"Oh yeah?" Blays said. "What kind of flowers did it assault?"
"The rose of trade. I heard several proposals that Gallador's support in Setteven could be acquired through an exclusive deal or three with Narashtovik. As well as Cally's commitment to pave the main roads."
"Too good for dirt, are they?"
"That sounds promising," Dante said. "Mutually beneficial, even."
Fann tipped his head to one side. "I got the impression there was the expectation of heavy profit. There was talk of sheep."
"Cost us less than raising an army, won't it?" Blays said. "Or holding a funeral for every person in Narashtovik."
"Unless we got a mass grave," Dante said.
"You'd probably like that. All jammed up like that, you might be able to force a woman to touch you."
"I'll just have to pray the gravediggers finish their work before rigor mortis wears off."
"I think I'm off to bed," Fann smiled tightly. He rose. Mourn joined him on the brief walk to the piers. Lira stayed, scanning every patron as they came and went.
"I hope this isn't too boring," Blays said to her. He pointed to Dante. "I find it pretty dull myself, and he at least pretends like I have some influence around here."
Lira smiled at the steam rising from her tall glass. "You think I find your company disinteresting?"
"His? Definitely."
"In the last few weeks, we've attacked a nobleman, freed a passel of slaves, foiled an assassination attempt, and traveled halfway around the empire speaking to some of Gask's most powerful men." Lira sipped her mullen. "Before that, getting left for dead by pirates was the most exciting thing to happen to me in years."
Blays turned to Dante, laughing. "I think she actually likes this."
"Spent too much time around you, no doubt," Dante said.
"No such thing. That's like having too much summer."
"Summer's awful," Lira said. "If I have to sweat, I prefer to earn it in other ways."
"Like what?" Blays said, straight-faced. "Long runs and cold baths?"
Talk came easy, but a couple hours later, even Blays was ready to leave. They stood, buttoning cloaks, draining the last of their mullen.
Lira adjusted her collar. "I think we may be followed home."
"Oh yes?" Dante said. "Is that because you're crazy?"
"It's because we were followed here."
"What?"
"Man in the northwest corner. Blue cloak. Don't look."
Dante scowled. "I wasn't going to."
"Well," Blays murmured, "that raises an interesting question, doesn't it?"
Dante shot him a look. "Oh no. No, we don't know this city well enough for that."
"Is the big bad wizard afraid of one hired goon?"
"If he has a knife? Or friends in a dark alley? Yes. Yes I am."
Lira clunked down her glass. "What's being talked about like I'm not here?"
Dante patted his chest, ensuring his brooches were in place. "Whether to catch a boat straight home, or take a leisurely stroll through the city."
"I think we should walk," Blays said.
"We know what you think."
"Do I get a vote?" Lira said.
Dante glanced at the door. "Depends if it's a good one."
"If he means us harm, it's better to draw him out now than be attacked unaware."
"Damn it." Dante snugged his cloak around his neck. "Let's go for a walk."
The open-walled pub had been plenty chilly, so the transition to the outside air was minimal. The wooden steps rocked under Dante's feet. He hit the damp streets and headed up the slope toward the heart of the city. A minute later, wood creaked behind them.
Dante forced himself not to look. He tightened his cloak again and passed beyond a circle of lamplight—the lamps here were few, placed only at major squares and the tall brass swappoles. Faint haze diffused the shine of the stars and half-moon. Blays whistled "Reeling Rilla," as out of tune as usual. Lira spent a lot of time gazing into any glass windows they passed. It was a bit after ten and the streets were sparse with people—plodding drunks, hurrying pedestrians, women standing in tight wraps and knee-high skirts while men sat behind them, fiddling openly with knives or clubs. Dante made a left turn toward a well-lit square of short grass and broad, crablike trees that had just begun to grow new buds.
