by R A Fisher
Ranat spat onto the flagstones. Nothing was ever easy.
He found the hawker later that evening, pulling the heavy oak doors closed across the front of his shop. The man jumped when he saw Ranat, almost dropping his ring of brass keys.
“Oh. Hello. Nice to see you again,” the hawker said, sounding very much like he didn’t mean it.
“You don’t need to pretend to be happy to see me,” Ranat stated, standing back to give the hawker enough space to latch the doors together. “But, I need a favor.”
The hawker grunted at the bronze lock, which he seemed to be having trouble with, and wiggled the key until there was a soft click. Then he turned, his expression sour. “Yes. A favor. Right.” He smirked as he pushed past Ranat into the street.
“Hey.” Ranat grabbed the man’s arm. “Remember how you ratted me out? How ‘sorry’ you were when you thought I’d come to get my revenge? Right. And remember how there was no revenge? I just asked a couple of questions. Now, you owe me.”
“You hit me,” the hawker whined, his voice weak.
“Yeah, and I’m tempted to do it again. Look, I’m not asking for much. At least, hear me out. I don’t want you to do anything you don’t want to do already, okay?”
“Like what?” The hawker pulled together what was left of his dignity and looked Ranat in the eye.
“Become a member of The Crow’s Marquis.”
“What? Why?”
“Because I want you to take me there as your servant. Or carriage driver, or whatever. I want to get in and have a look around. That’s all. Then I get one last chance to save my ass, and you get to be a member of a prestigious club.”
The hawker snorted. “Yeah, until they kick me out for whatever it is you’re going to do.”
Ranat shook his head. “It’s not like that. I won’t do anything to embarrass you. If you get me in there, you won’t see me again. If I get caught doing something, you can denounce me in front of everyone and leave me to my fate. Fine, okay? Get me in, and the rest is my problem.”
The hawker chewed on that for a while. “And what do I get out of it?”
Ranat shrugged. “You get to be a member of one of the most exclusive private clubs in Fom.”
The hawker snorted again. “I could do that, anyway.”
“Fair enough. Then I promise you, if you do this for me, you will never see me again. Never. And if you don’t, I’ll come down here and hang around your shop all day. Everyday. Until you change your mind.”
“I could have you arrested and dragged away.”
Ranat shrugged again. “You could do that now.”
The hawker stood in front of the heavy, slatted doors of his shop, staring at Ranat, who was hoping the hawker wouldn’t call his bluff.
Finally, the merchant sighed. “I never want to see you after this. This is done, and we’re even. You can sell your junk to someone else.”
Ranat pursed his lips and nodded. “I don’t think that will be a problem.”
“Give me some time. There’s an application process. I don’t even know what it involves. Come back here in a week or ten days. If I don’t have it by then, I’ll at least be able to tell you when I will. Hopefully.”
“Fine, then.” Ranat let go of the man’s arm. “Thanks for this. Oh, one other thing.”
The hawker turned from where he’d started down the street. “What?”
“There’s a guy who works there. Doorman or bouncer or something. Big guy with a big black mustache.”
“And?”
“Well, I’m pretty sure he’ll recognize me if he sees me again. Whenever we go, he probably shouldn’t be working.”
“How the hell should I know when he’s working?”
“I don’t know. I just thought it would be better if you knew ahead of time.”
The hawker rolled his eyes. “Fine. Anything else?”
“Um, yeah.”
“What?” The Hawker’s voice was growing shrill.
“Do I get to know your name?”
He paused and thought a second. “No,” he replied, then wheeled and strode down the street. Rain started to hiss on the cobbles.
Ranat smiled a little at the man’s back. “Yeah,” he said too soft for the hawker to hear him. “Fair enough. Okay.”
Chapter Eight
Ranat returned to the hawker’s place once a week for three weeks until he heard back from the Crow’s Marquis. There had been multiple tests and five interviews. In the end, they gave the merchant a provisional membership—a fact that made him even more nervous about Ranat’s plan, such as it was.
Though he insisted he had done so only for his own self-interest, he had also found out some things he thought Ranat might find useful.
For one, the large man with the mustache was named Lont and was, in fact, the head of security. He kept regular hours and was only there evenings for emergencies and formal events.
The hawker had also learned that servants and the like weren’t allowed past the foyer, but that there were always a few there playing cards, waiting for their masters or, if they knew it would be a long night, drinking in the camel sheds behind the house.
Both possibilities sounded fine with Ranat.
The hawker, desperate not to lose his hard-earned place in the Crow’s Marquis, insisted Ranat take clothes from his shop that would help the old man look like a servant. There was nothing to be done about his missing teeth, but Ranat promised he’d only be opening his mouth to drink, so the hawker consented a change of clothes might be enough.
The doorman that night greeted them with a veneer of respect that bordered on mocking disdain, but the hawker took it cordially enough and left Ranat to wander the foyer and grounds with a final warning look.
