“It is a very fine piece.” Tempted by the vivid color, Quintin reached out to rub one corner of the soft silk between his thumb and forefinger. He could easily imagine adding texture and contrast to the fabric with a few well-placed stitches. He had the exact right thread at home.
Elkart nudged Quintin’s hip, jostling him.
Quintin let go of the fabric and scratched his waccat behind the ears. “Thank you for the generous offer, but a Hand needs no reward for doing his duty.”
With the merchant’s praise ringing in his ears, Quintin hurried away from the market. He was sure to be late, and Tarinasday was always busy at the Tribute Office. He fought the urge to run. Though chancing tardiness, it was better to arrive with calm dignity, rather than panting and sweating.
When he reached the warehouse, he pulled open the door and was greeted by Bursar Fredrick’s bellow. “The Inspectors are coming today. We don’t have time for this nonsense!”
The Bursar loomed over the table of the newest auditor, a lanky young woman who always looked a little disheveled.
“I don’t know what happened.” Auditor Sarah trembled at the Bursar’s feet, dark curls escaping the thick braid at her nape. She ran her fingers over the dangling threads of a quipu tied to a frame. “The knots are all wrong. I have to fix them.”
“Silence!” Fredrick raised his staff of office, a polished black stick the size and weight of a thighbone, and brought it crashing down on Sarah’s work table.
Sarah jumped, snatching her fingers back.
Elkart growled and pressed against Quintin’s legs.
“If you bungled your accounts, you haven’t got time to fix them now. You’ve got to work with what you have.” Fredrick used the staff to knock over the frame. Tangled threads spilled over the table like a colorful spiderweb.
As he hurried forward to intervene, Quintin silently cursed his tardiness. The only other Hand in the office was out overseeing tariff collections at the wharf, and no one else dared stand up to the Bursar.
“Pick it up!” Fredrick jabbed Sarah’s shoulder with enough force to make her flinch.
Quintin cringed inside at her reaction since he knew from experience it was only likely to enrage the Bursar further.
“Why are you sniveling?” Fredrick roared, his heaving chest straining the bounds of his kaftan. His staff crashed into the table. “I said pick it up.”
“What a mess.” Quintin knelt next to Sarah. “We can get this straightened out, quick as a wink.” He picked up the quipu frame and put it upright on the table.
With shaking hands, Sarah combed her fingers through the knotted threads, her eyes focused on the quipu.
“Quintin.” Fredrick took a breath and bared his teeth in a smile. “How good of you to join us.”
“A thousand apologies for my tardiness, Bursar.” Quintin stood again to press his palms together and give Fredrick a proper bow.
“Tarinasday is a piss poor day to laze about.” Fredrick tapped his staff against his leg in an irritated motion. While he would lecture or scold until Quintin wished his ears would fall off, he dared not rage at a Hand. Aside from the issues of prestige and influence, if Fredrick ever raised his staff at Quintin, Elkart would bite his arm off.
“I know, sir, and I am sorry,” Quintin said sincerely, though he was really apologizing to Sarah. He placed a hand on Elkart’s head, taking comfort from the waccat’s warm strength. “We had to deal with a bit of trouble in the market this morning.”
“At market? Why didn’t you let the city guards deal with it?”
“It was during the shift change and no guards were about.” Quintin shrugged. “A citizen needed us, and I had to help. Duty of a Hand and all.”
As soon as the words were out of his mouth, he knew they were a mistake. Fredrick would not like the sharp reminder of Quintin’s higher calling and duties outside the Bursar’s purview. While Fredrick dared not assault the Hands under him, he did not hide his jealousy of their privileged position, nor his belief he should have been a Hand himself. As if a waccat would ever bond with such a grasping, temperamental peacock.
“Well, we wouldn’t want the paltry arrival of the Luminary’s Inspectors to interfere with your duty as a Hand,” Fredrick said, sarcasm dripping like venom from his words.
“It was only a small delay,” Quintin demurred. “Annoying yet unavoidable. I’m sure we’ll be able to get Auditor Sarah’s quipu straightened out in short order and have the tribute ready and accounted for before the Inspectors arrive.”
The Inspectors toured the country every season, collecting all the tributes destined for the capitol. Unless they were delayed, they should descend on the Trimble office in the afternoon.
“She botched her audit and thinks to fix it now.” Fredrick slapped his staff against the palm of his other hand. “I don’t know what the Luminary was thinking, sending us a woman to be an auditor.”
“Though Auditor Sarah is learning, she is perfectly competent at her job.”
“I don’t know what happened,” Sarah said in a voice almost too low to be heard. “Somehow the knots slipped and now the numbers are all wrong.”
Quintin placed a hand on her shoulder. “We’ll straighten it out. I know a couple of memory enhancing techniques. They might help.”
Fredrick’s chest puffed up. “You’ve got more pressing things to do than clean up her mess. She has to deal with what she has.”
Was the Bursar truly suggesting they send on a known error? Was he trying to get Sarah dismissed? Quintin couldn’t let it happen.
“The Luminary wants our accounts to be accurate,” he said mildly. “It would be a shame to miss a chance to correct an error. I assure you, I can help the auditor and complete my other duties.”
