A Hazardous Engagement

by Gaie Sebold

  “Then perhaps the mare...”

  “No. I want this horse.” Galzas smiled. “I’ll school him, soon enough.”

  They argued over the price for a little longer, and settled on two hundred. “I’ll have him fetched this afternoon,” the courtier said. He and his servant left, the servant still sweating and looking thoroughly discomfited.

  “Well, now,” Madis said, leaning on the gatepost. “I’m fairly sure I didn’t just see you sell a beautiful but touchy beast to Lord Galzas.”

  “Some men only want a creature they can break,” Dagri said. “If he had been sweet as milk, that tsikshala would never have bought him. But Shaikan and however many horses he decides to bring with him will be back tonight. By tomorrow, any horses that look like them will be nowhere in the city. And a certain fool will have perhaps a broken rib, or a crushed foot, and will not be riding for some time. Tea?”

  “What sort of tea?”

  “Weak stupid tea for weak city people,” Dagri said. “For you, at least.”

  “Then lead on.”

  The house attached to the stable was small and warm. It smelled of strong herbs and baking and contained a beaming young woman very like Dagri, an equally beaming young man, and a number of brightly-dressed children who ran in and out so quickly that Madis lost count.

  Dagri gestured Madis to a seat at the kitchen table. Tea appeared – weak city stuff for Madis and a concoction the colour and texture of hot, greasy mud for Dagri.

  “How many people, how much loot?” Dagri said.

  “People? Five at most. As to loot – one small important piece.”

  “All right. My sister and her husband can run the stables for a few days. One thing.”

  “Yes?”

  “If that tsikshala, who dishonours the name of brother to you, should happen to harm any of my horses, I will kill him. Or Shaikan will. Or we will do it together.”

  “Trust me, he won’t.”

  “I am only telling you what will happen.”

  “Understood.”

  The tiny shop was crammed between a perfumier whose average product cost more per ounce than a labourer’s yearly wage and a bootmaker who clad only the most well-heeled feet in the city. Madis had dressed for the occasion; a little paint around the nose, the faint shadow of stubble and she made a perfectly unobtrusive young man, in the discreet but well-made uniform of an upper servant.

  She pushed open the door on a glimmering, shifting cave of chimes and ticks and whispers. A small brass bird perched on a silver twig tilted its head and chirped at her, lifting delicately enamelled wings in shimmering blues and greens. A clock held in the arms of a pair of charming bronze dragon-nymphs declared the half-hour with a puff of scented steam that mingled with the scents of oil, brass, and extremely potent perfume suffusing the shop’s interior.

  Madis made her way carefully between the crammed shelves, elbows clamped to her sides. “Momenté, momenté,” a voice called from somewhere in the gleaming depths. A man popped out from behind a stand of over-elaborate clocks, rubbing his hands and bowing, dressed very much like Madis except for his fat silk cravat and the ornate jeweller’s glass swinging from a chain about his neck.

  He took in Madis at a glance, and his deferential demeanour, along with much of his Ankarian accent, dropped away. He did his best to look down his nose at her, despite being noticeably the shorter. “Yes?”

  “I’m here to see Orrie. Orivine Prett?”

  The shopkeeper sniffed. “Orivine? She’s working, if you can call it that. And I don’t permit dalliance.”

  “A family matter,” Madis said. She leaned down and cupped a hand beside her mouth. “Inheritance,” she whispered. “Unexpected, and substantial, I understand.”

  “Really?” The shopkeeper cleared his throat. “Orivine, Orrie, my dear, you have a visitor! Do go through, it’s that door on the right. And ask dear Orrie if there’s anything she needs.”

  The room Madis entered was brightly lit and far less cluttered than the shop, organised with an efficiency that verged on the brutal. Tools lay in gleaming rows, boxes of tiny cogs and accoutrements were lined up by size and shape, and in the middle of it a small figure with short, light brown curls, dressed in a snuff-coloured tunic with a leather apron, sat hunched on a stool, raising her head and adjusting a pair of wire-framed spectacles with extremely thick lenses. “Dear Orrie?” She said. “Who are you, and whatever did you say to Monsieur Pettigis?”

