The Iron Ring (14 page)

Tyvian pointed at the forced lock. “Why would he break into his own shop?” He knew the place was likely empty, but decided to be thorough. “Hello?”

Something fell over and broke within the shop, and a scruffy, bearded face popped up over the shop's bare counter. The man had far too many sores on his face to be Hortense, and his fingers were stained purple—­a squatter and an ink-­thrall. “Eh? Watchawant?”

“Ew!” Artus said, “Is that
him
?”

Tyvian glared at the boy. “Don't be an idiot.” He looked at the squatter. “You, idiot, how long have you been staying here?”

The man's unfocused eyes dilated at this, but produced no satisfactory answer. “You got any chicken?”

Tyvian threw a copper at the man. “What happened here?”

The sound of a coin hitting the floorboards cleared some of the squatter's mental haze. “Kidnapped, most like. Phantoms' been paying good gold for magic folk. You know any, you should go down there. Knew a guy that mugged him an alchemist, and he got—­”

Tyvian slammed the door and turned away. “Dammit. How could Hortense let himself be carried off in the middle of the night? He had wards and paid his bribes . . .” Something occurred to him, so he opened the door again. “Did they kidnap his daughter, too?”

The squatter was facedown on the counter, fast asleep and muttering to himself, his finger stuffed in an ink pot.

Tyvian walked over and recovered his copper, then left and slammed the door again.

His companions were looking at him, Artus expectant and Hool mildly curious. “C'mon. To our next stop.”

Tyvian led them out of the Stair Market and down a narrow alley that twisted and turned to squeeze between buildings in the process of sliding off their foundations. Here the light was blocked by teetering chimneys and sharply angled walls, and the cobblestones listed so sharply to one side that there were points where they needed to walk with a hand against a wall. Finally, just past the alley's most claustrophobic section, it opened into a circular courtyard of blue and white tiles, and at its center stood a bubbling fountain. A sign standing just before the fountain, written in a neat hand, read: Drinks for Patrons Only; All Others One Piece of Silver. A clay cup had been helpfully placed next to the sign.

Past the fountain, on the opposite side of the courtyard, Tyvian saw was a small, blue door with a silver knocker and a knob of crystal. “Wait out here,” he said. “I'll be back shortly.”

“Good.” Hool dropped her things and dunked her head in the fountain.

“Don't you have to pay?” Artus asked, examining the cup.

“Don't be stupid,” the gnoll replied.

“For once,” Tyvian said, “I agree with Hool.”

He opened the door and went inside.

C
arlo diCarlo was a Verisi political expatriate, thanks to the public humiliation he had inflicted upon the Baron of Veris fifteen years earlier. Tyvian, at that time only a handful of years older than Artus, had been there to witness the event and still could not recall a time he had laughed so hard at so powerful a person. It was because of Carlo that current Verisi law required all royal garments to be flame resistant and all pigeon owners to be licensed by the state.

Carlo's “office” was a low, domelike room that required Tyvian to duck to enter. It reeked of tooka smoke and was thickly carpeted with a mixture of furs, silks, and gaudy embroidered pillows. Carlo himself sat cross-­legged on the largest of these pillows, a smoking pipe on one knee and balancing a simple blasting wand on his other. It had been over two years since Tyvian had seen him, and he noted that the short, wiry Carlo had been replaced with one no taller but considerably fatter, and festooned with a waxed handlebar moustache, to boot. He was wearing an ornate silk robe of Kalsaari style and a crystal eyepiece pinched between the cheekbone and brow of his left eye. He smiled as Tyvian entered the light, as though just noticing him. Tyvian knew perfectly well the old pirate had seen him coming from the moment he entered the alley that led to his home.

Carlo's smile revealed a pair of gold teeth. “Tyvian Reldamar, my friend! Why ever are you not dead?”

Tyvian pulled up a cushion and sat down. “Is that the word on the street?”

“Just so. Have you come to kill me?”

“Have you given me cause?”

Carlo considered this and then laughed, smiling even more broadly. “Yes, I think I have.”

“Please explain,” Tyvian said calmly. It was impossible to read whether Carlo was kidding or not—­the man's face had no connection whatever to his thoughts, a fact that had frustrated as many interrogators as it had gamblers. Tyvian had spent years studying how Carlo did it, but despite his own considerable skill at masking his expression, he had to concede that Carlo was the master.