Fredrick scowled and huffed.
Before his superior could come up with another senseless argument, Quintin turned to Sarah. “How many knots slipped?”
“If you have so much time to spare, perhaps I should increase your duties next week,” Fredrick interrupted, his frown slowly transforming into a nasty grin. “I haven’t finalized the assignments yet. Why don’t I have you audit a homestead, to remind you how it’s done?”
“If you honestly think this is the best use of my time and experience, I will perform audits with all due diligence.” Quintin bowed politely, though he seethed inside. For the past three years, he had managed the auditors working on properties inside Trimble, as well as helping Fredrick oversee other accounts as often as not. To go back to merely assessing homestead parcels was degrading.
“Oh, you’ll also need to oversee the other auditors’ work. Since you have such a surplus of time, I’m sure you can manage one homestead audit while performing your normal duties. I’ll give you one of Sarah’s. Hopefully with fewer audits to do, she can manage not to bungle them all.”
“Whatever you think is best,” Quintin said as calmly as he could. Auditing a homestead was a small price to pay for diverting Fredrick’s wrath. Still, the expression on the Bursar’s face filled him with misgivings.
“In that case, I have the perfect homestead for you.” Bursar Fredrick’s teeth glinted as he smiled. “Merdale.”
Chapter 7
A few hours later Quintin paused in his other work to run his fingers over the knots of the quipu from the last audit of the Merdale homestead. He traced each rough woolen strand, the colors and types of knots telling him what to expect when he visited the estate in two days. His fingers would smell of wool and dye from all the time he had spent distracted from his other accounts by the Merdale quipu.
The quipu had taught him a lot about the Merdale estate. He now knew the owner was Lord Harold, a Trilord entrusted with two major temples and a minor one. He knew the prosperous homestead consisted of four parcels. He knew Lord Harold’s wife was dea
d and his three grown children lived on the estate.
While the quipu was a wealth of information, it couldn’t tell him why Fredrick had a queer smirk on his face every time he saw Quintin touching it.
Quintin scooped up the tangle of threads from his work table and hid it in the trunk next to his sitting mat. With the sun nearing its zenith, he would leave soon to relax at a tavern through the heat of the day. When he returned, he needed to focus on organizing the Trimble audits, and could waste no more time pondering what Merdale had in store for him.
Auditor Sarah stopped at his elbow. “I don’t know how to thank you for your help.”
“I’m sorry my assistance was necessary.” He instinctively scanned the room for Bursar Fredrick. Being discussed by his underlings was the kind of thing to set the Bursar off again.
“He already left for his aestivation. I hope he returns in a better mood.” Auditor Sarah let out a soft sigh. “I wanted to thank you, not only for diverting his temper, but for helping me straighten out my quipu. I don’t know how it got in such a state since no one else had a chance to touch it.” She laughed. “Unless you got bored during Taricday duty and fiddled with it.”
Quintin frowned as he realized the Bursar himself could have altered the quipu on Taricday. Could the Bursar merely want to make trouble for Sarah or could he have a more sinister motive?
“Not that I’m accusing you of any such thing,” she said quickly.
“No, I just realized—”
He cut off the thought. He had no proof the Bursar had tampered with the quipu. Such idle speculation was unworthy of a Hand. “It’s not important.”
“It was important to me.” She bit her lip, her brown eyes shining with gratitude. “You saved me today.”
He smiled and tried to sound encouraging. “Fortunately, your memory is very sound, so it wasn’t hard to fix. You’ll be a good Auditor, Sarah. Don’t ever doubt it.”
She clasped her hands together and bowed. “You are the kindest of men.”
He waved away her words, his conscience nagging him for concealing the possibility of the Bursar’s perfidy. “Any Hand would have done the same.”
She touched his arm. “Perhaps, but you are special, Quintin.”
His mouth went dry at the intensity of her words. Was she forming some kind of attachment to him?
“You’ve been watching out for me like a kindly uncle ever since I came here. I’ve missed my family terribly on this assignment. Knowing I can rely on you has been a great comfort.”
“It is nothing,” Quintin muttered, feeling oddly deflated. He had no romantic designs on the amiable auditor. Even so, it was disheartening to be relegated to the role of doting uncle by a woman scarcely younger than himself.
“Nevertheless, I wanted to thank you.”
He nodded politely. “Tighten up those knots of yours and Fredrick will have less to shout about next week.”
“I imagine it will be your quipu he’s most interested in this time. I hope your audit goes smoothly.”
“Knowing Fredrick, it’ll be a tricky case.”
“Which is also my fault.”
“Think nothing of it.” Quintin closed the lid of the trunk. “Now I should be off as well. It’s too hot to breathe in here.”
Auditor Sarah bowed again and took her leave.
Quintin left the warehouse, yearning for an hour free from thoughts of quipus or the Bursar’s tricks.
Or how being called the kindest of men wasn’t actually a compliment.
With his waccat at his side, he traversed the three short blocks along the waterfront to the Salty Dog Tavern to meet his favorite year-mates for their traditional Tarinasday meal. While twenty youths had trained to become Hands at the same time as Quintin, only the five of them had become closer than family.
