by Lynn Abbey
The crowd had vanished like smoke on a windy day.
“Damn insolence! Move him out of the way!”
Dace turned toward the sound and snagged eyes with Lord Noordiseh himself, resplendent in billowing silk and an equally billowed silk-and-feather hat. Three thoughts burst into Dace’s mind. The first two—Find your crutch and Get yourself away from here!—were wise choices, but the third—He’s wearing a fake beard—was more compelling, at least until one of the burly retainers reached for Dace’s sack.
“The little thief’s got enough food here to feed an army—”
Dace flailed and found his crutch. With a desperate heave and a measure of luck he lurched to his feet without surrendering the sack. “No army, ser, just my household.”
“What family?” the retainer demanded. “Where do you live?”
Dace saw the crack of doom looming before him. He should have listened to Chersey, should have stayed away from the Processional, but bad as things were, they’d be worse if he lied. “Wriggle Way, ser. The house of Bezulshash the Changer.”
The retainer wasn’t impressed, but Lord Noordiseh showed unexpected mercy: “Let him go.”
And Dace went, as fast as his gimpy leg allowed. His heart didn’t stop racing until his feet touched Wriggle Way. Familiar buildings had never looked so good. He paused to tidy his clothes; no sense walking into the changing house with his shirt hitched up.
A girl emerged from the Frog and Bucket tavern as Dace swiped his fingers through his hair. Geddie wasn’t the sort to draw much attention. She had a plain face with slightly bulging eyes. Her hair hung in braids against her back and her skirt was shorter than it should have been, as if she were in the midst of a girlish growth spurt, though she swore she was nineteen and a veteran of the Maze brothels.
Dace didn’t believe Geddie had worked the brothels and didn’t think she was pretty. In fact, he thought she was so homely that she might eventually succumb to a cripple’s charm. He called her name and hurry-hobbled to catch up.
“I didn’t expect to see you today!”
“It’s my day off.”
Geddie worked in the palace laundry where she’d risen from pounding and wringing to the skilled labor of mending.
“So, where’re you going?”
“Same place as you. Got me a gift to change.” Geddie patted the pouch slung at her waist. “Then I’m off to see One-Eye Reesch. He just got a chest of Aurvesh fortune oils. S’not like they’re Caronnese, but my girlfriend says they work real well.”
“Can I come with?”
Geddie shrugged and Dace stuck close.
“I can give you twelve padpols—three soldats—for them,” Chersey judged while eyeing the pair of merely serviceable boots.
“You gave a whole shaboozh last time.”
Chersey sighed inwardly. She preferred to give her customers what they wanted and had never hardened to this colder part of changing-house life. “Last time I didn’t have six other pairs of boots on the shelves.”
“I’ve got to have a shaboozh. Just one until Ilsday. I’ll buy ’em back then, same as always.”
“Thirteen.” Chersey made her final offer.
The woman was a regular customer who cycled her husband’s boots through the changing house the way fishermen cycled their nets.
“We’ll starve,” the woman insisted, which was merely her way of accepting the offer.
Chersey pulled a thin, baked-clay, double-eyed tablet from a bowl beneath the counter and began writing the details of the trade on it. When she finished, she handed the tablet to the woman who broke it in two, keeping one sherd and returning the other to Chersey who threaded a bit of twine through the eye. She tied the twine to the boots before counting out thirteen good-sized padpols—one of them almost large enough to be a two-padpol bit.
The woman wasn’t blind to generosity. She gave thanks and swept the tarnished bits into the hem of her sleeve. Chersey put the tagged boots on the shelf. The changing house always had boots, but eight pairs—she’d forgotten one—were an unusually high number. Something was amiss in the hand-to-mouth segment of Sanctuary society that relied on the changing house to tide them over.
She and Bezul should discuss the problem. The changing house didn’t have unlimited padpols. There’d been times in the past when they’d had to stop making exchanges for cash. But Bezul and Pel Garwood were no closer to an exchange for the old Ilsigi ewer someone had given the healer in exchange for his services. The healer was a good man—Chersey consulted him whenever one of the children took sick—and a better bargainer. He and Bezul might be at it all day.
