Anthology - Thieves World - Turning Points

Dace sat on the floor beside the hearth, ignoring the chairs and table. He cradled a smallish bread loaf and a bowl of whey in his lap. By the looks of the whey as he dipped a morsel of bread in it, Chersey had fortified the weak milk with an egg. Thanks to their flock of night-watchmen, the changing house always had extra eggs. Four-year-old Ayse sat cross-legged in one of the chairs, her wide eyes not missing a thing as the Nighter ate with his fingers-something she was no longer permitted to do.

The young man wiped his hands on his breeches before taking the glass bulb Bezul offered. He seemed pleased, though a bit overwhelmed. Bezul's gift was bigger, he stammered, redder, and heavier-solid where the missing bulb had been hollow, but it was Ayse who got to the heart of matter:

"Is it lucky, Poppa? It's got to be lucky, doesn't it?"

Bezul answered with hope, not honesty, and got out of the kitchen.

Despite Gedozia's statements, Bezul didn't strike out for the Vulgar Unicorn. He clung to the hope that Perrez wasn't that foolish until he'd finished poking his head into every tavern and wine shop in the Shambles without meeting anyone who'd seen his brother recently. With his hope exhausted, and feeling quite foolish himself, Bezul plunged into Sanctuary's most infamous quarter.

It had been a year, easily, since Bezul's last encounter with the tangled, narrow alleys that passed for streets in the Maze. He'd nearly convinced himself that he'd missed a critical turn and would have to start over (getting in and out of the Maze wasn't nearly as difficult, by daylight, as finding a particular place) when he caught sight of the Unicorn's signboard. The sign was to Bezul's left, not his right, where he'd been expecting it, so he had missed a turn or two, or perhaps the gossips were correct and, in the Maze, all paths led to the Vulgar Unicorn.

The Unicorn's shutters were open, not that it made a difference. The air in the commons was as thick and stale as the shadows. Bezul leaned against a wooden upright, looking for Perrez, waiting for his eyes to adjust to the haze. A woman hailed him by name-

"Bezulshash! Bezul the Changer!"

The woman coming toward Bezul was taller than him by a hand-span, heavier by at least a stone. Her red hair fairly glowed in the twilight and her bodice was cut so snug and low that her breasts jounced above her corset like fresh fish on a trawl line. She came to the changing house every month or so to change a sackful of padpols into fewer, better coins. Bezul knew her name; he might even remember it, if he concentrated on her face.

"Frog all, Bezulshash, what's brought you to the Unicorn?"

They were considerably less than an arm's length apart. Bezul would have retreated, but he had a post at his back. Clearing his throat, he stammered, then said, "I'm looking for my brother, Per-rez."

That name meant nothing to her (and Bezul hadn't remembered hers… It was Mimmi, Minzie, something like that), but his description of Perrez's scrupulously clean clothes, neatly trimmed hair, and his love of someone else's largesse rang a bell.

"You froggin' missed him, Bezulshash. He was here when I came downstairs-talking with the aromacist."

"The what?"

She shrugged, a very distracting gesture. Bezul missed her first words. "-of winter. Set himself up off the Processional. Froggin' fancy place: fancy bottles, colored oils, silks and tassels hanging from the walls."

"A perfumer?"

She shook her head and everything else. " 'Aromas' he called them, better than perfume. Said no man could resist his 'aroma' of passion. Frog all, Bezulshash-do I look like I need help attracting men? He never fit inside the Unicorn; a little like you, Bezulshash: You don't belong here. But he came by, every few days, late morning or early afternoon, when it was slow and quiet. He'd take one of the side tables, buy a whole ewer of ale, leave it, too-unless he got company-your brother, a handful of others. Come to think of it- they left together. First time, I think, for that; first time I noticed:

Your brother, he was tipsy, noisy. Don't think he'd've made it outside by himself-"

"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.