The foyer was a long oval, thirty paces across lengthwise, and ten or fifteen between the front door and the reception desk. Windows ran the front of the room, covered by heavy pink and red drapes. The back wall was painted with a recurring red-and-black pattern of angular, interlocking crows. Low, polished tables sat to the left and right of the reception desk, surrounded by tasseled pillows upholstered in gold cloth and embroidered with the same crow pattern. The left table was empty. To the right, two bored-looking men in servants’ suits sat playing cards.
The woman at the reception desk eyed him through her thick lashes without looking up from her ledger. Ranat sauntered over. Across from her on the broad desk was the member sign-in book, turned open to the most recent page.
Ranat noted the hawker’s name with a small smile and began to thumb backward.
“Excuse me,” the woman said, still looking at him through her lashes.
“Oh, sorry,” Ranat mumbled. “Just looking for famous names.”
She rolled her eyes at him and turned back to her work.
Ranat braved a few more pages until the woman turned her head to eye him directly. “Excuse me,” she said, the words this time enunciated and dripping with scorn.
“Sorry. Sorry,” Ranat said again, throwing his hands up to his shoulders, palms out. “My mistake.”
She gave a little snort of derision with a toss of her head and another pronounced eye-roll before looking down at her leger again.
Ranat gave an apologetic nod to the top of her head and went outside.
A brick path ran between the wall of the house and the rampart that bordered the estate next door. Both were covered with ivy, and flowers and patches of grass grew along the path, illuminated with blue-hooded glow lamps poking through the vines. Ranat hadn’t seen so much green since he’d left the vineyards.
The Crow’s Marquis was a sprawling monster, four stories of stone and white plaster, added onto over the centuries until all original concept of form was lost. Ranat counted two-hundred-and-twenty-nine paces from the front of the house to the back. Where the house ended, the rampart continued for another two-hundred steps, until it stopped at the high alley wall and a pair of wagon gates, one of which looked like it hadn’t been opened i
n fifty years.
The backyard was well-groomed. A massive oak grew to one side, its lower branches brushing the top of the wall that bordered the next estate. Opposite, slumped against the alley wall, was the camel shed. Long and low, it had been pounded together from what seemed to be random chunks of unpolished wood, and someone had made a halfhearted attempt to make it blend in with the delicate artfulness of the rest of the yard by slapping it with green paint.
He couldn’t hear any voices coming from the shed, but he had convinced the hawker to buy him a fresh bottle of rum before coming to the club, citing everyone’s best interest, and the merchant was practical enough to relent. Ranat didn’t have any problem going to the shed and making it a party of one.
The building was dark but unlocked and, if the camel snorting within it was any indication, not devoid of life. Ranat unstoppered the bottle and took a pull. It was too dark to see, but he groped around inside the front gate until he found an oil lantern and the flint hanging on a hook next to it.
The camel snorted in irritation at the sudden flare of light. A row of stables ran down both sides, but only two stalls were full: the grumpy one, a single-humped shaggy black beast who glared at Ranat over the top of the stable door, and the one next to it, where a smaller, sandy-colored animal slept on its feet, oblivious to its neighbor’s mood. A scattering of old, moldering straw was strewn around the packed dirt floor. Between the rows of stables sat a single camel-keg wagon that looked like it had been built in the same manner as the barn, with whatever materials were available. It even had the same shade of green paint coating it, though on the wagon, it had worn down to a faint hint of chartreuse brushing the grey wood.
Ranat moved around to the back, careful to avoid both camels by a wide margin. For all he knew, the sleeping one was even meaner.
He climbed into the cart and leaned against the side. He’d been so desperate to get into The Crow’s Marquis that he hadn’t thought about what he would do once he got here. His original plan had been to go into the bar where the Hierophant had had his last drink and ask around, and he’d never come up with anything else after he’d learned that wouldn’t work. He didn’t think the hawker would be too keen on asking questions for him—favors from that man were spent.
Ranat had seen the name Trier N’navum in the guestbook before the receptionist had shooed him away, but that didn’t do any good. He had no idea if the Hierophant had come here with his killer or separate, or who’d arrived first.
He’d set the bottle down on the wagon bed between his knees, and when he reached down to pick it up, he saw a dark stain, faded but noticeable, spread in a rough circle from where he was sitting. The edges were blurred as if scrubbed. Whatever it was that had soaked into the grain of the wood was a turgid, brownish red.
Ranat jerked upright. The black camel snorted at him, while the other one shifted in its sleep. He bolted from the shed, remembering at the last moment to blow out the lamp so he didn’t burn down the building, camels and wagon included.
He trotted over to the back wall of The Crow’s Marquis. The kitchen door was propped open to let out the heat from the cooking stoves. Two women stood in the doorway, sampling the fresh air and passing back and forth a rolled stick of magarisi petals, exhaling the sweet smoke out of their noses.
Ranat slowed to a walk when he saw them and sauntered up. They nodded in greeting.
“No party in the camel shed tonight?” a young woman in the sharp suit of a bartender asked.
Ranat smiled. “Not really. Just me.” He held out the bottle to them. The one that had spoken shook her head, but her companion, older and dressed in a stained cook’s jacket, shrugged, took a drink, and handed it back with a nod of thanks.
“That old keg wagon see much action anymore?” Ranat probed, tone casual.
