by Jaida Jones
“Indeed,” I said, making a show of clearing my own throat.
We came to a curtain, a heavy velvet affair that was thick with dust. Nor paused before drawing it aside and I could tell that he was enjoying himself. In his hands he held the power to reveal another world, as it were, to someone lower than himself. Mollyscum didn’t get much chance to feel better than anyone, so as long as he didn’t waste too much of my time, there was no harm in allowing him the delight of drawing the moment out.
“It’s Nor,” my guide said. “Nor by Nor’east today. I’ve brought a guest for you.”
“What’s his number?” a man asked.
“He’s decent,” Nor said. “I shook him down myself.”
“Buy or sell?”
“He’s selling, I think,” Nor replied. “Funny little bugger.”
This was my cue, and I drew the scale out of my secret pocket as the curtain was drawn back fully.
Whatever I’d been expecting to see, it certainly wasn’t what lay behind that curtain: a smallish, shabby room that someone had taken great effort to decorate in their idea of the Ke-Han style. There was the incense, in a curious bronze dish shaped like a tiger, and various standing screens were scattered here and there, in direct antithesis to the Ke-Han principles of austerity. Most folk in Molly hardly had enough things to fill up a room, let alone decorate it, so one could hardly blame them for going a bit overboard with such a wealth of exciting, foreign items at hand.
“You the seller?” The same man who’d asked the questions glanced over, looking me up and down. He was a geometric breed of person—square head, straight shoulders, and a rectangular body—and he was seated in a Volstovic-style chair, though I noticed he’d seen fit to decorate it with an elaborately embroidered Ke-Han cushion.
“That’s me,” I said, the metal of the scale warm against my gloved palm.
There weren’t any other chairs in the room, but there were more cushions. They were plainer than the one the man had chosen to adorn his chair, but that was to be expected. I sat, crossing my legs beneath me.
“Saw you admiring my tiger,” the square-shaped man said, in a way that told me immediately which piece was his favorite. Men could be so predictable at times. “Had a monkey that came with it, but that went last week.”
“What if I told you that I’ve got something in my possession that’ll blow monkeys and tigers right out of the water?” I said, laying the scale bare and holding it out like an offering, without hiding anything like I had down at the docks.
Trying to be coy here would only make it look as though I was trying to pull a fast one, and it would be doing an unkindness to Nor by Nor’east to make myself out as a person of questionable motivation.
The man’s eyebrows shot up as though they’d been fired from a cannon and he leaned forward, his interest plain and the chair creaking beneath his weight.
“Where’d a slip of a thing like you get a piece like that, hey?” he asked. “I’m not so bold as to think all Ke-Han junk comes through me first, but I pride myself on getting the best of the goods—my own joke, there.”
“So I’ve heard,” I said, sidestepping the question.
“You don’t look like a soldier,” he said. “Where’s it from?”
“I wasn’t, but my brother was,” I said. “He’s dead. It’s a memento from the war, and I’m looking to sell.”
The excuse seemed to satisfy him. “You won’t get its worth trying to pawn it off on your own, that’s for certain,” the man said, stroking his square chin in thought. He had a three days’ beard growing, not yet at the stage where it was substantial, and there was a scar on his chin that marred the effect somewhat.
“That’s why I’m here,” I answered, sitting up straight but not too straight. “Easier to move a piece with the right connections, and I hear you’ve got quite a few.”
“Can’t be beat,” he said, looking as proud as if I’d just complimented one of his children. “I could probably find some idiot from the Basquiat with more brains than sense to peddle it off to, but doing business in dragon parts is tricky up near Miranda. Dangerous work, if the wrong man overhears,” he added, and drew his finger across his throat in the universal gesture for losing one’s head.
“I’m quite attached to my head,” I said. Here was where I had to be careful and influence the conversation in the direction I wanted it to go. I couldn’t afford to sell the scale the Esar had given me within Thremedon itself; I’d worked out already that my best bet would be to try to get a foreign buyer, which would at least lead me to the point where those in Thremedon traded off with those from other nations. It wasn’t a gamble, but it was also far from a sure thing. “I want to buy a big house next to th’Esar’s palace, not end up buried underneath it.”
“That’s the only way most of us’ll ever end up in Miranda,” the man said, then laughed a wheezing sort of laugh that was more like a cough. “You’re right, though, and I’m not that keen on losing my head either. Be better off with a foreign investor, someone with no ties to Volstov or the Ke-Han. Can’t let something like that fall into the wrong hands, now can we?”
“Do you already have someone in mind?” I asked, rubbing my thumb over the blackened surface of the scale. It had a curious feeling to it, hard yet with a bit of a give if you pressed against it—almost the way flesh would have.
But of course, there was no telling with magicians.
“Not someone,” the man said. “More like, a whole lot of someones. And whoever I pick, it’s his lucky day, you understand?”
“I see,” I said. “All foreigners?”
“Yeah,” the man said. “Listen, I’ll let you in on a little secret of the market, because you’re a first timer and Nor vouched for you and all. Since the war ended, even countries that weren’t involved—especially countries that weren’t involved—want themselves a little piece of the history that took place. No one ever thought the damned thing would end, so now that it has, everyone’s in a celebrating mood. And when people celebrate, their purse strings get loose. Everyone’s looking to turn a profit, but to do that, you’ve got to shell it out first.”
