Rob Scott - Lessek_s Key

The baker, a gigantic man who appeared to have lived on nothing but unleavened dough for the past three hundred Twinmoons, had missed the whole by-play; he was far more interested in what his assistant, a much younger man, but already well on his way to baker’s girth himself, was saying about an incident along the southern wharf the previous night.

‘Ran all the way? Gods-rut-a-whore, but I would pay a Moon’s wages to have seen that. I can just imagine it, all those cheeks and chins of his all jouncing along! And crying, too?’

‘I heard he was crying,’ the apprentice said, ‘but I didn’t see it. I guess he ran all the way across the bridge and out to his place near the barracks. He’s probably still out of breath, hey.’

‘Well,’ the baker shrugged sympathetically, ‘I know what that’s like. And old Carpello, he’s not quite as big as me – but I don’t go running scared, hey. I stand and fight, you know.’

‘Hey, I know, but running full-on and terrified of something, hey – maybe he saw old Prince Malagon? I mean, no one else has, hey.’

‘Nah.’ The bigger man laughed, a wet throaty chortle that left Brexan staring in wonder that he was not already dead. ‘Old Carpello probably ran into one of his wives, huh, or maybe his wives ran into one another and he was running to get the coffers locked up, hey?’

‘Yes and down on the southern wharf, too. If his wives are spending time down there, they’re making their own money. You know what I’m saying?’

The baker laughed again and nodded towards Brexan. ‘Which one, girly?’

Brexan gaped: she needed to find this man. She had been frightened in the alley, feeling Jacrys’ breath on her skin as he pressed his dirk into her ribs, but had she not been attacked by the Malakasian spy she would never have known the man’s name: Carpello, the Falkan merchant with the mole on his nose. ‘Um, that one up there, please-’ She indicated the loaf on the third shelf.

‘This one?’ The baker grabbed the wrong loaf, but Brexan was too busy trying to come up with a reasonable question which would keep the men talking.

‘Something scared old Carpello last night?’ she asked, controlling the quaver in her voice. Anyone know what it was?’

‘His wives had a meeting.’ The baker nearly howled at that as he sprayed the counter.

‘Oh, really? Well, I think my mother was married to the fat old horsecock once or twice – I wonder if she was there.’ Brexan was getting into the spirit now; all she had to do was pretend she was back in the regiment.

Both men roared and the younger of the two nearly lost his balance.

Brexan continued, ‘The southern wharf, huh? Well, maybe I’ll go down there and see if she’s around. Actually, you’d better give me another loaf in case I find her.’

The baker’s face reddened and broke out in a sweat. This was apparently the funniest thing he had heard in his lifetime. Unable to breathe, he coughed long and hard into a piece of soiled cloth, hacking up whatever was festering in his lungs. ‘Oh girly, but that is the best I’ve heard in a Twinmoon. You come back any morning, any morning and visit us. If you find old Carpello down there, you tell him if all those wives are going to meet, he needs to build a bigger warehouse, huh.’

Brexan laughed herself, and repeated, ‘Bigger warehouse, you bet!’ She paid for her bread and waved cheerily before turning to hurry down the wharf.

Brexan had met Sallax Farro near the last pier on the southern wharf and she thought she knew the warehouses the bakers were talking about. She would be able to eliminate most of them just by asking around, although she might have to sneak inside two or three for a quick search. Gnawing thoughtfully on one of the loaves, she forgot her desire for a decent cup of tecan and instead bought a beer at a dockside tavern, one where she could sit and observe the pedestrian traffic outside.

The sun was bright this morning and except for the same black cloud that looked as if it had been hanging sentinel over the harbour since the day she arrived, the skies above the waterfront were clear. There was a pervasive chill, and the passersby all looked the same: bent over and clutching their cloaks tightly closed. They reminded her of Sallax; he had been stooped over as well.

Carpello would know. He would know where she could find Jacrys, too. She had originally planned to torture the bloated merchant simply because of what he had done to Versen. Now she could do both: Carpello’s imminent interrogation would be closely followed by an agonisingly long session of creative revenge. Anyone who had ever told her that revenge felt hollow had obviously not been doing it properly – bleeding Haden to death had ranked among the most gratifying things she had ever done. She hadn’t killed the scarred Seron to revive Versen; she had killed him out of a passionate lust for vengeance.

Now that lust flared again: as soon as he revealed Sallax’s whereabouts, she would quench that fire with Carpello’s blood. His mole, Brexan decided, she would hang from a string and present to Brynne if she ever managed to catch up with the rest of the Ronan freedom fighters.

By the evening, Brexan had worked out a rudimentary map of the southern wharf. There were numerous warehouses, owned by a mixture of individuals and companies, as far as she could make out, and roving teams of Malakasian guards patrolled the area. At least two of the buildings provided permanent offices for Malakasian customs officials, so those were discounted – though Carpello was working for Prince Malagon, Brexan didn’t believe for a moment that all his business was legitimate.

Several storage facilities were obviously owned by the same person: they were marked with a red slash through a white triangle. She had chatted idly with a stevedore stacking empty crates – the only one who would to talk with her, for work was hard to find in Orindale and most of the dockers had learned to keep their mouths shut. He mentioned that he did not often see his employer, a Malakasian shipping magnate who lived most Twinmoons in Pellia, and Brexan struck five more warehouses from her mental map.

Finally she found someone who directed her to a series of storage units as far down the pier as she could go – he knew the ships loading and unloading along those piers were bound for Malakasia. ‘You said he was from Falkan but that he had done well.’ The brawny young man tossed a pallet up and through a roughly hewn window in the warehouse wall. Brexan heard it jounce over several others before coming to rest somewhere inside. ‘No locals do well unless they run shipments back and forth for the prince. Try down there. You’ll find him.’

Gilmour took his time checking every hoof, each limb and all the saddlery while the rest of them bedded down for the night: it had been the hardest ride thus far. He knew their nights of using a Larion tailwind were over; in northern Falkan the land was too rough: rocks and granite boulders broke unevenly through the surface of the earth. Too often the previous night Gilmour had been forced to make last-moment changes in their path to avoid tripping one of the mounts; it was too dangerous to risk again.

Now he had determined that the horses were fine, and quite fit to ride later that day, but he dallied a few moments longer, watching the stream trickle by. Late autumn was moving quickly into winter and there wouldn’t be much grass left anywhere this far north; they would need hay, and stables for the horses each night from this point forward.

He sighed. It had taken too long to get here, five, maybe six days. Nerak could have made it in one. Gilmour calculated that Traver’s Notch was still a day or two north and east from the bare earth and the exposed rock of their current campsite.