"Whoever's got him, he sent us a message," Bezul mused aloud. "He wants something… wants to exchange something. That's what we're here for, isn't it? Setting values, brokering exchanges. Getting Perrez out of trouble… again." Bezul was mildly astonished by his own lack of panic or despair. "Put the tea on, Chersey, and keep it hot. Sun's nearly up-Ammen and Jopze will be along soon to keep an eye on things while I'm gone."
By training and temperament, Jopze and Ammen were soldiers. Imperial soldiers. They said they'd served their terms in the unsettled northern reaches of the crumbling Rankan Empire and that, five years ago, they'd decided to retire in Sanctuary because it was a quieter place these days. Bezul imagined there was more to the story; he didn't press for details. The pair could have joined the city guard, maybe commanded it, but between them they'd had six children when they arrived and at least a dozen children now. They did better swapping time for shoes, cloaks, and other household goods at the changing house than they'd have in the barracks.
Without comment, Chersey lowered her eyes. She lifted the children off the counter and herded them toward the kitchen where geese and Gedozia were forbidden. Bezul locked stares with his mother, fairly defying her to wish him well or warn him to be careful.
"It's not his fault," Gedozia said instead. "This isn't what your father meant for him…" She caught herself-"For either of you-" but the correction, as always, came too late.
"You've done him no favors, Mother, reminding him every day."
Bezul was angry to the bone, but what good was anger in a family that the Hand had broken? Someday Bezul feared he might lose control and ask how his father had truly died. And where would he be if his mother told him the truth? No closer to his father, that much was sure.
The eastern sky had taken a sunrise glow when Bezul strode onto Wriggle Way. He was dressed as befitted his station in life: plainer than the best of Sanctuary, but better than most in homespun breeches, loosely fitted boots, a linen shirt and a bit of Chersey's fancy work on his half-sleeve coat. He'd left his cloak behind. It had been a warm winter thus far-no appreciable snow and very little ice-and though the air was chillier this morning than it had been for a month, Bezul believed in the sun. He believed in the short-bladed knife sheathed at his waist, too, and another, longer knife tucked into a boot top. The latter was a weapon, not a tool, and he'd made good use of it once or twice, though no one would mistake Bezul the changer for a fighting man.
There were signs of life all around-Wriggle Way was a workman's street and workers rose before the sun in winter-but no strangers. Bezul dug the cord, the stone, and the cloth out of his scrip. He held them out for anyone to see. People hailed him left and right-the master of the changing house was known to nearly everyone in the Shambles-but no one noticed the cord, not in the quarter, nor on the Wideway where the wharves were empty, the tide was out, and the air smelled like the cord dangling from his left hand.
From the Wideway, Bezul headed northwest, toward the bazaar and past streets that would have him quickly back to the changing house, had he been returning home. Toward the raw, knocked-together tournament stands as well. Perrez, that epicure of rumor, claimed that both Ranke and Ilsig had put up the gold and silver to host a first-blood tournament-short of the old gladiator matches the Vigeles clan used to run in the Hill, when it was still the estate quarter. If Bezul believed Perrez, Sanctuary's importance in the minds of kings and emperors was growing daily. If Bezul were ever fool enough to believe his brother.
What Bezul did believe was that his brother's great scholarly talents were currently being employed as oddsmaker and bookkeeper for scores of ordinary folk who were squandering their savings on one duelist or another. Bezul didn't care a tinker's damn who won the tournament; he'd made a point of ignoring it, even forbidding Jopze and Ammen-inveterate gamblers, like all career soldiers-to mention it inside the changing house. Time enough for that when the tournament was over, debts were due, and the losers trooped into the changing house to sell their clothes, their tools, anything short of their wives and children.
Bezul reminded himself he needed to visit the palace soon to do some changing himself: a sack of their valuable, but slow-moving, jewels in exchange for a chest or two of Sanctuary's near-worthless shaboozh for cutting into padpols.
He came to the footbridge below the bazaar that connected the Shambles with the fishermen's quarter where knotted, oiled nets hung by the armful over every fence and wall. The bridge-keeper held out his hand for a padpol. Bezul dug the smallest, blackest bit of pot-metal from his scrip and crossed the footbridge, holding his breath against the stench rising from the midden ditch beneath.
The men and women who crewed Sanctuary's fishing fleet lived by the tides, not the sun. Their boats were out aad had left their moorings long before the stone thumped against the changing house door. But there were other ways to harvest a living from Sanctuary's waters. Across the White Foal River, the Swamp of Night Secrets sprawled as far as the eye could see.
Night Secrets Swamp was larger than it been when Bezul was a boy. He could just about remember how this part of Sanctuary had looked before the Great Flood rechanneled the White Foal River. The slum-quarter his father had called Downwind had stood-or slouched-where thickets of swamp-scrub now grew. "Good riddance," Bezul's father had said when he'd brought him to see the damage. Of course, Sanctuary wasn't truly rid of Downwind. The Hill quarter-every bit as treacherous and squalid-had sprung up before the flood waters receded and the swamp wasn't exactly empty.
A hardy breed they called the Nightmen eked their livings from the shifty waters. They were trappers, mostly, and not particular about what they snared: fish and crabs, plume-y birds, soft-furred predators, or the occasional man. When the Hand couldn't find better targets or victims for their madness, they'd combed the swamp; and the people of Sanctuary-Bezul included-had heaved guilty, but relieved, sighs: Better the Nightmen, than kith or kin.
For their part, the Nightmen did nothing to improve the impression they left behind. They stood out in any crowd-if only by the tang of their unwashed flesh. The Irrune shaman, Zarzakhan, in all his fur-clad, mud-caked glory, looked no more unkempt than the average Nighter. And as much as the Imperials complained about the guttural belching of the Wrigglie dialect or the Wrigglies complained about high-pitched Imperial chatter, both agreed that it was impossible to converse intelligently with anyone reared in the swamp.
Still, Nightmen-their women almost never crossed the river-in their reeking leathers were regular visitors at the changing house. They found things in the mud-old coins or bits of jewelry-that weren't useful until traded away. Bezul gave them what they wanted, Chersey gave them a little more, but the changing house showed a profit either way. Fact was, a good many thieves had lost their hoards when the White Foal flooded and there were rumors-undying rumors-of riches hidden in the Swamp of Night Secrets: the beggar king's hoard, the slaver's mansion, the treasure troves of a half-dozen immortal mages, to name only a few.
Perrez-Father Ils have mercy on his greedy heart-believed every rumor and Gedozia encouraged him. She wouldn't forget that the family had once been jewelers-goldsmiths and gem-cutters-on the Path of Money. They'd never been as wealthy as their clients, but they'd lived very comfortably, indeed, when she was young and beautiful. Bezul kept food on the hearth and their heads above water, but a changing house on Wriggle Way could never salve Ge-dozia's wounded pride.
Perrez believed Gedozia when she told him that fate owed him, that their dead father was looking out for him, and that he was too good for labor and better than any ten other men rolled together- especially ten Nightmen who, by her reckoning, weren't really men at all.