“Fascinating,” I breathed, and meant it. There was nothing I enjoyed more than learning a new fact about the way people operated, and mentally I filed this bit of information along with the rest.
“’Course some folk are on the lookout for more than just mementos, but I wouldn’t bother you with that lot. They’re real particular. When it comes to a piece like yours,” the man continued, “a real part of one of Volstov’s dragons now, I’m not even going to have to put it on the open market. I’ll pass the word to a few choice contacts, real classy gentlemen, and soon you’ll have more suitors than you can shake a stick at, friend.”
“And what do I owe you for this kind favor?” Only a fool did favors in Molly without expecting something in return, and it was up to the recipient to ask up front or else he was the fool. I neatly skirted around his mention of particular customers, not knowing whether that was a warning to me, that he’d perhaps sensed something off and wanted to see if I’d nibble.
No such luck. Even in Molly, I was a well-trained professional.
“I get a cut of whatever you make. Twenty percent is standard on high-ticket items, and I can’t say as things get any higher ticket than this.”
“Done,” I said, without compunction. The Esar provided me with an allowance, as well as covering any costs I incurred while working for him. Money was no object. I would cheerfully pay off this man out of my own pocket—or the Esar’s own pocket—in order to achieve my ends.
What was objectionable, I realized, was the idea of anyone unsavory getting wind of this deal before it was finalized. Like the man had said, word spread fast over something this hot, and if Dmitri’s men were to hear of the deal and shut things down before they got under way, I ran the risk of losing my only lead.
I certainly didn’t cherish the idea of having to return to the Esar to ask if he happened to have any o
ther spare parts lying around that I could use, nor did I think Nor would be so open-minded to strangers in the future, no matter how neat my next disguise was.
The man sitting in the chair got up and held out his hand. I switched the scale to my other hand and took it, shaking once firmly as I’d practiced so many times, then releasing him.
“Nice doing business with an interesting chap for a change,” he said, with a glance at Nor that I supposed meant he fell into the uninteresting category. “Nor here’ll be in contact to let you know when we’ve got a buyer. As a personal favor, I’ll weed out any offers that I don’t find worth our time.”
“Very generous of you,” I said, the understanding between us that he was also being generous to himself.
With a short bow to the man and to Nor, I left.
Soon, I hoped, depending on how quickly the market’s lines ran, I would have a point from which I could start. After that, I would trace the trajectory from Thremedon until I came to the point of origin of where these parts were being sold. In the meantime, it looked as though I’d be spending my time in Molly. Still, my game didn’t have to be all waiting, not now that I’d discovered some further business that required attending to.
I didn’t much cherish the idea of conducting said business in my current attire, but there was nothing to be done for it.
I had to go speak with the Provost.
CHAPTER THREE
THOM
Another night camped out under the stars and I was going to lose my mind.
My hand had healed, as had some of my wounded morals, but my back was what troubled me now. The weather was turning hotter and drier as we headed south toward the deserts, and the inns in these parts were few and far between.
And I couldn’t trust Rook with people, given his present mood.
I didn’t count; I was his punching bag for the time being, and I could consider myself lucky that such abuse was merely verbal and emotional, and had not yet turned to fisticuffs. It was easy enough to assume I would lose should matters ever come to that, but I did wonder how deep the vein of Rook’s anger ran, that even the extreme amounts of physical exercise we endured was not enough to cool his temper.
My travel log was full of notations—not merely on my surroundings, which was to be expected, but I found I was falling back on old habits, making note of each grunt and scowl Rook tossed my way like a master tossed his hunting dog scraps. Matters had been worse before—even I could admit that, despite how depressing they were now—but now I had no one else to talk to. There was only the fire, the soil, the open road, and Rook. The first three couldn’t speak, and the fourth refused to.
Days of traveling had taken their toll on me, and I wondered if this was an endeavor that could have been accomplished by carriage rides. How did normal people travel, I wondered to myself, and with what comforts and expenses?
Yet if I considered it all fieldwork—if I reminded myself that Excursions with a Hero: A Travel Diary might become a fascinating treatise on a sort of modern-day walkabout—it was almost bearable.
Luckily for my sanity, we had found ourselves a campsite.
There were such places along the best-traveled routes to and from the major cities in Volstov, and those outside of Volstov’s domain that nonetheless were both friendly and major sites of trade. It was the possibility of visiting such metropolises that truly thrilled me, and our next stop would be just outside the famed caravan oasis of Karakhum—where my ’Versity friend Geoffrey Bless was, I could only hope, expecting our arrival.
Poor Geoffrey. He had no idea the storm that was, at this very moment, gathering.
“Get something to eat,” Rook grunted at me—the most perfunctory of statements that implied I was slow and soft in the head and needed to be told to eat when I was hungry.
“Are you going somewhere?” I asked, softly, in the hopes that he wouldn’t hear me. The less he heard, the less chance there was of his becoming angry.