“I will, but first—­tea!” Carlo clapped his hands, and a barely clad woman with golden hair sauntered into the room with a silver tray and two cups. Tyvian found himself thinking she looked just a
little
bit like Alafarr before shaking himself back to his senses.

He held up his hand. “No thank you.”

Carlo laughed again, but this time so violently that he shook his eyepiece loose from its fitting. Tyvian only got a glimpse of the gaping socket behind it before Carlo's lightning-­quick fingers replaced the item. “Tyvian, my good friend, I am not going to poison you! You are dead, remember?”

Tyvian snorted. “Not for long. Somebody must have recognized me in the city today. Word will get out. The Phantom Guild will sell the information for pennies to any interested parties.”

“Ho, ho! In the Freegate of two months ago, perhaps, but not today. There is too much other business for the rumormongers to bother with you, Tyvian.”

Tyvian cocked his head to the side. “What's happened?”

Carlo took his cup of tea and waved the woman with the pot back toward the smuggler. “Drink some tea—­there is much to tell, and you are thirsty. Do not worry, Tyvian Reldamar, Carlo diCarlo is still your friend.”

 

CHAPTER TEN

A CONVERSATION WITH CARLO

I
f one were to call Carlo diCarlo a banker, they would simultaneously insult both Carlo and bankers everywhere. Still, the tasks banks undertook were not altogether different than what Carlo offered to his select group of patrons. Both he and banks kept things safe for those who employed them, and both “invested” the assets in their care for the purpose of profit. But there the similarity ended. Banks, according to the one-­eyed Verisi, were engaged in an institutionalized con that involved making money off of ­people who thought they were being done a favor, when all they were
really
gaining was the assurance that the bank would not steal from them—­something any decent business wouldn't do anyway. Carlo, on the other hand, asked that you pay your money up front, and the ser­vices he provided you in return were commensurate with the scale of that remuneration. The “profits,” as it were, served to benefit both Carlo
and
you.

An additional and important difference between Carlo and a bank was the kind of things Carlo kept. He would not keep money for anybody—­any coin that passed into his nimble hands was henceforward
his
, no matter what the former owner thought about it. No, Carlo diCarlo kept safe two things:
items
and, more importantly,
information.

In the first case, it worked something like this: if a person owned a home in Freegate but was leaving town for a while, he would ask Carlo to care for that house in his absence. Carlo would ensure that the house remained free of squatters, unvandalized, and unburgled until such time as the owner returned. However, during that time, Carlo would use the home as he saw fit—­he might rent it out to visitors, use it to host parties, or exploit it in a variety of much less savory and semilegal ways. Then, upon the owner's return, Carlo would give the owner a percentage of the profits he made from his use of the house—­a sum that could range from a few coppers to a king's ransom, depending on how profitable the house had been for Carlo.

Information worked in much the same way. If a person had a secret they thought might be worth something, they could go to Carlo. Upon accepting knowledge of the secret—­which, in itself, was payment up front—­Carlo would go out into the seething river of rumors and illicit information that ran through Freegate and see how the information could be used to his advantage. In most cases it became a matter of selling the secret to somebody else, in others it led to other secrets that, themselves, were more profitable than the original, and in some others it could lead to blackmail, conspiracy, or other potentially advantageous criminal behaviors based around secrets. In any event, the person who supplied Carlo with the secret was entitled to a portion of the profits, be they monetary or informational in nature.

Carlo's peculiar business was quite lucrative and his reputation was impeccable, once you accepted that if you left a good coat in his care you would never see the loose change in the pockets again. Furthermore, thanks to the nature of his business, Carlo had his fingers in more pies and his head in more plots and schemes in Freegate than anybody Tyvian knew of. He was a very useful man to know and an even better person to be able to call friend.

So, while Tyvian sat across from Carlo diCarlo on a cushion in the Verisi's smoky office, he took comfort in the fact that whatever he was about to be told, it was going to be both useful and at least more than half true.

Carlo took a sip of tea. “I take it you will be recovering the things left in my care.”

Tyvian nodded. “The keys to my flat and a strongbox. I hope they were useful to you.”

“Very much so.”

“How much do you owe me?”

Carlo produced an abacus and did some quick calculations. “One hundred thirty-­five marks, sixteen crowns, and five peers.”

Tyvian nodded. “Keep the silver and the coppers—­you do good work.”