  “He’s no more a Monsieur than I am,” Madis said. “I believe his sudden surge of affection was due to a rumour you’re about to receive a substantial inheritance.”

  “Any inheritance from my lot would probably be a broken wagon and a debt to the miller.” Orrie took off her spectacles again and screwed a jeweller’s loupe into her eye. “Give me a moment.”

  Madis could make nothing of the scatter of parts on the table. She wandered back to the door and watched Monsieur Pettigis bow himself into knots in an attempt to charm a sale out of a high-nosed dowager in a jewelled hood.

  “Why is your boss pretending to be Ankarian?” she said.

  “Ankarian work is supposed to be the best,” Orrie said. “True, some of it’s pretty good, but it’s not the best.”

  “Whose is?”

  “Falsin gold-handed. Glory of the Court of Mair. Arbian of Tessery – who’s an Adept as well, of course, which some might consider cheating. Other than that, the dead.”

  “How did you get on with your Whirligigs?”

  “Oh, they’re done.”

  “Really? What are you going to do with them?”

  Orrie shrugged. “I can’t sell them here, not while I’m apprenticed to Pettigis. The Guild would destroy me – and he’d help.”

  “It’s stupid, you being apprenticed to him. You’re twice the artisan he is. Ten times.”

  “True,” Orrie took the jeweller’s loupe out of her eye. “Doesn’t matter. Until I’ve completed an apprenticeship I can’t sell my own work. At least the Artisans’ Guild allows women – at a price. So I make and mend for Pettigis.”

  “Is there anything you can’t fix?”

  “People.”

  “Ah.” Madis picked up a delicate jointed brass figurine holding a flute, turning it over in her hands. “How is Enlarius?”

  “Blind, crippled and robbed. How do you think he is?” Enlarius was Orrie’s mentor. The Duke of Cantilia had been so pleased with the mechanical orchestra he had commissioned from Enlarius that he had, in the tradition of tyrants, had him crippled and blinded so he could not make something better for another lord. It was only through Orrie’s intervention that he had made it home, and wasn’t begging on the street.

  Orrie sighed. “Arbian created artificial hands that worked, for Lord Prindis. Guided by the wearer’s mind like hands of flesh. I saw them once. But they need an Adept artisan and I’m not. If I could get Enlarius to Tessery, if I could persuade Arbian to see him – I just need to harness some flying pigs to a chariot full of gold, and we’ll be well away. It won’t give him back his eyes, but it would be a start.”

  “There’s a job. It won’t be a chariot full of gold, but it’ll be a fair chunk. No flying pigs, though.”

  “How much?”

  “Not sure yet, but at least two thousand nobles each. More if I can swing it. And there might be a role for your Whirligigs.”

  Orrie looked up. “Really?”

  “Be nice to see them used, wouldn’t it? After the time you put into them?”

  “Hmm.”

  Orrie put her tools carefully away in a soft leather roll, tied its ribbons and tucked it into a battered leather satchel. Then she slipped off her stool. “Where are we meeting?”

  “The Convent of the Pure Waters. I hired a room.”

  “The Convent?”

  “It’s clean, it’s quiet, and it’s not where anyone would expect a meeting of thieves. Not secular ones, anyway.”

  As the sun sank and the light turned purple, lant
erns and glows marked the market that wove along the main street of Brisha town on every third Godsday. At this time of year, the crowds didn’t begin until the thick heat of the afternoon had drawn off and the sharp sudden chill of the evening had begun.

  “Herbal potions! Fine herbal potions here!” The little stall – no more than a tiny hinged table and a few strips of bright cloth – displayed bottles and boxes and packets, some plainly wrapped, some brilliantly. Alina wore tatterdemalion finery in black and scarlet. Tiny bells woven into her crow-coloured curls jingled and chimed with every movement. “Perfumes sweet from distant lands, for neck and nape and hair and hands! Potions for the itch, the ache and the ague! Potions to rid you of whatever’ll plague you!”

  A small crowd gathered. A young girl with her mother’s black curls perched on a stool behind the stall, watching solemn-eyed, clutching a stitch-faced doll.

