Fortune's Fool (Eterean Empire Book 1)

by Angela Boord

  Vadz lives in a skinny building on one of the nameless small canals that empty into the lagoon. He doesn’t have enough money to own it outright, but he’s charging me rent on a room at the top floor anyway. When I have the money, I don’t mind paying, because the room has its own ladder entry and the money goes toward the medical supplies his wife uses to treat refugees.

  Three ragged children are sitting at the table when we walk in. Aleya leans over them, ladling big, steaming spoonfuls of lentil stew into their bowls. They’re already chewing pieces of the crispy flatbread she cooks on a griddle in the fire, but they stop when they see us, like rabbits caught among lettuces in the garden.

  Aleya glances up, worried at first, but then she smiles for the children. “It’s just Vadz and Kyris. Nothing to worry about. Plenty for all.”

  Vadz catches her around the waist and pulls her into a kiss. I imagine that in her youth, Aleya was the kind of woman who collected suitors, and I’ve often wondered how she ended up with Vadz. She’s beautiful in a different way now with gray threading her black hair, her dusky skin flushed with the warmth of the cookfire. The loose red robes she wears, Qalfan-style, are a bright spot in the otherwise small, rundown room.

  Coming back here after dealing with Tonia di Sere makes me nervous, but Vadz is right; if there’s a safe place to have a conversation in Liera, it’s his kitchen. Authorities and criminals alike know what his wife does, so they leave it alone.

  “You’re home early tonight,” she says.

  Vadz darts a quick glance at me before he answers. “I thought I’d quit while I was ahead for once. Thought if my streak held, I’d make it home for a hot meal.”

  “It does appear that Fortune has smiled upon you,” she says. “After the little ones eat.”

  Vadz turns to the smallest child, a girl with tangled brown hair who can’t be more than eight years old. “You’re not going to put away that whole pot, are you? Got a stomach that goes all the way down in your leg or something?”

  The children look at each other as if they can’t quite decide whether to smile or not. Or maybe they don’t remember how.

  Vadz’s face creases into a smile for them. “Eat your stew, claim your mittens and a cloak, and you can go next door to sleep. There’s space.”

  “But—” one of the children, an older boy, starts, then stops.

  “But what, child?” Aleya asks.

  “Is it safe?”

  “Safer than anywhere else you’ll find tonight,” she answers. “And in the morning, we’ll check on that sore you’ve got on your leg, yes?”

  The boy nods and they eat their soup like ravenous wolves, then take the rest of their bread plus their mittens and cloaks and disappear out the door.

  Vadz and I slide in at the table.

  “More strays?” he says to Aleya.

  She pulls out two bowls and turns her back to us, sighing as she dips the ladle in the stew again. “The city is full of strays,” she says. “It’s not like I have to go out looking for them. I took an oath to heal, didn’t I?”

  “I’m not sure you can heal all of them.”

  “Oh, like you can talk. Where did you get all those mittens from? And the cloaks?”

  “That Garonze regiment will never miss them. You know how hard it is to get supply orders right.”

  Aleya sets the bowls in front of us with a bemused smile. “Right. Also, I noticed a very large bag of flour sitting in the larder.”

  Vadz sniffs and twirls his spoon in his stew. “The Lady and the Vine had an extra.”

  “One day, all the gavaros on the Talos are going to find out why you smuggle,” I tell him.

  “What—you think it’s going to hurt my reputation as a steely-eyed highwayman?”

  Aleya laughs and leans against his shoulder, reaching down to play with the hair at the back of his collar. “Robbing the rich to give to the poor?”

  “Now, that—that would hurt my gaming table.”

  “How?”

  “Nobody wants a do-gooder as a dealer. A gambler always wants to think he’s in the right when he beats the house.”

  “Well,” Aleya says, straightening up to clear the children’s dishes, “I see that your own stray has made his way back after a few nights gone. Welcome home, Kyris. Where’ve you been?”

  “Here and there,” I say, smiling tightly. I try to hide my impatience by tucking into the stew, for which I would ordinarily be grateful; it’s redolent with cumin, a welcome warmth on a cold night. But tonight, I feel like I’m vibrating like the struck wire of a harpsichord.

