Authors: Sharon Shinn
At first, she wasn’t so sure. She didn’t need the money, so the idea of holding down a daily job didn’t appeal to her; it would restrict her movements too much. On the other hand, what better place to observe the wealthy and powerful of Palminera than from a stall on the fourth floor of the Great Market?
“Part-time only,” she said. “Certain days and hours.”
“As long as you inform me in advance when you won’t be present.”
“Mmmm, I don’t know that I can always promise that. But if
you
tell
me
the days you most want me here, I can do my utmost to honor that.”
He agreed to the compromise, and their partnership continued.
Leah found herself unexpectedly enjoying her working days and spent a little time figuring out why. At first she thought it was because she relished the chance to walk the wide aisles during slow times and visit with the other merchants, learning names, learning trades, picking up scraps of information that might one day be useful for Darien.
Then she thought it was the camaraderie. Although she had many carefully cultivated acquaintances throughout the city, none of them were friends; she rarely saw any of them twice in the same nineday. But at the market, she could follow the unfolding lives of her fellow workers. She learned when their wives were sick or their sons were getting married. She could commiserate with them when the weather was bad and offer congratulations when they made big sales. She still wouldn’t say she had friends, but she had a circle, and that was almost as good.
Later she thought it was the sense of accomplishment. She’d never had a job when she lived in Welce, so the only way she’d ever made a living was by spying for Darien Serlast. It was an altogether different experience to earn money through actual labor. She hauled boxes, counted money, cleaned tables, and waited on customers, sometimes for ten hours at a stretch. She wouldn’t have thought the work was that demanding, but after a long day spent in Chandran’s booth, she would go home and topple, exhausted, onto her bed.
She liked those days. She liked being so tired that she fell asleep almost instantly; she liked sleeping through the night without dreaming.
But more than that, she liked the feel of coins in her pocket, coins she practically felt she had minted herself because she could equate each one to an hour of work. The first time Chandran had handed over her nineday’s pay, she had spent nearly all of it on a Berringese necklace that she had admired for three days. It was made of thin, curling strands of gold wire wrapped protectively over dozens of small emeralds, and it was the least practical thing she could have selected from a market full of impractical things. Yet she loved it, and every single time her eye fell upon it, she would smile.
It was the end of the second nineday before she realized what she really liked about the job at Chandran’s booth. It was having structure to her days. For five years, her life had been utterly shapeless; unless Darien sent her a specific request, she had nothing to dictate how she spent her
hours. She had fallen into a routine of sorts, visiting certain parts of the city during certain days, checking in with all her contacts two or three times a quintile, but there had been nothing and nobody to ensure that she kept to a schedule.
Nobody to notice if, one day, she failed to show up at all.
Although she and Chandran were still wary of each other, they quickly fell into an easy rhythm. When the market was slow, Leah would work the counter, waiting on customers, while Chandran tallied accounts in the back or logged in new inventory. He handled all the transactions with his regular suppliers, sometimes entertaining them in the curtained-off “office” and sometimes departing for a few hours to meet them at other rendezvous points. Occasionally a new supplier would come peddling down the aisles, offering treasures from Cozique or Dhonsho and swearing that he wouldn’t sell them to any other merchant in the market if only Chandran would promise him favorable terms.
Leah was surprised the first time Chandran asked her opinion about potential new wares. These happened to be small, finely crafted wooden boxes with hidden drawers barely big enough to hold a gold coin.
“What do you think?” he asked her. “Is this something a rich woman would buy?”
“I’m not a rich woman,” she answered, but she inspected the merchandise anyway. She instantly loved the little boxes, so varied in woodgrain and color, so smoothly finished, so delicate in her hand.
“If you decide to carry them,” she told Chandran, “you should invest in a few rings or charms or loose jewels, too. Men looking for gifts for their wives and daughters will be happy to have all the work done for them in advance.” She glanced at the supplier, whose pale face looked hopeful at the thought of a sale. “And then even if he
does
sell boxes to someone else on Great Four, yours will still be distinctive.”