The morning was hot. Chersey thought about getting herself a glass of night-cooled mint tea from the kitchen sump. She got as far as the inner door when the brass bell hanging from the open doorway jangled and Jopze—one of the two retired soldiers who kept a lid on things in exchange for clothes for their ever-increasing broods—hailed Dace by name.
Dace didn’t usually come through the front door. Chersey wondered why he’d changed his habits and, turning, saw that the youth wasn’t alone. She recognized the scrawny girl by sight, not name. The girl lived above the Frog and Bucket, which was tantamount to saying she sold herself to the tavern’s customers. She had some sort of dealings with the palace, too: a job in the laundry, or so she claimed. Chersey couldn’t imagine how any laundress could come by the trinkets the girl exchanged without shedding her own clothes.
Chersey wasn’t pleased to see the girl with Dace, though she immediately realized she shouldn’t have been surprised. Dace might have a crippled leg and a lopsided smile, but he was still a young man at an age when young men had only one thought on their minds. He was being practical, aiming low where his chances of success were high.
Dace began the conversation: “Geddie’s got something to change.”
So the girl’s name was Geddie. Somehow it fit that her name sounded like something stuck to a shoe, but business was business. Chersey returned to the counter.
“Let’s have a look.”
The girl brought out a cloth-wrapped parcel which proved to contain a small statue of Anen, the Ilsigi god of wine and good fortune. The statue was painted stone, chipped here and there, with hollow eyes where gems had once resided. Three bands confined the god’s unruly hair. Two were hollow but the third shone with gold. Chersey could pin a value to ordinary household objects, but when it came to relics, she turned to her husband.
“Bez? Could you take a look at this?”
Bezul seemed relieved by the interruption. He picked up the statue, paying particular attention to its base. “You realize this once stood in Anen’s chapel at the Temple of Ils?” he said with a trace of accusation in his voice.
Of course, the Dyareelan fanatics had destroyed the temple. Ils’s priests had hidden a few of their treasures before they died. A week didn’t go by without someone claiming to have found an abandoned hoard.
Chersey and Bezul heard all the treasure rumors, thanks to Bezul’s brother, Perrez. Sometimes the rumors were true—that ewer Pel Garwood was determined to exchange had survived the Troubles intact, but the changing house didn’t knowingly trade in looted goods. There were dens on the Hill that specialized in covert trade.
“How did you come by this?” Bezul challenged.
“A gift,” she replied, sullen and defiant.
“From whom?”
“I got a friend at the palace.”
Chersey scowled and flicked her moonstone ring close to her right eye. The ring was minor wizardry. It cast an aura through which Chersey could detect lies and deceit. The girl was full of deceit, but she wasn’t lying when she said, “I mended his britches. Them Irrunes, they don’t touch money, but they’ll give you gifts.”
Chersey doubted that mending had anything to do with Geddie’s good fortune, but it was true enough that Sanctuary’s current rulers refused to handle money. Had it been up to Chersey, they would have sent Geddie and her relic packing. Regardless
of how the girl had come by her gift, they weren’t likely to resell a stripped relic in day-to-day trade. They’d have to turn it over to Perrez who brokered their one-of-a-kinds to east-side dealers, foreigners, and an occasional rich patron. Chersey would rather have made do without Perrez’s contributions. Bezul would have done the same, but his brother’s trades turned a tidy profit, when they didn’t fall through; and the house couldn’t overlook profit.
According to Perrez, Sanctuary relics were all the rage in the Ilsigi Kingdom and the right trade could yield a tidy profit—could being the operative word.
Bez set the statue on the counter. “You’d do better at a goldsmith’s. I recommend Thibalt in Copper Corner.”
Geddie worked her mouth into a sarcastic smile. “Sure. I’m going to walk into a froggin’ goldsmith’s. Me an’ all my ladies.”
“We don’t trade in relics. I can only offer intrinsic worm—”
The girl scowled at the unfamiliar word. “Shite for sure, so long as it’s four froggin’ shaboozh”
“three” Bezul replied without batting an eye, which told Chersey the statue must be worth ten.
