T
he mob in front of the Serian factory had grown larger with each passing minute after nightfall, the way some of the showiest flowers open in the darkness. A few of the locals had thrown stones, but for the most part they watched with the grinning malice of a cat with its paws spread, waiting for a vole to move.
“Your broker would have done better to come by daylight,” Cashel said uneasily. The killers were prowling around his flock and there was nothing he could do about it.
Frasa extended both little fingers in the equivalent of a shrug. “It was Themo's decision,” he said. “He's lived here for twenty years, so we can only hope that he has better judgment about this sort of situation than we do.”
“He was in Carcosa during the Troubles seventeen years ago,” Jen agreed. “We can only hope.”
Mellie was prowling about the roof, peeking into drains and sometimes reappearing over the coping several feet from where Cashel had last seen her. The sprite was visible in light or shadow as though she were illuminated by a sky different from the one she walked under. Cashel knew he'd never get used to the blithe nonchalance with which Mellie took risks;
but like most things, his concern would never reach his tongue.
“The man you're dealing with isn't a Carcosan?” Cashel said aloud. It gave him an odd feeling to be standing on a flat roof looking down on the world. Roofs in Barca's Hamlet were peaked and mostly thatch. Even the ancient slates of the millhouse sloped steeply and fed an equally old cistern with rainwater that Ilna saved for washing delicate fabrics.
“We've used two brokers here in the past,” Frasa explained. “The other one, Sidras or-Morr, is a local man.”
“He seemed honest and satisfactory in the past,” Jen said. “Under the present circumstances, though, we thought that Themo or-Casmon was the better choice. His family is on Ornifal, so he'll be less swayed by local passions.”
“Folks from Ornifal don't hate devil worshippers?” Cashel said with a frown.
Jen stiffened again, then broke into the broadest smile Cashel had thus far seen on his face. Frasa merely said, “Master Cashel, under the present circumstances I wouldn't trust a Serian out of my own family to deal honestly with me; but we decided to choose a broker whose allegiance isn't to Count Lascarg.”
It didn't seem to Cashel that anybody's real allegiance was to Count Lascarg, or that Lascarg felt responsibility for anything except his own skin. Tenoctris had said that outside forces were breaking down society, but pressure on society doesn't make a man evil or weak: it just allows those qualities to show through if they were there in the first place.
The city folk below with bricks in their hands and empty hate in their hearts were making their own decision; wizardry wasn't responsible. Cashel and his quarterstaff had already shown what he thought of picking on strangers. The way things were looking, he'd have more chances to repeat the lesson.
Harbor Street was a broad relic of the Old Kingdom. The tenements on the other side overlooked the factories. Because of the backdrop of the dark sky, the mob in the street couldn't
see Cashel and the Serian merchants, but they showed up against the roof's pale brickwork to folk on the tenement roofs.
“Dirt! Dirt! Dirt!” screamed a girl not even Cashel's age. She flung a roofing tile. The missile flew less than halfway to the intended target, dropping to shatter among the mob in the street.
“Arrows!” cried a man as the mob surged away from the sharp-edged fragments. “The dirt's shooting arrows!”
“Maybe we'd better stay back,” Cashel suggested, wondering as he spoke where Mellie had gone to. The roof was in easy range of stones thrown from the street. If the mob realized it was being watched from above, there'd be a hail that might hurt somebody before they got under cover.
“There he comes,” said Frasa. “That's Themo now.”
Half a dozen men in steel caps and quilted leather armor came up the street from the south. Five of them carried spears and wore small round shields on their left forearms: the sixth had a larger shield and no spear.
The crowd saw the broker's men at about the same time Frasa did. A murmur grew, spreading from the edge back to the mob's heart. Themo's guards raised their spears point-forward over their right shoulders, ready to stab or throw.
The rioters nearest the weapons backed or sidled away: those to the rear began throwing stones. The blind shower of missiles scattered the front of the mob faster than the oncoming spears could have done. Themo and his men broke into a run toward the factory door.
Frasa and Jen started for the stairs down into the building proper. Cashel backed behind them, alert to block a missile flung from the street as a farewell but also looking desperately for Mellie.
“They aren't serious about it yet,” the sprite said from his shoulder. Cashel whirled his staff in a startled half-circle, responding to nonexistent threats to either side. “You can smell when a mob means business.”
“Don't scare me like that!” Cashel hissed. He hadn't felt
the touch of her climbing his leg; had she hopped to his shoulder from the roof coping?
Mellie giggled but cuddled his throat repentantly.
Shouts and curses echoed briefly through the entryway, then muted when Serian servants slammed the door behind Themo and his men. The broker dropped his oversized shield and flung his helmet down on the stone. He was a thin-faced man whose blond hair was going gray. Glaring up the staircase at Jen and Frasa, he said, “You didn't tell me what it was like out there! Were you trying to get me killed?”
“Your pardon, Master Themo,” Jen said with a deep bow. Except that he and his brother were standing at the top of stairs, Cashel was pretty sure they'd have fallen on their knees in full obeisance. “We didn't want to have the Highlanders out in the street to await your coming lest we give the civic authorities an excuse to bring their own troops against us.”
It was none of Cashel's business but it bothered him to see anyway. The Serians had nothing to apologize for: it wasn't their city, their mob, or their decision to delay so long. Besides, there weren't a hundred people in the street at present. Cashel, Garric, and four more of the right lads from the borough with quarterstaves could have sent a wispy rabble like that packing with less effort than as many minutes on the threshing floor after every harvest.
“He didn't want people to see him by good light,” Mellie said, lying on her back and somehow managing to touch her toes with her fingertips from that position. “Consorting with devil worshippers.”
