Thieves' World: Enemies of Fortune (16 page)

Chersey’s mother-wit counseled responsibility. The girl was trouble. On the other hand, Dace was nearly grown and she wasn’t his mother. She reached for the sack.

The boy brightened. “I’ll be back in good time to start the supper!”

Bezul caught Chersey’s eye as the pair left. Chersey shrugged. She liked having someone to do the kitchen chores, but she didn’t expect the respite to last forever.

“Y
ou should have gone to a goldsmith,” Dace said as he kept pace, barely, with the woman of his current fantasies.

Geddie gave a snort worthy of an overheated horse. “And get cheated even worse? When I can dress myself like a lady, then I’ll go where ladies go.”

“Where’s One-Eye Reesch?”

“In the bazaar. With what I got for that statue, I can buy myself some good-fortune oil. I’m telling you, I’m due for good fortune. I’m not spending my life on Wriggle Way.”

Dace had never heard of good-fortune oils. At the very least, he’d meet someone new and fill in another gap or two in his knowledge of life beyond the Swamp of Night Secrets. He would have been happier if Geddie looked at him when she spoke, but she wasn’t telling him to get lost.

Though Geddie insisted that the bazaar was quiet, almost deserted, Dace was left agog by the sights, sounds, and smells. He didn’t dare ask questions, though, lest Geddie get the wrong impression or abandon him among the stalls.

Geddie navigated and brought them to the large wooden stall where One-Eye Reesch both lived and worked. Mostly, the gray-haired, patch-eyed trader sold metal lamps and colorful glass goblets, but when Geddie mentioned fortune oils, he winked his good eye and led her to a wicker chest, maybe two feet on each side, stuffed with straw and waxstoppered vials.

“Can you read?” Geddie hissed.

Dace winced. Chersey was teaching him Ilsigi letters, same as she taught five-year-old Ayse. He could recognize a few words and enough letters to know that the writing on the bottles wasn’t Ilsigi.

Reesch had overheard. “No problem. The blue ones are for money, the red for true love, the green ones will get rid of sickness, and the blacks will break a hex.”

Geddie wanted vials in red and blue, but her money wouldn’t stretch that far. The smallest red vial was three shaboozh. The blue vials were cheaper. For two and ten Geddie could buy a fist-sized vial of fortune. Geddie bar- gained Reesch down to two and seven. She slipped the precious vial inside her bodice.

“Fortune comes first,” she told Dace as they headed out of the bazaar. “This oil’s going to pull me a froggin’ rich man. Once I have money, love will follow.”

“What if your true love happened to be poor?” Dace didn’t add crippled; there was no sense in tempting fate.

“He won’t be. I’ve had my palm read: My love line joins my money line. You want to share?”

“Share what?”

“My fortune oil! Soon as I get home, I’m going to burn some. You want to sit beside me? You need all the help you can »

Dace agreed. His hopes soared, until Geddie asked—

“Is Perrez rich?”

In self-defense, Dace answered, “No.”

“But he looks so fine in his white shirts, and he knows everyone. I’ve watched him in the Frog.”

“Most of the time Perrez works for Bezul. He’ll be working for Bezul when he brokers your statue. That means what he gets goes to Bezul—most of it, anyway. He only keeps it all when he brokers something he found—” Dace caught himself on the verge of a secret and clammed up.

Geddie wasn’t fooled. “What has he found?”

“Well, he didn’t
find
it, exactly. He made a trade—with a fisherman. You’ve heard the rumors—there’s some mystery wreck out on the reef. No one knows anything about it, but the fishermen are picking it clean. Guess the fisherman thought the thing was cursed and wanted to be rid of it. Perrez says it’s going to make him rich.”

“What kind of thing is it?”

Dace shook his head.

“C’mon—you can tell me. I won’t tell anyone.”

“It’s a black rod, half as long as my arm from elbow to wrist. There’s a gold dragon wrapped around the tip and honey amber wired to the base.”

Geddie’s eyes and mouth widened into circles. “Froggin’ sure that’s sorcery.”

“That’s what Perrez thinks. He hasn’t told anyone but me. Not even Bezul. He’s keeping it—” Dace caught himself again. “Keeping it safe until he can sell it. Not here. He’s going to consign it up to Ilsig. Lord Noordiseh’s his vouchsafe—’cause he knows Kingdom lords who’re richer than all Sanctuary put together. I took the message straight to Lord Noordiseh—”

“You’ve met Lord Noordiseh?” There was new respect in Geddie’s voice.

