enough, to infiltrate the stable without being noticed, but you, my lad, are the one who might save us.”
“How?”
“It is certain that the Duke’s roach will be stabled at Herimar’s from tomorrow or the next day. You will surely have access to it; Herimar has no one else to clean the stable. If you perform this task, it might be possible to overlook your thieving, since you are so young and can be retrained…”
Petry bethought himself of the certainty of death if he failed, and quickly agreed to do his best. The serjeant kept him close in the watch-house until it was time for him to return to Herimar. “Abase yourself,” the serjeant said. “Whatever is necessary to regain your place — for I am sure you did not tell us the whole truth. It matters not, if you are able to perform your task.”
Before dawn, Petry crouched outside the main door of the Bilge and Belly, face washed, hair combed, cap tipped rakishly to one side. When Herimar threw open the door at last, Petry leapt up and bowed, bowed once, twice, thrice, sweeping his cap to the dust each time.
“Well, you rascal,” Herimar said. “Are you ready to work, then?”
“With all my heart,” Petry said.
“It’s your hands I want,” Herimar said. “At work. You can start by cleaning the stable; we have a valuable beast coming in.” He led Petry through the inn’s main downstairs room without even time to snatch a crumb from the bar. Still talking, he led the way to the stable. “The Duke of Malakendra’s famous racing roach, here — and a premium paid for the exclusive use of the entire stable. Every stall to be cleaned, swept, and raked. No dung, no webs, no loose dirt. In this one, spread straw, make it level. I shall inspect your work later. It’s essential the creature win — for to obtain the custom, I had to lay a wager risking all my possessions, including this inn. You may earn yourself bread and cheese, if you do well.”
When Herimar was well out of the way, Petry slunk down to the end of the row and dug up his small pot of depilatory, smearing it on his face and body. The bristly hairs already rising from his skin fell off at once. Then he set to work, his belly clinging to his backbone with hunger, but he had no choice. He thought of many potent curses to lay on Herimar, but if the man sickened or died before the Duke’s roach arrived, the constabulary would blame him.
When Herimar came back, Petry had cleaned all the stalls to the walls and bedded the one Herimar specified with straw to the depth of his elbow. Petry bowed, doffing his cap and waving it about. “You see, gracious Master, I have performed all you asked, to the last detail. Please, sir, a morsel to break my fast.”
Herimar dug his hand into the straw. “Deeper,” he said. “Twice as deep. I didn’t mean a boy’s elbow deep, but a man’s. Are you stupid as well as lazy? Do that, and you can come to the kitchen door. You are at least working.”
Grumbling to himself, but no louder than his empty belly, Petry added straw until it reached his own armpit, then went to the kitchen where the cook, without looking at him, handed out a half-loaf of stale bread and a lump of hard cheese rimed with mold.
He was halfway through his lunch when the Duke’s roach arrived, surrounded by liveried roachifers, each holding one of the sandspider-fiber ropes that kept the creature in check, their black-and-white tunics and red leggings setting off the roach’s gleaming dark crimson elytra with inlaid silver scrollwork. The Duke’s own Roachkeeper Extraordinary led the way, wearing a wide hat layered in black and white plumes, a white cape edged in black and white sandspider fur, a crimson shirt with full sleeves and baggy black trousers tucked into crimson boots. He led a pack animal carrying sacks of roach-bait that kept the creature moving forward.
Herimar, bowing and scraping for all he was worth, led the way into the stables; the Roachkeeper signaled his assistants to follow, and the great roach, leg by leg, squeezed through the gateway and into the stall prepared for it.
“We require a dungpicker,” the Roachkeeper said, in a tone that suggested he expected Herimar to offer a selection of them for his inspection.
Herimar grabbed Petry by the shoulder and shoved him forward. “Here you are, good sir. Name’s Petry — smart lad, does exactly what you tell him.”
The Roachkeeper stared at Petry as if at dung on his shoe. “Well…if that’s the best you can do…you, boy, you do exactly what you’re told and nothing else, hear? And no gossiping about Magnificence out in town!”
“No, sir,” Petry said.
“And no eavesdropping!”
Petry attempted a shocked expression that seemed to satisfy the Roachkeeper, who turned to Herimar. “I will require your best room for myself. My roachifers will stay with the champion and will require bedding in the stable, and their meals served to them there.”
“Of course,” Herimar said. “Come this way, good sir.”
The rest of that day, the roachifers ordered Petry about as if he were their exclusive servant. He had to bed a stall to either side of the roach with straw, and fetch sheets to lay over it; he had to bring buckets of water; they demanded dishes not on the menu and complained about the quality of the crockery. During that time he had no need to eavesdrop, as they talked freely as if Petry had no ears. He heard the gossip of the Duke’s court — which girls they’d bedded, which they fancied, when the Duchess might birth the next, which servants were cheating the steward. The only matter of interest to him was the recent illness and death of the Duke’s dwarf jester.
“Such an easy life,” said one. “Fed from the Duke’s own table and all the ale he could drink, all for acting the fool and letting people laugh at him.”
“I wouldn’t like that,” said another.
“For meat every day and a skinful of ale? They could laugh all they wanted, and I would be laughing too.”
Petry felt the same way, but saw no way to get the Duke to hire him. Here, he was known as a beardless boy of no particular talent, fit to carry straw and dung and scrub pots. How could he prove himself without getting killed for it?
The next afternoon, when the roachifers had taken the roach out of town for a workout and Petry was hoping for a quick nap, one of the watchmen came to the inn and demanded to have a cask of ale delivered to the watch- house. Herimar beckoned to Petry. “Take the handcart, and be very sure you do not crack the hogshead or damage the cart or it will be the worse for you.” Accompanied by the watchman, Petry pushed the cart down to the watch- house.
“Tell me all,” the serjeant said, once the cask had been set up and broached. He sucked the ale off his whiskers; no one had offered Petry any.
Petry recounted the little he knew — the creature’s size, its name, and the care being taken of it.
“Well, then. First we’ll need a pellet of its dung, to season the bait. Then we’ll give you the cuttlemite bait, and a jug to put them in. Drag the cuttlemite bait from its side to the jar; they’ll follow the scent.”
“They won’t let me touch the beast…how am I supposed to get its cuttlemites?”
“You collect its dung…surely you have to be close to it to do that.”
“No — they take it out to exercise; I’m only allowed in the stall then. And the roachifers sleep in the stable with it — they never leave it unguarded.”
The serjeant exchanged glances with his men. “That still might work. We get the dung and make the bait, then — you take their meals to them, don’t you?” Petry nodded. “Then you’ll have to drug them.” The serjeant pulled out a box from below the desk and rummaged in it, coming up with a flat-sided bottle, glass-stoppered. It had no label. “See that you drop a thimbleful in the food or drink of each roachifer this evening. Daggart will obtain a sample from the dungheap on his afternoon rounds. When your work’s done and the inn’s locked up, one of us’ll be out behind the stable, on guard as it were, with the cuttlemite bait.”
“What if the roachifers taste something?”
“They won’t. The wizard Kalendar created for us this most potent soporific, undetectable but by another wizard. Very useful for those times when—” The serjeant stopped abruptly, flushing. “Never mind. Use it tonight; the race is day after tomorrow, time for the roach to miss its cuttlemites, but not time enough to fetch any from the Duke’s stronghold.”
Petry put the potion in the pocket of his vest and raced back to the inn, turning in the handcart to a scowling Herimar.
“Get yourself out there and make sure the stall is clean,” Herimar said. “They’ll be back from its training run soon.”