She gave a trill of liquid laughter and added, “Who'd want to worship a demon anyway? Most of them are too stupid even to be good company.”
Themo stamped up the stairs with two of his guards, a red-haired man and one whose flat nose and scarred cheekbones marked him as a longtime fistfighter. They'd laid their spears aside but they wore their steel caps and carried swords on shoulder belts over their leather jacks.
The guards eyed Cashel with the same generalized contempt
they offered everyone else in the factory including the brothers and the four Highlanders laughing just off the entrance hall. Contempt for those little killers seemed to Cashel as stupid as scorning a poisonous snake because it was small.
“I don't like this man,” Mellie said, following Themo with her eyes. Cashel said nothing as he walked behind the Serians and their visitors into the office, but he sure didn't disagree.
“Who's that?” Themo demanded, pointing his thumb at Cashel as he addressed his question to the brothers. A servant closed the door behind Cashel.
“This is our aide, Master Cashel or-Kenset,” Frasa said calmly. “He is a native of this island.”
Themo assessed Cashel and frowned in puzzlement before dismissing him again. Cashel knew he looked like exactly what he was: a big shepherd who had no business in a discussion of this sort.
He kept right hand firmly on the quarterstaff upright at his side; that avoided the possibility that Themo would try to clasp hands with him out of normal politeness. Themo didn't seem the sort who was normally polite anyway.
The broker sat down without waiting for the offer of the chair and pulled several folded sheets of rice paper out of his belt pouch. “All right,” he said, “I've looked at your manifest and most of it seems in order. I haven't been able to move the figured pottery at anything like the price the celadon bringsâwhy do you insist on trying to change people's tastes when they know what they like?”
Jen bobbed his head in apology. “The figured ware is very popular in Valles,” he said. “We hoped that when news of the court's tastes reached Haft, there would be a surge in demand.”
“Well, it's a drug on the market here,” Themo grunted. “I've half a mind to tell you to keep it aboard as ballast, but since we've done business so many years I'll do you the favor of taking it off your hands.”
The brothers said nothing. Themo fumbled again in his
scrip and came out with another list, this one written on a pair of thin boards.
“Here's what I'm offering in return,” he said, tossing the boards on the table instead of handing them across. “Understand, it's going to be a lot of trouble to me to move
any
Serian stuff for the next who-knows-how-long. It might be I'll just have to dump it all at sea to keep from getting charged with devil worship myself. And there's not going to be more cargoes from you lot anytime soon, that I know.”
Still without speaking, the brothers each picked up one of the boards, read it through, and then exchanged it for the other. They looked at one another expressionlessly. Frasa handed the board he now held to his brother and said, “This appears satisfactory, Master Themo. Though it's not in my interest to say so, it's quite a generous offer under the circumstances. We'll have a contract prepared.”
Jen handed the list to a long-robed servant, who turned with it to a slanted writing desk against the wall near Cashel.
“I already had that made up,” the broker said and pulled a third document from his purse; this one a narrow parchment scroll, the ends of the hide left ragged but the roll done up with a red ribbon for show.
He tossed it to Frasa, who untied it expressionlessly. Jen tented his hands and looked calmly accepting.
Cashel would've liked to ask Mellie what she made of what was going on, but she'd left him to climb over the three visitors. Cashel was horrified to see the sprite disappear into the broker's open purse, then pop out again an instant before he buckled it closed again.
“I've got six wagons waiting at Fountain Court,” Themo said. “There's a man on top of the Arch of Verucca who can take a signal from your roof and relay it to the wagoners. The only thing is, they're coming empty. I'll have to deliver the return cargo tomorrow.”
Frasa put down the parchment scroll. “It's traditional to make the exchange of merchandise at the factory before
goods are either loaded on shipboard or carried off the premises,” Jen said.
“It's not traditional that there's a mob waiting at the door to knock the heads in of anybody who deals with you Serians!” Themo said. “And the Sister take you if you can't see that. I won't take the chance of unloading the wagons while that lotâ”
He gestured toward the street behind him. There was scar tissue on the ball of his thumb and the nail was twisted into a claw.
“âgathers up all their friends and brothers with maybe some of the Count's guard too and waits for us to come back out. I want a quick in and out. Tomorrow when things settle down I'll bring your goods.”
He pointed at the parchment. “It's all right there, already signed.”
All Cashel knew about contracts was two men spitting on their palms and shaking hands, but he had a notion of how far a Serian would get trying to sue today before Count Lascarg's judges. They'd be as likely to leave court alive as a sickly ewe was to survive the Hungry Time in February before the new grass came in.
Frasa met the broker's eyes for a long moment. “Yes, I can see that,” he said at last.
Jen held out his hand. The secretary brought a bronze pen and alabaster inkwell to him, moving with steps so tiny that the long robe appeared to glide over the floor by itself.
“Good, good,” Themo said. He'd visibly relaxed; so did his pair of guards. “I figured you'd see reason. The signal's three lanterns from the roof. You've got that here, right.”
“Yes,” said Frasa. Cashel had seen stones with more overt emotion. The Serians knew the risk they were taking with this man, but they were hoping against hope of a good result for their trust.
“Master Cashel will witness my signature,” Jen said, rotating the document on the table and setting the pen across the inkwell where Cashel could reach it.
“Yes you can,” Mellie said. She hopped from Cashel's shoulder to the floor in three long jumps that would have frightened the youth if he hadn't already been frozen by Jen's words. Garric had taught him to write his name, but he couldn't imagine doing it under the eyes of so many educated strangers.