  “It’s that Aliente gavaro captain, isn’t it?” Vadz says suddenly.

  I bring my head up. “What?”

  Vadz turns to Aleya. “You might want to be gone for this conversation, love.”

  Aleya sighs. “What have you got for him now, Kyris?”

  Guiltily, I trail my spoon through my stew. “I just want him to pick up a little something extra for me. For a job. When I get paid —”

  Aleya rolls her eyes. “I’ve heard that before.”

  “It’ll be worth it,” I say, looking up at her. “And I’d rather the money went to your enterprises than to the other networks in this city.”

  Her brows arch upwards. “The other networks in the city? So, it’s a little more than a bag of flour, is it?”

  Aleya’s no delicate flower. She was Vadz’s partner through all the smuggling he did in the wars—the reason he was hauling victims to the Qalfan Quarter for healing in the first place.

  But her presence still makes me shift uncomfortably in my seat. “No, it’s not a bag of flour. But I’d rather talk about it with Vadz, if it’s all the same, Aleya.”

  Aleya snorts and pulls up her own chair. “If Vadz is involved, then I am too. Especially if you want the money to go to my enterprises. Is this a job that’s going to hurt people? I don’t want blood money.”

  “It’s a job that will right some wrongs. Let’s put it that way.”

  “What do you need him to get, then?”

  “Aleya,” Vadz says. “The less you know, the better off you are.”

  Aleya leans back in her chair and crosses her arms over her chest. “It’s a gun, isn’t it?”

  Vadz breathes in heavily through his nose and sits back, scrubbing his beard with one hand.

  “All I want is an extra,” I say. “I’m not looking to get hooked up with real gunrunners. I just need a misplaced pistol.”

  Vadz leans on his elbows. “Nobody misplaces a pistol.”

  “You’re good at making it seem like things have been misplaced, though, aren’t you?”

  “A few cloaks are one thing. A gun’s another. I might be able to convince the Prinze a couple of their gavaros have been selling arms on the black market. But it’s less likely you’ll survive being caught after all those questions you’ve been asking about that Aliente captain.”

  “This job doesn’t have anything to do with him.”

  “So, you’re not working for any Aliente rebels?”

  I stop and stare at him in surprise. “If I was working for a rebel cell, would I want one gun?”

  “Perhaps not. But I’ve only heard that kind of hero worship from Aliente sympathizers.”

  “Hero worship?” For a moment, all I can think of is how Arsenault would react to this conversation. The way his brows would rise and how the corner of his mouth would pull up. Then he’d say something like That’s a dire situation, if you’ve run out of gods and are using me as a replacement.

  “I think you’ve misunderstood me,” I say. “I certainly don’t worship the man.”

  There were many ways I felt about him. That I still feel about him. But worship was never one of them.

  He wasn’t the kind of man who wanted worship. Or needed it, either.

  “Let an old man share his wisdom, Kyris. You’ve got to be more careful with those questions. You’re awfully young to wind up dead.”

  “Vadz, if I die and do what I’ve
been hired to do, it will be a good death.”

  Vadz rubs his forehead as if talking to me is giving him a headache. “There are no good deaths. Are you one of those Adalusian idiots?”

  Adalus is the Dying God. A while back, an Adalusian sect thought they could change the course of the wars by dying in the name of Adalus. Two hundred young men flung themselves off the cliffs at Iffria into the tortured, pounding surf. Some of them died instantly, smashed upon the rocks, but a great number only suffered broken bones. A Lieran merchant told me the story, wide-eyed, as we both sat in the hall of a Rojornicki boyar. He’d seen it, he said, two hundred men who dove off the cliffs like gannets. No one dared pick up the bodies, so the birds got them. If they did shorten the wars, it wasn’t apparent. The fighting went on for two more years.

  “Of course not,” I say. “My concern is more with vengeance.”

  “Vengeance,” Aleya says. “So, it is blood money.”

  Vadz’s gaze strays to my right arm. “What do you have up that sleeve?”

  “An arm. Nothing more.”

  He pinches the bridge of his nose. “Just how much money are we talking about?”