Carlo peered up at Tyvian and smirked. “Your generosity is overwhelming. My stomach thanks you for the singular meal with which you have provided it.”

“Given its proportions, I should advise your stomach, for its own good, to consider the meal in question its last for some time.” Tyvian permitted himself a small smile. “Have the money delivered to my flat; send it by djinn. Now, you haven't yet told me what has happened—­does it by any chance have anything to do with the unseasonable crowds clogging the streets?”

“It does.” Carlo nodded, waving to his scantily clad assistant to leave them. “There is a Kalsaari Hanim in town. She's throwing money around like she's allergic to it. Every enterprising boob in the Trell Valley is here trying to nab a piece.”

Tyvian frowned, “And every spy in the West is here trying to get a look at her. What the hell is she doing here, though?”

Carlo smiled then, a twinkle in his real eye that Tyvian usually associated with a god-­awful amount of trouble. “Exiled, they say.”

Tyvian blinked, but wished he could take back the gesture. Carlo was watching his face like a cat watches a bird. “By whom? The Emperor? Her family? The . . .” He lowered his voice to a whisper. “ . . .
Nine
?”

“They”
—­Carlo said the word with a kind of sinister weight—­“aren't the kind to exile ­people. If you cross them, you simply vanish. Besides, if you ask me, it is all an act—­those queenies are always up to more than it looks like, and this is no different. She isn't here to be spied on, she's here to do the spying.”

Tyvian let the information sink in for a minute or two. The Kalsaari Empire rested half a continent away, across thousands of miles of deserts, mountains, and one sea. The primary aggressor in the Illini Wars twenty-­seven years ago, it took the combined might of four Western nations to fight them to a standstill. Since the Treaty of Al Maharik, the two sides had barely spoken. Everyone expected the Kalsaaris to invade again, but they hadn't. Trade had resumed eventually, but it was very slow and few Western merchants were permitted to travel beyond the city of Tasis at the edge of the Empire's vast realm, so very little was known of what occurred or what was occurring within their borders. The West, of course, returned the favor, so one could assume the Kalsaaris knew as little about the modern West as the West knew about Kalsaar. That one of their nobility—­and from an Imperial House, too—­would have taken up residence here, in Freegate, was something of a revolutionary occurrence.

On a personal level, Tyvian had interacted with his fair share of Kalsaaris in his line of work. Besides the valuable silks, spices, and clockwork that constituted most of the legal trade between the two regions, magical goods were of paramount interest to both sides. The war had proven, of course, that Western magi were far more innovative, talented, and knowledgeable than their Kalsaari counterparts when it came to the High Arts, but the Kalsaaris knew a surprising number of strange and terrifying tricks of the arcane. Kalsaari magecraft was as valuable and rare as it was illegal, including the proscribed arts of both biomancy and necromancy, and their talents with the Low Arts of alchemy, talismancy, and thaumaturgy were clearly superior to those practiced in the West. Considering that he had recently been framed for trafficking in biomancy
and
had even more recently fallen victim to a rather advanced case of talismancy, Tyvian thought the presence of a Kalsaari princess in Freegate was more than a coincidence.

At length, he snorted. “She's probably just here slumming on her father's dime.”

Carlo shrugged, “Who knows? The Lord Mayor, of course, is up in arms about the whole situation, and nobody listens to him anyway, especially when the gold keeps flowing from the Hanim's purse. All I know is that my usual contacts have been trying to get some information on this for weeks and have come up with precious little.”

Tyvian snorted. “Well, it's none of my concern, in any case. I have unfinished business.”

“Hendrieux,” Carlo said calmly. It was not a question.

“Have you seen him?” Tyvian asked, trying to keep his voice calm. The thought of Hendrieux's betrayal was enough to boil his stomach.

Carlo grimaced. “Tyvian, Tyvian—­you know my policy. I never get involved in vendettas.”

“Just tell me if he's in the city.”

“Should he come to me and ask me about you, should I return the favor?” Carlo countered, draining his teacup in one quick gulp.

Tyvian licked his lips; conversations with Carlo were usually rife with subtext, and the underlying inferences that could be drawn from that last statement were tantalizing. “He won't come. He thinks I'm dead.”

Carlo leaned back on his cushion and closed his one good eye. “Hendrieux is in Freegate.”

“That was all I needed to know.”

Carlo opened his eye a crack. “That information wasn't free, you know.”

Tyvian nodded. “Of course. How much?”