He strolled straight through the park, pausing often to admire the artfully trimmed trees, and stopped in the light of another pub to hold a false discussion about whether it looked like their kind of place. He and Lira "overruled" Blays. They moved on. Occupied with memorizing landmarks and routes and keeping their orientation straight, Dante could no longer tell if they were being followed. Instead he led them through a meandering semicircle that brought them back within a bowshot of the docks, where he stopped in front of an empty, gaping warehouse.
Lira risked a look behind them. "Nothing the last five minutes."
"Ready to head home?" Dante said.
Blays nodded. Dante crossed the slick stones to the docks. The skiff's oars stirred the black water. They spoke of nothing important until they were back within the warm walls of Lolligan's house.
"Must have just been scouting us," Blays said then. "That dawdle through the park was an engraved invitation to stab us."
"That's what I was going for." Dante turned to Lira. "What'd you see?"
Her eyes wandered to the ceiling. "Short. Thin. Male. Unobtrusive. Dark hair. Hitch in his step."
"A hitch? Like this?" Dante limped in a circle.
"That's a wobble. This was more of a hiccup." She demonstrated, jerking her spine straight with every other step. "Not that exaggerated, but you get the idea."
"Maybe it's Robert," Blays grinned. "After us for rum money."
"We could use him about now," Dante chuckled. He unclasped his cloak. "It's probably just one of Jocubs' men making sure we're on the up-and-up. But keep your eyes peeled."
"Well, I'm in for nightmares now," Blays said. "Have you ever thought about how gross that expression really is?"
The day before their meeting passed with blessedly little excitement. A letter arrived from Jocubs. The TAGVOG had its quorum. They would meet at his house at one o'clock the following day.
The morning of the event, Dante rode a skiff into the city and took a long walk in the early sunshine. He felt calm and ready. He returned to Lolligan's at noon and, accompanied by Blays and Fann, was rowed to Jocubs' island. A servant showed him to the carpeted dining hall. A dozen-odd merchants were already there, primarily old and male, but disrupted here and there by unwrinkled or female faces. Servants danced between the men of means, bearing gold trays of olives and figs and sweet port that tasted of chocolate and prunes. They brought fish, too. Dante lost count at ten different kinds—one type red as beef, two baked and headless, three fried whole in skins and heads and tails, one mashed up with soft cheese in a salty, savory paste which the merchants ate on thin slices of toast. More and more old men filtered into the vast room, accompanied by one to three servants and secretaries apiece, who drifted around their fat employers like pilot fish. Dante was introduced to face after face, forgetting the names attached to them as each new one shuffled up to greet him. The room was in constant, dizzying motion, a slow whirl of forty estate-holders and a hundred attendants.
Conversation shifted to his thoughts on the potential conflict and Narashtovik's stance to it, official and otherwise. Dante found himself in the middle of a sea of faces. Abruptly, he realized the meeting had already begun. He faltered, then laughed as if at a private joke: no place handled its business quite like anywhere else. How large and strange and wonderful the world was.
"It's a fundamentally simple position," he said to the school of curious merchants. "We don't want war. We've seen it too recently to believe any good can come of it. Furthermore, we know the norren too well to think they mean greater Gask real harm. We're concerned for our own lands, as well as our neighbors—even friendly armies tend to leave m
uddy tracks. There's no need and no want for one half of the country to march on the other.
"We know Gallador carries heavy weight with the king. Without the taxes your ships and wagons bring home, Moddegan would have no army to send forth in the first place. That's all we're here for. With your help, we can spare a lot of strife and a lot of lives."
A smattering of applause followed, though it wasn't particularly that sort of gathering. Dante expected to be assailed with a public back-and-forth afterwards, but instead the room dissolved into a dozen different knots of conversation. For a moment, he stood isolated and ignored. Then, one by one, they came for him.
The first was a man in his early thirties with a widow's peak and an arch smile. "I hope you're ready for this."
"This being?" Dante said.
"You've just made an offer. Now come the counters. You don't expect our aid will come for free, do you?"
"Narashtovik's not so different. We're ready to make any reasonable agreements."
