[Fools' Guild 08] - The Parisian Prodigal (13 page)

“When our relief gets here,” he said. “Might as well tell you, since you keep spotting us.”

“Would it help if I gave you my schedule in advance?” I asked.

“Do you ever know where you’re going from moment to moment?”

“Not usually.”

“Then no thanks,” he said. “We’ll do it the old-fashioned way.”

“Right then,” I said. “Best of luck to you. We’ll be at the dinner at the Count of Foix’s maison tomorrow night. Sancho probably knows that already, but you could bring that tidbit to him just to show you’re on the job.”

“Thank you,” he said. “Would you like us to give you a head start, just to make it fun?”

“Very sporting of you,” I said. “Let me say good-bye to my wife.”

I rejoined my fellow fools.

“Don’t look, but I suspect that I’m being followed,” I said.

“You think?” said Helga.

I kissed Claudia on the mouth, Portia on the nose, Helga on the cheek, and stopped myself just in the nick of time from kissing Pelardit. He pouted in disappointment. I waved to my two watchers, and they waved back as I left the tavern.

They didn’t follow me, but I quickly noted their two replacements who were waiting for me to emerge so they could take up the task. I walked for two blocks just to give them a fair chance.

Then I lost them.

T
he Count of Foix
. The Abbess. La Rossa. Sancho.

All with their secrets. What they knew, what they wanted to know, whom they worked for. One, at least, had already taken her secrets where no one would ever find them. Well, no one except for that bloodhound who called herself my wife. Even the grave might prove no barrier to her curiosity.

It made sense to leave the women to the woman. I considered the men.

Sancho concerned me more and more. He was obviously afraid that I was on the verge of some unpleasant discovery, in which case he was giving me too much credit. The constant surveillance was hampering my abilities. Even now, sitting on the rooftop that I had climbed to avoid his men, I sensed the many sets of eyes this spider had deployed in my direction. My escape was only temporary.

And the increase in his fear served only to increase my apprehension at the scope of the threat that I might uncover.

If he was working against Count Raimon, then whom was he working for? What could have corrupted this man? A week ago, I would have said nothing. Sancho was what he seemed to be: a simple, stolid soldier.

Well, mercenary. But one who honored his commitments to his master. Would he actually gamble on a betrayal this—

Gamble. Of course he would. This was a man who would hazard a month’s salary on a single throw of the dice. I had seen it. No different from any other mercenary, quartered in a strange city far from home with too much peace on his hands. I have seen more than one incorruptible soul, even one immune to the pleasures of flesh and drink, pick up a pair of dice and sink into that particular pit, never to reemerge.

If Sancho was such a man, then it would be useful to know who held his debts.

I peered over the edge of the rooftop. Sancho’s men were trudging back toward the château Narbonnais, no doubt dreading the tongue-lashing they would receive for losing me. I scanned the area for others, saw none, and dropped lightly into th’e alley, frightening a small boy who was playing with a pile of sticks.

“I was on the roof,” I explained.

“Why?” he asked.

“Excellent question,” I said. “I couldn’t think of a good reason to be there either, so I came back down.”

“Oh,” he said.

I pulled a piece of candy out of my pouch. “It’s what fools do,” I said, holding it out to him.

“Oh,” he said, taking it.

He went back to his work. I went back to mine.

T
he Toulousan dicemakers
had their own guild, something they maintained to put a patina of propriety on a depraved profession. There was no guildhall. As far as I could tell, the leadership passed from man to man on an irregular basis and without election. I suspected that this was done by rolls of the dice at their occasional meetings at a tavern called the Knuckles in the Comminges quarter.

The current head of the guild was named Antonio, whose shop was around the corner from the tavern. I was hoping he would be at the Knuckles, where the drink might loosen his tongue, but he was a craftsman who took his working hours seriously. When I came in, he was bent over a plane, meticulously smoothing the surface of a single wooden cube, then holding it against a perfect stone one to compare. I waited until he had it to his liking, then cleared my throat.

