She finally conquered her fears and pushed inwards. Kadro had walked here without fear, or at least he had shown none. She tried to emulate him, even though she was big and clumsy and kept getting in the way. Porters with sacks of flour and sweet spices jostled and cursed her. A be-ringed merchant's retinue pushed her aside against the counter of a jeweller so that she upset his scales in a tiny clatter of brass. Her apologies fell into the abyss: they all maintained the Khanaphir reserve. Whether they were the local Beetle-kinden or the sinewy Marsh folk, or one of a dozen breeds of foreigner or halfbreed, they looked at her as though she was not wanted there. As though I do not belong. She did not belong. She had no wish to belong. It was just that she had nowhere within this city to turn. Khanaphes was the problem. If a solution existed, it must be somewhere here.
She regained her balance. The offended jeweller was a Khanaphir Beetle, shaven-headed as they all were. With that narrow-eyed, unreadable look they all adopted when looking at her, he finished restacking his weights and measures. She tried to remember what route Kadro had taken through this maze of shifting streets, hoping it was still good. Her memory was not up to it, though: the Marsh Alcaia was a world without reference. Each day the faces here might be different, and if there was a code in the colours of the awnings that might have directed her where she needed to go, she had no way of reading it. Recognizing such patterns had been Kadro's strong point.
'Excuse me,' she said to the jeweller, the effort almost having her in tears again. 'I need to speak to the Fisher. Do you know her?' The title was all she knew. Most of the darker denizens of the Alcaia had left their real names behind a long time ago.
The jeweller stared at her with the Khanaphir stare reserved for foreigners. It was not hostile, in fact very polite, but suggested that she was speaking some kind of infantile nonsense that the man could not possibly be expected to understand. It humoured her without admitting any comprehension.
Petri bit her lip. Reaching for her purse, she took out a pair of coins – Helleron-minted Standards and a long way from home – and put them on his counter. With a deft motion he slipped them on to his scales. Weight and purity of metal was everything here. Her money from home was disastrously devalued and she knew that in exchange he would give her a fraction of the value that unadulterated gold of that same weight would have brought her.
'Please?' she asked. The jeweller still said nothing but, as if by magic, a small child appeared at his elbow. He muttered a few words and the girl ducked under the counter and ran off into the Alcaia. A nod of the jeweller's head then suggested that she follow.
Where the girl led her was nowhere near where she had gone before, but headed deeper into the Alcaia than she had ever been. The thought came to her, within three turns, that she was being led into some kind of trap. By then she could only follow, because she was lost already. She was out of breath from keeping up with the girl's skipping figure, with dodging all the other bustling people doing their secretive deals beneath this all-embracing cloth sky.
The girl had stopped, ahead of her. Petri put a hand on her dagger-hilt, feeling it so unfamiliar in her grip. There was a tent ahead, which surely could hold a dozen people inside, all ready to lay hands on her. 'This… this is it?' she asked. The girl looked back at her, as blandly unreadable as any local. She still had hair, cut ragged to just above her shoulders. The ubiquitous head-shaving was an adult affectation.
Deprived of an answer, Petri took a deep, harsh breath. She could wait out here as long as she wanted, but all she would accomplish would be to make herself look indecisive and lost. She had to move forward, so she pushed into the tent.
The Fisher lay there, attended by a quartet of young Khanaphir men serving her wine and grapes. She was spread out on a heap of cushions, wearing Spiderland silks that must cost a fortune to import here, and adorned with gold all over: armlets, anklets, rings, pendants, even a band of it across her forehead. She was compensating in some way, Petri suspected, for the Fisher was a halfbreed of mixed Khanaphir and Marsh people stock. Her skin was an oily greenish colour and, somewhere between the solid Beetle build and the slight grace of the estuary folk, she had turned out shapeless and baggy. Her eyes were yellow and unblinking as they regarded Petri. A servant handed her a long-stemmed lit pipe made from smoke-coloured glass, and she accepted it, wordlessly.
How did Kadro do this?
'I… er… I wish to do business,' Petri began, trying to keep her voice steady. Responding to a small tilt of the Fisher's head, abruptly one of the servants appeared by Petri's arm, offering her a shallow bowl of wine. Gratefully Petri took it and subsided on to the cushions. It was hot and airless in here, and the bittersweet pipe smoke made her head swim.
'Please…' she said, before she could stop herself.
The Fisher continued to regard her silently, waiting. Petri summoned all her reserves of strength.
'I wish you to find someone for me.' How would Kadro have put this? 'I know that, of all the knowledgeable people in the Marsh Alcaia, you are renowned as being the one who can locate anyone or anything.' Compliments were important in Khanaphes, she knew.
A slight nod revealed the Fisher's acceptance of Petri's clumsy offering. 'A friend of Kadro of Collegium is always my friend too, of course,' she replied. 'But a curious woman would wonder at the purpose of such a hunt. Perhaps some fool who has insulted you, and is therefore deserving of death? You should know that there is another who would be keenly interested in such dealings.'
Petri's mouth twitched. 'It is no such matter,' she stammered, 'only that a friend of mine has been… too long out of touch, so that I am now concerned for him.'
'Your sense of duty does you credit,' the Fisher told her, with a shallow smile. 'The path to my tent is not the worst that you might have chosen. Who is this ailing friend?'
Petri drained her wine for courage. The local stuff was strong, and she waited for a moment of dizziness to pass her. 'Ma… Kadro. I need you to find Kadro.' Never Master Kadro, not here. Here, the word had other meanings.
The Fisher's slight smile did not flicker, and its very fixed immobility told Petri that something was wrong. The halfbreed woman took a long puff of her pipe, then handed it back to one of her servants.
'Fisher?' Petri pressed, knowing that things had gone awry, but unable to see precisely how or why.
In a single movement the Fisher stood up, her face still devoid of expression. 'Alas, what you ask is impossible,' she declared. Her servants had moved closer to her, as though expecting attack. Petri stood up as well, mouth working silently, searching for words.
'But…' she got out finally. 'I have money!' It was unspeakably rude, by local standards, but the Fisher did not visibly react to it. Instead she simply retreated further and further. What had seemed a wall of cloth parted for her, and then she had vanished beyond it, her servants following silently. Petri was left in sole possession of the tent, deep within the Marsh Alcaia.
Her heart was beginning to pound. She had the sense of something chasing her. The Fisher had known something, had known enough not to want anything to do with this. Petri was fast running out of places to turn.
There was someone, though: there was the very person the Fisher had alluded to. The Khanaphir loved middlemen. Even in the business of seeking another's death there was someone to go to, who would then find someone else to wield the knife. Petri had never met the current holder of the office, but she knew the name from a casual mention by Kadro.