Chapter 18
Tamas stopped underneath a streetlamp to check the address he’d scribbled on plain stationery a few hours before. “One seven eight,” he muttered to himself, squinting to see the number plaques. Olem walked a few feet behind him, pistols hidden under a long coat, keeping an eye out for trouble.
The Routs was a wealthy part of town, where the banks and the remnants of the old merchant guilds still did business every weekday. It had barely been touched by the earthquake, and not at all by the royalist uprising. Side streets were lined with small but well-kept houses for businessmen, clerks, and merchant liaisons. The lanterns were lit, and there was a common police beat on every street, enough that Tamas wondered if he’d stumbled into the wrong part of town.
Bad place to kill a man, he noted. He paused, correcting himself as he noticed that there was a splash of darkness on the street up ahead. As he drew closer, he saw that a good half-dozen lamps had blown out – or had been put out, as was the case. He counted the street numbers so that he was sure to find the right house and approached it straight on, stepping up from the street and rapping on the front door three times. There were no lights on, or any sign of life at all. The place looked abandoned.
The door opened a crack, and he and Olem were admitted immediately. Olem waited in the sitting room while Tamas was taken by the arm and led down a hall and then into what he guessed to be a back room. A match was struck and a candle lit.
Tamas saw a familiar face over the candle.
“Good to see you, Tamas,” Sabon said.
“Likewise. I hope I’m not too late.”
“The Barbers aren’t here yet.”
“Good. I want to see how they operate.” Tamas’s eyes adjusted to the light and he glanced around. They were in a small kitchen, the floors and cupboards bare. A man sat on one of the counters in the corner, an unlit pipe in the corner of his mouth. He was a small man, demure and of medium build, his face covered with a thick black beard that made his features almost impossible to see in the dim light. He chewed on the stem of his pipe and watched Tamas.
“You are our contact?” Tamas asked.
“Fingers,” the man said.
“I take it that’s not your real name?” Tamas said, raising an eyebrow.
“A pseudonym,” he said. “For my protection.” The man was studying Tamas with some intent, his eyes working up and down slowly – judging, weighing. Tamas felt there was something peculiar about the man.
“You have the Knack,” Tamas said.
Fingers adjusted his long black coat and brushed something off the front. “Ah, yes,” he said. “A lot of spies do. It makes it easier to get things done when you have talents that others can’t judge.”
“It also makes it damn hard for me to put together a spy network, since Manhouch’s whole system went to ground when I killed the royal cabal.”
“Fearing for one’s life gives one an incentive to disappear.” Fingers’s eyes darted between Sabon and Tamas. It was clear he didn’t like being in the same room with two powder mages.
“Yet here you are,” Tamas said.
“I have mouths to feed.” He paused, then added, “I’m a very minor Knacked. I can pick locks without a set, open latches from the outside.”
Tamas had heard scholars talk about this kind of thing. Minor telekinesis, they called it. “Nothing that would be a threat to me,” Tamas said. “Yes, I get your meaning, but I have no quarrel with anyone outside the royal cabals – unless they have a quarrel with me. I need Manhouch’s spies. You let it be known that we’re paying twice what Manhouch did.”
Fingers removed the pipe from his mouth and coughed into his hand.
“Are you laughing at me?” Tamas said. He glanced at Sabon. The Deliv just shrugged.
“What the pit is so funny?” Tamas said.
“That stuff about paying us more,” Fingers said, “It doesn’t really work that way.”
Tamas narrowed his eyes. “How does it work?”
“Spies aren’t like soldiers, Field Marshal. A soldier has loyalty, yes, but at the end of the day he does what he does for a full belly and a month’s wages. Spies do it because they love the game. They love their country, or their king.”
“Are you saying I won’t be able to use Manhouch’s old spy network?”
Fingers pointed the stem of his pipe at Tamas. “Not at all, Field Marshal. Some of us were loyal to Manhouch himself. Those have already left the country, or are working for the Kez outright. The rest of us love Adro and will drift back. I suspect the longer I stay alive, being a Knacked and all, the more spies will come out of the woodwork.”
Tamas rubbed his eyes. When they came out of the woodwork, he’d have to worry about whether they were double agents and whom to trust. It was all a great big headache. “I thought you said you did this because you have a family to feed,” Tamas said.
Fingers nodded. “Right, well, I may have lied about them.”
Sabon snickered. Tamas threw him a look. Spies. He’d rather let the whole lot of them rot in the pit. Unfortunately, he needed them.
“Are the Barbers here yet?” Tamas asked.
“I don’t know,” Fingers said.
Tamas jerked a thumb at the door. “Go find out.”
“Someone will let us know.”
“Now.”
The spy scurried from the room, and Tamas went over to the counter, hoisting himself up. He rubbed at the stitches on his chest, resisting the urge to pick at them.
“I need some advice,” Tamas said.
“Of course you do. You’re like a newborn babe, without me by your side.”
The silence dragged on for several moments. Tamas could read Sabon’s eyes. If I’d been there, they said, that Warden wouldn’t have come close to killing you.
“Mihali,” Tamas said. “The mad chef.”
“Is this really worthy of your attention?”
“He’s cooking for the whole army. Morale is higher than ever, mostly thanks to him.”
“So what more do you know about him?”
“He escaped from the Hassenbur Asylum,” he said.
“Ah. A madman.”
“They certainly think so. They’ve sent some men to retrieve him. He claims he was committed because his relatives and competitors were jealous of him.”
“Paranoid?”
Tamas shrugged. “Possibly.”
“Send him back,” Sabon said. “His cooking is good, but it’s not worth making enemies of the asylum’s patrons. Do you know who they are?”
“A man named Claremonte.”
Sabon was silent for a moment. “The new head of the Brudania-Gurla Trading Company?”
“Yes.”
“I think that settles it. We can’t risk our supply of saltpeter.”
“I’m not so sure,” Tamas said.
“That rubbish in the newspapers?” Sabon snorted. “Mihali claiming to be Adom reborn? Evidence of his madness, I would think. Not many educated men believe such myths.”
“You haven’t met him.”
Sabon ran a hand over his smooth head. “You believe him?”
“Don’t look at me like that. Of course not. But the man’s harmless.”
“Then what reason could you have to keep him?”
“Sorcery,” Tamas said.
“He’s a Privileged?”
“He has the Knack,” Tamas said. “Something to do with food. He can create the stuff out of thin air.”
Sabon said, “That doesn’t sound like much.”
“Have you ever heard of anyone who could create matter out of thin air? Even a Knacked?”