“Ah, Tan Pierre,” he said, looking up and smiling. “Welcome to my humble shop.”

“May I see?” I asked, holding out my hand.

He tossed it to me, and I held it up to the sun. Each corner was perfect. Each surface was as smooth as water in a silver chalice.

“It’s magnificent,” I said. “And then you will dab it with black spots, and it will become the very decider of someone’s life. I see now that the difference between a thing of geometric beauty and an instrument of seduction are the spots.”

“Do you approach everything in life this philosophically?” he asked, taking it back and placing it in a box of similar blank cubes awaiting their transformation.

“Always seeking the truth,” I said. “That’s what a fool does.”

“Does it pay well?” he asked.

“The truth is priceless,” I said. “Which means that no one can afford to hear it. No, it doesn’t pay well at all. Does dice-making pay well?”

“The demand is constant,” he said. “They are much desired, and easily lost.”

“Like women,” I said.

“Only you can’t put a woman in your pouch and travel with her,” he said.

“The moment God creates one, I shall be on her doorstep with a bouquet and a ring,” I said.

“Would you like to see my wares, good Fool?”

“Actually, I have a pair already,” I said.

“Let me see,” he said.

I pulled them out of the recesses of my pouch and handed them to him. He hefted each in his hand, then held them up to the light and inspected each corner critically.

“Better not let the bade catch you with those,” he said, tossing them back to me.

“I’m not a gambling man,” I said.

“I can see that,” he replied. “A gambling man would have honest dice. Why are you here?”

“Information,” I said.

“Why?”

“I am on a mission of mercy,” I said. “Mercy to a mercenary, of all things, but he is a friend, and I am hoping to bail him out of trouble before things get any worse.”

“He is a gambler.”

“He only thinks he is,” I said. “What he really is is a man of considerable bad luck. I suspect that he has stumbled into a game where the dice were like mine. I seek to retire his debt before it becomes a threat to his position, and I hope to accomplish this with some discretion.”

“Using those?” he asked, pointing to my dice.

“Hopefully, the offer of money will be enough,” I said. “But I have these as a secondary line of attack.”

“A very Christian thing to do,” he said. “However, as the head of the Dicemakers’ Guild, I cannot sanction the disruption of a game by a dishonest set of dice, no matter how worthy the motives are.”

“The game has already been disrupted, if my suspicions are correct,” I pointed out. “I would be restoring balance to a loaded world.”

“Who is this soldier of misfortune?” he asked.

“Sancho of Castile,” I said. “A good man at heart.”

He sat at his table, thinking. Then he took the die he had just finished, shook it in his fist, and rolled it. It bounced several times, banged off the plane, and came to rest. He looked at it, then back up at me.

“Very well,” he said. “From what I have heard, your friend fell into a game run by a man named Higini, who works by day in the stables in Saint Cyprien.”

“I know those stables,” I said. “Thank you. Did that die determine your decision to help me?”

“Of course.”

“But there aren’t any spots on it yet,” I said. “It’s blank.” He smiled. “Only to you,” he said.

I
crossed
the Daurade Bridge to the neighborhood of Saint Cyprien. We had lived there when we first came to town, the rents being cheaper outside the protection of the city walls. The area was notable mostly for its cemetery and for the barracks for the count’s mercenaries, but many of the city-dwellers stabled their horses there. I decided to pay a quick visit to Zeus, my own recalcitrant beast.

He had been imposed upon me by Brother Dennis, the ostler for the Fools’ Guild, when I needed to travel in disguise as a merchant for a particular mission. He was a vicious, petulant, violent, and sometimes uncontrollable animal, but he was fast and strong, and there were occasions when I needed him to be both. Nevertheless, he was the terror of the stable boys—indeed, of any rational human being. The only one that he tolerated was me. The only one that he truly adored was Portia, who returned his love threefold. The same horse that could throw an unwary rider twenty feet through the air or put a well-placed hoof through a steel visor would walk along as gently as a lamb when my daughter sat on his back, embracing his neck and tugging on his mane.

