“The little thief’s got enough food here to feed an army—”
Dace flailed and found his crutch. With a desperate heave and a measure of luck he lurched to his feet without surrendering the sack. “No army, ser, just my household.”
“What family?” the retainer demanded. “Where do you live?”
Dace saw the crack of doom looming before him. He should have listened to Chersey, should have stayed away from the Processional, but bad as things were, they’d be worse if he lied. “Wriggle Way, ser. The house of Bezulshash the Changer.”
The retainer wasn’t impressed, but Lord Noordiseh showed unexpected mercy: “Let him go.”
And Dace went, as fast as his gimpy leg allowed. His heart didn’t stop racing until his feet touched Wriggle Way. Familiar buildings had never looked so good. He paused to tidy his clothes; no sense walking into the changing house with his shirt hitched up.
A girl emerged from the Frog and Bucket tavern as Dace swiped his fingers through his hair. Geddie wasn’t the sort to draw much attention. She had a plain face with slightly bulging eyes. Her hair hung in braids against her back and her skirt was shorter than it should have been, as if she were in the midst of a girlish growth spurt, though she swore she was nineteen and a veteran of the Maze brothels.
Dace didn’t believe Geddie had worked the brothels and didn’t think she was pretty. In fact, he thought she was so homely that she might eventually succumb to a cripple’s charm. He called her name and hurry-hobbled to catch up.
“I didn’t expect to see you today!”
“It’s my day off.”
Geddie worked in the palace laundry where she’d risen from pounding and wringing to the skilled labor of mending.
“So, where’re you going?”
“Same place as you. Got me a gift to change.” Geddie patted the pouch slung at her waist. “Then I’m off to see One-Eye Reesch. He just got a chest of Aurvesh fortune oils. S’not like they’re Caronnese, but my girlfriend says they work real well.”
“Can I come with?”
Geddie shrugged and Dace stuck close.
“I can give you twelve padpols—three soldats—for them,” Chersey judged while eyeing the pair of merely serviceable boots.
“You gave a whole shaboozh last time.”
Chersey sighed inwardly. She preferred to give her customers what they wanted and had never hardened to this colder part of changing-house life. “Last time I didn’t have six other pairs of boots on the shelves.”
“I’ve got to have a shaboozh. Just one until Ilsday. I’ll buy ’em back then, same as always.”
“Thirteen.” Chersey made her final offer.
The woman was a regular customer who cycled her husband’s boots through the changing house the way fishermen cycled their nets.
“We’ll starve,” the woman insisted, which was merely her way of accepting the offer.
Chersey pulled a thin, baked-clay, double-eyed tablet from a bowl beneath the counter and began writing the details of the trade on it. When she finished, she handed the tablet to the woman who broke it in two, keeping one sherd and returning the other to Chersey who threaded a bit of twine through the eye. She tied the twine to the boots before counting out thirteen good-sized padpols—one of them almost large enough to be a two-padpol bit.
The woman wasn’t blind to generosity. She gave thanks and swept the tarnished bits into the hem of her sleeve. Chersey put the tagged boots on the shelf. The changing house always had boots, but eight pairs—she’d forgotten one—were an unusually high number. Something was amiss in the hand-to-mouth segment of Sanctuary society that relied on the changing house to tide them over.
She and Bezul should discuss the problem. The changing house didn’t have unlimited padpols. There’d been times in the past when they’d had to stop making exchanges for cash. But Bezul and Pel Garwood were no closer to an exchange for the old Ilsigi ewer someone had given the healer in exchange for his services. The healer was a good man—Chersey consulted him whenever one of the children took sick—and a better bargainer. He and Bezul might be at it all day.
The morning was hot. Chersey thought about getting herself a glass of night-cooled mint tea from the kitchen sump. She got as far as the inner door when the brass bell hanging from the open doorway jangled and Jopze—one of the two retired soldiers who kept a lid on things in exchange for clothes for their ever-increasing broods—hailed Dace by name.
Dace didn’t usually come through the front door. Chersey wondered why he’d changed his habits and, turning, saw that the youth wasn’t alone. She recognized the scrawny girl by sight, not name. The girl lived above the Frog and Bucket, which was tantamount to saying she sold herself to the tavern’s customers. She had some sort of dealings with the palace, too: a job in the laundry, or so she claimed. Chersey couldn’t imagine how any laundress could come by the trinkets the girl exchanged without shedding her own clothes.
Chersey wasn’t pleased to see the girl with Dace, though she immediately realized she shouldn’t have been surprised. Dace might have a crippled leg and a lopsided smile, but he was still a young man at an age when young men had only one thought on their minds. He was being practical, aiming low where his chances of success were high.
Dace began the conversation: “Geddie’s got something to change.”
So the girl’s name was Geddie. Somehow it fit that her name sounded like something stuck to a shoe, but business was business. Chersey returned to the counter.
“Let’s have a look.”
The girl brought out a cloth-wrapped parcel which proved to contain a small statue of Anen, the Ilsigi god of wine and good fortune. The statue was painted stone, chipped here and there, with hollow eyes where gems had once resided. Three bands confined the god’s unruly hair. Two were hollow but the third shone with gold. Chersey could pin a value to ordinary household objects, but when it came to relics, she turned to her husband.
“Bez? Could you take a look at this?”
Bezul seemed relieved by the interruption. He picked up the statue, paying particular attention to its base. “You realize this once stood in Anen’s chapel at the Temple of Ils?” he said with a trace of accusation in his voice.
Of course, the Dyareelan fanatics had destroyed the temple. Ils’s priests had hidden a few of their treasures before they died. A week didn’t go by without someone claiming to have found an abandoned hoard.
Chersey and Bezul heard all the treasure rumors, thanks to Bezul’s brother, Perrez. Sometimes the rumors were true—that ewer Pel Garwood was determined to exchange had survived the Troubles intact, but the changing house didn’t knowingly trade in looted goods. There were dens on the Hill that specialized in covert trade.
“How did you come by this?” Bezul challenged.
“A gift,” she replied, sullen and defiant.
“From whom?”
“I got a friend at the palace.”
Chersey scowled and flicked her moonstone ring close to her right eye. The ring was minor wizardry. It cast an aura through which Chersey could detect lies and deceit. The girl was full of deceit, but she wasn’t lying when she said, “I mended his britches. Them Irrunes, they don’t touch money, but they’ll give you gifts.”
Chersey doubted that mending had anything to do with Geddie’s good fortune, but it was true enough that Sanctuary’s current rulers refused to handle money. Had it been up to Chersey, they would have sent Geddie and her relic packing. Regardless of how the girl had come by her gift, they weren’t likely to resell a stripped relic in day-to-day trade. They’d have to turn it over to Perrez who brokered their one-of-a-kinds to east-side dealers, foreigners, and an occasional rich patron. Chersey would rather have made do without Perrez’s contributions. Bezul would have done the same, but his brother’s trades turned a tidy profit, when they didn’t fall through; and the house couldn’t overlook profit.