“Three’n twelve.”
“Three and eight.”
Geddie thrust out her chin. “Done,” she declared and held out her hand.
Bezul counted the coins and the girl turned to leave the shop. Dace turned with her, then hesitated. The young man’s conflicting thoughts were so obvious that Chersey could read them on his face: The household’s supper was hanging in a sack from his shoulder, but he’d rather moon after the girl.
Chersey’s mother-wit counseled responsibility. The girl was trouble. On the other hand, Dace was nearly grown and she wasn’t his mother. She reached for the sack.
The boy brightened. “I’ll be back in good time to start the supper!”
Bezul caught Chersey’s eye as the pair left. Chersey shrugged. She liked having someone to do the kitchen chores, but she didn’t expect the respite to last forever.
“You should have gone to a goldsmith,” Dace said as he kept pace, barely, with the woman of his current fantasies.
Geddie gave a snort worthy of an overheated horse. “And get cheated even worse? When I can dress myself like a lady, then I’ll go where ladies go.”
“Where’s One-Eye Reesch?”
“In the bazaar. With what I got for that statue, I can buy myself some good-fortune oil. I’m telling you, I’m due for good fortune. I’m not spending my life on Wriggle Way.”
Dace had never heard of good-fortune oils. At the very least, he’d meet someone new and fill in another gap or two in his knowledge of life beyond the Swamp of Night Secrets. He would have been happier if Geddie looked at him when she spoke, but she wasn’t telling him to get lost.
Though Geddie insisted that the bazaar was quiet, almost deserted, Dace was left agog by the sights, sounds, and smells. He didn’t dare ask questions, though, lest Geddie get the wrong impression or abandon him among the stalls.
Geddie navigated and brought them to the large wooden stall where One-Eye Reesch both lived and worked. Mostly, the gray-haired, patch-eyed trader sold metal lamps and colorful glass goblets, but when Geddie mentioned fortune oils, he winked his good eye and led her to a wicker chest, maybe two feet on each side, stuffed with straw and waxstoppered vials.
“Can you read?” Geddie hissed.
Dace winced. Chersey was teaching him Ilsigi letters, same as she taught five-year-old Ayse. He could recognize a few words and enough letters to know that the writing on the bottles wasn’t Ilsigi.
Reesch had overheard. “No problem. The blue ones are for money, the red for true love, the green ones will get rid of sickness, and the blacks will break a hex.”
Geddie wanted vials in red and blue, but her money wouldn’t stretch that far. The smallest red vial was three shaboozh. The blue vials were cheaper. For two and ten Geddie could buy a fist-sized vial of fortune. Geddie bar- gained Reesch down to two and seven. She slipped the precious vial inside her bodice.
“Fortune comes first,” she told Dace as they headed out of the bazaar. “This oil’s going to pull me a froggin’ rich man. Once I have money, love will follow.”
“What if your true love happened to be poor?” Dace didn’t add crippled; there was no sense in tempting fate.
“He won’t be. I’ve had my palm read: My love line joins my money line. You want to share?”
“Share what?”
“My fortune oil! Soon as I get home, I’m going to burn some. You want to sit beside me? You need all the help you can »
Dace agreed. His hopes soared, until Geddie asked—
“Is Perrez rich?”
In self-defense, Dace answered, “No.”
“But he looks so fine in his white shirts, and he knows everyone. I’ve watched him in the Frog.”
“Most of the time Perrez works for Bezul. He’ll be working for Bezul when he brokers your statue. That means what he gets goes to Bezul—most of it, anyway. He only keeps it all when he brokers something he found—” Dace caught himself on the verge of a secret and clammed up.
Geddie wasn’t fooled. “What has he found?”
“Well, he didn’t find it, exactly. He made a trade—with a fisherman. You’ve heard the rumors—there’s some mystery wreck out on the reef. No one knows anything about it, but the fishermen are picking it clean. Guess the fisherman thought the thing was cursed and wanted to be rid of it. Perrez says it’s going to make him rich.”
“What kind of thing is it?”
Dace shook his head.
“C’mon—you can tell me. I won’t tell anyone.”