  “How much do you need?”

  “If you want a pistol…not an arquebus…five thousand astra should cover it. For Aleya’s strays…”

  “All the gold in the Sere’s vaults probably wouldn’t cover that,” Aleya says, sounding tired. “More people come into the city from the rural estates all the time. The fields and flocks haven’t recovered from being plundered and burned. So many children lost both parents. And the Houses continue to maintain their standing armies at the expense of the serfs. They’ve used up their winter stores, and what little remains to eat is still going to feed householders and gavaros.”

  She taps her fingers on the table and her dark eyes flash. “And as if all that weren’t bad enough—may the gods have mercy on us—when the weather warms, we’ll be right into fever season. It’s going to be bad this year, with all the crowding on the waterfront and in the Kinless Quarter. The water’s already foul there, and it will just get worse.”

  We’re all silent for a moment as her words sink in. Then I start figuring expenses in my head.

  “I get half my pay tomorrow,” I say slowly. I’ll need a horse, probably some different clothes, fare for a ship down the coast, and then…

  Maybe enough to get me to Vençal. Maybe Arsenault ended up back there. I doubt it, because I’m sure he would have left me clues. But maybe.

  “I can get you ten thousand astra tomorrow. If I can, I’ll send you more when the job is done. To help with the fevers. Does that make it worth it?”

  Vadz and Aleya look at each other in amazement.

  “And all you need is a pistol? One?” Vadz says in disbelief.

  “It’s a one-person job,” I say. “But there’s plenty to share. My needs are simple, really.”

  And also nothing money can buy.

  “Isn’t working out of the Night Market risky?” I ask Vadz as we walk along the waterfront to meet his contact. The air smells of dead fish and feels like mucus in my lungs. It might as well be made of something solid. I flex my right hand to keep it from stiffening in the wet cold.

  “My man doesn’t sell guns there. People contact him there and he directs them to his clansman.”

  Still, I feel edgy, like somebody is watching us from the shadows. But when I turn around, there’s nobody there.

  The Mera di Capria, the Canal of Flowers, splits a promontory of land that juts out into the Sheltered Sea. On the right side of the Capria lies the Day Market, bustling with merchants, artisans, farmers, peddlers, and ordinary citizens from dawn until dusk. On the left, the Night Market carries Lieran commerce deep into the dark hours from winter until the end of spring, giving restless householders something to do on those long, cold nights.

  Paper lanterns bob on wires strung between stalls, flashing crazy shadows as the wind tosses them. A line has formed at the gates, and gavaros wearing Prinze blue and silver check to make sure nothing is smuggled in. The Prinze get a cut of the proceeds from every stall in the Night Market, even if it does violate all the laws of the Charter. They stand at the gates to make sure no one undercuts them on their own merchandise. No guns for sale, and if you bring in silk, there’s a hefty markup if it doesn’t have a Prinze—or a Garonze or a Sere—seal on it. But they haven’t been able to lay claim to the Day Market yet, and their stringent practices in the Night Market will likely lead to fewer and fewer purchases of silk here. My father would swear about it, but my father would be happy to see them shooting themselves in the foot.

  The guard makes me open my cloak and show him my weapons, then glances at my Caprine green armband. Both Day and Night Markets are neutral ground. Gavaros don’t usually care about Houses. The wars ended only because the gavaros wanted their pay but were tired of getting killed. Battles turned into extended draws, until both sides were forced to sign peace accords with each other. But that was after Kafrin Gorge.

  Maybe because of Kafrin Gorge.

  The guards wave us in and we enter with a small crowd of people, instantly enveloped by the spectacle of the market. The smell of cloves and cinnamon, the snap of canvas in the wind—each stall brightly painted with House colors or a merchant’s design—householders on parade in their masks and velvet cloaks.

  In Liera, every night is a festival. Vadz and I stand out with our naked faces.

  “We’ll buy masks,” he shouts above the din, and I nod, edging my way through the crowd after him, but all I have are a few catos, and that won’t even buy me an unadorned mask of leather or wood.

  “Vadz,” I say, “If you could loan me—”

  He waves away my embarrassment. “No matter. I had a good night. What about this one?”