“Beats me,” the cook said. “I’m in the back. Never even see the bar. Cid? How often you need to send Birk out for a pickup?”
Cid shrugged with a little, rueful laugh. “Three, maybe four times a week, just about. Maybe less. Depends. Shit, a few weeks ago, we almost didn’t make the run at all.”
“Why’s that?” Ranat feigned idle interest.
“Some Church official. Came in one evening, requisitioned the wagon. ‘Temporary’ he said. Thing ended up disappearing pretty well near all night.”
“You pick up your kegs at night?”
“Hah! What, you new in town? You want to drive a wagon through Fom during the day, be my goddamn guest.”
“Ah, yeah. I guess,” Ranat said. “But I’ve seen plenty of wagons during the day.”
Cid scoffed as if the idea were absurd. “Yeah, and they were going nowhere fast, too, I bet.”
“Yeah,” Ranat agreed. “Fair enough.” He paused and offered a quick smile. “So the Church can just come in and take your wagon? Never heard of that before.”
Cid took the last drag off the magarisi stick and ground the smoldering roach into the mud next to the door. “If they have the right paperwork, they can. Never heard of it, either, but in he comes—all the right people sign in all the right places, and they can do just about anything they want, I guess. I told him we needed it for a pick-up. He just went straight to the boss, waved the paper at him. Ten minutes later, my keg wagon is rolling out the back gate.”
“So, what’d they need the wagon for?” Ranat asked, nonchalant.
Cid shrugged. “Don’t know. Wasn’t on the form.”
Ranat shook his head in disbelief. “Never heard of that before,” he said again. “You still got it?”
“What? The requisition form?”
“Yeah.”
“Somewhere, yeah.” She gave Ranat an incredulous look. “Why? You want to see it?”
“Sure, if it’s no trouble.”
“Why?”
It was his turn to shrug. “I don’t know. I just find shit like that interesting. Not just that the Church can do stuff like that—hell, I know they can do whatever they want—but the fact that they would have to. Seems like they should have their own fucking keg wagons if you know what I mean.”
She nodded. “Yeah, it was pretty weird. Sure. Let me see if I can find it. Wait here.”
The younger woman, who’d been listening to the conversation in silence, stretched. “I’ll go in with you, Cid. I have to get back to work.” She gave a little wave to Ranat. “Nice meeting you.”
They both disappeared into the back of The Crow’s Marquis, leaving the door propped open.
Ranat waited in the darkness of the backyard, heart pounding.
Chapter Nine
Ranat heaved through the books and papers stacked around his home, looking for pieces of the black wax seal.
Stupid to have been so careless, he thought. He’d read the note so many times he’d memorized the last message written to Trier N’navum, but until now he’d ignored the clinging fragments of the seal that had held it closed, and every time he’d read it, a few more pieces of it crumbled to his chaotic floor.
There, that was … no, just another fragment of charcoal. He didn’t know where all the charcoal had come from—never even noticed it before until now when he was trying to find something small and black. He’d never considered how filthy his home was; never cared enough to notice.
There. Ranat found the biggest of the wax fragments that had fallen loose, buried under a batch of faded lumber shipment invoices. He cleared a spot on the floor, crouched down, and pieced the jigsaw puzzle together. Not quite half of the original blob remained, but it hadn’t all been there to begin with. He spent another couple of minutes rifling around but accepted that he wouldn’t find any more among the filth and clutter. Most of the tree molded onto the seal was intact, along with a solitary antler branching up from the remains of some animal’s head. Most of the crescent moon that had been hanging over the scene was gone. Just a thin splinter of its bottom edge. He hoped it would be enough.
He folded up the top page of the yellowed lumber invoice and gat
hered the wax slivers into it. Then he folded it again, forming an envelope, and stuffed it all into his empty coin pouch.
Ranat stood and took a swig from the almost-empty bottle of rum. He had a couple of days before The Library’s next public day, and not a lot to do until then.
Well, no. There was one thing he could do. Ranat finished draining the bottle and eyed it, wondering if he’d have a chance to get another one.
No matter, he thought. He climbed up the stairs into the rain, looking for Gessa.
“That’s your plan?” Gessa looked disgusted.
They sat in a booth in the nameless bar, leaning in close across the table, but they still needed to shout to each other over the din of voices washing back and forth around the room. Ranat wondered what was going on. He’d never seen the place so crowded before, and it seemed like most of the people knew one another.
He waited to speak as a man standing near them let out a guffaw and half-fell onto their table, almost spilling Gessa’s drink before righting himself and staggering off.
“It’s the—” A young woman screamed in what sounded like pain, but what looked like delight. “You want to get out of here?” he shouted across the table at Gessa.
She nodded. He followed her out, taking the bottle with him.
“It’s the best thing I can come up with,” he finished when they got outside.
They paused just outside the low doorway. Screams and shouts of revelry drifted through.
“It’s a terrible idea, Ranat.” Her voice was low, hoarse, after shouting through the cacophony of the bar.
He shrugged. “Maybe so.”
“You should have left the city, back when we all thought you’d already gone.”
He shrugged again, said nothing.
“It’s not too late. You could still be out of Fom by dawn.”
Another shrug.