  “You, sir,” Alina grinned at an ancient man leaning on a cane. “Something to help you entertain all those young ladies?”

  The old man snorted and grinned, exposing one brown and crooked tooth. “Away with yer!”

  “Maybe something for that old wound, eh? Ah, I know a soldier when I see one. Here.” She held out a small package.

  “What is it?”

  “It’ll help with that knee. Take a small spoonful in hot water, twice a day.”

  He looked down, his mouth trembling. “I can’t...”

  “No charge for a brave man, soldier. Your God’s blessings on you.” She folded his fingers over the package. “Now, you, madam. How about something for that fine young’un, whose teeth are coming through, eh? Let you both get a bit of sleep?”

  Alina had an uncanny ability to spot what was wrong with each customer. Even those who had only stopped out of curiosity found themselves adeptly analysed by those bright black eyes. And for all her patter, she was, when necessary, discreet, pressing a packet into a hand and murmuring a problem and a price, sometimes before the recipient had admitted to themselves that they were in need of a cure. Most of the cures were for ailments of the body. One or two... were not.

  A man of hearty physique and magnificent beard, but with shadows under his eyes and the jowly look of someone who had recently lost a deal of weight, found her hand brushing his as she murmured, “Lot of bad luck, lately, sir?”

  “How...”

  “Demon. Just a little’un, but nasty. I can sort that for you. Wait a moment till the crowd’s thinned.”

  He glanced at her clothes, seeking something. “You’re not...”

  “No, and I don’t charge their prices, neither. But you got to promise you won’t peach on me.”

  “I won’t!” he said, fervently. “It’s been hanging around for weeks, wretched thing, I can’t move without breaking something, my poor wife’s going distracted, I dropped a vase that was the only thing she had from her mother. But Guild prices...”

  She put her finger to her lips.

  The crowd thinned out. When they were briefly alone, and no one was looking in their direction, she beckoned him close, frowned, and jabbed out at his shoulder. Something like a curl of black smoke coalesced there for a moment. There was an outraged chittering just on the edge of hearing, and a brief stench that had nearby stallholders looking around accusingly and waving their hands in front of their noses.

  “Gone,” she said. “Three nobles, if you please.”

  “You’re a gift from the Sky God, you are,” the man said. “Take four.” He thrust the coins into her hand and walked off, his shoulders straighter than they had been.

  The crowd gradually collected again. More coins rattled into her purse, until the small girl tugged at her skirts. “Ma.” She pointed down the street, where a wink of brass gleamed among the crowd.

  “Bollocks,” Alina muttered. “Nib...”

  “Yes, Ma.”

  The little girl gave a yawn so wide it seemed likely to unhinge her jaw, and said, in a much louder voice, “Ma, I’m tired.”

  “Oh, sweetie. All right. Sorry, everyone, got to pack up. I was enjoying meself so much with you fine folks I forgot it was past this ’un’s bedtime. She’s off to the convent school tomorrow!”

  Murmurs of admiration and nods of approval greeted this revelation, which was, as it happened, actually true – which might have been why Nib was packing away bottles with a certain sullen emphasis.

  “You study well, young’un,” a matronly woman said, “and listen to the nuns. That’s the way to get into a good respectable post, eh! You might end up as a lady’s maid to one of the nobility!”

  What Nib thought of this possible future remained unspoken, but she gave the woman a bright smile.

  Another woman, her bodice dusted with flour, leaned over and pressed a coin into Nib’s hand. “You buy yourself some food with that. I know them nuns. All prayer and no pastry!”

  “You’re very kind,” Alina said, already whisking down the bright cloths, and whipping one over her head, hiding and muffling the bells. She folded the little table down to a square no bigger than a large handkerchief, which she jammed into a vast cloth bag and hoisted onto her shoulders with the rest of the gear. Nib folded up her stool, slung it over her arm, and took her mother’s hand.

  The two of them disappeared into the dispersing crowd just as the Guild Inspector reached the edge of it.

  “I don’t want to go,” Nib said. “I’m not going to be a lady’s maid. Some woman ordering me about, it’d be like the nuns forever.”