“It’s a black rod, half as long as my arm from elbow to wrist. There’s a gold dragon wrapped around the tip and honey amber wired to the base.”
Geddie’s eyes and mouth widened into circles. “Froggin’ sure that’s sorcery.”
“That’s what Perrez thinks. He hasn’t told anyone but me. Not even Bezul. He’s keeping it—” Dace caught himself again. “Keeping it safe until he can sell it. Not here. He’s going to consign it up to Ilsig. Lord Noordiseh’s his vouchsafe—’cause he knows Kingdom lords who’re richer than all Sanctuary put together. I took the message straight to Lord Noordiseh—”
“You’ve met Lord Noordiseh?” There was new respect in Geddie’s voice.
“I saw him this morning.”
Geddie stopped short and gave Dace a once-over. He bore her appraisal without flinching. He had delivered Perrez’s message to Lord Noordiseh’s mansion—and waited at the back door all afternoon for an answer that never came. And he had seen the nabob on his way back from the market. His heart leaped when Geddie slipped her hand beneath his left arm. Walking close to anyone was a challenge with the crutch but he managed all the way to the Frog and Bucket.
Geddie’s room was beneath the tavern’s roof and accessible only by a rickety outside stairway. Dace didn’t like using stairways, especially when he could see between the risers. He planted his crutch, held his breath, hopped, and hoped. His teeth hurt from clenching by the time he got to the landing and he stayed close to the wall until Geddie undid her latch knot. She ushered him into a stiflingly hot room scarcely large enough for a narrow cot, a couple of baskets, and a tied-together table. For sitting, there was a three-legged stool.
Dace disliked stools almost as much as he disliked stairs, but he wasn’t forward enough to sit on the cot, so he stood while Geddie lit the lamp with a sparker, set it on the stool, set the stool by the cot, sat down, and patted the mattress beside her.
Dace didn’t need a second invitation. The warmth of Geddie’s thigh was palpable against his and she hadn’t bothered to tidy her bodice after retrieving the vial. He sucked in a lungful of smoke after Geddie shook a few drops of fortune oil into the lamp, but he already had his good fortune. Her small, pale breast was visible within the cloth. Dace tried not to stare. It was a lost cause, but Geddie didn’t seem to mind.
“Take another breath,�
�� she urged, leaning toward the lamp.
He could see everything then, from root to nipple. The forbidden sight took his breath away and he choked on the vapors.
Geddie pounded between his shoulder blades. “Shite for guts, haven’t you done this before?”
Between gasps, Dace shook his head.
“Want something easier? Something better?”
Good fortune indeed! Dace nodded vigorously. He wasn’t sure what came next, then Geddie shoved a pitcher into his hands.
“Go downstairs and buy some wine.”
Downstairs was worse than upstairs, but he’d do it for the reward he thought she’d promised. Except—Except—
“I don’t drink much. I have enough trouble staying upright as is.” He laughed, but the joke fell flat.
“You don’t have to drink. All’s you’ve got to do is dip.”
Dace wouldn’t admit it, but he didn’t understand that remark. He had another painful confession: “I’ve only got three padpols.”
“That’s enough.”
Three padpols of the Frog’s cheapest wine filled the pitcher halfway. Four padpols and he’d have spilled some struggling up the stairs a second time. Geddie had her head in the lamp fumes when he opened the door. She called him to the cot with a question:
“Ever done opah?”
Dace felt like a wet-eared puppy, shaking his head for the umpteenth time.
She patted the cot. “I’ll show you.”
Obediently, Dace sat beside her. Geddie produced a palm-sized square of dirt-crusted cloth.
“Here. Just dip the corner into the wine”—she demonstrated the proper motion—“and hold it against the tip of your tongue.”
The first sensation was an alarming bitterness, but the second, a heartbeat later, was a tingling that raced down Dace’s throat and down his arms as well. He pulled away from the strangeness. Geddie laughed, re-dipped the cloth, and challenged him to stick out his tongue again. Unwilling to be shown up by a woman, Dace obliged. The tingling shot down his spine like ice and fire together.
