"A fancy shop off the Processional?" Bezul asked and tried to keep the rest out of his thoughts for a few moments longer. He was ready to leave, but found his way blocked. In his concern-his anger-he'd forgotten something more important than her name. "Stop by the changing house," he urged. "There's a pair of earrings tucked away with your name on them."
She grinned and let him depart.
The Processional between the harbor and the palace was neither the longest nor the widest street in Sanctuary. With the tight-fisted Irrune in the palace, it wasn't even the busiest street. Mansions, some of them still abandoned after the Troubles, lined both sides of the street. When the residents left their homes, they traveled in clumps. A solitary man was marked as a visitor and ignored.
Lord Kuklos-a bearded magnate with an oversized cloak, a bright-red hat, and a flock of aides-rushed past Bezul without a by-your-leave. Probably on their way to the tournament. A slower clutch of nursemaids and guards surrounding a pair of children stopped when the better-dressed boy threw himself into a tantrum. Probably wanted to go to the tournament.
As Bezul wove around them-stepping carefully over one of the two gutters running from the palace to the harbor-he took note that the second child, equally winsome but less lavishly dressed- received the thrashing his companion deserved.
The third procession bore down rapidly on Bezul from behind. A man with a clanging bell and a loud voice ordered him out of the way. Prudence, rather than obedience, launched Bezul up on a curbstone. He clung to a pedestal that had long since lost its commemorative statue while a woman wrapped in a sea-green mantle and seated in an open chair charged toward the harbor. A whiskery dog with jewels in its ears yapped at Bezul from the lady's lap. The rest of her retinue-a brace of underdressed porters that might have been twins, three breathless maids clutching their skirts with one hand, their mantles with the other; five guards whose legs were taking a beating from their scabbards, and the lead man with the bell- spared him not a single glance.
Watching them sweep around the corner that was his own goal, Bezul offered a quick prayer to any nearby god that the lady's final destination not be the aromacist's shop. Someone listened. The lady and her retinue were rounding the next corner when Bezul turned off the Processional. Perhaps the lady knew something the corseted wench at the Unicorn had not: The aromacist's shop-its business proclaimed in both Ilsigi and Rankan script on a bright signboard- was shuttered tight from the inside.
"Perrez," Bezul called, giving the handle a firm shake. "If you're in there, open the door!"
He shook the handle a second time and kicked the door. When that produced no response, Bezul berated himself for imagining that his quest would end any other way. He should return to the changing house: His own business was suffering and his brother would return. Men like Perrez landed on their feet and on the backs of their families.
Bezul turned away from the shop; and as he did, he noticed that the door beside it-the alleyway door between the shop and its leftside neighbor-was not completely closed. By Ils's thousandth eye, Bezul was a cautious man and, to the extent his profession allowed, an honest man. Undoubtedly, there were objects on the changing house shelves which had not been placed there by their legitimate owners, but Bezulshash, son of Bezulshash, did not knowingly trade for suspect goods. He did not venture into another man's domain uninvited, or he hadn't before. After glances toward the Processional and away from it, Bezul slipped into the alley and pulled the door back into its almost-shut position.
The alley proved to be a tunnel running beneath the upper floors of the aromacist's building. Bezul scuttled as quickly as he dared through the darkness, emerging into a tiny fenced-in square with another door to his right. This door had been properly closed and bolted, but the bolt was on Bezul's side. The aromacist, then, was more concerned about escape than invasion. After listening for sounds of life on the far side, and hearing none, Bezul slid the bolt from its housing. Still gripping the bolt, he lifted the door so its greater weight was in his hands, not on its hinges, then eased it open.
Bezul stuck his head into what looked, at first, to be a long-abandoned garden, strewn with discarded barrels, crates, and overturned furniture. On second glance around, Bezul realized that while the garden was, indeed, abandoned, the other wreckage was more recent. Perhaps very recent: There were puddles in the dirt around a broken barrel. Bezul eased the rest of the way into the garden. He grabbed the nearest chunk of sturdy wreckage and used it to insure that the door remained open.
Bezul was taking his time, assessing everything in sight, when he spotted a broken barrel-stave with a scrap of red-stained cloth caught in its splintered end.
"Perrez?" he asked himself, then, louder: "Perrez?"
He heard the sound of a heavy object thudding to the ground. The shop's rear door, Bezul realized, was open and the sound had come from within. He ran across the garden.
"Perrez! Per-!"
Horror, relief, and anger were only three of the emotions that bottled Bezul's voice in his throat. He'd found his younger brother, found him alive, but bloody. Beaten bloody, bound with ropes and rags, gagged, and hung from a roof beam were he swayed like a dripping pendulum, an overturned bench beneath. Not-thank all the gods that ever were-hanged by a noose around his neck, but slant-wise with from a noose that passed under the opposite shoulder. The shoulder-slung noose wouldn't make much difference, if Bezul didn't cut through it quick. Perrez was already wheezing for air.
Bezul righted the bench and went to work with his knife. He freed his brother's wrists with a single slash, then hacked through the hanging rope. Bezul meant to keep hold of the loose end and lower
Perrez gently to the floor, but the rope wasn't long enough. Perrez hit the floor with a moan-but he was breathing easier even then.
"Hold still!" Bezul commanded as he slipped his knife beneath the gag and for, perhaps, the first time in his life, Perrez obeyed.
"Bez…Bez!" the battered man gasped. "Father Ils! Never thought… you'd find…"
"Save your thanks." Bezul had gotten a closer look at his brother. On the ground, it was clear that none of Perrez's wounds was close to mortal and that meant Bezul could vent his anger. "I don't know which is worse: that you cheated the Nighters or that you got cheated by some Ilsigi fly-by-night yourself."
Through the bruises and blood, Perrez protested his innocence.
"I've talked to Mother," Bezul snapped. "I've talked to a wench at the Unicorn who seemed to remember you well enough. And I've done more than talk to that Nighter."
"What Nighter? What are you talking about, Bez?"
"Don't 'Bez' me. You knew he'd come looking when you didn't show up to return his damn lucky so you pointed him at me. What did you expect? That I'd keep him out of your way until you had your seventy royals? Or was that just a number you threw at Mother? Did your aromacist friend make you the same sheep-shite promise you gave the Nighter: Give me what I want and I'll make you my partner? By Lord Ils's thousandth eye, what else have you been doing besides making us the guarantor for every bet in Sanctuary?"
"I'd have split the royals with you, Bez… with you and the frackin' froggin' Nighter!" Perrez studied his torn, stained sleeve before cursing softly and swiping his face with the cloth. He ignored the jibe about his oddsmaking activities. "It was a fair deal, Bez, a good price. That 'lucky' wasn't any ordinary piece of glass. It's an attractor. The fish-folk made them: hollow bulbs filled with their magic. If you want something bad enough it'll bring it to you, or lead you there. Worth their frackin' froggin' weight in gold when the fish-folk made them and ten times that now. Nareel-"
"Your buyer? The aromacist? The man who strung you up?" Perrez hesitated, then nodded. "Nareel will get a thousand for it up in Ilsig… once we'd gotten the crabs out of it. Shalpa! Those Nighters were using a fish-eye attractor as bait in their crab traps! Now, there's a waste, Bez, a true crime. Once we got it focused on gold-"