ready to go to work?”
“Majesty, first, I want to say that last night I enjoyed my best night of sleep since I came to this wretched kingdom.
This morning I enjoyed my finest breakfast since we left Itaskia. I’m in an excel ent mood. I’m eager to start work. So let’s review what you want me to do.”
“I want you to root through shadows. To turn out hidden secrets. To find things. To find people. Can you do al that?”
“Maybe. Tel me what you’re looking for.”
“Al right. First and most critical: find Colonel Gales. Dead or alive. See Nathan Wolf. He’s done al the looking so far.”
“What else?”
“The treasury money. I’l give you ten percent.”
“Most every minute I bless anew the fate that brought me to you.”
“Let’s hope you feel that way a year from now. Others I want found: General Liakopulos, Michael Trebilcock, and that bitch Kristen Gjerdrumsdottir.”
“The Duke had her kil ed.”
“He tried. He might think he was successful. But she’s stil alive and scheming to make her brat king.” Babeltausque did not argue. Dane of Greyfel s had become the tenant of a dungeon cel because of his ineffable ability to believe anything he wanted to be true.
Inger said, “The money is the most important thing. Then Josiah Gales and any looming threats. Especial y threats to you. You’l become a target for folks who don’t like me. The rest you can deal with when you find time.” Babeltausque said, “As you want it, so shal it be.”
“Sweet talk, sorcerer. But these are desperate times.
Talk won’t help make us the people doing the grinning at the other end.”
“You’ve changed.”
“I have. You won’t find this Inger nearly as nice as the one you remember. This Inger can be quite bloodthirsty. What do you need to make what I want happen?” The sorcerer opened and closed his mouth several times.
Nothing came out.
“Tel me, Babeltausque.” Her tone suggested pain on the way if he did not buckle down now.
...
Dane, Duke of Greyfel s, had a concussion. Its effects were exacerbated by his inability to accept his situation. He was Greyfel s, the Duke, senior member of a noble family that, by God, deserved, by God, to rule Itaskia and several neighboring states. Only continuous, relentless evil conspiracy by lesser men kept the Greyfel s line from claiming its rights.
He was not one to note what had been done to ease his confinement. He had a cot, topped by a mattress. Fresh straw covered the muck on the floor. He was not chained.
He had a stool with a bucket underneath to manage his eliminations. But al he saw was an iron wal with welded straps and rivets that made escape hopeless.
Meals came regularly, through a slot three inches high and sixteen wide. The slops bucket left via its own little door, too smal to pass a man.
Reality took days to dawn. He was completely at Inger’s mercy, and her mercy would be slight at its most generous.
Those who brought food and removed his wastes would not talk. Maybe they did not understand Itaskian. Maybe they were deaf. It was beyond his capacity to understand that most people hated him. Inger’s people thought she was being too soft.
He did see that if he was not heard, if no one listened, if no one understood, he would go nowhere ever again, but while he remained alive the Greyfel s fortunes would remain out in the wind.
More than ever he cursed the idiot he had been when he decided that he could steal a crown for his family.
...
Josiah Gales strove ferociously to pul himself together.
He could not begin to guess how long he had been like this.
He wanted to assess his situation but his head would not clear.
Clever bastards. They did not feed him wel . Teetering at the edge of starvation, he attacked whatever food they brought. Which was drugged. Always.
No one interrogated him. No one cared what he knew.
No one explained why he was a captive.
He had been removed from the equation by a means less harsh than murder. He no longer signified. He might be turned loose later, or maybe retained as a bargaining chip.
Gales saw few of his captors. They did not talk. They did not acknowledge his existence, except that they fed him.
Drugged, it took Gales a while to fathom the rules of his new life.
If he said nothing and did nothing life proceeded with no inconvenience beyond being imprisoned and drugged. It went smoothest when he just quietly contemplated the stupidity that had brought him to this.
His captors evidently bore him no malice. They just wanted him out of the way.
...
An old man entered the apothecary shop in Old Registry Lane. He seemed almost too frail to manage the door.
A girl of fourteen was minding the shop. She was surprised to see him. He smiled a smile ful of fine white teeth, shuffled forward. His body, like his teeth, was in excel ent shape. Apparent infirmity was part of his disguise.
“You’re looking especial y nice this morning, Haida. You make me wish I was ten years younger.”
Haida flushed, flattered, flustered, but not offended. “I’l see if Chames is in back.”
“You don’t know?”
“Not always. He comes and goes without tel ing me. I’m just the help.”
The girl was more than that, though not the plaything some suspected. She was the little sister of someone who had been kil ed, a friend of the man cal ed Chames Marks today.
The old man watched her swish through the hangings in a doorless doorway. He thought Haida would be more than just help if Chames would let her. There was a sparkle in her eye when she said his name.
The old man smiled, turned the sign on the street door to say the chemist was out, then latched the latch.
The wait stretched, five minutes, ten, fifteen. The old man amused himself by studying the pots and jars on the scores of shelves covering al four wal s. Large glass jars contained questionable items in liquids of unusual hue.
Stage dressing, those, mostly. He was interested in the smal phials of imported rarities. Sometimes he paused, nodded. Once he murmured, “Wel !”
The hangings in the back doorway stirred. Haida returned.
Her gaze flicked round, checking for spaces where something had gone missing. “Turn the sign back. People wil wonder. We’re always open during the day. Then come with me.”
The old man complied. Compliance had been his first layer of camouflage for decades.
The room beyond the doorway was larger than the one out front. It was dry and dusty. It smel ed of spices and mystery.
The real work of the chemist took place here.
“Wait here. Touch nothing.” Haida returned to the front. The bel on the door had announced an arrival. A male voice asked a question the old man could not make out.
Minutes passed. A man came through a narrow door that was disguised as a rack of dusty shelves. The old
