Страница 32 из 158
Her house smelled like oil, sweat, stone dust and heated metal. The interior was one tall, hollow space, the strangest cluttered conglomeration Jean had ever seen. There were man-sized arched windows on the right— and left-hand walls, but every other inch of wall space was taken up with a sort of scaffolding that supported a hundred wooden shelves crammed with tools, materials and junk. At the top of the scaffolding, set upon a makeshift floor of planks, Jean could see a sleeping pallet and a desk beneath a pair of hanging alchemical lamps. Ladders and leather cords hung down in several places; books and scrolls and half-empty corked bottles covered most of the floor. "If I" ve come at a bad time—" "It's usually a bad time, Young Master Interloper. A client with an interesting request is about the only thing that ever changes that. So what's it to be?"
"Guildmistress Gallardine, everyone I" ve asked has sworn that the most subtle, most accomplished, most imitated artificer in all of Tal Verrar is none other than y—"
"Stop bathing me with your flattery, boy," said the old woman, waving her hands. "Look around you. Gears and levers, weights and chains. You don't need to lick them with pretty words to make them work — nor me."
"As you wish," said Jean, straightening up and reaching within his coat. "I couldn't live with myself if I didn't extend one small courtesy, however."
From within his coat he brought forth a small package wrapped in cloth-of-silver. The neat corners of the wrapping were drawn together beneath a red wax seal, stamped into a curled disc of shaved gold.
Jean's informants had all mentioned Gallardine's single human failing: a taste for presents as strong as her distaste for flattery and interruptions. She knitted her eyebrows, but did manage a ghost of an anticipatory smile as she took the package in her tattooed hands.
"Well," she said, "well, we must all certainly be able to live with ourselves…"
She popped the disc-seal and pried the cloth-of silver apart with the eagerness of a little girl. The package contained a rectangular bottle with a brass stopper, filled with milky white liquid. She sucked in her breath when she read the label.
"White Plum Austershalin," she whispered. "Twelve gods. Who have you been speaking to?"
Brandy mixes were a Tal Verrar peculiarity: fine brandies from elsewhere (in this case, the peerless Austershalin of Emberlain) mixed with local liquor from rare alchemical fruits (and there were none rarer than the heavenly white plum), bottled and aged together to produce cordials that could blast the tongue into numbness with the richness of their flavour. The bottle held perhaps two glasses of White Plum Austershalin, and it was worth forty-five solari.
"A few knowledgeable souls," said Jean, "who said you might appreciate a modest draught." "This is hardly modest, Master…" "De Ferra. Jerome de Ferra, at your service."
"Quite the opposite, Master de Ferra. What do you want me to do for you?"
"Well — if you" d really prefer to get to the nub of the matter, I don't have a specific need just yet. What I have are… questions." "About what?" "Vaults."
Guildmistress Gallardine cradled her brandy mix like a new baby and said, "Vaults, Master de Ferra? Simple storage vaults, with mechanical conveniences, or secure vaults, with mechanical defences?" "My taste, madam, runs more toward the latter." "What is it you wish to guard?"
"Nothing," said Jean. "It is more a matter of something I wish to un-guard."
"Are you locked out of a vault? Needing someone to loosen it up a bit for you?" "Yes, madam. It's just…" "Just what?"
Jean licked his lips again and smiled. "I had heard, well, credible rumours that you might be amenable to the sort of work I might suggest."
She fixed him with a knowing stare. "Are you implying that you don't necessarily own the vault that you're locked out of?" "Heh. Not necessarily, no."
She paced around the floor of her house, stepping over books and bottles and mechanical devices.
"The law of the Great Guild," she said at last, "forbids any one of us from directly interfering with the work of another, save by invitation, or at the need of the state." There was another pause. "However… it's not unknown for advice to be given, schematics to be examined… in the interest of advancing the craft, you understand. It's a form of testing to destruction. It's how we critique one another, as it were."
"Advice would be all that I ask," said Jean. "I don't even need a locksmith; I just need information to arm a locksmith."
"There are few who could better arm such a one than myself. Before we discuss the matter of compensation, tell me — do you know the designer of the vault you" ve got your eyes on?" "I do." "And it is?" "Azura Gallardine." f
The guildmistress took a step away from him, as though a forked tongue had suddenly flicked out between his lips. "Help you circumvent my own work? Are you mad?"
"I had hoped," said Jean, "that the identity of the vault-owner might be one that wouldn't raise any particular pangs of sympathy." "Who and where?" "Requin. The Sinspire."
"Twelve gods, you are mad!" Gallardine glanced around as though checking the room for spies before she continued. "That certainly does raise pangs of sympathy! Sympathy for myself!"
"My pockets are deep, Guildmistress. Surely there must be a sum that would alleviate your qualms?"
"There is no sum in this world," said the old woman, "large enough to convince me to give you what you ask for. Your accent, Master de Ferra… I believe I place it. You're from Talisham, are you not?" "Yes." "And Requin — you" ve studied him, have you?" "Thoroughly, of course."
"Nonsense. If you" d studied him thoroughly, you wouldn't be here. Let me tell you a little something about Requin, you poor rich Talishani simpleton. Do you know that woman of his, Selendri? The one with the brass hand?" "I" ve heard that he keeps no other close to him." "And that's all you know?" "Ah, more or less."
"Until several years ago," said Gallardine, "it was Requin's custom to host a grand masque at the Sinspire each Day of Changes. A mad revel, in thousand-solari costumes, of which his were always the grandest. Well, one year he and that beautiful young woman of his decided to switch costumes and masks. On a whim.
"An assassin," she continued, "had dusted the inside of Requin's costume with something devilish. The blackest sort of alchemy, a kind of aqua regia for human flesh. It was just a powder… it needed sweat and warmth to bring it to life. And so that woman wore it for nearly half an hour, until she'd just begun to sweat and enjoy herself. And that's when she started to scream.
"I wasn't there. But there were artificers of my acquaintance in the crowd, and they say she screamed and screamed until her voice broke. Until there was nothing coming from her throat but a hiss, and still she kept trying to scream. Only one side of the costume was doused with the stuff… a perverse gesture. Her skin bubbled and ran like hot tar. Her flesh steamed, Master de Ferra. No one had the courage to touch her, except Requin. He cut her costume off, demanded water, worked over her feverishly. He wiped her burning skin clean with his jacket, with scraps of cloth, with his bare hands. He was so badly burned himself that he wears gloves to this day, to hide his own scars." "Astonishing,"said Jean.
"He saved her life," said Gallardine, "what was left of it to save. Surely you" ve seen her face. One eye evaporated, like a grape in a bonfire. Her toes required amputation. Her fingers were burned twigs, her hand a blistered waste. It had to go as well. They had to cut off a breast, Master de Ferra. I assure you, you can have no conception of quite what that means — it would mean much to me now, and it has been many long years since I was last thought comely.