  “Is that what’s bothering you? No one said you had to be a lady’s maid.”

  “That woman at the market did.”

  Alina lifted her daughter onto her lap. “She doesn’t know anything.”

  Nib poked out her lower lip and tugged at a button on her mother’s dress, as though she were four, instead of nearly ten.

  “Sweetheart, listen to me.” Alina put a finger under her daughter’s chin, tilting her head up. Oh, those eyes – the same deep green her father’s had been. His eyes had been half the reason she fell for him. “You need your letters and your numbers. Even sewing’s useful. You need skills you can turn to a trade, skills I can’t teach you.”

  “I can do what you do!”

  “I can teach you potions and herbs, but herbalists are common as dung. “

  “And if I’m Adept?”

  “You can’t use it. You know that.”

  “You do.”

  “Just because I’ve spent my life dodging the Guild doesn’t mean I want that for you. Now put that pouty lip away before a bird lands on it, wash your face, and get on.”

  Nib had finally slouched off, kicking at stones, when there was a knocking below. Alina edged up to the window. She had chosen this room carefully for a good view of the front door.

  “Madis?”

  Madis swept a bow.

  “Wait there.”

  “Where else am I going to go?”

  Alina hurtled down the stairs, flung the door open and threw her arms around Madis. “Where the hells have you been?”

  “It’s been less than a moon, you daft creature. It’s good to see you.”

  “Come up, but quiet, the landlady’s got ears on her like a bat.”

  The room was small but colourful, clothes and jewellery and trinkets draping every surface in a disorder that somehow managed to look intentional, like the interior of a fancy jewellery box. It smelled of sweet herbs and perfumes. Among the glorious frippery were a basin, a chest and a chair. Madis seated herself on the chest. “How’s Nib?”

  “Having her numbers hammered into her head. Poor scrap.”

  “What?”

  “I got her into the little school the Nuns run.”

  “Not the Pure Waters.”

  “That’s the one. Why?” Alina leaned forward, her face suddenly grim. “Have you heard something? Something bad?”

  “No, not at all. I’m having a meeting there, that’s all.”

  “Oh!” Alina snorted laughter.

 
; “It’s no funnier than that your daughter’s being schooled there,“ Madis said. “Why is she being schooled there?”

  “Because she needs skills. Specially if something happens to me. Also...” Alina sighed. “If something happens to me, I’ve contracted with the nuns to take care of her until she reaches her majority. It’s a thing they do.”

  “Oh.”

  “You don’t approve?”

  “I just thought you’d have asked me, that’s all. You know I’d take her.”

  “And if you’re in prison? Or your head’s no longer attached to your neck?”

  “Well, there is that.”

  “So,” Alina said, “What’s the job, and who else is in? Oh, and has your donkey’s arse of a brother fallen down a dry well yet? Please tell me he has.”

  The room at the convent smelled of cotton scrubbed with harsh soap and the incense that drifted from the shrine. There was a narrow bed on which Dagri and Milandree sat discussing horses as Milandree mended a strap. There were two chairs which looked so rigidly unwelcoming that Orrie had chosen instead to sit on Madis’ ancient travelling chest, which was a great deal stronger and less cheap than it looked.

  Alina and Madis entered together. Dagri and Milandree looked up and nodded. Orrie bounced to her feet.

  Alina whisked her into a hug and let go abruptly. “Ow! You’re spiky!”

  “Sorry.” Orrie said. “Tools.” She straightened her spectacles, knocked askew by Alina’s enthusiasm.

  “And how’s,” Alina made an extravagant bow, “the most elegant Pettigis?”

  Orrie rolled her eyes. “So worn out with all the bowing and scraping he hardly has the strength to take all the credit.”

  Alina snorted.

  “Oh, here,” Orrie said, digging in one of her many pockets. “This is for Nib.” She held out a shiny metal figure about six inches high. It had a head and arms and torso, and a cone-shaped lower half. In one hand was a fan, and a small key was attached to its wrist on a fine chain. “Wind it up at the back, and it’ll dance and open and close its fan.”