The price of victory- - Thieves World 13 (105 page)

The Beysib ship came into the harbor with her galley oars shipped and her rust-colored sails stretched tight. She rode low in the water, but her lines showed speed despite her heavy holds and metal-clad bow. A cata pult rose from her stem; she'd bum the sails of anything foolhardy enough to chase her. The exiles insisted that the ship, and her sisters, were their homeland's cargo vessels—lumbering relations of their war ships. It might be that the fish-folk were lying through their staring eyes, but no Sanctuary sailor felt the urge to challenge them.

"Pirates each and every one of them. Barbarians," Thrusher muttered as Beysib sailors swarmed over the rigging as the ship drew alongside the wharf. "They think we're animals," Thrush continued. "They think we've got no souls because we don't have fish eyes like them. Don't think they've made a square deal with us since their first ship put in here.
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Stealin' us blind is what they're doing. I'll bet they're selling us garbage."

Walegrin grunted noncommittally; he wouldn't take his friend's bet. For all that he'd been bom a thrall, Thrusher was a snob. As far as the commander could tell, the Beysib were getting insect egg cases, uncured pelts, and barrels of swamp beer for such goods as caught a mainland

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eye. The Beysib might be selling garbage—Walegrin couldn't be sure—

the Sanctuary merchants definitely were.

The two soldiers broke up a fistfight between Beysib sailors and Sanc tuary laborers. They fished a careless merchant out of the harbor. A red haired Ilbarsi offered them a bribe of pickled passion fruit. A Rankan offered them pearls if they'd guard a certain triple-locked chest against all comers. They took the fruit, and took the Rankan to the palace lockup for stealing. The carnival was still going strong when they returned to the wharf.

A woman with a donkey cart blocked their way. The wharf could support a three-horse dray, but there were drainage gaps between the diagonally laid planks. The donkey was sweating in its harness; the woman was pulling the donkey; and the wheels were wedged into the

gaps.

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Walegrin nudged Thrusher. The woman had to be new in town. Only a stranger would lead the donkey along the wharf rather than across it, much less own a cart that could get both wheels stuck.

'"I don't understand it," the woman explained as the two men made a barrier between her and the unamused crowd. She was almost as frantic as the donkey.

"We'll get you out of here," Walegrin muttered. He took the woman's shawl and wrapped it over the donkey's eyes. Donkeys were smarter than horses, but not by much. "Never done this before, have you?"

"Why, no ... When the other ships came in, my brother-in-law was home ..."

Walegrin walked away to exchange places with Thrusher. He got a firm grip on the single axle, then nodded his head, lifted, and scuttled sideways as Thrush got the donkey moving.

"No! No! Not that way. I've got to get out to where they're unload ing."

The two men exchanged an evening's conversation in a glance. The cart settled back onto its axle, free now, but still blocking traffic.
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"The length of an axle is set by the prince's decree," Walegrin recited to the woman, who was, by then, in tears. "It's matched to the width of these planks and the width of the gap between them." He handed the shawl back to her. "This cart gets stuck out there and I'll have to im pound it. I'll have to take it to the palace and it'll go to firewood unless you pay a fine of two soldats."

The woman's tears ceased; she turned pale enough to frighten the commander, There was no fine for women fainting on the wharf, but he had no desire to have his arms full of drooping femininity. To his im

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mense relief she squared her shoulders and started breathing normally again.

"Is it permitted to tie a cart here—by the cobblestones?"

Walegrin nodded.

"Then I shall carry my goods myself. I cannot risk my brother-in-law's cart. I do not have two soldats."

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It was the second time she'd referred to her brother-in-law, and both times she seemed to shrink as she uttered the words. She hadn't men tioned a father or a son, nor a brother or husband; not even a sister's husband. Walegrin looked at her with the beginnings of sympathy. Slaves had more rights than a childless widow cut off from her blood family. "I don't make the laws, goodwife," he said, taking another step toward her.

"•I'll carry your goods back here for you."

For a moment it seemed she had been too broken by her misfortunes to take advantage of Walegrin's offer-Her eyes widened; they were blue. It was possible that, if she were not so thin and anxious, she'd be a hand some woman. It was hard to tell, and the commander was about to turn away when she made up her mind to accept his offer..

Since the Beysib traders and their mainland counterparts did not share a spoken language, bargaining was done with gestures. Factotums re corded the transaction in the appropriate languages on parchment, which was then torn and divided among the principals. In theory, there was no need for shouting, but the clamor along the wharf was guaranteed to give all but the deaf a headache.

Chests and bales were still coming off the ship, to be opened on the first empty patch of wharf the merchant encountered. There was no such thing as a clear path and the indigenous criminals were having a field day. Walegrin spotted a light-fingered youth in the act of lifting a sizable
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purse. Their eyes met, and the thief kept lifting. A half-dozen overflowing chest separated the law from the lawbreaker, and even if they hadn't, Walegrin had all he could do to keep up with the woman.

She strode past more gimcrack and gewgaw dealers than Walegrin cared to count. Personally, he saw nothing that would tempt him to crack his next egg. But he was a soldier; women were supposed to be different.

There was a hierarchy in the disorder. The frivolities which the fish judged most likely to please the natives were crammed together at the landward end of the wharf. The consignment goods destined for the exiles were more carefully displayed closer to the ship. Midway between them three silk sellers displayed bolts of cloth and finished garments.

Silk had been known since the Ilsigi Kingdom. Mainland silks were thick and brittle compared to the fiber the Beysib Empire produced in

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vast quantities. They took dye poorly and, in any event, not even the Ilsigi alchemists had conjured colors like those the Beysib set in their silks. They shimmered in the sunlight; any fool could see Beysib silks were worth their weight in gold.