“I saw him this morning.”

Geddie stopped short and gave Dace a once-over. He bore her appraisal without flinching. He
had
delivered Perrez’s message to Lord Noordiseh’s mansion—and waited at the back door all afternoon for an answer that never came. And he
had
seen the nabob on his way back from the market. His heart leaped when Geddie slipped her hand beneath his left arm. Walking close to anyone was a challenge with the crutch but he managed all the way to the Frog and Bucket.

Geddie’s room was beneath the tavern’s roof and accessible only by a rickety outside stairway. Dace didn’t like using stairways, especially when he could see between the risers. He planted his crutch, held his breath, hopped, and hoped. His teeth hurt from clenching by the time he got to the landing and he stayed close to the wall until Geddie undid her latch knot. She ushered him into a stiflingly hot room scarcely large enough for a narrow cot, a couple of baskets, and a tied-together table. For sitting, there was a three-legged stool.

Dace disliked stools almost as much as he disliked stairs, but he wasn’t forward enough to sit on the cot, so he stood while Geddie lit the lamp with a sparker, set it on the stool, set the stool by the cot, sat down, and patted the mattress beside her.

Dace didn’t need a second invitation. The warmth of Geddie’s thigh was palpable against his and she hadn’t bothered to tidy her bodice after retrieving the vial. He sucked in a lungful of smoke after Geddie shook a few drops of fortune oil into the lamp, but he already had his good fortune. Her small, pale breast was visible within the cloth. Dace tried not to stare. It was a lost cause, but Geddie didn’t seem to mind.

“Take another breath,” she urged, leaning toward the lamp.

He could see everything then, from root to nipple. The forbidden sight took his breath away and he choked on the vapors.

Geddie pounded between his shoulder blades. “Shite for guts, haven’t you done this before?”

Between gasps, Dace shook his head.

“Want something
easier?
Something
better?”

Good fortune indeed! Dace nodded vigorously. He wasn’t sure what came next, then Geddie shoved a pitcher into his hands.

“Go downstairs and buy some wine.”

Downstairs was worse than upstairs, but he’d do it for the reward he thought she’d promised. Except—Except—

“I don’t drink much. I have enough trouble staying upright as is.” He laughed, but the joke fell flat.

“You don’t have to
drink.
All’s you’ve got to do is dip.”

Dace wouldn’t admit it, but he didn’t understand that remark. He had another painful confession: “I’ve only got three padpols.”

“That’s enough.”

Three padpols of the Frog’s cheapest wine filled the pitcher halfway. Four padpols and he’d have spilled some struggling up the stairs a second time. Geddie had her head in the lamp fumes when he opened the door. She called him to the cot with a question:

“Ever done
opah?”

Dace felt like a wet-eared puppy, shaking his head for the umpteenth time.

She patted the cot. “I’ll show you.”

Obediently, Dace sat beside her. Geddie produced a palm-sized square of dirt-crusted cloth.

“Here. Just dip the corner into the wine”—she demonstrated the proper motion—“and hold it against the tip of your tongue.”

The first sensation was an alarming bitterness, but the second, a heartbeat later, was a tingling that raced down Dace’s throat and down his arms as well. He pulled away from the strangeness. Geddie laughed, re-dipped the cloth, and challenged him to stick out his tongue again. Unwilling to be shown up by a woman, Dace obliged. The tingling shot down his spine like ice and fire together.

“Now, suck the wine out,” Geddie commanded. “Suck hard.”

A part of Dace knew that was a bad idea, that nothing that made him feel so
odd
could possibly be a good thing. But that wasn’t the part he listened to. He closed his lips over the cloth and sucked for all he was worth.

The bitterness damn near took his breath away and the tingling—“tingling” wasn’t the right word. Dace’s flesh quivered and his body seemed to expand. His eyes watered. When they cleared there new colors everywhere, colors Dace could taste and hear.

He watched in rapt fascination as Geddie repeated the process for herself. Her eyes closed as she released the cloth and lolled back on the cot. Dace’s arm moved toward her breast, which was also the location of the damp cloth. He barely stopped his arm in time and wasn’t completely certain which he’d been reaching for.

“So, now you’ve done
opah,”
Geddie told him in a dreamy, distant voice. “Ready to do it again?”