I bought a bunch of carrots and stopped by the stables. One of the stable boys saw me and waved. “Have you come to make sacrifice to the great god Zeus?” he called.

“I am on that holy pilgrimage,” I said, holding up the carrots. “I hope that I am deemed worthy.”

“Approach the holy stall with humility and gifts, and he will receive you,” he said. “Will you be riding him? He could use the workout. He has a lot of pent-up energy today.”

“That is precisely when I do not want to ride him,” I said.

“Please,” he begged me. “We could use a laugh.”

Well, that was an appeal I could not possibly refuse. One of the perils of being a jester: One is expected to be entertaining anytime and anywhere. If I couldn’t handle that request, then I had no business being in the business.

“Follow me at a safe distance,” I said, “and send my body back to my wife when it’s all over.”

I passed the row of stalls as their inmates watched with interest, each hoping a carrot would land in the straw at their feet. From the shadows of the last stall, my shaggy gray steed cast a malign eye in my direction.

“Feeling cooped up and sorry for ourselves, are we?” I chirped. “Let me comfort you with carrots.”

I dangled the bunch invitingly at the edge of the stall. A moment later, the gate shivered under the impact of Zeus’s body hitting it. I stepped back in time to avoid being horse food. Two of the carrots were less fortunate.

“Two more once I’ve saddled you,” I said. “The rest when we’re done with our ride.”

He looked back and forth from me to the remaining carrots. I hung them on a hook on the opposite wall where he could see them, then took his saddle from its shelf over the stall. I took a deep breath, then slid quickly through the gate to his side.

The side of a vicious horse is the safest place to be, with the exception of nowhere near him. Equidistant between kicking and biting, so all he can do is try to crush you against the wall. Which he did.

“No saddle, no carrots,” I reminded him once I was able to inhale again.

Having made his point, he settled down, and I was able to get the saddle in place and cinch it firmly. I vaulted over the gate before he could bring his teeth into play, and gave him two more carrots.

“As you can see, I am a man of my word,” I said. “Now, let’s put on a show for the stable boys.”

I stuffed the rest of the carrots into my pouch and grabbed his reins. When I opened the gates, the stable boys, who had been watching from a safe distance, scattered. I led Zeus out to the field where a few other horses were being exercised. Even they stopped when they saw Zeus.

“Any last words?” one of the riders called.

I thumped my chest in salute, then climbed up.

He had this nasty habit of lurching forward before I could get my other foot into the stirrup. I pulled back hard on the reins before he could launch into a full gallop, and managed to locate the stirrup with my free foot as it swung wildly. He reared, and I gripped hard with my knees until he came down again. I secured my foot, then leaned forward.

“Is that all you’ve got?” I whispered.

The next thing I knew, we were at the other end of the field. I prepared myself for the inevitable leap over the fence, but he stopped abruptly, nearly catapulting me over his withers. I thudded into his neck instead, jarring my teeth together.

“That was new,” I muttered. “Good one. Now, let’s see how fast—“

He was off again, veering so perilously close to the fence that I feared for my leggings. And my leg. I urged him away, and he made the turn without colliding with anything and continued on. I got a brief glimpse of the grooms watching from the other side of the fence, coins changing hands. Then I was off to the races again.

We made five more laps before he deigned to be reined in again. I wasn’t aware that I had been screaming until I ran out of the wind needed to sustain it. He was barely breathing hard. I had sweated through my motley, and didn’t even want to know the condition of my whiteface at this point. When I finally brought him to a halt by the stables, the collected group applauded. I dismounted and signaled to the stable boy who had first greeted me.

“Enough entertainment for one day, I hope,” I said, handing him the reins. “Oh. Wait.”