"Well, I support you." The man swept back his hair. "I've scheduled my first caravan this spring. Fresh leaf bound for Bressel. Would hate to delay just because a few tribes of overgrown men would rather spend their time fighting than shaving."
The second to approach was a middle-aged woman whose skirt brushed the floor; when she walked, she appeared to glide over the plush carpet.
"Quick speech," she said. "That's good. Fewer details to offend the sensitive."
"I didn't even know I was giving one until halfway through."
She smiled with half her mouth. "Frankly, the clans have never shown much concern for the safety of their roads. Calm them down and you'll convince a lot of the people in this room."
He thanked her and she moved on. Most of those who spoke with him over the next hour were the newcomers, the fringe-dwellers, those who needed every leg up they could get. They queried him on trade pacts and the northern markets for tea and salt and fish. The elder men—the finest-dressed, the easiest with their laughter and pronouncements—stuck to their clusters, chuckling and snacking.
Eventually, one of these epic figures detached from his cohort and swayed over to Dante. His silk skirts rasped. His gray muttonchops swept into his bristling mustache, all of which was thick enough to impress any norren. His olive skin was as craggy and pocked as the sulfurous hills by the salt flats.
"I wonder if," he said, "at the end of the day, we have any influence at all on the movements of men and kingdoms?"
"You and me personally?" Dante cocked his head. "Because I imagine King Moddegan has rather a lot of influence on the movements of Gask."
The man waved a fleshy hand. "You're from Narashtovik. You believe Arawn has no influence over the actions of our earthly king?"
"I suppose he could. He tends not to intervene directly." Dante smiled wryly. "I think he laughs hardest when a man's folly is his own."
"To put it another way, would we be speaking now if Moddegan's ancestors hadn't annexed the Norren Territories three hundred years ago?"
"I don't know. I doubt it."
"So our king, it can be said, is playing out the story written for him by his ancestors."
"That would mean you and I are, too."
The man's muttonchops lifted in a smile. "We're all at the mercy of ghosts."
The merchant gave a slight bow of his head and turned to rejoin his compatriots. That was more or less the end of the dialogues. One other youngish man approached him with questions about Narashtovik and was interrupted by a servant, who informed Dante he should stay until after the quorum dissolved. This took the better part of three hours. That evening, Jocubs beckoned Dante and Blays into the enclosed balcony, leaving the servants to fetch tea and sweep up the dining hall.
"Well." Jocubs eased himself onto a bench, glancing at the sunset on the lake. "I hope you had a good time."
Blays jerked his chin in the direction of the hall. "The fish were so good it's a wonder you don't live in the lake. with them"
"I'm glad." He folded his hands on his stomach and gave Dante a sideways look. "I hope it wasn't too imposing?"
Dante shrugged lightly. "Not at all. Although I'm confused about what we accomplished."
"With exceptions, the Association sympathizes with you. We have a few peripheral details we'd like to work out with you—I don't think most of us knew how large Narashtovik had gotten—but I think you can count on a positive vote at the assembly two weeks from now."
"Is that a joke?" Blays said.
Jocubs blinked, lower lip outthrust. "If so, please tell me what struck you as funny. I've always wished myself wittier."
"Two weeks?"
"Yes, I think so."
Blays laughed, glancing at Dante in disbelief. "And then you'll reach a decision? Then what the hell was this party for?"
A frown gathered on the merchant's face. "To see if your proposal was worth pursuing. The next two weeks will be about working out the specifics. Some of the estates represented by the men you met are the size of small kingdoms."
Dante's head buzzed. "I don't suppose this can be hurried along."
"Not in any significant way." The man leaned forward and patted Dante's knee. "It will be fine in time. If it takes this long for Gallador to shift course, just think how long it would take the entire kingdom to come to grips with something weighty as a war!"
Dante expressed his thanks, turned down a final glass of port, and walked down to Jocubs' pier. "Well, so much for our schedule."
"So much for our youth," Blays said.
"Maybe we should just give up. Run off to be pirates."
"Wait, is that an option? Why didn't you tell me that years ago?"
