round table, with two cups and a wine bottle on it.
'Drink,' she said; not a suggestion or an offer, just a statement of fact. She tilted the bottle, pushed one cup across the table at him, and sat down.
'Thanks,' he said, leaving the cup where it was. 'Did-what did you say his name was?'
'Marcellinus. And no, he didn't say what you wanted to see me about. I can guess, though.'
Vaatzes nodded. 'Go on, then,' he said.
'You're an engineer, aren't you?' she said, wiping her mouth on her left forefinger. 'Blacksmith, metalworker, whatever. You need materials. Someone told you I used to be in business, trading east with the Cure Doce.' She shook her head. 'Whoever told you that's way behind the times. I retired. Bad knee,' she added, squeezing her right kneecap. 'So, sorry, can't help you.'
'Actually,' Vaatzes smiled, 'the man at the Poverty and Justice did tell me you'd retired, but it wasn't business I wanted to talk to you about. At least,' he added, 'not directly.'
'Oh.' She looked at him as though he'd just slithered out of check and taken her queen. 'Well, in that case, what can I do for you?'
Vaatzes edged a little closer. 'Your late husband,' he said.
'Oh. Him.'
'Yes.' He picked up the wine cup but didn't drink anything. 'I understand that he used to lead a mule-train out along the southern border occasionally. Is that right?'
She pulled a face, as though trying to remember something unimportant from a long time ago. It was a reasonable performance, but she held it just a fraction too long. 'Salt,' she said. 'There's some place in the desert where they dig it out of the ground. A couple of times he went down there to the market, where they take the stuff to sell it off. Thought he could make a profit but the margins were too tight. Mind you,' she added, 'that's got to be, what, twenty years ago, and we weren't living here then, it was while we were still in Chora. Lost a fair bit of money, one way and another.'
Vaatzes nodded. 'That's more or less what I'd heard,' he said.
She looked up at him. 'Why?' she asked. 'You thinking of going into the salt business?'
'It had crossed my mind.'
'Forget it.' She waved her hand, as though swatting a fat, blind fly. 'The salt trade's all tied up, has been for years. Your lot, mostly, the Mezentines. They run everything now.'
'But not twenty years ago,' Vaatzes said quietly, and that made her look at him again. 'And besides, even now they mostly buy through intermediaries. Cure Doce, as I understand.'
'Could be.' She yawned, revealing an unexpectedly pristine set of teeth. 'I never got into that particular venture very much. Knew from the outset it was a dead end. If he'd listened to me, maybe things'd be very different now.' She tilted the bottle over her cup, but Vaatzes could see it was already three-quarters full. 'When we were living in Chora-'
'I expect you had something to do with it,' he said mildly. 'Presumably you were buying the stock he took with him to trade for the salt.'
'Could be. Can't remember.' She yawned again, but she was picking at a loose thread on her sleeve. 'That was my side of the business back then, yes. I'd buy the stuff in Chora, he'd take it out to wherever he was trading that year. Never worked out. Any margin I managed to make at home, he'd blow it all out in the wilderness somewhere. That's what made me throw him out, eventually.'
'I can see it must've been frustrating for you,' Vaatzes said. 'But to get back to the salt. Can you remember who it was he used to buy it from? The miners, I mean, the people who dug it out of the ground.'
She looked at him, and she most certainly wasn't drunk or rambling. 'I don't think he ever mentioned it,' she said. 'Just salt-miners, that's all.'
'Are you sure?' Vaatzes raised his eyebrows. 'I'd have thought that if you were trading with them, you'd have known a bit about them. So as to know what they'd be likely to want, in exchange for the salt.'
'You'd have thought.' She shrugged. 'I guess that's how come we lost so much money.'
Vaatzes smiled. 'I see,' he said. 'Well, that explains that. It's a shame, though.'
He leaned back in his chair and sipped a little of the wine. It was actually quite good. She waited for rather a long time, then scowled.
'Are you really thinking about going into the salt business?'
He nodded. 'And of course,' he went on, 'I wouldn't expect an experienced businesswoman to go around giving valuable trade secrets away for nothing.' She nodded, very slightly. He went on, 'Unfortunately, until I've got finance of my own, backers, I haven't got anything to offer up front, in exchange for valuable information.'
'Ah.'
'But.' He waited for a moment, then continued. 'It occurred to me, however, that you might be interested in a partnership. Of sorts,' he added quickly, as she looked up at him sharply. 'I'm sure you know far more about this sort of thing than I do; but the way I see it is, I can't get any serious funding for the idea unless I've got something hard to convince a potential backer with. Once I've got the money, of course…'
'I see,' she said, with a sour little smile. 'I tell you what I know, you take that and get your funding with it, and we settle up afterward, when the business is up and running.' She sighed. 'No disrespect, but what are you bringing to the deal?'
He smiled. 'Energy,' he said. 'Youth. Boundless enthusiasm. And the information isn't doing you any good as it is,' he added. 'It's just cluttering up your mind, like inherited furniture.'
Her scowl deepened. 'There'd have to be a contract,' she said.
'Of course,' Vaatzes said, smiling. 'All properly written up and sealed and everything.'
'Ten percent.'
'Five.'
She made a vague grunting noise, shook her head. 'Fair enough,' she said. 'It's a waste of your time and effort, mind, there never was a margin in it.'
'Times have changed,' Vaatzes said. 'The war, for one thing.'
'What's the war got to do with it?'
He gave her a fancy-you-not-guessing look. 'All those soldiers,' he said, 'on both sides, living off field rations. You know the sort of thing: salt beef, salt pork, bacon…'
She blinked. 'That's true,' she said. She hesitated, then added, 'The Mezentines always used to buy off the Cure Doce, at Mundus Vergens. Don't suppose the Cure Doce go there much anymore, what with the guerrillas and all.' She scratched her nose; the first unselfconscious gesture he'd seen her make. 'I wonder how they're getting salt nowadays,' she said.
'From Lonazep,' Vaatzes said briskly. 'I have done a little bit of research, you see. It's coming in there from somewhere, but nobody's sure where. But it's rock salt; Valens' men have found enough of it in the ration bags of dead Mezentines to know that. So it must ultimately be coming from the desert; and no army can keep going without salt, not if they're far from home, at the long end of their supply line. So if someone could find the producers and buy up the entire supply-well, that'd be a worthwhile contribution to the war effort, in my opinion. What do you think?'
She was scowling at him again. 'I should've known you'd be political,' she said.
'Me?' He shook his head. 'Not in my nature. But I think that if I had solid information to go on, I could get some money out of the Duke. I've got a living to earn, after all. It looks like I'm going to be stuck here for a long time, maybe the rest of my life. It's about time I settled down and got a job.'
She breathed out slowly. 'Like I said,' she replied, 'there'd have to be a written agreement. You come back with that and I might have something for you.'
Vaatzes tried not to be too obvious about taking a breath. 'A map?'
'Who said anything about a map?'
'The Duke would want there to be a map,' Vaatzes said. 'A genuine one,' he added sternly, 'not one that smudges as soon as he opens it.'
'There might be one,' she said slowly. 'I'd have to look. There's loads of his old junk up in the roof. Maybe not a map, but there could be a journal. Bearings, number of days traveled, names of places and people. Better than a map, really.'
Vaatzes dipped his head. 'As you say.' He stood up. 'If you happen to come across it, don't throw it
