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Nighters with their furs and leathers, not to mention their swampy aroma, attracted attention at the best of times. A gimpy Nighter trailing after a respectably dressed merchant attracted extra attention. Someone, seeing them and recognizing Bezul, had run ahead to the changing house. Jopze had left his comfortable post inside the changing house and taken up position beneath the baker's awning a few doors up Wriggle Way. A barrel stave leaned in easy reach against the wall.
Bezul caught Jopze's eye and shook his head twice, assuring the old soldier that, however strange it looked, he wasn't in need of protection. Jopze picked up the stave and followed them to the changing house where Ammen, their other guard, had remained with the family and customers.
Before he could finish, Chersey ran from behind the heavy wooden counter. She was all smiles and clearly hadn't noticed Dace.
"It was all for nothing," she told him. "Your brother showed up not long after you left—shirt and all. I told him what had happened—how frightened we were and how you'd gone after him. He laughed, like it was nothing at all, and said it had to be the laundress; he was missing a shirt…" Chersey's voice trailed. She'd gotten an eyeful of Dace. "What—? Who—?"
"Meet my brother's laundress," Bezul said bitterly and began his own version of the morning's events.
He was cautious at first, expecting Gedozia or Perrez himself to challenge him from the shadows, but Chersey had said—when Bezul paused for breath—that Gedozia and the children hadn't returned from the farmers' market—held this week, on account of the tournament, in the cemetery outside the walls—and Perrez had stayed at the changing house only long enough to "borrow" three shaboozh.
"He said he had work to do," Chersey explained. "Something big—isn't it always? He was meeting a man. I couldn't tell whether he was buying or selling—but it wasn't anything to do with the tournament. Your brother was beside himself, Bez. All bright-eyed and high-colored, as though he'd been drinking. I didn't know what to make of him so I gave him one shaboozh and told him to come back later, when you'd gotten back, if he needed more."
One shaboozh was two more than Perrez deserved.
There was more that Chersey wasn't saying. Bezul knew that by the way she fussed with her silver-gray moonstone ring. It was a magical ring—not particularly potent, but useful for assessing intentions, useful when you made your living buying and selling. He watched his wife take Dace's measure with a casual gesture, lining the ring up with the Nighter's face as she tucked a stray lock of hair behind her ear.
They needed to talk and if Bezul had been thinking he would have helped Chersey clear their customers out of the shop before they talked further about Perrez's indiscretions. Or perhaps not. Bezul had restrained himself far too long on his brother's account, and his mother's. Suddenly, he no longer cared. Let the gossips spread the tale of how the changer's brother had swindled a crippled Nighter out of a lump of red glass throughout the quarter, throughout Sanctuary. Let Perrez feel their eyes burning his neck and hang his head in shame for a change.
Words spilled out of Bezul, honest and acid, until his belly was empty and he asked, "I don't suppose he left that damned red lucky here?"
Chersey shook her head. Mistress Glary—the greatest snoop in all Sanctuary—slipped out the door, careful not to let the hem of her dress brush against the slack-jawed Nighter. Her departure broke the spell of curiosity. The other customers clamored to complete their business. Bezul joined his wife behind the counter: twenty padpols exchanged for a pair of boots with patched soles, a copper-lined pot exchanged for four shaboozh, one of them a royal shaboozh minted in llsig, not Sanctuary; and a child's fur-lined cloak swapped even for a larger one of boiled wool and a pair of woolen breeches.
Dace blinked often enough, but he didn't move, didn't say a word as the changing house conducted its business. As birds flew, the Prince's gate on the east side of Sanctuary was farther from Wriggle Way than the Swamp of Night Secrets, but Dace might just as well have fallen from the moon for all he seemed to grasp of ordinary trade.
"No, we owe him—" Bezul rubbed his brow. He'd acquired a headache between Stink Street and home. "We owe him a 'lucky.' " He turned to Chersey. "That chest of my father's. The one with the glass bulbs Ayse loves to play with, it's—?"
"In the woodshed behind the a
Bezul leaned forward to kiss his wife on the cheek.
She whispered, "I knew Perrez was lying about something, but I couldn't get him to say what. That's why I wouldn't give him three shaboozh—I'd guessed he wanted it for wine. I never thought—"
"Who could?" Bezul replied in the same tone. "There'll be a reckoning this time, I swear it. The children are getting old enough to notice."
"What about that one? The Nighter… the boy."
"We'll give him a 'lucky' and send him back to the swamp." Bezul sighed. "I don't know which I find harder to believe: that my brother stole crab-trap bait or that he promised to take that poor, frog-eating bastard on as a partner."
Chersey put an arm's length between herself and her husband. "Could you be wrong about the bait?"
"I could be wrong about everything, Chersey. Why?"
"It's just—"
She twisted the moonstone ring and revealed an oval patch of reddened skin on her finger. Bezul gasped. The ring had been in his family since their goldsmithing days. It had kept them safe—almost—from the Hand and even in the face of Retribution himself, Dyareela's right hand in Sanctuary, the ring hadn't harmed the slender finger that wore it.
"I was suspicious," Chersey confessed. "So I ke
She blushed and Bezul tried to reassure her while asking, "Did you see which way he headed?"
"Out, that's all. We've been busy all morning. Maybe Jopze saw something. He was near the door, but I doubt it."
Bezul's headache was getting worse by the heartbeat.
"I'll go down to the tavern after we're done with Dace—the Nigh-ter. I'll talk to him, get to the bottom of this."
He left his wife smiling and went outside to the woodshed where the dusty air aggravated his headache and the big urn was at least twice as heavy as he remembered. Bezul had his arms full and his cheek pressed against the porphyry when he heard footfalls behind him. "Give me a hand, here," he said, expecting that Chersey had sent Jopze or Ammen out to help, but the arms that slid around the polished stone were Gedozia's.
"You won't find your brother in any tavern around here."
Bezul raised his arm—in anger or sheer frustration, he couldn't have said which. After a moment, it dropped to his side again. "You knew," he accused her. "This morning, I asked you where he'd gone and you said you didn't know."
"And I didn't!" Gedozia insisted. "Oh, Bezul, this has nothing to do with that Nighter stinking up the front room. Perrez found something—"
"A bulb of red glass!"
"Some glass bulb," Gedozia retorted, "if there's an Ilsigi trader willing to pay seventy royals for it."
Bezul blanched at the sum, though, surely, if something were worth seventy golden royals in Sanctuary, it would be worth seven hundred in the king's city.
"Perrez came by to tell me this morning. Seventy royals! He's been working with this trader all winter. Yesterday the trader finally got serious and offered some earnest money. Today Perrez said he was turning it over—the red glass—and getting the full seventy royals. Seventy! He was so excited. He swore me to secrecy because he wanted to tell you himself, Bezul, to show you what he's made of. But you were already gone—chasing that Nighter—and he had to meet the Ilsigi at midday. Think of it: seventy royals! I told your father, 'Bezulshash, it's not enough, not what he deserves, but it's a start.' I went to market to buy food for a feast—tried to, the city's up to here with people who think they're going to win more than seventy royals tomorrow and are spending their wi