Dante nodded at the skiff tied along the dock. "There's our flagship. Let's go. Lake-pirates are a thing, right?"
"If not, we can make them a thing." Blays stepped over the side of the hull. Down the pier, two men dislodged from the boathouse and hurried down the planks. "We'll blaze watery new trails for highwaymen everywhere."
The boatman paddled them back to Lolligan's, where the old man asked Dante for a detailed recap of the quorum. While Dante spoke, Lolligan cocked his head, frowned at spots on the wall, and muttered to himself, petting his pointed mustache with a single finger.
"Choker," he said once Dante finished.
"What?"
"Lord Choker. The elderly man with the muttonchops who spoke about ghosts and strings? He's the only part I can't figure out."
"Well, that's good," Dante said. "Because I don't understand any part."
"It's straightforward enough."
"And so is an ant's nest—if you're an ant. If the TAGVOG already knows they want to send a delegation to the king on our behalf, why do they need another two weeks to finalize that decision?"
Lolligan waved a sun-browned hand. "This assembly wasn't about deciding whether they should try to talk down the war-hawks. Other than those who dabble in arms and armsmen, none of the TAGVOG is keen on a fight. Today, they were judging you. How much Narashtovik wants their help, and how far you will bend to provide it. They've bought themselves two weeks to suss that out and maneuver to leverage you to the hilt."
"Excellent," Dante said. "While they're off counting coins, the king is counting troops. And unless his abacus is bent, he'll soon discover he has far more than the norren."
"When in doubt, look to the path of the crowd." Lolligan gestured across the water toward Jocubs' home. "If those old bastards thought time were running short, do you think they'd wait two more weeks? Remember, to these men, ignorance is the water between them and gold. Information is the boat they use to cross it."
Dante nodded, comforted. Most of these men had built their fortunes through shrewdness, caution, and prudence. Even the lure of squeezing Narashtovik for every ounce of its excess silver would only push them to tempt fate so far.
They were all wrong, of course. The king would hand down his proclamation the next day. It reached Gallador just two days after that. In th
e style of all great ultimatums, it brooked just two outcomes.
The norren would rebel, or never be able to again.
12
On hearing the king's proclamation, Blays had one of his own.
"Horseshit." He replaced his tea cup on its saucer. "A sixty-pound sack of horseshit."
Dante felt sick. "Horseshit isn't nearly offensive enough. This is...apeshit. At least."
He switched on his loon. On hearing the news, Cally was silent for a full ten seconds. "Well, that's no good."
"Not unless you're a mortician," Dante said. "Or a vendor of rebel banners."
"Unless you feel like defecting—and at this point I wouldn't blame you—there's no reason to stay in Wending when the king's decision has already been made. See what there is to see at the cove. Come back through the lakes on your way home and see if the merchants can talk Moddegan down, but don't waste a lot of time if they're waffling." Cally hmm'd. "Leave Fann behind to grease whatever wheels he can reach. He won't serve any use at Pocket Cove. Except as breakfast."
The orders cleared Dante's head. Fann accepted his charge with a silent nod; he was used to being dispatched to courtly settings as soon as the road turned rough. Blays clapped his hands. Mourn turned to gather his things. Lira smiled strangely and reached for her hip for a sword that wasn't there.
Lolligan was equal parts apologetic and eager for them to stay. "We don't know how the path may fork from here. Moddegan could be being deliberately outrageous in order to appear benevolent when he scales back his demands."
Dante gazed at the sparkling lake. "I won't bank on that."
"Then talk the TAGVOG into talking him down. There's still time."
"I don't understand how this city works, Lolligan, and I no longer have the time to learn. The king has made his decision. It's time for your friends to make theirs."
"They're not my friends," Lolligan muttered.
Dante wanted no more of it. For what little good it would do, he composed a brief letter to Jocubs, then took a rowboat into the city to pick up provisions while the stables prepped the horses. Waiting at the bakery, he realized he had no desire to go to Pocket Cove.
The Great Rift Page 29