What the thshite did he want that for: a boxth of angry horneth?
Shaking his head, Rogi got up from his concealment and, weighing the bag of kastor beans in his hand and deciding he had enough, he set off for the tower, hoping to arrive before dusk turned to dark … .
He didn’t make it, and blundered in just ere mid of night.
Carefully, Hâlott, down in his laboratory, twisted the minute augur into the minuscule denticle, barely widening the hollow running its length. Then he augured even tinier holes thwartwise through the sides of the tooth. Finally, he carefully rasped the widest end of the tiny, conical dent to flatness. He examined the work in total blackness, the lack of light notwithstanding. The bone was, in fact, the minute tip of a wee serpent’s fang, now no larger than the point of a pin with a tiny length of shaft, hollow end to end with three additional infinitesimal flutelike holes along the insignificant span.
“Good,” he whispered in the darkness.
“Rogi!” he called, though it sounded more like groan.
There was no answer.
“Rogi!” he groaned again, somewhat louder.
There was still no answer.
Hâlott went back up the stairs and began examining the rune-marked, gilded box. He was still prodding and poking it well into the night, when at last Rogi came stumbling in.
“I wath lotht, Mathter,” he said in the dark, “elth I would have got here thooner.” Rogi began lighting lanterns.
“Have you the kastor ricinus?”
“Yeth. Quite a few, Mathter.”
Hâlott held out his hand, and Rogi dropped the pouch into it.
“There wath thith man, Mathter, and he put a large horneth’ netht into a boxth.”
“Did he see you?”
“No, Mathter. You told me to avoid being theen when I collect the beanth.”
“Good.” Hâlott stepped away from the table and headed for the stairs to the lab. But then he paused and said, “I want you to go and find a man they call Chance. He is a man with black hair and dresses in black and limps and carries a cane.” Hâlott seemed to glance at the box, though how Rogi could tell is a mystery. Perhaps he had come to know Hâlott’s ways through long association, for they had been together through many years and across many countries and through many escapes and flights from angry mobs and enraged rulers and other such. Regardless, Hâlott slightly twitched his head toward the box and said, “Tell him I have a commission for him. You might find him at the Bottomless Well.”
“But Mathter, they throw me out of the Bottomleth Well.”
“Tell them you are on my business.” Without further word, Hâlott turned and descended the stairs.
With a sigh, Rogi got another chunk of bread and a wedge of cheese from the cupboard and then left, heading for Sanctuary, all the while mumbling about “having to thtumble about in moonthadowth with a bag of beanth, and nobody theemed to care that he needed retht and needed to get thome thleep, and what‘th more it’th the middle of the night, and robberth and muggerth would be lurking in alleywayth and …”
Andriko stood in the light of the moon above and waited.
A slim, dark figure came slipping through the shadows.
“You have it, Driko?”
“Yes, my lady.” He canted his head toward the latched box. “It’s a rather large one. White-faced hornets.”
“White-faced? Not yellows?”
“The whites are very aggressive, my lady.”
“Well and good. I need them placed in the courtyard sometime ere the gathering, unseen, of course.”
“Yes, my lady. The day after tomorrow.”
“I need them to be unnoticed, and I need a means for loosing them wherein I will not overly suffer from stings.”
Andriko frowned in puzzlement but said, “I will arrange for both.”
“Thank you, Driko.”
With mortar and pestle, Hâlott ground the husks of the kastor beans to a fine powder. Then he added a bit of liquid from a vial, and another bit from a second vial. He was not overly cautious while doing these things; after all, why should he be? Poisons, toxins, venoms: None had an effect on him, not even elixir of ricinus.
Stirring the admixture, Hâlott’s brows twitched in a frown. What might the rune-marked box contain? And he wondered whether Rogi had yet found the man called Chance.
Grumbling to himself, Rogi stumped away from the Broken Mast along the docks. Several fishermen had paused in their worry about the oncoming storm season long enough to jeer at him, but they had made no move to plague him further. After all, he was Hâlott’s man.
Before going to the Mast, he had tried the Bottomless Well, the ’Unicorn, and the Yellow Lantern, but in none of those places was a man in black, no man with a cane. But now he was headed for the Golden Gourd, a place said to be a brothel, though they always threw Rogi out before he had occasion to see for himself.
Rogi finally reached the tavern. Stepping through the door, he immediately spotted a black-haired man in black clothes sitting at a table. A rather heavy hardwood cane hung on the back of his chair. Across the table was a black-haired woman dressed in drab, rather shapeless garments. It was Elemi, the S’danzo woman who had read her cards for Rogi and had told him that as a newborn on two separate occasions he had been deliberately cast into the sea and had been twice plucked therefrom. She and the man in black seemed to be in deep converse. Other than those two, there were but a handful of patrons within.
“You little shite!” called Prall, starting ’round the bar as he added, “I told you to never show your face in this—”
“I am thent here by my mathter Hâlott,” yelled Rogi at the barkeep. “I am here to thsee a man named Chanth.”
Prall glanced at the man in black, who shrugged and nodded.
“All right, pud,” said Prall, waving Rogi forward. “But keep a froggin’ civil tongue in your head.” Then he looked at Rogi and laughed uproariously and managed to gasp out, “As if you could keep that long lapper of yours inside your mouth.”
Rogi scuttled over to the table where the man sat and looked up at him. In spite of the man’s black hair, he appeared to be in his sixties. “Are you the one called Chanth?”
The man nodded.
“I am thent by my mathter who wanth to give you a commithion.”
“A commission?”
“Yeth.”
“And it is for … ?”
“He didn’t thay.”
Chance shook his head. “I take no commissions these days, Rogi.”
Rogi’s eyes widened in surprise, for the man knew his name even though Rogi had not until now ever spoken with this person called Chance.
Still, the man seemed to be intrigued, and he glanced over toward a dark corner where sat a young man. Rogi looked, too, and saw a youth also dressed in black, though a red sash splashed a bit of color across his waist. His black hair was pulled back in ponytail, and he wore a sword at his side and an upside-down dagger strapped to a forearm. A dangerouth perthon, thought Rogi.
Chance interrupted the small hunchback’s observations: “Rogi, have you no inkling whatsoever as to what this commission might be?”
Rogi glanced at Elemi. The young woman stared back at him, her dark, dark eyes glittering in the lantern light, her gold hoop earrings gleaming as well.
“You can trust her,” said Chance.
“I think he wanth you to open a boxth.”
“Open a box?”
Rogi nodded. “A thecret boxth.”
Chance smiled, and then called to the youth in black. “Lone.”