Dace didn’t need to think. The unpleasant quivery sensation had passed and he felt … he felt better than he’d ever felt Even the pain in his leg that had been a part of him forever was gone. He reached again … for the cloth. Geddie met his hand halfway. Their hands touched. Dace felt the tiny ridges on her fingertips and much, much more. He did the
opah
a second time, and a third, and there was nothing he couldn’t have done after that third dosing.

Geddie poured more fortune oil. They knocked foreheads over the fumes and collapsed, laughing, against each other. Dace endeavored to untangle himself, but, as good as the
opah
made him feel, his hands weren’t moving quite the way he expected them to. He was still solving that problem when Geddie’s hand closed over his shirt and pulled him close.

T
he brutal heel of midsummer settled firmly on Sanctuary’s collective neck. Life slowed especially during the midday hours. Bezul retreated to the warrens where there was always something that needed straightening—and where the shadows were still cool. Chersey retreated to the kitchen. She poured tea from the jug in the sump and sipped liquid, marginally cooler than the air.

The children played in the courtyard under Gedozia’s watchful eye. Neither the old woman nor the youngsters seemed to feel the heat as heavily as working folk. Little Ayse laughted as she chased one of Sanctuary’s gem-colored bugs and distracted Chersey from other concerns.

Dace hadn’t returned from the market. He’d left at sunrise, as usual—or as close to usual as he’d been since taking up with that girl from the Frog and Bucket. Geddie was no sorceress, but she’d cast a spell over the naive Nighter all the same. The boy’s habits now included evening visits to her room above the tavern. He’d roll in late, reeking of wine and a bitter perfume Chersey couldn’t place. Even Perrez had noticed the deterioration.

Talk about the pot calling the kettle black!

Perrez had been skulking lately. Something to do with the shipwreck fishermen had discovered on the reefs where they caught their summer fish. Chersey didn’t know—didn’t
want
to know—what Perrez had gotten himself into this time. So long as he didn’t involve the rest of the household, she preferred to ignore her brother-in-law’s affairs.

Chersey took another sip of tea and succumbed to the thoughtless drowse of a too-hot morning. The next thing she knew there was noise at the kitchen door. Dace with the sack slung carelessly over his shoulder and sweat beading on his face.

“The market’s frogged for fair.” He’d never used language like that before Geddie.

She replied, “The heat’s hard on everything.”

“The heat and some sheep-shite nabobs. There wasn’t a melon to be had and the beans weren’t fit for pigs.”

Dace emptied the sack on the sideboard. The fish were stiff and glistening with salt, the cheese glowed waxy from the heat, and the greens were wilted. Not an appetizing array, but unless you lived rich, you didn’t expect appetizing meals day-in and day-out. The palace wasn’t the problem—the Irrune ate like animals: meat, grains, and wine or ale. It was the city’s own aristocrats that bled the markets dry. Chersey couldn’t count the number of times Gedozia had returned from the market with a half-empty sack and curses galore for the nabobs.

“Don’t worry,” she reassured Dace. “The weather and the market will cool soon enough.”

“Maybe.” Dace picked up a fish by its tail. “Three padpols and look at the size of it! I had to buy two. You can’t tell me that the froggin’ nabobs are feasting on salt-fish! Gets any worse and I’m going to have to go back to baitin’ crabs”

“We’ll get by. We’ve always got eggs—”

The changing house’s security, when not provided by Ammen and Jopze, came from the flock of geese Bezul turned loose every night. The birds were nasty creatures but the changing house had never been robbed and, come morning, there was always a clutch of eggs for Ayse to gather.

“Oh, I’ll find something,” Dace assured her. “But a shaboozh isn’t going as far as it did a month ago. No change again today.”

“We’ll get by.”

Chersey thought of the folk who wouldn’t, the folk who dribbled into the changing house with their precious possessions. This summer was turning into a bad season. Bezul couldn’t pinpoint the reason. They’d had a mild winter and moist spring. The farmers were content, notwithstanding the current heat wave. Content farmers were the surest measure of a content Sanctuary. Yet something lurked below the surface, siphoning off the small change.

“We’ve got sacks of dried lentils out back,” she reminded Dace, “and a barrel of pickled congers for emergencies—” Not anyone’s idea of an appetizing meal, but better than starvation … or overheated prices. “We can live off that for a few weeks.”