“I merely came to pray,” said Jean, “for the intercession of the Lady Most Kind with those unfortunates out there on the water. Pay me no heed, and do continue with your labors.”
Jean encouraged them by putting his back mostly to the gang of laborers; he stood staring out at the ship, listening very carefully to the sounds of the work going on beside him. There were grunts of lifting and the tread of footfalls; the creaking of weathered, water-eaten boards. The donkey-cart had looked to be full of little sacks, each about the size of a one-gallon wineskin. For the most part, the crew handled them gingerly, but after a few minutes-
“Gods damn it, Mazzik!” There was a strange clattering, clinking noise as one of the sacks hit the dock. The overseer of the labor gang immediately wrung his hands and looked over at Jean. “I, uh, begging your pardon, Your Holiness. We, uh, we swore…we promised we would, uh, see these supplies safely to the plague ship.”
Jean turned slowly and let the man have the full, drawn-out effect of his faceless regard. Then he nodded, ever so slightly. “It is a penitent thing you do. Your master is most charitable to undertake the work that would ordinarily fall to the Order of Perelandro.”
“Yeah, uh…that really was too bad. Quite the, uh, tragedy.”
“The Lady Most Kind tends the mortal garden as she will,” said Jean, “and plucks what blossoms she will. Don’t be angry with your man. It’s only natural, to be discomfited in the presence of something…so unusual.”
“Oh, the plague ship,” said the man. “Yeah, it, uh, gives us all the creeps.”
“I shall leave you to your work,” said Jean. “Call for us at the House of Aza Guilla if the men aboard that ship should chance to need us.”
“Uh…sure. Th-thank you, Your Holiness.”
As Jean walked slowly along the dock, back toward shore, the crew finished loading the small boat, which was then unlashed from its mooring.
“Haul away,” bellowed one of the men at the end of the dock.
Slowly, the rope tautened, and then as the little black silhouettes aboard the Satisfaction picked up the rhythm of their work, the boat began to draw across Old Harbor toward the frigate at good speed, leaving a wavering silver wake on the dark water.
Jean strolled north into the Dregs, using the dignified pace of a priest to give himself time to roll one question over and over in his mind.
What could a ship full of dead and dying men reasonably do with bags of coins?
5
“BAGS OF coins? You’re absolutely sure?”
“It was cold spending metal, Locke. You may recall we had a whole vault full of it, until recently. I’d say we both have a pretty keen ear for the sound of coins on coins.”
“Hmmm. So unless the duke’s started minting full crowns in bread since I fell ill, those provisions are as charitable as my gods-damned mood.”
“I’ll keep nosing about and see if I can turn anything else up.”
“Good, good. Now we need to haul me out of this bed and get me working on something.”
“Master Lamora,” cried Ibelius, “you are in no shape to be out of bed, and moving around under your own volition! It is your own volition that has brought you to this enervated state.”
“Master Ibelius, with all due respect, now that I am conscious, if I have to crawl about the city on my hands and my knees to do something useful against Capa Raza, I will. I start my war from here.”
He heaved himself up off the sleeping pallet and tried to stand; once again, his head swam, his knees buckled, and he toppled to the ground.
“From there?” said Jean. “Looks damned uncomfortable.”
“Ibelius,” said Locke, “this is intolerable. I must be able to move about. I require my strength back.”
“My dear Master Lamora,” said Ibelius, reaching down to help pick Locke up. Jean took Locke’s other side, and the two of them soon had him back atop the sleeping pallet. “You are learning that what you require and what your frame may endure can be two very different things. If only I could have a solon for every patient who came to me speaking as you do! ‘Ibelius, I have smoked Jeremite powders for twenty years and now my throat bleeds, make me well!’ ‘Ibelius, I have been drunk and brawling all night, and now my eye has been cut out! Restore my vision, damn you.’ Why, let us not speak of solons, let us instead say a copper baron per such outburst…I could still retire to Lashain a gentleman!”
“I can do precious little harm to Capa Raza with my face planted in the dust of this hovel,” said Locke, his temper flaring once again.
“Then rest, sir; rest,” snapped Ibelius, his own color rising. “Have the grace not to lash your tongue at me for failing to carry the power of the gods about in my fingertips! Rest, and regain your strength. Tomorrow, when it is safe to move about, I shall bring you more food; a restored appetite will be a welcome sign. With food and rest, you may achieve an acceptable level of vigor in but a day or two. You cannot expect to skip lightly away from what you’ve endured. Have patience.”
Locke sighed. “Very well. I just…I ache to be about the business of keeping Capa Raza’s reign short.”
“And I yearn to have you about it as well, Master Lamora.” Ibelius removed his optics and polished them against his tunic. “If I thought you could slay him now, with little more strength in you than a half-drowned kitten, why, I’d put you in a basket and carry you to him myself. But that is not the case, and no poultice in my books of physik could make it so.”
“Listen to Master Ibelius, Locke, and quit sulking.” Jean gave him a pat on the shoulder. “Look on this as a chance to exercise your mind. I’ll gather what further information I can, and I’ll be your strong arm. You give me a plan to trip that fucker up and send him to hell. For Calo, Galdo, and Bug.”
6
BY THE next night, Locke had recovered enough of his strength to pace about the room under his own power. His muscles felt like jelly, and his limbs moved as though they were being controlled from a very great distance-the messages transmitted by heliograph, perhaps, before being translated into movements of joint and sinew. But he no longer fell on his face when he stood up, and he’d eaten an entire pound of roast sausages, along with half a loaf of bread slathered in honey, since Ibelius had brought the food in the late afternoon.
“Master Ibelius,” said Locke as the physiker counted off Locke’s pulse for what Locke suspected must be the thirteen thousandth time. “We are of a like size, you and I. Do you by chance have any coats in good care? With suitably matching breeches, vests, and gentleman’s trifles?”
“Ah,” said Ibelius, “I did have such things, after a fashion, but I fear…I fear Jean did not tell you…”
“Ibelius is living with us here for the time being,” said Jean. “Around the corner, in one of the villa’s other rooms.”
“My chambers, from which I conducted my business, well…” Ibelius scowled, and it seemed to Locke that a very fine fog actually formed behind his optics. “They were burned, the morning after Raza’s ascension. Those of us with blood ties to Barsavi’s slain men…we have not been encouraged to remain in Camorr! There have already been several murders. I can still come and go, if I’m careful, but…I have lost most of my finer things, such as they were. And my patients. And my books! Yet another reason for me to earnestly desire that some harm should befall Raza.”
“Damnation,” said Locke. “Master Ibelius, might I beg just a few minutes alone with Jean? What we have to discuss is…well, it is of the utmost privacy, and for very good reason. You have my apologies.”