Most of the stalls in the Farmer's Market were shuttered now, but he was able to trade two coppers for a fresh melon, which he peeled as he walked into the bazaar, the krrf inconspicuous under his arm.
He haggled for a while with a coppersmith, new to the bazaar, for a brace of lamps to replace the ones that had been stolen from the Unicorn last night. He would send one of his urchins around to pick them up. He watched the acrobats for a while, then went to the various wine merchants for bids on the next week's ordinaries. He ordered a hundredweight of salt meat, sliced into snacks, to be delivered that night, and checked the guild hall of the mercenaries to find a hall guard more sober than the one who had allowed the lamps to be stolen. Then he went down to the Wideway and had an early dinner of raw fish and crab fritters. Fortified, he entered the Maze.
As the eunuch had said, One-Thumb had nothing to fear from the regular denizens of the Maze. Desperadoes who would disembowel children for sport (a sport sadly declining since the introduction of a foolproof herbal abortifacient) tipped their hats respectfully, or stayed out of his way. Still, he was careful. There were always strangers, often hot to prove themselves, or desperate for the price of bread or wine; and although One-Thumb was a formidable opponent with or without his rapier, he knew he looked rather like an overweight merchant whose ugliness interfered with his trade.
He also knew evil well, from the yiside, which is why he dressed shabbily and displayed no outward sign of wealth. Not to prevent violence, since he knew the poor were more often victims than the rich, but to restrict the class of his possible opponents to those who would kill for coppers. They generally lacked skill.
On the way to the Unicorn, on Serpentine, a man with the conspicuously casual air of a beginner pickpocket fell in behind him. One-Thumb knew that the alley was coming up and would be in deep shadow, and it had a hiding-niche a few paces inside. He turned into the alley and, drawing the dagger from his boot, slipped into the niche and set the krrf between his feet.
The man did follow, proof enough, and when his steps faltered at the darkness, One-Thumb spun out of the niche behind him, clamped a strong hand over his mouth and nose, and methodically slammed the stiletto into his back, time and again, aiming for kidneys. When the man's knees buckled, One-Thumb let him down slowly, slitting his throat for silence. He took the money-belt and a bag of coin from the still-twitching body, cleaned and replaced his dagger, picked up the krrf, and resumed his stroll down the Serpentine. There were a few bright spatters of blood on his houppelande, but no one on that street would be troubled by it. Sometimes guardsmen came through, but not to harass the good citizens nor criticize their quaint customs.
Two in one day, he thought; it had been a year or more since the last time that happened. He felt vaguely good about it, though neither man had been much of a challenge. The cutpurse was a clumsy amateur and the young noble from Ranke a trusting fool (whose assassination had been commissioned by one of his father's ministers).
He came up the street south of the Vulgar Unicorn's entrance and let himself in the back door. He glanced at the inventory in the storeroom and noted that it must have been a slow day, and went through to his office. He locked up the krrf in a strongbox and then poured himself a small glass of lemony aperitif, and sat down at the one-way mirror that allowed him to watch the bar unseen.
For an hour he watched money and drink change hands. The bar-tender, who had been the cook aboard a pirate vessel until he'd lost a leg, seemed good with the customers and reasonably honest, though he gave short measures to some of the more intoxicated patrons - probably not out of concern for their welfare. He started to pour a third glass of the liqueur and saw Amoli, the Lily Garden's mistress, come into the place, along with the eunuch and another bodyguard. He went out to meet them.
'Wine over here,' he said to a serving wench, and escorted the three to a curtained-off table.
Amoli was almost beautiful, though she was scarcely younger than One-Thumb, in a trade that normally aged one rapidly. She came to the point at once: 'Kalem tells me you have twenty grimales of Caronne for sale.'
'Prime and pure.'
That's a rare amount.' One-Thumb nodded. 'Where, may I ask, did it come from?'
'I'd rather not say.'
'You'd better say. I had a twenty-grimale block in my bedroom safe. Yesterday it was stolen.'
One-Thumb didn't move or change expression. 'That's an interesting coincidence.'
She snorted. They sat without speaking while a pitcher of wine and four glasses were slipped through the curtain.
'Of course I'm not accusing you of theft,' she said. 'But you can understand why I'm interested in the person you bought it from.'
'In the first place, I didn't buy it. In the second, it didn't come from Sanctuary.'
'I can't afford riddles, One-Thumb. Who was it?'
'That has to remain secret. It involves a murder.'
'You might be involved in another,' she said tightly.
One-Thumb slowly reached down and brought out his dagger. The bodyguards tensed. He smiled, and pushed it across the table to Amoli. 'Go ahead, kill me. What happens to you will be rather worse than going without krrf.'
'Oh -' She knocked the knife back to him. 'My temper is short nowadays. I'm sorry. But the krrf's not just for me; most of my women use it, and take part of their pay in it, which is why I like to buy in large amounts.' One-Thumb was pouring the wine; he nodded. 'Do you have any idea how much of my capital was tied up in that block?'
He replaced the half-full glasses on the round serving tray and gave it a spin. 'Half?'
'And half again of that. I will get it back, One-Thumb!' She selected a glass and drank.
'I hope you do. But it can't be the same block.'
'Let me judge that - have you had it for more than two days?'
'No, but it must have left Ranke more than a week ago. It came on the Anenday caravan. Hidden inside a cheese.'
'You can't know for sure that it was on the caravan all the time. It could have been waiting here until the caravan came.'
'I can hear your logic straining, Amoli.'
'But not without reason. How often have you seen a block as large as twenty grimales!'
'Only this time,' he admitted.
'And is a pressed design stamped all over it uniformly, an eagle within a circle?'
'It is. But that only means a common supplier, his mark.'
'Still, I think you owe me information.'
One-Thumb sipped his wine. 'All right. I know I can trust the eunuch. What about the other?'
'I had a vassal spell laid on him when I bought him. Besides ... show him your tongue, Gage.' The slave opened his mouth and showed pink scar tissue nested in bad teeth. 'He can neither speak nor write.'
'We make an interesting table,' he said. 'Missing thumb, tongue, and tamale. What are you missing, Amoli?'
'Heart. And a block of krrf.'
'All right.' He drank off the rest of his small glass and refilled it. 'There is a man high in the court of Ranke, old and soon to die. His son, who would inherit his title, is slothful, incompetent, dishonest. The old man's counsellors would rather the daughter succeed; she is not only more able, but easier for them to control.'