop racing until his feet touched Wriggle Way. Familiar buildings had never looked so good. He paused to tidy his clothes; no sense walking into the changing house with his shirt hitched up.

A girl emerged from the Frog and Bucket tavern as Dace swiped his fingers through his hair. Geddie wasn’t the sort to draw much attention. She had a plain face with slightly bulging eyes. Her hair hung in braids against her back and her skirt was shorter than it should have been, as if she were in the midst of a girlish growth spurt, though she swore she was nineteen and a veteran of the Maze brothels.

Dace didn’t believe Geddie had worked the brothels and didn’t think she was pretty. In fact, he thought she was so homely that she might eventually succumb to a cripple’s charm. He called her name and hurry-hobbled to catch up.

“I didn’t expect to see you today!”

“It’s my day off.”

Geddie worked in the palace laundry where she’d risen from pounding and wringing to the skilled labor of mending.

“So, where’re you going?”

“Same place as you. Got me a gift to change.” Geddie patted the pouch slung at her waist. “Then I’m off to see One-Eye Reesch. He just got a chest of Aurvesh fortune oils. S’not like they’re Caronnese, but my girlfriend says they work real well.”

“Can I come with?”

Geddie shrugged and Dace stuck close.

“
I
can give you twelve padpols—three soldats—for them,” Chersey judged while eyeing the pair of merely serviceable boots.

“You gave a whole shaboozh last time.”

Chersey sighed inwardly. She preferred to give her customers what they wanted and had never hardened to this colder part of changing-house life. “Last time I didn’t have six other pairs of boots on the shelves.”

“I’ve got to have a shaboozh. Just one until Ilsday. I’ll buy ’em back then, same as always.”

“Thirteen.” Chersey made her final offer.

The woman was a regular customer who cycled her husband’s boots through the changing house the way fishermen cycled their nets.

“We’ll starve,” the woman insisted, which was merely her way of accepting the offer.

Chersey pulled a thin, baked-clay, double-eyed tablet from a bowl beneath the counter and began writing the details of the trade on it. When she finished, she handed the tablet to the woman who broke it in two, keeping one sherd and returning the other to Chersey who threaded a bit of twine through the eye. She tied the twine to the boots before counting out thirteen good-sized padpols—one of them almost large enough to be a two-padpol bit.

The woman wasn’t blind to generosity. She gave thanks and swept the tarnished bits into the hem of her sleeve. Chersey put the tagged boots on the shelf. The changing house always had boots, but eight pairs—she’d forgotten one—were an unusually high number. Something was amiss in the hand-to-mouth segment of Sanctuary society that relied on the changing house to tide them over.

She and Bezul should discuss the problem. The changing house didn’t have unlimited padpols. There’d been times in the past when they’d had to stop making exchanges for cash. But Bezul and Pel Garwood were no closer to an exchange for the old Ilsigi ewer someone had given the healer in exchange for
his
services. The healer was a good man—Chersey consulted him whenever one of the children took sick—and a better bargainer. He and Bezul might be at it all day.

The morning was hot. Chersey thought about getting herself a glass of night-cooled mint tea from the kitchen sump. She got as far as the inner door when the brass bell hanging from the open doorway jangled and Jopze—one of the two retired soldiers who kept a lid on things in exchange for clothes for their ever-increasing broods—hailed Dace by name.

Dace didn’t usually come through the front door. Chersey wondered why he’d changed his habits and, turning, saw that the youth wasn’t alone. She recognized the scrawny girl by sight, not name. The girl lived above the Frog and Bucket, which was tantamount to saying she sold herself to the tavern’s customers. She had some sort of dealings with the palace, too: a job in the laundry, or so she claimed. Chersey couldn’t imagine how any laundress could come by the trinkets the girl exchanged without shedding her own clothes.

Chersey wasn’t pleased to see the girl with Dace, though she immediately realized she shouldn’t have been surprised. Dace might have a crippled leg and a lopsided smile, but he was still a young man at an age when young men had only one thought on their minds. He was being practical, aiming low where his chances of success were high.

Dace began the conversation: “Geddie’s got something to change.”

So the girl’s name was Geddie. Somehow it fit that her name sounded like something stuck to a shoe, but business was business. Chersey returned to the counter.

“Let’s have a look.”

The girl brought out a cloth-wrapped parcel which proved to contain a small statue of Anen, the Ilsigi god of wine and good fortune. The statue was painted stone, chipped here and there, with hollow eyes where gems had once resided. Three bands confined the god’s unruly hair. Two were hollow but the third shone with gold. Chersey could pin a value to ordinary household objects, but when it came to relics, she turned to her husband.

“Bez? Could you take a look at this?”

Bezul seemed relieved by the interruption. He picked up the statue, paying particular attention to its base. “You realize this once stood in Anen’s chapel at the Temple of Ils?” he said with a trace of accusation in his voice.

Of course, the Dyareelan fanatics had destroyed the temple. Ils’s priests had hidden a few of their treasures before they died. A week didn’t go by without someone claiming to have found an abandoned hoard.

Chersey and Bezul heard
all
the treasure rumors, thanks to Bezul’s brother, Perrez. Sometimes the rumors were true—that ewer Pel Garwood was determined to exchange had survived the Troubles intact, but the changing house didn’t knowingly trade in looted goods. There were dens on the Hill that specialized in covert trade.

“How did you come by this?” Bezul challenged.

“A gift,” she replied, sullen and defiant.

“From whom?”

“I got a friend at the palace.”

Chersey scowled and flicked her moonstone ring close to her right eye. The ring was minor wizardry. It cast an aura through which Chersey could detect lies and deceit. The girl was full of deceit, but she wasn’t lying when she said, “I mended his britches. Them Irrunes, they don’t touch money, but they’ll give you gifts.”

Chersey doubted that mending had anything to do with Geddie’s good fortune, but it was true enough that Sanctuary’s current rulers refused to handle money. Had it been up to Chersey, they would have sent Geddie and her relic packing. Regardless of how the girl had come by her gift, they weren’t likely to resell a stripped relic in day-to-day trade. They’d have to turn it over to Perrez who brokered their one-of-a-kinds to east-side dealers, foreigners, and an occasional rich patron. Chersey would rather have made do without Perrez’s contributions. Bezul would have done the same, but his brother’s trades turned a tidy profit, when they didn’t fall through; and the house couldn’t overlook profit.

According to Perrez, Sanctuary relics were all the rage in the Ilsigi Kingdom and the right trade could yield a tidy profit—
could
being the operative word.

Bez set the statue on the counter. “You’d do better at a goldsmith’s. I recommend Thibalt in Copper Corner.”

Geddie worked her mouth into a sarcastic smile. “Sure. I’m going to walk into a froggin’
gold
smith’s. Me an’ all my ladies.”

“We don’t trade in relics. I can only offer intrinsic worm—”

The girl scowled at the unfamiliar word. “Shite for sure, so long as it’s four froggin’ shaboozh”

“three” Bezul replied without batting an eye, which told Chersey the statue must be worth ten.

“Three’n twelve.”

“Three and eight.”

Geddie thrust out her chin. “Done,” she declared and held out her hand.

Bezul counted the coins and the girl turned to leave the shop. Dace turned with her, then hesitated. The young man’s conflicting thoughts were so obvious that Chersey could read them on his face: The household’s supper was hanging in a sack from his shoulder, but he’d rather moon after the girl.