“For the lady’s husband?” the cobbler asked Phyrea.
She shook her head. The boot was easily twice the size of her own delicate foot, and cut for a man. The craftsmanship was exceptional. Willem could see that even from a distance.
Someone bumped him, and Willem looked down to see his purse stolen by a boy no older than ten. They looked each other in the eye for half a breath, the boy’s dirty face frozen in fear, his mouth open to show yellow teethan old man’s teeth. He ran into the crowd, pushing past a man carrying a crate of live chickens. The chicken farmer shouted some obscenity at the boy, and the chickens put up a fuss of their own. The boy didn’t run too fast, and Willem could have caught him easily enough and got his coins back, but he didn’t bother.
When he looked back at the cobbler’s stall, Phyrea was gone.
His heart stuttered in his chest, and he whispered, “Oh, no.
He turned his head, unaware that his shoulders twisted at the same time, and he nudged the man with the chickens. One of the crates clattered to the cobblestones, eliciting a loud chorus of complaints from the chickens, and a louder burst of profanity from the man selling the cheap pewter jewelry.
“Oh,” Willem breathed. “My apologies-” But the man had already picked up his chickens and ignored him.
“Wait,” Phyrea said, and Willem gasped. She put a hand on the chicken farmer’s arm, and the man looked first at her hand, then only briefly at her face, before letting his eyes pour over her like warm, but stagnant water. “I’d like one of those.”
“Phyrea,” Willem said, not sure if he should, or even could, smile. “I”
“A chicken, miss?” the farmer asked, obviously not sure he’d heard her correctly.
She dropped the boots she was carrying and dug in a pocket of her cloak for a coin. She handed him a gold piecetoo much for a single chickenand looked at Willem while the man pulled a squawking bird from the crude wooden box.
“It’s a surprise to see you here,” Willem lied, and by her face she didn’t believe it.
“I may not be able to make change, miss,” the chicken monger said, pocketing the coin at the same time he held out the bird to her.
“Keep it,” she told him.
With some difficulty she took the squealing foul from the man, holding it as he had by the legs, at arm’s length to avoid the furious flapping of wings. On the ground beneath them, the pewter merchant gathered up his jewelry, cursing under a shower of chicken feathers. The farmer arrowed off into the crowd before she changed her mind about the gold piece.
“Why are you following me?” she demanded.
“I’m not” Willem started, but stopped himself before she could interrupt. “I wanted to ask you something.”
“They’re for you,” she said, her eyes darting down to the cobblestones at her feet.
Willem looked down and saw the boots.
“Thank you,” he said by reflex alone.
“You don’t want to know why I bought them for you?” she asked from behind the still-panicked chicken. People on the street began to give the two of them a wide berth.
A smile came to him, and pleased with himself, he said, “I was actually more curious about the chicken.”
Without the slightest change in her stony demeanor, she dropped the black lace parasol to the ground, and squinted in the dim light. Her hand free, she grabbed the struggling bird by the neck and twisted once, hard and fast. It sounded like a twig snapping underfoot. The chicken flapped its wings only faster, but not for long.
“The chicken is for dinner,” she said.
Willem stepped back from her, and that elicited a smile. She dropped the chicken to the cobblestones next to the boots and retrieved her parasol.
“They are fine boots,” he said, and found that his mouth was dry, his tongue heavy and sticking to his teeth. Sweat tickled his hair line. “Why are you helping me?”
“I abhor your taste in footwear,” she said, and Willem blinked at the fire in her eyes.
Her jaw set tight, Phyrea stared him down. Willem blinked.
“You know what I mean,” he risked, unable to put as much strength into his voice as he’d hoped to. “You have been talking to people on my behalf.”
Her lips twisted with undisguised contempt, and she said, “Because they don’t deserve it any more than you do.”
“I won’t pretend I have any idea what you mean,” he said.
Something distracted her, and she looked off to one side, listening. Willem could pick out nothing from the background drone of the market.
“Thank me,” she said, finally turning back to look at him.
He didn’t speak, but studied her as best he could. Her perfect beauty was undiminished, even by the palpable madness that radiated from her burning gaze.
“You can keep the chicken, too,” she told him.
Should I kill her? Willem thought. I should kill her.
“You are the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen,” he said.
Phyrea put a hand to her lips and gagged. The skin of her long neck twisted and rippled. Willem looked away, and watched a peasant woman carry a basket of lemons on her head.
When he looked back, Phyrea was gone. He stood there for a long time, and if passersby noticed him at all they would have assumed he was deep in thought, but he didn’t think at all. He just stood there.
Eventually he bent and picked up the boots, but left the chicken in the street for the beggars.
21
19 Kythorn, the Year of the Sword (1365 DR) First Quarter, Innarlith
The rich and decadent masters of Innarlith have never been in greater danger than through the direct action of our brotherhood of the many, we who do the work of the city-state, but see so little, if any, of the gold that passes through this port.”
Marek Rymiit paused to let the assembled dock workers cheer in their unruly fashion. Disguised by the simplest of illusions, to them he was but an ordinary worker, a burly, grimy, near-toothless hulk of a man. His magic had made him one of them, and because he was one of them, they listened.
“And so here we are, not because we are strong or because we are many; for we continue to struggle with tradition even as we remove ourselves inch by inch from the ten-copper words of the Third Quarter tradesmen. For that reason the aristocrats will find it fairly easy for a time to keep us and our confused, confusing brothers in the Third Quarter down.”
He’d heard from many that his speeches to the tradesmen of the Third Quarter had been too confusingcomplex words and concepts directed at simple men. If the skilled tradesmen were simple men, then what were the brutes who loaded and unloaded ships, plying a trade that barely required sentience, let alone skill or craft?
Whatever they are, Marek thought, as long as they’re disrupting the flow of trade in Innarlith, as long as they’re slitting their own throats by not laboring for at least the pittance they once made, they serve me.
“The danger to the senate is not that their power is directly menaced, but in the fact that we can not possibly form the guilds we’ve formed without overstepping the false limits placed on us by those thieves in their Chamber of so-called Law and Civility. The Guild of Stevedores is bound only by its own lawslaws that guarantee that we, the men who deserve it most, who have paid the highest price of sweat and blood and poverty, can once and for all take charge of this port and gather for ourselves our fair portion of the coin that trade with Innarlithour city as much as theirsbrings here.”
Most of the men were listening, a few jabbered to each other, but Marek could tell that his ideas, if not the finer points of his words, were getting through to them. One man shouted some incoherent muddle of drunken syllables at him and was answered by loud cheers from a small group around him. The rest of the dockhands ignored them, though, so Marek went on.
“Our guild shows that the simple folkwhen we finally exhibit to those doddering dandies the true extent of our powercan seize control of the docks and the storehouses. Because the mastery of the senate depends on the control of the way everything is made and traded in Innarlithfor this reason the senate and its bullies have no choice. They must beat us down, and beat down our Third Quarter brothers, too, with the sharpest means at their command.”