“Clever thinking,” Chandran approved. “Let’s buy twenty. You pick them out.”
So she spent a pleasant half hour carefully checking out each individual box, pulling out the drawer to be sure it didn’t stick, examining the joints, and making her selections. The next hour passed even more enjoyably as Chandran sent her out to buy trinkets to fill the secret compartments.
“Now I’m a little nervous, though,” she told Chandran as she filled
about half the boxes with her new acquisitions. “If nobody wants them, I’ll be the one to blame.”
“Which is why I expect you to work hard to sell each one,” he said imperturbably. “You now have a stake in the game.”
“
You
won’t make an effort, too?”
“Oh, I will. But I have noticed that the more I myself like an item, the more eagerly I display it to customers—and the more frequently it sells. I do not know if my enthusiasm for a product makes me a better salesperson, or if my unwillingness to be wrong just makes me try harder.”
She laughed. “Maybe both of those things.”
“That is what I suspect.”
In any case, Chandran was right. Leah was so enamored of the wooden boxes that she had no trouble finding buyers for them, and all of them were gone within a nineday.
“You have an eye,” Chandran told her. “If you see other items you think we should sell, bring them to my attention.”
It shouldn’t have pleased her so much—Why did she care if a Coziquela merchant working in a Malinquese market had a profitable quintile?—and yet it did. She might be good at something after all. Something besides spying. Something besides watching other people live their lives and wondering what they knew that she had never learned.
• • •
A
s Corene had promised, she sent updates to Leah once or twice every nineday, but since she was trying to be circumspect, sometimes her messages were obscure. For instance, the first one:
I bought some lovely beads when I was at the market. I might send you some one day if I think you’ll like them.
Leah assumed the beads were red, and if she received a packet of red stones, she should understand that Corene was in danger. But she hoped any real request for rescue would be worded a little more clearly.
A few letters later, Leah received a note that was even more difficult to decode.
By now, the whole city knows that Steff has been certified as Filomara’s grandson, and she’s planning a celebration. I wanted to buy something special to wear at the gala, but there was such a crowd I found it impossible to get past the iron gates. Maybe someday I will ask the palace guards to escort me out and I’ll have more luck.
What did the princess mean by that? Had she tried to leave the palace on her own and been stopped at the exit? That was the way Leah read it, anyway. It raised the very real question: If Corene ever
did
need to be rescued, how would Leah manage it?
Time to put some strategies in place.
Leah spent the next few afternoons down at the wharf, paying attention to how often Welchin ships were at the harbor. There were usually one or two tied up at the dock, most of them small private vessels, doubtless ferrying cargo between Welce and some of the other southern nations.
She picked the ones that looked most prosperous and asked to come aboard to meet the captains. If, after a little general conversation, she judged them reasonable and relatively honest, she started asking her real questions:
How often are you in port? How quickly can you make it back to Welce? What kind of payment would you require to carry a delicate cargo back to Chialto on very short notice?
“What kind of cargo?” was the inevitable question at this point.
“Human.”
“Criminal?”
“No.”
“Worth something to the empress?”
“Worth something to Darien Serlast.”
That always got their attention. If the captains immediately jacked up their prices, she mentally crossed them off her list—though, if the time came, she might not be able to be too choosy. If they showed great willingness to do a favor for the regent-who-would-one-day-be-king, she paid a few coins on deposit as a good-faith gesture.
One of the captains was a blunt red-faced woman who looked strong enough to wrestle a sea monster and who had introduced herself as Ada
Simms. Captain Simms had obviously pieced the whole puzzle together with no trouble. “It’s his daughter, then, that he’s worried about?”
Leah played dumb. “Excuse me?”
Captain Simms nodded in the direction of the palace. “His oldest girl. Princess Corene. She’s not liking Malinqua after all? Thinking about leaving suddenly?”