Carlo pointed through the wall behind Tyvian. “Tell me who that tall, willowy beauty in the casterlocks is.”

Tyvian sighed. “A Mage Defender of the Balance.”

“Which one? A name, please.” Carlo yawned. “Tell me more about Hendrieux and I'll consider it.” Carlo was hinting at something; Tyvian knew he knew much more than he could let on, but Carlo's evasiveness seemed to suggest that he wasn't comfortable letting him
know
that he knew. That either meant Carlo was involved in something extremely dangerous, or that Carlo was actively plotting against him. Those two options, of course, were not mutually exclusive.

“Oh,” Carlo chuckled, “haggling, are we? Forget it—­I don't care so much as that.”

“Really?” Tyvian said, eyebrows rising, “I have a captive Defender of the Balance—­a blonde, at that—­and you don't care what her name is? Unlikely.”

Carlo pointed at the door. “That's the way out, Tyvian.”

Tyvian stood and turned to leave. “You know, you never
did
tell me what you've done to make me want to kill you.”

“I was joking.” Carlo said, and then shooed Tyvian away like a fly.

Tyvian put his hand on the doorknob and stopped suddenly.
That was it.
He looked over his shoulder. “Allow me to guess—­you've been doing a lot more business with Hendrieux lately, haven't you? He's been buying a lot of information.”

Carlo shook his head. “Not true.”

Tyvian turned back and sat down. He grinned broadly. “Yes he has—­why else would you be worried about him asking for me? Hendrieux would have no reason to come to you about me, as I said, so that means he's coming in here all the time for reasons completely unrelated to me, doesn't it?”

Carlo glared at Tyvian but said nothing. To eavesdroppers—­and Carlo
always
assumed he had eavesdroppers—­it would seem Tyvian were prying information out of the old Verisi. In the private language that Tyvian and Carlo had built up over the years, however, it was tantamount to a thundering yes.

Still, Tyvian knew he had to play it all up. Talking with Carlo was always half real, half elaborate mummer's farce. “Does it have anything to do with the fact that the Phantom Guild is buying practitioners of the Low Arts off any lowlife with a club and a sack?”

Carlo snorted. “As though Freegate has any shortage of lowlifes, clubs, and sacks. The kidnapping trade is what it always is.”

Tyvian kept his gaze level—­that last meant Carlo wasn't sure himself. Fair enough. “Information, Carlo. Give it to me.”

“Why should I? You know my policies—­why jeopardize them for a dead man?”

“I'm
not
dead.”
I'm in danger, am I?

Carlo didn't blink as he spoke. “If you start fooling with Hendrieux, you will be soon enough.”

“Hendrieux's a sleazy cutthroat and a thug. He doesn't worry me.” Tyvian, though, felt a tiny knot of worry nestling itself into his innards. Carlo was being far too direct now; it might be that he actually
was
worried about him.

“It's not Hendrieux you need to . . .” Carlo sighed. “
Kroth's teeth
, boy—­I'm not telling you anything else. You'll endanger my reputation.”

That meant Carlo was too close to the trouble, whatever it was, and couldn't even hint at more without some kind of external coercion on his own part. Fortunately, he had just the thing. He jerked a thumb through the door behind him. “You see that gnoll out there? She's after Hendrieux, too. She can track a man over miles of snow-­covered country, so she can probably find out if Zazlar's been here—­his stink is probably on the curtains or the pillows. Suppose I were to mention to her that you've
seen
Hendrieux and that you might know what Hendrieux has done with what she's after?”

Carlo's crystal eye was fixed on the door, or, rather, the gnoll beyond it. “What is she after, then? Money?”

“Not money, Carlo. Her
children
.”

For the first time in Tyvian's memory, the color drained from Carlo diCarlo's mustachioed face. He swallowed a lump in his throat, which Tyvian granted was a wonderful effect. “This . . . this is extortion.”

“How clever of you to identify it.”

“You . . . you don't understand, Tyvian.” Carlo spoke hurriedly and softly; Tyvian honestly couldn't tell if the man was actually terrified or not. “You haven't seen what gnolls can do. They attack settlements in Veris sometimes—­they skin ­people like rabbits, make them into
capes
.”

“I think she'd get a whole greatcoat out of you, Carlo.”

Carlo jumped as though bitten, causing his crystal eye to fall loose. “Ah! She's looking this way!”

“Tell me where Hendrieux is.”