His anger frightened me.
“To check out the location,” Rook replied.
I would have offered to go with him, but he had already left me behind.
The landscape was rocky and uneven here, and, as previously noted, the dirt was becoming sandier, the air drier—all these conditions pointing toward our close proximity with the desert. Here and there my fellow travelers were talking with each other, little fires glinting alongside the tents. It was a fascinating scene and I was determined to make the most of it, to receive news from like-minded, intrepid explorers…or something akin to that.
I was beginning to discover that fieldwork was not my specialty. But the man I had come here with—presumably under the conditions that we were to better understand one another—was somewhere among all these strangers, just as much of a stranger to me as all the rest.
“You look troubled,” someone said at my side. “Bad news from home?”
It was startling to be addressed. At first, I assumed that the voice in question could not be referring to me, but a hand on my shoulder brought me up short.
“Oh, and it looks bad,” the man—suddenly at my side—said, upon seeing my face.
In the dim light I could barely make out his descent, but his accent and the sharpness of his features were foreign to me. If I had to wager a guess on what small evidence I did have, I would have said he was three-quarters Volstovic and one-quarter Ke-Han—but just as fieldwork was not my specialty, neither were matters of lineage.
“What a fascinating accent you have,” I said.
“Is that so?” he asked. “I could say the same for you. I must’ve picked mine up somewhere; I’ve been traveling most of my life. What’s your excuse?”
“I’m from Thremedon,” I said.
“My sincerest apologies,” he replied. “I hope you don’t take any offense, but I can’t stand big cities.”
“I do find it to be a polarizing topic among nonnatives,” I admitted, trying to hide how shaken I was by his appearance. Something told me that Rook would never have been taken by surprise in this way, but then his upbringing had provided him with all sorts of instincts that I’d missed out on.
Funny, as always, that we were from the same place.
“Ah, but see, here I have to beg your pardon once again,” my new companion said, “as I’ve gone and started up a conversation without introducing myself. The name’s Afanasiy. Can’t blame that one on traveling; I got it from my mother.”
“Very traditional,” I said. “Your mother must have been quite the Volstovic purist.”
“Call me Fan,” he countered, smiling, as though I’d said something particularly amusing. “Don’t see many from Thremedon around these parts, and taking these roads. Hope you don’t mind my coming up to say hello; just thought you looked like you could use some company. I know I could.”
“No,” I said, because even if I’d wanted to be alone with my thoughts, I couldn’t find much objectionable in his actions thus far. “I don’t mind at all.”
There followed a slightly awkward pause in the conversation, where he waited for me to give my name, then shrugged when I didn’t volunteer it. While I hadn’t grown up in the Airman, I’d still managed to cultivate a certain set of my own instincts, and any Mollyrat worth his teeth knew not to give his name to a complete stranger—even when he was polite enough to offer his first.
“So, you heading into desert country?” Fan asked, scratching his neck beneath his jaw. “I only ask because if you’re on this road, then that’s where you’re heading whether you meant to or not, and the desert isn’t particularly…kind to those of us who go in unprepared.”
I didn’t blame him for thinking I looked unprepared. I felt unprepared, and I was unprepared; my only shame was how obvious it was, even to complete strangers.
“I’m meeting a friend,” I said, fingering the edges of my travel journal.
“Never a better reason to go on a journey,” he said. I couldn’t quite make out his eyes, but his voice was fill
ed with approval. “I’ll tell you something else, since you and I are in the same boat, so to speak—being men of the road and all—but it’s my opinion that it’s never been a better time to get out of Volstov. See the world a bit, come back when things are settled. You take my meaning?”
“That was the general idea,” I agreed, beginning to wonder just how long it could be taking Rook to scout the location and come back, and whether or not he was coming back at all.
To our left, a woman scurried into her tent and came out dragging a man I assumed must have been her husband. She seemed provincial, and I wondered what she was doing all the way out here. But then, it took all kinds. I was so absorbed in studying her particular style of dress that I caught—quite by accident—the tail end of her conversation.
“I’m telling you, it’s him!” she said anxiously. “And you wanted to sleep early tonight! Teach me to marry the likes of you. Come on!”
“But what’s an airman like Rook doing all the way out here?” her husband demanded, before they disappeared between two distant tents.
I followed them with my eyes, attention diverted from my sudden companion.
“Excuse me,” I said to Fan, and started after them.
“You don’t think they meant the Rook?” he asked, keeping step with me all of a sudden. I supposed it was another thing he’d picked up being on the road—a kind of friendliness that bordered on overbearing to people more used to the anonymity of city life. In Thremedon, his behavior would have been considered rather rude, but after some time on the road myself, I supposed I could understand the urge to strike up a conversation with a complete stranger. Hell, any more time with Rook in this temper, and I would likely be the one accosting strangers at random for a little conversation.
None of that mattered now. Rook was the center of a commotion, and I knew how he hated the sort of mindless attention that he garnered by being famous. Attention he caused was the sort he thrived on, but he had to be in control of it. The other set him snarling like a wild animal, and most people expecting a hero wouldn’t be prepared for my brother’s behavior when he felt cornered or trapped.
