‘Don’t worry about that, Bugg. Once they find out what you’re claiming to be able to do, they’ll be sure you’ll fail and so ignore you thereafter. Until you succeed, that is.’
‘I’m having second thoughts.’
‘About what?’
‘Put the skirt back on.’
‘I’m inclined to agree with you. Find some more wool. Preferably the same colour, although that is not essential, I suppose. In any case, we have a meeting with the three darlings this evening.’
‘Risky.’
‘We must be circumspect.’
‘That goes both ways. I stole that wool.’
Tehol wrapped the sheet once more about his waist. ‘I’ll be back down later to collect you. Clean up around here, will you?’
‘If I’ve the time.’
Tehol climbed the ladder to the roof.
The sun’s light was deepening, as it edged towards the horizon, bathing the surrounding buildings in a warm glow. Two artists had set up easels on the Third Tier, competing to immortalize Tehol and his bed. He gave them a wave that seemed to trigger a loud argument, then settled down on the sun-warmed mattress. Stared up at the darkening sky.
He had seen his brother Brys at the Drownings. On the other side of the canal, in conversation with Gerun Eberict. Rumour had it that Gerun was accompanying the delegation to the Tiste Edur. Hardly surprising. The King needed that wild man out of the city.
The problem with gold was the way it crawled. Where nothing else could. It seeped out from secrets, flowered in what should have been lifeless cracks. It strutted when it should have remained hidden, beneath notice. Brazen as any weed between the cobbles, and, if one was so inclined, one could track those roots all the way down. Sudden spending, from kin of dead hirelings, followed quickly – but not quickly enough – by sudden, inexplicable demises. A strange severing that left the king’s inquisitors with no-one to question, no-one to torture to find the source of the conspiracy. Assassination attempts were no small thing, after all, especially when the king himself was the target. Extraordinary, almost unbelievable success – to have reached Diskanar’s own bedchamber, to stand poised above the man, mere heartbeats from delivering death. That particular sorceror had never before shown such skill in the relevant arts. To conjure sand to fill the chests of two men was highest sorcery.
Natural curiosity and possible advantage, these had been Tehol’s motives, and he’d been much quicker than the royal inquisitors. A fortune, he had discovered, had been spent on the conspiracy, a life’s savings.
Clearly, only Gerun Eberict had known the full extent of the scheme. His hirelings would not have anticipated their employer’s attacking them. Killing them. They’d fought back, and one had come close to succeeding. And the Finadd carried the scars still, lips and crooked teeth, to show the nearness of the thing.
Immunity from conviction. So that Gerun Eberict could set out and do what he wanted to do. Judge and executioner, for crimes real and imagined, for offences both major and minor.
In a way, Tehol admired the man. For his determination, if not his methods. And for devising and gambling all on a scheme that took one’s breath away with its bold… extremity.
No doubt Brys had official business with the man. As King’s Champion.
Even so, worrying. It wouldn’t do to have his young brother so close to Gerun Eberict.
For if Tehol possessed a true enemy, a foe to match his own cleverness who – it would appear – surpassed Tehol himself in viciousness – it was Finadd Gerun Eberict, possessor of the King’s Leave.
And he’d been sniffing around, twisting arms. Safer, then, to assume Gerun knew that Tehol was not as destitute as most would believe. Nor entirely… inactive.
Thus, a new fold to consider in this rumpled, tangled tapestry.
Gerun was immune. But not without enemies. Granted, deadly with a sword, and known to have a dozen sworn, blood-bound bodyguards to protect him when he slept. His estate was rumoured to be impregnable, and possessed of its own armoury, apothecary with resident alchemist well versed in poisons and their antidotes, voluminous store-houses, and independent source of water. All in all, Gerun had planned for virtually every contingency.
Sometimes the only solution was also the simplest, most obvious.
‘Bugg!’
A faint voice from below. ‘What?’
‘Who was holding Gerun’s tiles on that bet this afternoon?’
His servant’s grizzled head appeared in the hatch. ‘You already know, since you own the bastard. Turble. Assuming he’s not dead of a heart attack… or suicide.’
‘Turble? Not a chance. My guess is, the man’s packing. A sudden trip to the Outer Isles.’
‘He’ll never make it to the city gates.’
‘Meaning Gerun is on the poor bastard.’
‘Wouldn’t you be? With that payoff?’
Tehol frowned. ‘Suicide, I’m now thinking, might well be Turble’s conclusion to his sorry state of affairs. Unexpected, true, and all the more shocking for it. He’s got no kin, as I recall. So the debt dies with him.’
‘And Gerun is out eight hundred docks.’
‘He might wince at that, but not so much as you’d notice. The man’s worth a peak, maybe more.’
‘You don’t know?’
‘All right, so I was generalizing. Of course I know, down to the last dock. Nay, the last stripling. In any case, I was saying, or, rather, suggesting, that the loss of eight hundred docks is not what would make Gerun sting. It’s the
‘I doubt he’ll agree to it.’
‘No, probably not. But set it in motion, Bugg. Down to the Eddies. Find us a suitable corpse. Fresh, and not yet drained. Get a bottle or two of Turble’s blood from him in exchange-’
‘What’ll it be? Fire? Who commits suicide using fire?’
‘The fire will be an unfortunate consequence of an unattended oil lamp. Unattended because of the suicide. Burnt beyond recognition, alas, but the scrivers will swear by the blood’s owner. That’s how they work, isn’t it?’
‘A man’s veins never lie.’
‘Right. Only, they can.’
‘Right, if you’re insane enough to drain a corpse and pump new blood into it.’
‘A ghastly exercise, Bugg. Glad you’re up to it.’
The wizened face at the hatch was scowling. ‘And Turble?’
‘We smuggle him out the usual way. He’s always wanted to take up fishing. Put someone in the tunnel, in case he bolts sooner than we expect. Gerun’s watchers will be our finest witnesses. Oh, and won’t the Finadd spit.’
‘Is this wise?’ Bugg asked.
‘No choice. He’s the only man who can stop me. So I’m getting him first.’
‘If he catches a whiff that it’s you-’
‘Then I’m a dead man.’
‘And I’m out of work.’
‘Nonsense. The lasses will carry on. Besides, you are my beneficiary – unofficially, of course.’
‘Should you have told me that?’
‘Why not? I’m lying.’
Bugg’s head sank back down.
Tehol settled back onto the bed.
‘Bugg!’
