Stealers' Sky

"What are you looking for?" Walegrin protested as his companion neared the expensive end of the wharf. "It's not going to get any cheaper."

She looked at him as if he'd grown another head. *T haven't seen what I need," she a

Walegrin tossed a round-bottom jug back to its owner and scurried to catch up with her. They approached the stem gangplank. Beysibs were buying from Beysibs, wailing in their peculiar language over merchandise only a fish could find attractive. The woman was moving slower now. She stopped beside a greasy man hawking ceramic snakes and indicated that she wished to bargain.

The Beysib was almost as confused as the commander. The woman slashed her hand and shook her head as he lifted one garish reptile after another out of its case. Walegrin had a very crude understanding of the Beysin language, but if he had any hope of getting off the wharf before midday, he was going to have to intervene.

He confined the woman's gesturing hands in his own. "The man's shown you everything he's got. You keep pointing at empty boxes, and he keeps telling you that there's nothing in them to sell."

"You understand him ... ? Then, tell him I want to buy the dross."

"The what?"

"The dross ... Dross-the packing around his wretched statues!"

"Dross?"

Walegrin shook his head. He knew several fish words for garbage, a few of which would likely turn the merchant's bald scalp a brilliant shade of red. He knew the fish word for purchase-if buying a woman's time at a brothel was the same as buying something from a merchant. He opened his eyes as wide as he could and started talking. If his luck ran true to form he was about to create a scandal.

The merchant roared with laughter. He slapped his naked belly and turned the crimson color Walegrin had so hoped not to see. His eyes bugged out. "You joking."

Walegrin swallowed hard and, adding more gestures than he'd used the first time, tried again. He got the feeling that the greasy fish understood him well enough and that the third and fourth tries were simply for the amusement of the other Beysib who'd wandered over to watch the barbarian make a fool of himself.

The ceramics seller guessed that the game had gone on as long as it could. The gales of laughter ceased; he flashed his fingers twice and muttered koppit, which had become the generally accepted name for any of Sanctuary's myriad copper coins.

"Twenty copper bits," Walegrin told the woman.

"Now explain to him that I will pay him forty when he comes back next time, but that I can't pay him anything now,"

This time it took no effort at all for Walegrin to show whites all around his green eyes. "Lady, you must be out of your mind."

She was stung by his sarcasm, but clung to her dignity. "I am a weaver. When I have finished with his dross it will be worth a hundred times his twenty copper bits."

Walegrin dug into the pouch at his hip. "Fine. You can owe me. I'm not going to make a monkey out of myself telling your lunacy to this fish."

Irregular copper disks rained into the merchant's hands. He poured them into his coin coffer, then demanded a silver coin for the box the dross was in. Walegrin threw the coin so hard it bounced, and disappeared between the planks into the harbor. The fish revealed his painted teeth. Walegrin was more careful with the second coin. Walegrin picked up the box carefully; it would have cost another five coppers for rope to bind it shut.

"They throw this stuff into the harbor at the end of the day," the commander complained. "It's garbage. You've paid halfasoldat for garbage you could have fished out of the water tomorrow morning."

She would have preferred to whisper; she would have preferred not to reply at all, but he was her partner now and she felt she owed him an answer. "I know that, but once the salt water touches the dross, it's ruined."

"Lady-"

"Theudebourga. My name is Theudebourga."

Walegrin scowled. "Lady, how can you ruin garbage?"

Theudebourga proceeded to tell him. The wharf was still crowded; they had to go slowly. By the time they had returned to the cart Walegrin knew more about the pernicious effects ofseawater on garbage than he'd wanted to know. Thrusher took one look at the pair of them and instinctively knew to ask no questions until after the box was loaded and the woman on her way.

"The Vulgar Unicorn's probably serving by now," the hawk-faced man suggested. "You look like you could use something to take the taste from your mouth."

The commander allowed himself to be led from the wharf in silence. The Vulgar Unicorn was open, but it was undergoing one of its infrequent cleanings. The shutters and doors were wide open, the common room was awash with sunlight, and workmen were busily repairing a month of damage. The two soldiers kept going until they found themselves beyond the Maze.

Once the Shambles had been as rough a neighborhood as the Maze, though without the Maze's perverse reputation. Later it had swarmed with the dead, the half-dead, and the other assorted leftovers of Sanctuary's magic troubles. Now it was the quarter where newcomers made their homes in abandoned buildings. It was factious enough that the soldiers knew it as well as they knew the Maze, but there were also signs of prosperity. Well-fed children in carefully mended clothes played games beside their mothers, who created gardens wherever sunlight touched the ground.

Not all these diligent women were from way beyond Sanctuary's newly painted walls. Some had been widowed in the years of chaos, some had seized their opportunity and exchanged the Promise of Heaven or the Street of Red Lanterns for ordinary domesticity. Walegrin knew most of them by name, and a few of them much better, but it was understood these days in Sanctuary that you didn't talk about the past without invitation.

The Tinker's Knob was typical of Shambles taverns: salvaged from the wreckage, it had a lingering charred odor, and a cellar no one cared to enter after sundown. Its sole claim to fame, and the inspiration for its name, came from a hammered plaque depicting the exploits of a singularly well endowed tinker.

Walegrin looked right past it.

"Want to talk?" Thrusher asked, pushing a wooden mug across the table.

The commander shook his head, but the skeleton of the story rose out of him. "What's happening to this place?" he asked rhetorically. "An honest soldier helps a foolish woman buy garbage from a merchant whose ancestors were snakes and fish."

Thrusher shook his head. "You could've left when the orders came. You could still leave," he stated the obvious.

Walegrin drained his mug and poured another from the pitcher. He hadn't seriously considered throwing his lot in with the Stepsons when they left. In three years he could convert his officer's commission into a tidy pile of gold and enough land to support a handful of heirs. All his adult life he'd been pla

"Damn your eyes-this is my porking home!" He slammed the mug against the table somewhat more forcefully than he'd'intended. The entire room went wary. Thrusher sat back in his chair, taking careful measure of his commander between cautious sips of ale.

There was no doubt the last few years had aged Walegrin. Gods knew, those years aged everyone they hadn't killed. Age had softened the angles of the commander's face, giving it the semblance of wisdom without compromising its strength. He was a good deal calmer than he'd been before leading his men back to the city of his birth with the secret of Enlibar steel almost five years ago.

Thrusher reckoned he might head north to the capital himself if the haunted, self-cursed Walegrin reappeared-and with that reckoning, the lieutenant got a handle on his friend's problem.