“Customers? For?”
“Well, originally for anything at all made of cloth, sir. We’re a cloth-weaving town, after all. More recently for the dream crystals as well. What else have we to sell? Why else am I Dream Merchant’s man?”
“Would some of these be yellow crystals?” I asked. “Yellow as piss, about the size of my thumb-tip?”
“They would not,” Brom said in an offended voice. “They would be green ones, some large, some small. And amber-brown ones as big as my ear. And little red ones. Those yellow crystals were never intended for commerce. Dream Merchant sent a man here from Fangel. He told me to keep an eye out, confiscate any I found. Which I did. Told me to destroy any I found. Which I would have done. Save for that damned Oracle. Took the sack I put them in. Took them all. Stole them.”
“Would this “Oracle” be a strange creature in a fancy robe?” I asked. “With a painted face, and full of emphatic language?”
Brom assented at once to this description. “Oh, he came here, all ribboned up like a Festival Horse, wandered around Bloome, full of amusing stories. So, I invited him here to amuse my ... my friends. When every day is festival it’s hard to come by any genuine amusements. He was gone the next day, and so was the whole sack of yellow crystals meant for the disposal pits. And since, then I’ve been hearing troubles from every side. People who should have come to Bloome to take part in festival, who should have come to buy costumes, come to buy good crystals, dead along the road! Dead! What good will that do commerce? I ask you! Bad enough that half the roads are ruined.” For a moment, when it seemed he knew something about the crystals, I had been almost ready to fly at him, dagger in hand (and no small weapon, but the Dagger of Daggerhawk which needed only to touch in anger to cause death). Now I took my hand out of my pocket.
The Dagger was in its holster high upon my thigh. It was seldom far from my reach, but Brom did not seem worth the use of it. Besides, what he had to say was interesting.
I said casually, “And what has destroyed half the roads, Brom? Come. Tell us.”
He choked. I saw him struggling not to speak. He had been told not to speak? Threatened, perhaps? Whatever it had been that kept him silent was no match for the truth tea we had given him.
“Storm Grower,” he mumbled, making two syllables out of it, the last one a growl.
“Why? Why is that, Brom?”
“Does ... does that when she’s angry. When people don’t ... do what she wants. Oh, don’t make me speak. She’ll kill me, truly she will. Or Dream Miner will. Or the Merchant. He’s their son, you know. So he says. I don’t believe it, but so he says.”
“So you are not responsible for ruining roads or distributing yellow crystals. None of it.”
“None of it but doing my job,” he sulked. “And that’s no more than anyone would do. All I really want to do is go away.”
“How was it you had the things in the first place?” asked Peter, watching the man through narrowed eyes. “Where did you say you got them?”
“They came in a shipment from the Dream Merchant in Fangel, as all of them come. Neatly packed in boxes, a dozen to the box. They come to me from the district headquarters, in Fangel. They come to Fangel from the Dream Miner, I suppose. How these yellow ones got in with the others, no one says. No one tells me anything.”
“And the Miner gets them where?” pressed Queynt, eager to learn something real after our long search.
“Why, I suppose he digs them up! I’ve seen Dream Mines. Well, no, I saw one. A little one, just outside Fangel. Nice old fella there, him and his wife, they watch the place. He digs them up with a shovel and a pick, just like you’d dig for anything.” An idea nicked through my head, one of those quick, glittering ones that go before you can grab it.
Something to do with mines and crystals. I sighed.
“There for a moment, I thought I had something. By the Hundred Devils, Queynt, but this whole business gets stranger and stranger.”
“There’s nothing we can do about it now, Jinian,” said Peter, doing what he too often did, coming close to me, putting his arm around my waist, his hand flat against my side, burning there with an aching heat. I took a deep breath and moved away, choking back a desire to return the caress.
“I suppose you’re right. But still, I’d like to know more about these mines.”
“Well, of course,” said Brom. “If you’d like to come with me to Fangel, you could see the one I saw for yourself. But if you come with me to Fangel, you wouldn’t be staying here in Bloome, and I’d still be Merchant’s man.”
I returned to the other room as Chance said, “And why’re you goin’ up to Fangel, friend Brom? Is it a city worth seein’?”
“There’s to be a great reception there for the delegation of the Duke of Betand on his way north,” came the answer in a dull, uncaring voice. “Him and his new allies. The Ogress, Valearn. The Witch, Huldra. There’s another Gameswoman, too, but her name I can’t remember. All the Merchants’ men have been sent for.” I turned, suddenly alert, seeing Peter stiffen as well.
He had responded to the first name mentioned; I to that of Valearn. Queynt, too, had suddenly grown very quiet. “Huldra?” he said. “Peter, I seem to recognize that name
