Brent Weeks - Beyond the Shadows

But bards were too good a resource to abandon. They plied Momma K with every tidbit they knew and lapped up every morsel she dropped. Indeed, they often gave her new information, for bards were always present at parties even if her other spies were not. But Quoglee was different. Quoglee’s stories were rare, and the nobles regarded them as absolute truth; other bards often repeated them. He was hard to interest, but once that interest was piqued, he was a bulldog.

“Do you know who I am, Quoglee Mars?” she asked again.

Again, he hesitated. “You’re the owner of half the brothels in the city. You’re a woman who crawled out of the gutter to climb higher than anyone would have believed. My guess is you’re the Sa’kagé Mistress of Pleasures.”

“One of my girls has a small Talent of foretelling,” Momma K said. “She doesn’t dream often, but when she does, she’s never been wrong. Two years ago she dreamed of you, maestro, though she’d never seen or heard of you and indeed, you hadn’t yet come to Cenaria. She described you perfectly. She said a song burst from your mouth like a river. The river was the purest, clearest water she’d ever seen. She said I tried to stop it, but the waters overwhelmed me and I drowned. The next night she dreamed the same dream, but this time I tried to strike you down before you could sing, but the song was unstoppable, and again I drowned. On the third night, I swam. I think the name of your river is Truth, Quoglee Mars, so I ask again: do you know who I am?”

“You’re the Shinga of the Sa’kagé,” he said quietly.

Though she’d been prepared for it, hearing the truth spoken aloud frightened her. But this was why she’d hired Quoglee Mars in the first place. She’d paid him for a flute piece, then had her informants drop hints to him of a much bigger story, the kind of tale Quoglee couldn’t resist telling. But the man was incredibly bright, and that made him dangerous. “How’d you learn?” she asked.

“Everyone knew you were Jarl’s right hand. When he disappeared, none of the Sa’kagé’s work was interrupted. Agon’s Dogs continued training, the Nocta Hemata happened, and there was no rush of thugs’ bodies floating in the Plith. The Sa’kagé isn’t an organization to put off a struggle for succession just because there’s a war. You’ve been Shinga for more than a month, haven’t you?”

Momma K let out a long, slow breath. “Fifteen years,” she said. “Always behind puppet Shingas. Shingas don’t tend to die of natural causes.”

“So what are you buying? I’m guessing you want more than a flute piece.”

“I want you to sing a song of Terah Graesin’s secrets.”

“Do you know what those are?” Quoglee asked.

“Yes.”

“Are you going to tell me?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Because I’ve made my living telling lies and you know it. Because the truth is damning enough. Because you’re renowned for winkling out the truth on your own.”

“So if you can’t dam the river, you wish to channel it. How do you propose to buy me off?”

“You want more than coin?” she asked, knowing the answer.

“Oh yes.”

“Then I’ll give you what you wish,” she said.

“I want your story. You will answer every question I ask, and if you lie in any particular, I will use your tale to cast you in a devastating light.”

“Now you tempt me to take my chances with prophecy and signal the wetboy I have waiting behind that curtain to kill you. A whore’s truth has too many sharp edges. I will tell my story and not spare myself, but I will not share the secrets of the men I could destroy with what I know. It would be my death, and some few of them deserve better. I will give you more of my story, and more about the Sa’kagé, than you could ever learn alone, but that is all. And you will not tell it for at least a year. I have work to do first.”

Quoglee’s skin had turned green, making the impression of a frog complete. “You don’t really have a wetboy behind that curtain, do you?” he asked.

“Of course not.” Quoglee was a coward? Odd. “Do we have a deal?

He inhaled deeply, as if trying to smell the wetboy, and slowly he regained his balance. “If you tell me why you’re doing this. I don’t believe it’s because of some whore’s dream.”

She nodded. “If Logan Gyre were king, Jarl’s dream of a new Cenaria might come to pass. Things wouldn’t have to be how they were for my sister and me growing up, or how they are for the guild rats now.”

“Sounds awfully …altruistic,” Quoglee said.

Momma K didn’t let his tone anger her. “I have a daughter.”

“Now that I didn’t know.”

“I’m the richest, most powerful person in this country, maestro. But a Shinga’s power dies with her, and my wealth will be taken by whoever finally murders me. Having a daughter has cost me the man I love and quite nearly my life. But as much as she endangers me, I endanger her much more. I need Logan Gyre to become king because that’s the only way I can go legitimate, and going legitimate is the only way I can pass anything on to my daughter except death.”

Quoglee’s eyes were wide. “You don’t just mean to be a merchant or even a merchant queen, do you? You mean to establish a new noble house. How would you buy such a thing?”

“That’s a tale I’ll tell after the coronation. Do we have a deal?”

“You want me to learn a queen’s darkest secrets and make a song of it …in three days? That’s ridiculous. Impossible. There isn’t a bard in Midcyru who could do such a thing. But.” He paused theatrically, and Momma K had to restrain herself from rolling her eyes. “But I am no mere bard. I am a genius. I’ll do it.”

“Sing fearlessly, maestro. I will make sure your song isn’t interrupted.”

Quoglee blinked rapidly and he sniffed again. “That’s it. Head notes of bergamot and galbanum with a third I can’t recall. The heart notes are jasmine and daffodil over base notes of vanilla, iris, amber, and forest. Nuec vin Broemar, the royal Alitaeran perfumer himself showed me that perfume. He said it was his queen’s own perfume. No one else ever …” he trailed off, his eyes widening.

Momma K smiled, glad the gesture hadn’t been wasted.

A small tongue wet his wide, fleshy lips. “May I just say, Madame Kirena, you frighten and intrigue me in almost equal measures.”

She chuckled. “I promise you, maestro, the feeling is mutual.”

Scarred Wrable was on time. He always was. This time their meeting was in the castle’s statue gardens. Scarred Wrable wore the hundred-colored robe of a hecatonarch, the long sleeves covering his ritually scarred arms and hands, the chasuble covering the lattice of scars across his chest and neck. He smirked at her. “Yes, my child? Do you have sins to confess, or sins to contract?”

Terah Graesin favored him with a contemptuous stare. “You blaspheme, coming as a priest.”

“Out of a hundred gods, there’s got to be one with a sense of humor. What’s the job, Your Highness? If people see you talking to me too long, they might think you really are confessing. They might wonder why.”

“I want you to kill Logan Gyre. Sooner is better.” She itched her bandaged arm. It was healing from where that damned shadow had stabbed her, but slowly.

Scarred Wrable spat on the brushed white gravel, forgetting he was supposed to be a priest. “Yah, right.”

“I’ll pay you twice what I paid you to kill Durzo Blint.”

“Funny how you didn’t tell me I was killing Blint until afterward.”

“It turned out all right, didn’t it?”

“Only ’cause I caught him unawares,” Wrable said.

“I thought you said you fought him man to man,” she said coolly.