Twenty

T R A D E

 

Neythan sat next to Caleb at the tent booth and watched the people bustling along Hanesda’s narrow walkways as though it was a sport – builders and masons from Harán, merchants from Calapaar’s coastal market towns, garment-makers from the High East. There were even Súnamites here, just as Caleb had promised, selling spices and fabrics from the Summerlands – the whole world, it seemed, packed together in one place, and all of them moving hurriedly along the city’s streets and gangways as though they were being chased.

It was a similar story in Sumeria’s other cities – Qadesh, Sippar, Qareb – each one filled with too many people and not enough time, the fruit of having sprung up along the ever-fertile banks of the Swift back when the neighbouring Harán was little more than dirt and sandshrubs, before the Low East discovered bronze and iron and how to forge them, and then how to dig deeper wells, further inland, and build their settlements around what they’d dug. Still, Hanesda remained the biggest, built atop a sloping valley on its north and eastern sides and overlooking the Swift to its south and west. A sprawling whitewalled network of terraces, alleys and squares where friends behaved like strangers and strangers sought to make friends, all in the name of trade. It took some getting used to. Not the kind of adjustment a golden-haired Kivite, unaccustomed to the warmer weather and heavily peopled streets and a native of the barren city-less scrublands of the Reach, should find easy to make. But then that was just one of the many strange things about the ranger, how comfortable he’d seemed strolling through the cluttered passageways of the marketplace and laying down his wishes.

“Do you trust him?” Caleb asked.

Neythan glanced at him, then back to the street opposite. “Not really. But then how much can I trust a man I’ve known a day?”

Caleb gave a conceding shrug. “His price is steep – go rob the sharíf himself.”

“I know… What of Nouredín? How well do you trust him?”

Caleb shrugged again, made a wry face.

“You’ve known him long?”

“Years. But time isn’t always a teacher when it comes to people.”

“How did you come to know him?”

“He’s a broker. Came upon him in a village in the High East, south of Tirash. I was trying to find buyers for a cage of peacocks I’d brought up from the Narrow. The man I’d gone there to meet had refused to do what was agreed. Wouldn’t buy. So there I was, stuck on the back side of the desert with this cage of birds and no buyer. One of the hirelings knew men in the town, sent word, not the kind of thing I like to normally do. I like to know whose silver I’m taking ahead of time. But, as I said, it’s desert land, ten days’ journey at least from almost anywhere. If I go on with the stock how am I to feed them? And they are nervous creatures. Two had died already on the way. So anyway, word comes back from the town, this man Nouredín has taken an interest – which is a relief – and what’s more is willing to come out from the township to meet me and see the stock. Which, well, he didn’t have to do, did so as good faith, to make life a little easier for me. As I said, the creatures are skittish.

“He wanted and took a hard price, of course. I mean, I had four birds in the cage, all strong and healthy. But we are in the desert. Who else am I going to sell to? He knew this… so anyway, he was impressed with the stock, asked if I was able to get other beasts besides, which I was, and so he partnered with me at a better price to take what I brought him every three moons – monkeys, camels and so on… He was a reliable buyer, more so than the first, always on time, always with silver.”

“You trust him, then?”

Caleb grimaced mildly. “I trust him to pay for goods when he has agreed to do so, nothing more. We’ve seldom eaten together. I do not know his kin. It is not like that with us.”

Neythan grunted.

“When does he want to do it?” Caleb asked.

“Ten days from now. The sharíf is to visit the south corner of the city to see the school before he departs to Qadesh to wed. The ranger thinks that if the sharíf goes, so ought the Brothers who are guarding him.”

“Should it be a difficult thing to take this jewel?”

“Not the way the ranger tells it. The sharíf’s guard are twenty men but most will go with him when he journeys. In the palace will be only cooks and servants, perhaps a handful of armed guards, or so he says.”

“Even so, this is the crown city. The cityguard is what, maybe a thousand men?”

“I said the same.”

“And what did he say?”

“He claims the jewel won’t be missed, that the sharíf barely knows of it. It is kept in a tomb he never visits and is of little or no value to the Sovereignty. He claims as long as our trespass goes unknown we could leave with the jewel and abide a year in the city without it being noted missing.”

“Seems unlikely.”

“I said the same, but he spoke as if all the more certain.”

Caleb grunted and continued working on his sandal as they squatted together on stools by the tent booths. He’d been at it for a while. Several thongs had come loose around the toes. He was taking the remaining thongs, bound from further back on the sole, and dipping the thing whole into a bucket of water, trying to make the leather stretch to tether them at the front.

“Would help, of course,” he said as he continued to work, “if you were able to remember more of the Watcher’s words.”

“So you have said.”

“To come here and nothing more… it’s slim counsel. Bones without meat.”

“We’ve been over this.”

“If we knew, at least, whether your heretic is here.”

Neythan sighed.

“It would be helpful were you to remember.”

“Yes, I know. But I do not. The sticks are as they are.”

“You say he met her, the ranger?”

“Ate with her, he said.”

“And you think he speaks the truth?”

Neythan shrugged again. “He described her likeness to me well. He’s seen her, if nothing else.”