  He holds up a leather goshawk mask, black with gray feathers glued on at the sides, making it look like a mask on a mask. “I can pay you tomorrow,” I say.

  He nods absently as he hands it to me. He chooses a fox mask for himself, done not in fur but wood. “And two blue feathers,” he tells the shopkeep, “as long as you can find.”

  The shopkeep doesn’t even raise an eyebrow. He has no trouble finding the feathers, producing them from somewhere under the table. Such small signals are commonplace in the Night Market, where intrigues abound. He and Vadz haggle while I slip on the hawk mask and look around. People drift back and forth like the tide, shoring up against the small wooden stalls for a moment before flowing on. There are women here but always well guarded. A woman with a turquoise beak and a cockade of white feathers has a cage of gavaros.

  A tall man wearing a gray wolf’s head looks my way. Its gray fur ruffles in the wind and lantern light glints on the slivers of glass that form the eyes. If it isn’t a real wolf’s head, it must have been Fixed—worked with magic, the way my arm was. He lays a fist-sized rock down on the table at an artisan’s stall. If he’s an artist, he doesn’t look it. A man who moves with such economy and wears a sword at his side, he’s either a gavaro or a householder. A gavaro wouldn’t be able to afford that mask, though, unless he really is a Fixer, and they’re all being snatched up by Geoffre di Prinze.

  Vadz touches me lightly on the shoulder. I turn around too quickly.

  “We’re headed for the piazza,” he says.

  I adjust the mask-strap at the back of my head and plunge into the crowd after him.

  Crowds make me nervous, and the mask blocks my peripheral vision and gives the world a curious tinny quality, capping off sounds until they seem thin and dreamlike. Vadz weaves his way in and out and among people, the two long blue feathers bobbing behind him ridiculously. The people we pass all look up at them, trying to read the sign, and turn away when they can’t. Snatches of a dozen conversations worm their way into my mask. It’s a spy’s holiday, the Night Market. I’ve spent a few nights here myself since I returned to Liera, asking questions about the war, the Aliente, and Arsenault. Maybe Tonia’s Qalfan noticed me h
ere.

  I’ve never seen the wolf mask before.

  Something begins to bother me about him. Why did he stare at me so directly? Did he know what Vadz’s sign meant?

  “Vadz,” I say, turning sideways to avoid the crimson-liveried guard of a bird of paradise. “There was a man in a wolf mask back there. Have you seen him before?”

  Vadz doesn’t look at me. His mouth turns down a bit. “There are a lot of men in wolf masks in the Market.”

  “Not like this one. It’s a wolf’s head. Looks real.”

  His mouth turns down a bit more. He glances over his shoulder. “No,” he says. “Should I have?”

  I shrug. “His mask was a work of art; that’s all. I thought you might have seen him before.”

  “I doubt that’s all you think, Kyris.”

  “I haven’t seen him before either.”

  I catch a glimpse of gray fur over my right shoulder. “He seems to know you.”

  “Does he?”

  I put my hand on the hilt of my knife.

  “We’ll go sit near the fountain,” Vadz says.

  The Night Market is set up on a square, as are most public places in Liera, with a fountain at its center. In the middle of the fountain stand massive alabaster sculptures of Tekus, king of the gods, and his son, Erelf, the god of knowledge. They sit on thrones, as if in judgment. Sculpted ravens—the gods’ eyes—scatter at their feet and perch on their shoulders. Water trickles out through pipes set into the gods’ outstretched hands.

  I’d rather sit anywhere but near the fountain.

  Geoffre di Prinze commissioned the statue. The statue that used to stand in this fountain was an old Eterean one of Adalus, holding sheaves of wheat in his hands. The worship of Adalus dwindles, though. Geoffre backs the worship of Erelf, and Geoffre is the hand that turns the Circle. Works of Adalus have gone disappearing lately, and even the Adalusians fling themselves into the sea.

  People still gather at the fountain, though, the way they always have. Courting couples sit with their chaperones and speak to each other in low tones; bolder, older men and women tryst. Gavaros circle the fountain like the iron spikes of a fence.