“The princess is happy at the present moment,” Leah replied. “But as you know, the situation at a royal court can change unexpectedly. I’m just helping to prepare her against any contingency.”
“Well, that’s wise,” the captain said. She rubbed her great raw hand over her weather-beaten jaw. “But you’ll have a harder time getting her out if Berringey sets up another blockade.”
Leah cursed under her breath. Every few quintiles, or so it seemed, Malinqua and Berringey started threatening each other with war, which mostly resulted in skirmishes at sea and a choke hold on trade. Until now, Leah had never found the hostilities to be more than inconvenient. But if she was trying to spirit Corene out of the country—
“Does that seem likely?”
Simms shrugged her burly shoulders. “There’s some talk about a Malinquese ship that disappeared last quintile, then a Berringese ship that disappeared a couple ninedays later. There were some shots fired at us as we came sailing in. They seemed to be just for show, but it wouldn’t take too much of the Berringese navy to set up an effective blockade.”
“And then no ships get in or out?”
The big woman grinned. “We-elll, I wouldn’t say that. It’s just harder to move merchandise.”
“There’s a smuggler’s port?” Leah asked.
The captain regarded her steadily for a moment and clearly came to the conclusion that this whole conversation might have been the bait for an elaborate trap. “There might be,” she answered finally, “but
I
wouldn’t know where it is.”
More she wouldn’t say, and Leah knew better than to badger anyone for details; such tactics only made the informant grow more stubbornly silent or start handing out lies just to get rid of her. She was sure she could find out about the smuggler’s port from other sources, but she liked Simms. She wanted to win her over.
“I wonder,” Leah said. “Do you think we have any acquaintances in common in Chialto? Someone who might vouch for me?”
The captain looked interested. “Might be.”
“What kind of cargo do you carry?”
“Mostly mechanical parts,” the woman answered. “Valves and small motors and such. Although—” Suddenly her rough face softened with a grin. “My next trip out I might be carrying an elaymotive. One of those smoker cars that run on gas? I hear the empress is dying to have one of her own, but she’s been negotiating with Kayle Dochenza about his price.”
Leah’s head snapped back. “Kayle Dochenza? The elay prime?”
The captain couldn’t help looking pleased with herself. “One and the same. We’ve been doing business for five years now. He’s as odd as they say, but smarter than most people realize. And any contract he writes is good as a quint-gold. He never reneges.”
Leah leaned back in her chair, feeling like she’d finally stumbled on a little coru luck. “I know Kayle Dochenza,” she said. “I’ll give you a letter for him, and he’ll vouch for me. Then you’ll know you can trust me.”
The woman looked impressed—but not entirely won over. Anyone could
claim
to be a friend of Kayle Dochenza’s, after all. “Good enough,” she said. “I’m heading for Chialto in the morning. I’ll be seeing the prime in a couple of ninedays.”
“Good,” Leah said. “I think this will be a very profitable arrangement.”
• • •
C
handran, of course, knew all about the smuggler’s port, though he insisted he preferred not to do business with the captains who used it. “When the taxes are equitable and the system is fairly managed, it benefits everyone to abide by the rules,” he said. “My business will only thrive if there are roads to bring customers my way and guards to keep them safe. The nation will only thrive if there is a strong commercial class and successful international trade. We help each other. I have no desire to operate outside the system.”
“So you’ve never bought or sold illegal goods?”
“When there was no other option.”
“For instance, during the last blockade.”
“Yes,” he said reluctantly.
“Then introduce me to somebody who can help me when I have no other options.”
She didn’t much like the man Chandran produced a few days later, thin and nervous, with a hoarse, raspy voice that sounded like a permanent side effect from being nearly hanged. In fact, she suspected that Chandran had chosen the least prepossessing individual from his short list of smuggling contacts in the hopes of discouraging Leah from cultivating such an acquaintance. She found the thought amusing—and oddly touching.
The rogue was a font of information, though, telling her where she might find him on certain days, what prices he charged for various services, and what kinds of goods were most likely to pass through the illicit venue.