Even as she said the words, Allesandra doubted the truth of them. The young woman seated before her was plain in appearance. She looked to be in her third decade, though that was difficult to tell; a hard life may have made her look older than her actual years. Her hair was evidently unacquainted with a hairbrush: long and touched with fierce red highlights on the brown, wild strands flying everywhere, it was pulled fiercely back into an unkempt braid of a style Allesandra had not seen since she’d been young. Her bangs were bedraggled, her eyes nearly lost behind the forest of them. Allesandra couldn’t even see the color of the eyes shaded as they were, though they seemed to be pale.
The woman only shrugged, glancing once at the pebble. “That may be,” she said. Her words held the hint of an accent so slight that Allesandra couldn’t place it, and the voice was whiskey-rough. “The one you’re talking about is hard to contact. Even for me.”
If he knows you that well, girl, I’m not impressed with his taste.
… “What’s your full name, Elzbet?” Allesandra asked the woman.
The woman stared, her eyes unblinking behind the tangle of brown locks. “Begging your pardon, A’Hirzg, but you’ll not be needing my name. You’re not hiring me, after all-at least no further than finding him. ”
It had taken Allesandra days to get this far, and she could be certain of nothing. There had been discreet inquiries made of people who might have had a reason to kill the three most recent victims of the White Stone, inquiries made by private agents who themselves didn’t know who they were representing, only that it was someone wealthy and influential. Names and descriptions had been given, and slowly, slowly, it had all come down to this young woman. Allesandra had arranged to meet her-in a tavern on the edge of one of the poorer districts in Brezno-on the pretext of wishing to interview her for a position on the palais staff. Through the shuttered windows of the tavern, she could see the uniform of the gardai who had accompanied her, waiting by the carriage for her. “How do I know that you can do what you say you can do?”
“You don’t,” the woman replied. That was all she said. She waited, those unblinking, hidden eyes on Allesandra’s as if daring her to look away. The impudence, the lack of respect, nearly made Allesandra get up from her chair and leave the tavern, but this was what she needed and it had taken too long to get this far.
“Then how do we proceed?” Allesandra asked.
“Give me three days to see if I can contact this person you’re looking for,” the woman said. Her finger flicked at the stone Allesandra had placed on the table. “If I think that your gardai or agents are watching me, or if he sees them, especially, nothing will happen at all. At the night of the third day-that would be Draiordi-you will do this…” The woman leaned over the table, she whispered instructions into Allesandra’s ear, then sat back again. “You understand, A’Hirzg? You can do that?”
“It’s a lot of money.”
“You don’t bargain with him, ” the woman said. “If what you want done were an easy task, you would do it yourself. And you, A’Hirzg, can afford the price he asks.”
“If I do this, how do I know he will keep his end of the bargain?”
No answer. The woman simply sat with her hands on the table as if ready to push her chair back.
Allesandra nodded, finally. “Find him, Elzbet,” she said. She plucked a half-solas from the pocket of her cloak and placed the coin on the table between them, next to the stone. “For your trouble,” she said.
The woman glanced down at the coin. Her lips twisted. Her chair scraped across the wooden planks of the floor. “Draiordi evening,” she told Allesandra. “Be there as I said. Remember what I said about being followed.”
With that, she turned and strode quickly from the tavern, with the stride of someone used to walking long distances. Light bloomed in the dimness as she pushed open the door with surprising strength. Through the shutters, Allesandra could see the gardai come suddenly alert as the woman left the tavern.
The coin was still on the table. Allesandra took the stone but left the coin, going to the door herself and shaking her head at the gardai, one of whom was already pulling open the door with concern; the others were watching the woman. “I’m fine,” she said to them. The woman was already halfway down the street, walking fast without looking back. The garda who had opened the door inclined his head toward the woman, raising his eyebrows quizzically. “Should I-?”
“No,” she said to him. “I won’t be hiring her; she was a poor match. Let her go…”
Karl ci’Vliomani
Karl watched the man carefully, standing close to him in the bakery, where he could hear him.
This one seemed different than the others he’d watched. For the last few weeks, Karl had prowled Oldtown, dressed in soiled and ragged clothes, and watching the crowds surging around him. He’d haunted the public places, lurked in the shadows of the hidden squares in the maze of tiny streets, avoiding the occasional utilino who passed on his or her rounds and who might recognize him. He’d looked at the faces, searching for coppery skin tones, for the lifted cheekbones and the slightly flatter faces that he remembered from his own forays into the Westlands decades ago. He’d found a half dozen people, male and female both, that he followed for a time, on whom he’d eavesdropped, whom he’d touched with the Scath Cumhacht to see if they might respond.
There’d been nothing. Nothing.
But now…
“These croissants have been here all day and are half-stale already,” the man said. Karl heard his voice plainly from where he stood at the bakery’s open door, staring out across the street as if he were waiting for someone. He heard the man’s walking stick tapping the wooden floor of the bakery. “They’re worth no more than a d’folia for the dozen.” The words were nothing, but that accent… Karl remembered it welclass="underline" from his youth, from Mahri-an accent as foreign in Nessantico as his own and as unmistakable.
Karl glanced into the shop in time to see the baker’s scowl. “They’re still as fresh and soft as they were this morning, Vajiki. And worth a se’folia at least. Why, I can sell them to anyone for that-the flour I use was blessed by the u’teni at the Old Temple.”
The man shrugged and waved his hand. “I don’t see anyone else here. Do you? Maybe you’ll wait all day until they’re no better than cobblestones, when I’ll give you two d’folia for them right now. Two d’folias against wasted bread-it seems more than fair to me.”
Karl listened as they bartered, settling on four d’folias for the croissants. The baker wrapped them in paper, grumbling all the while about the price of flour and the time spent baking and the general higher costs for everything in the city recently, until Karl’s quarry left the shop. The man brushed past Karl-the smell of the croissants making Karl’s own stomach grumble-and strolled eastward along the narrow lane. Karl let him get several strides ahead before he followed. The man turned left down a side alley; by the time Karl reached the intersection, the man was halfway down. In the late afternoon, the houses cast purpled shadows over the lane, seeming to lean toward each other as if to converse in whispers over the cobblestones. There was no one else visible in the alleyway. The spells Karl had cast that morning burned inside him, waiting to be released. He started to call out to the man, to make him turn…
… but a child-a boy perhaps ten or eleven-emerged from an intersection a little farther down the lane. “Talis! There you are! Matarh has been wondering if you were coming for supper.”
“Croissants!” Talis told the boy, holding up the wrapped pastries. “I practically stole them from old Carvel. Only four d’folias…” The man-Talis-clapped his arm around the boy. “Come then, we can’t keep Serafina waiting.”
Together, they started walking down the street. Karl hesitated. You can’t do anything with the boy there alongside him. That’s not what Ana would want of you.