A subtle tension left his shoulders as he stepped through a curtain of nuts and wooden knobs to enter the tavern. He paused to let his vision adjust to the dim interior before scanning the room for his friends and their waccats.
Most of the crude wooden tables were crowded with sailors and laborers enjoying a midday meal. Woven rugs added color to the clay walls, softened the noise of dozens of conversations, and held in the cool air given off by buckets of ice scattered around the room.
His friend Ulric waved an arm from a table near the wall.
At the movement, Quintin waved back, then picked his way between the cheap reed sitting mats covering the dirt floor.
Elkart pressed close behind him, like a furry feline shadow. Near the table occupied by three of Quintin’s friends and their attending waccats, Elkart broke off to circle around and sniff noses with his pack.
Quintin chose a mat, careful to leave space for Madi, who had not yet arrived.
“Here.” Ulric, a mountain of a man with a bushy black beard and mahogany skin, poured wine into a mug dwarfed by his huge hands.
“Thanks.” Quintin sipped the cool watermelon wine. The sweet, tangy liquid washed away the stress of the morning. “I needed this.”
“Really? Why?” Ophelia asked, her ethereal beauty enhanced by the green sari of a devotee of Marana, the Goddess of Water. While she looked as out of place kneeling on a wine-stained mat as a lily blooming in a mud bog, she seemed to enjoy their weekly gatherings at the rough and tumble tavern.
Elkart flopped down and rested his head on Quintin’s knee. Quintin buried his fingers in the fur at the back of his waccat’s neck. “The Tribute Office was a mess this morning.”
“Oh?” Ophelia leaned forward, the silver threads woven into the pallu covering her black hair twinkling with the movement. “Any trouble getting the tribute out on time?”
“No, no.” He gave her a reassuring smile, remembering she had one very important item tucked in among the offerings. “All the cacao beans, trunks, and offerings are packed and ready for the Luminary’s Inspectors this afternoon. They’re certain to be on their way to the capital by morning.”
“Good.” Her shoulders relaxed. “Very good.”
“The Bursar was in fine form today, intimidating one of the new auditors.” He rushed his words, hoping no one else noticed Ophelia’s odd response. “He’s incensed because I intervened, and I know he’s scheming to get me punished. I just don’t know how.”
“Can’t you get him fined or arrested or something?” Ulric asked.
“As far as I know, yelling and stomping and throwing tantrums isn’t against the law.” Quintin shot a look at Terin. As an advocate who dispensed justice in the name of the Troika, he was much better versed in the law than Quintin.
Terin lifted one shoulder in an elegant shrug. “He’d probably claim he was doing what was necessary to keep his underlings in line.”
“Besides, I think Fredrick is the embarrassing younger son of a Trilord and a distant cousin of our own Reeve.” Quintin tapped his fingers against the side of his mug. “I imagine they are quite happy to have him live out his days only causing trouble for an office full of auditors at a trade port town.”
“How depressing.” Ulric took a noisy swig from his mug.
“I was hoping to stop thinking about work for an hour or two.”
Terin clapped a hand on Quintin’s shoulder. “I know a way to take your mind off work.”
He stared at Terin, refusing to ask the obvious question.
“What’s that?” Ulric asked.
Quintin glared at him while Ophelia sighed.
“Don’t encourage him,” she said. “Next thing you know he’ll be dragging Quintin off to chat up some strange woman.”
“Oh, no, he won’t.”
“It’ll be good for you,” Terin said.
Quintin shook his head hard enough to loosen the leather knot holding his hair in place.
“What are you afraid of? She’s not going to bite you.” Terin grinned, a wicked glint in his dark eyes. “Not until she knows you better anyway.”
Ulric jabbed his elbow into Quintin’s side. “It’d do you some good to talk to a woman.”
“I don’t want to talk to any women.” He plunked his mug on the table before reaching behind his head to tighten the strap in his hair.
“Excuse me?” Ophelia pressed a delicate hand against her chest. “I am a woman.”
Ulric snorted. “Not in the way that matters.”
She sat up very straight, every inch radiating annoyance. “And what way is that?”
“The sex way,” Ulric replied, each word slow and deliberate.
“Why, you degenerate—”
Terin cleared his throat. “You must admit, Ophelia, after all these years it is exceedingly unlikely you are suddenly going to accompany Quintin home for a nice romp.”
“I’m not taking anyone home for a ‘romp’ as you say.” Quintin scowled, his fingers clamping around his mug. “What would my mother say?”
Terin’s sculpted brows rose. “If your mother is preventing you from poking women then you need to move out.”
“Has it occurred to you I might have no interest in poking some random woman?”
“Do you have someone specific in mind?”
Quintin hesitated for half a heartbeat as the sweet taste of the thief’s kiss filled his mouth. Then he realized his friends were staring. “No, of course not.”
“There is someone.” Ophelia’s copper eyes were as wide as a bushbaby’s. “Who is she?”
The thought of lying to his friends sent Quintin’s heart into a spasmodic beat. How could he tell them who haunted his thoughts? His mug twisted in his hands. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Taxing Courtship Page 5