Walegrin was not, therefore, surprised when the woman stopped to
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examine them, although how she thought she could buy silk when she was scared witless by a two-soldat fine was a question he couldn't answer. Why she would buy it was another puzzling question. For all its beauty, Beysib silk was not selling well in Sanctuary. It came in two equally impractical varieties: gossamer sheer that snagged and tore on a whisper and damasked over a horsehair foundation so stiff that the cloth sup ported itself.

Perhaps in the Beysib Empire, where it was both cool and dry the year around, such cloth could be made into wearable garments. In Sanctuary, a person could be noticed in Beysib silk, but never comfortable. It was comfort, more than any sense of propriety, that drew Shupansea and the other Beysib women out of their bare-breasted costumes and into tradi tional Rankene gowns.

The woman studied each length of fabric. She twisted it, and tugged it, and got down on her knees to examine the underside. The merchants began to get hopeful, then she started walking again.

"What are you looking for?" Walegrin protested as his companion neared the expensive end of the wharf. "It's not going to get any cheaper."

She looked at him as if he'd grown another head. *T haven't seen what I need," she announced, and kept moving.

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Walegrin tossed a round-bottom jug back to its owner and scurried to catch up with her. They approached the stem gangplank. Beysibs were buying from Beysibs, wailing in their peculiar language over merchandise only a fish could find attractive. The woman was moving slower now. She stopped beside a greasy man hawking ceramic snakes and indicated that she wished to bargain.

The Beysib was almost as confused as the commander. The woman slashed her hand and shook her head as he lifted one garish reptile after another out of its case. Walegrin had a very crude understanding of the Beysin language, but if he had any hope of getting off the wharf before midday, he was going to have to intervene.

He confined the woman's gesturing hands in his own. "The man's shown you everything he's got. You keep pointing at empty boxes, and he keeps telling you that there's nothing in them to sell."

"You understand him . . . ? Then, tell him I want to buy the dross."

"The what?"

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"The dross . . . Dross—the packing around his wretched statues!"

"Dross?"

Walegrin shook his head. He knew several fish words for garbage, a few of which would likely turn the merchant's bald scalp a brilliant shade of red. He knew the fish word for purchase—if buying a woman's time at a brothel was the same as buying something from a merchant. He opened his eyes as wide as he could and started talking. If his luck ran true to form he was about to create a scandal.

The merchant roared with laughter. He slapped his naked belly and turned the crimson color Walegrin had so hoped not to see. His eyes bugged out. "You joking."

Walegrin swallowed hard and, adding more gestures than he'd used the first time, tried again. He got the feeling that the greasy fish understood him well enough and that the third and fourth tries were simply for the amusement of the other Beysib who'd wandered over to watch the bar barian make a fool of himself.

The ceramics seller guessed that the game had gone on as long as it could. The gales of laughter ceased; he flashed his fingers twice and muttered koppit, which had become the generally accepted name for any of Sanctuary's myriad copper coins.

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"Twenty copper bits," Walegrin told the woman.

"Now explain to him that I will pay him forty when he comes back next time, but that I can't pay him anything now,"

This time it took no effort at all for Walegrin to show whites all around his green eyes. "Lady, you must be out of your mind."

She was stung by his sarcasm, but clung to her dignity. "I am a weaver. When I have finished with his dross it will be worth a hundred times his twenty copper bits."

Walegrin dug into the pouch at his hip. "Fine. You can owe me. I'm not going to make a monkey out of myself telling your lunacy to this fish."

Irregular copper disks rained into the merchant's hands. He poured them into his coin coffer, then demanded a silver coin for the box the dross was in. Walegrin threw the coin so hard it bounced, and disap peared between the planks into the harbor. The fish revealed his painted teeth. Walegrin was more careful with the second coin. Walegrin picked up the box carefully; it would have cost another five coppers for rope to bind it shut.

"They throw this stuff into the harbor at the end of the day," the
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commander complained. "It's garbage. You've paid halfasoldat for gar bage you could have fished out of the water tomorrow morning."

She would have preferred to whisper; she would have preferred not to

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reply at all, but he was her partner now and she felt she owed him an answer. "I know that, but once the salt water touches the dross, it's ruined."

"Lady—"

"Theudebourga. My name is Theudebourga." Walegrin scowled. "Lady, how can you ruin garbage?" Theudebourga proceeded to tell him. The wharf was still crowded;

they had to go slowly. By the time they had returned to the cart Walegrin knew more about the pernicious effects ofseawater on garbage than he'd wanted to know. Thrusher took one look at the pair of them and instinc tively knew to ask no questions until after the box was loaded and the

woman on her way.

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"The Vulgar Unicorn's probably serving by now," the hawk-faced man suggested. "You look like you could use something to take the taste from your mouth."

The commander allowed himself to be led from the wharf in silence. The Vulgar Unicorn was open, but it was undergoing one of its infre quent cleanings. The shutters and doors were wide open, the common room was awash with sunlight, and workmen were busily repairing a month of damage. The two soldiers kept going until they found them selves beyond the Maze.

Once the Shambles had been as rough a neighborhood as the Maze, though without the Maze's perverse reputation. Later it had swarmed with the dead, the half-dead, and the other assorted leftovers of Sanc tuary's magic troubles. Now it was the quarter where newcomers made their homes in abandoned buildings. It was factious enough that the soldiers knew it as well as they knew the Maze, but there were also signs of prosperity. Well-fed children in carefully mended clothes played games beside their mothers, who created gardens wherever sunlight touched the