“I found something. I thought you should see it.”
The face inclined at a slight angle.
“Very well. Show me.”
Slith fumbled inside his shirt pocket and pulled forth the roll of rags in which he had wrapped the blue-black disk. Before he could reach out to hand it over the roll of cloth disappeared from his grasp.
The dark eyes cast their gaze downward; then the face turned and vanished.
In the distance a glow of light pulsed, then brightened into a ring, as one by one a circle of lanterns was unhooded.
As the room was illuminated Slith saw that it was much smaller than he had imagined when the darkness still reigned unchallenged. In the far corners several grizzled men were watching him as they brought the room to light with the lanterns.
Esten stood before him, turning the blue-black disk carefully over in her long, delicate hands, her face, unlike those of most Yarimese women, unveiled. In the half-light he could see that she was no taller than he, with long raven hair and garments the color of a starless night that had blended perfectly into the darkness a moment before. Her tresses were bound back in a braid that was knotted at the nape of her neck, further accentuating the sharp angles of her face. Slith imagined she must be of mixed blood, her face possessing some but not all of the characteristics of Yarimese faces. He pondered where she might be from for a moment, but the thought disappeared as she leveled her dark gaze into his own.
“You are one of Bonnard’s apprentices?”
Slith’s father had imparted few words of wisdom that he remembered, but one oft-repeated phrase stood out in his mind: Look every man in the eye, friend or foe. Your friends deserve the respect, your enemies warrant it even more. He returned her stare as respectfully yet directly as he could.
“Yes.”
Esten nodded. “Your name?”
“Slith.”
“What year are you?”
“Fourth.”
She nodded again. “So you are, what—eleven? Twelve?”
“Thirteen.”
A look of interest came into her eye. “Hmm. I took you on rather old, then, didn’t I?”
Slith swallowed, determined to hold his ground, and shrugged.
Esten’s expression of amusement widened. “I like this one, Dranth. He has steel in his viscera. Make sure he is getting enough to eat.” The blue-black blade appeared between her long, thin fingers. “Where did you get this?”
“I found it in a greenware jar on the back storage rack in the firing room.”
“Do you know what it is?”
“No,” said Slith. He watched as Esten’s gaze returned to the disk. “Do you?”
Shock washed over her face at his impertinence, as if he had attacked her. Within a breath she had recovered in time to gesture to the men behind her, staying their hands, and leveled her shining gaze at him again.
“No, Slith, I don’t know what it is,” she said evenly, holding the disk up to the streaks of light pulsing from within the hooded lanterns. “But you may sleep in deepest peace tonight, assured in the certainty that I will find out.”
“At first I thought it was a seam scraper of some sort,” Slith said, watching the firelight ripple over the surface of the disk in her hands. “But it occurred to me that it has probably been in that jar a long time.”
When Slith looked at her again, her eyes were glittering with cruel excitement, looking past him.
“You may be right,” she said softly. “Maybe for as long as three years.” She turned to one of the men in the corner. “Yabrith—give Slith here a reward of ten gold crowns for his sharp eyes, and a good meal; tell Bonnard he will be ready to return to the foundry after he has supped.” She looked at Slith once more. “Your attention has served both of us well. It would be a good habit to cultivate. Tell no one what has transpired.”
Slith nodded, then followed the sullen man who gestured to him.
Dranth, the guild scion, watched as the boy had left, then turned to the guildmistress.
“Do you wish him removed?”
Esten shook her head as she turned the disk over in her hands again. “Not until we discover what this is. It would be a shame to toss away four years of good training if it merely is a seam scraper.”
Dranth’s eyelids twitched nervously in the lanternlight. “And if it is more? If it is indeed something we missed, something left behind from—that night?”
Esten held the disk up to the light, ripples of blue reflecting against the dark irises of her eyes.
“Bonnard knows where the boy sleeps. And you know where Bonnard sleeps.”
She finally broke her gaze away and nodded to the remaining men, who slipped out the back and disappeared into the darkest part of the Inner Market.
All but one of the lanterns had been extinguished and night held sway within the walls of the guildhall when the men returned with Mother Julia.
Esten smiled wryly as she watched the wizened crone enter the antechamber of the hall. She was a withered old prune, hunched and shrouded in myriad colorful shawls, the second most powerful woman in the Market, accustomed to receiving those who wanted information from her in her own lair, on her own terms. Being summoned in the middle of the night and hauled into the depths of the Inner Market undoubtedly did little to improve her normally crotchety and imperious disposition but, like everyone else in the realm of thieves, she could not refuse Esten, or show any sign of annoyance.
A false smile, minus more than a few teeth, spread across the wrinkled face.
“Good evening, Guildmistress. May Fortune bless you.”
“You as well, Mother.”
“What may I do to be of help to you, then?”
Esten studied the weathered face, its aged features a deceptive setting for the bright, quick eyes that stared back at her. Mother Julia was by trade a soothsayer, a fortune-teller who procured an extremely comfortable living from the fools who sought her advice. Although her ability to predict the future was no better than anyone else’s, she was a source of generally reliable information about the past and, even more so, the present, largely owing to her extensive network of spies, which was centered in Yarim but also crossed provincial and even national borders, the majority of them members of her own family. She had seventeen living children at last count, Esten knew, having been the agent by which that tally had been diminished by one, and more grandchildren, cousins, and relations by marriage than the stars in the night sky.
She was anxious, Esten knew as well. The wrinkled face was placid, but the dark eyes within it burned with nervous light. Usually Mother Julia played the information gambit better than anyone in the Market, but she had led too early, had tried in her second breath to entangle Esten into indebtedness. She’s losing her touch, the guildmistress thought, tucking the observation away as she did all information. She turned away and walked toward the fire, denying Mother Julia a clear look at her face.
“Nothing at all, Mother.”
The crone coughed, a consumptive sound of rattling phlegm and fear. “Oh?”
Esten smiled inwardly, then set her face into a serious mask and turned to face the old woman.
“I have been singularly disappointed in your lack of response to the one question about which I did seek your help.”
An arthritic claw went to the soothsayer’s throat. “I—I have—have been scrying diligently, Guildmistress, peering through the—the red sands of Time to try and discover—” Her words choked off and she sank into silence when Esten raised her hand.
“Spare me your prestidigitation and claptrap; I am not one of the imbeciles who seek it from you. You have had more than three years to bring me an answer to a simple question, Mother—who destroyed my tunnel, stole my slaves, killed my journeymen? Who snatched the sleeping water of Entudenin out of my hands, leaving Yarim to wither in thirst and depriving me of the wealth and power it would have brought? This should be an easy thing to find at least one clue to, and yet, yet you have brought me nothing, nothing at all.”