Caleb nodded, turned the sandal over, shook his head. “What is this jewel anyway?”

“A pearl… No, a black pearl, he said.”

“Black?”

“Yes.”

“Strange.”

“Yes.”

“And whose tomb is to be raided?”

“A wife of Sharíf Karel.”

“Karel, you say… Analatheia? Queen Analatheia?”

“You know of her?”

“Of course. As you ought, it is the wife he killed… But the Brotherhood these days…”

“Yes, I know, they teach us nothing.”

Caleb looked up from the sandal. He smiled sheepishly. “I say it so often?”

Neythan shrugged.

“I didn’t know I said it so often.”

“Why would he kill his own wife?”

“Ah, well. Whose story would you hear? There are as many as there are years to have passed since her death. Most say for infidelity. The intrigue is in knowing with whom the betrayal was, or, for some, with what.”

“What do you mean?”

Caleb put down the sandal. “It is said of some she practised the ways of the Magi, and that Karel commanded her to cease and keep his law. When she refused, he had her killed.”

“Loving husband.”

“There will be a secret or two for every man or woman of the royal line, Neythan. Of that you can be sure.”

“This too, you say often.”

“What does he want with this pearl, anyway?”

“He is Kivite. He says it belongs to his people, that Theron stole it when he conquered them.”

“And he’s waited until now?”

“I know, that too I questioned him of.”

“And?”

Neythan shrugged. “He said he’d only recently learned its whereabouts.”

Caleb frowned and shook his head. He dunked the sandal once more into the bucket. “Well. So, how would the deed be done?”

“The ranger and I would enter together.”

“He knows the palace?”

“He knows a man who does, a courtier. He’d be our guide to the tomb and out again; the ranger has bought him.”

“And he is reliable, this courtier?”

“So he says.”

“Must be quite a price the ranger paid, for the courtier to be so bold.”

Neythan nodded.

“What then? Where is the tomb?”

“There are many. Some beneath the palace, some in a crypt beneath the gardens behind. The ranger thinks the one he wants will be under the palace.”

“How does he know?”

“The courtier.”

“Right.”

“The courtier is to take us to the door of the tombs. The ranger will wait there to keep the watch, and I will descend.”

“How does he know this courtier?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t ask.”

“There’s not much to like about this.”

“Again, we agree.”

“The pearl, it will be somewhere in the tomb? Does he know of its place?”

“It sits in a pendant, joined to a necklace the queen wore. He says it will be with her.”

“What do you mean, with her?”

“With her… She… well, her corpse will be wearing it.”

Caleb snorted. “No wonder he’ll stay and keep the watch.”

Neither spoke for a while; Caleb puzzled, lifting and turning the sandal before putting it to the ground, pinning the sole there with his toes and yanking on the thin threaded leather of the thongs.

“I keep thinking there ought to be another way,” Neythan said. “To find Arianna, seek her out.”

“Like?”

“I don’t know. You know people in the city, people we could speak to… find a beginning.”

“I know the same people as Nouredín, except he knows more, and knows each one better than I. Were you to remember more of the Watcher’s words, that would be a good beginning.”

“What’s your advice then? That I do it?”

Caleb shrugged, then tutted, dropping the sandal as he yanked again on a thong. He picked it up. “Strange he doesn’t do it himself. He has the courtier, he has the day for the deed, why should he need you?”

“He fears the Shedaím, fears one of them may remain within the palace.”

“Why would they?”

“I know. But he doesn’t want to take chances. Thinks my being there will help, should anything go awry.”

Caleb frowned again.

“So, what is your advice?”

Caleb tossed the sandal to the ground grumpily. “I’ll have to buy another or pay for it to be mended, not that we have the silver.” He looked up from the battered and soggy leather sole. “My advice…” he looked around at the tents, at the market across from them, then, finally, back to Neythan again. “We cannot know whether the ranger speaks the truth or no… But what other means have we? Perhaps he does speak the truth. In which case how else, other than doing as he’s asked, might we come to learn what secrets he knows, where to find your heretic?”

He sat and stared for a while. Neythan waited.

“I do not trust him,” Caleb said evenly.

“That makes two of us.”

“It is a hard thing.”

“Perhaps we agree to do his bidding, but then find a corner somewhere, on the way to the deed, and take hold of him. Gain what he knows by force.”

Caleb shook his head. “But how then would we flee the city? And what if what he knows requires us to stay? We would have to kill him just to make sure whatever friends he has didn’t hear of it. And besides, he could as easily choose to lie.”

“I would bring the truth from him, Caleb. You can be certain of that.”

“Be that as it may, it would be less than wise… It would be better to do the task he has asked.”

“Rob from the sharíf?”

“That or bleed the ranger, each are as hopeful as the other.”

It was Neythan’s turn to sit and think.

“Perhaps our choice is this,” Caleb said. “Let us rob the tomb and hope the ranger’s words true, and if his steps prove false we simply put a blade in his back first, and then leave the city second, and seek some other way to find your heretic.”

Neythan thought about it for a moment. “No.”

“No?”

He picked up Caleb’s sandal, dusted it off. “A blade in the courtier, second,” he said distractedly as he tugged at the thongs. “Leave, third.”