“Yusuf Malendra,” he said, offering me the black smile of his caste and inclining his head. “So you’re changing your skin I see.” He ran an amused eye down the length of my attire.
I frowned at that. Kara had said something similar. I’d adopted some of the local fashion and spent fifty florins on fine silk shirts, brocaded pantaloons, high calfskin boots, and a good felt hat complete with ostrich feather.
“Style never goes out of fashion, Yusuf.” I offered him a rich man’s smile. A handsome fellow like me can carry off most looks, and although a prince is always in fashion it never hurts to put on the right display.
“You’re a rich man now?”
“Richer,” I said, not sure I liked the implication that I’d arrived as a beggar.
“Perhaps you’ll be buying yourself some protection now that you’re rich . . . er? A wealthy man cannot be too careful, and a man that makes his money so fast must be running risks. We have a saying in my homeland. Taking risks is risky.” He shrugged apologetically. “It doesn’t translate well.”
“Perhaps I should.” The idea had occurred to me. I missed having over six and a half foot of Norse killing machine beside me. I had only to bump into the wrong person in the street and I could find myself at the sharp end of an argument that no amount of money in the bank could save me from. And besides, annoyingly, Yusuf had the right of it: my system wasn’t exactly the sort that would please the authorities if it came to light, and some muscle at my side might buy me time to get away if things ever came to a crunch.
“You’ll find no more capable defender than a clockwork soldier.” Yusuf made a question of it, cocking his head. “With such a one at your side you’d be a proper Florentine and no mistake.”
Six steps ahead an overly tall merchant from the Utter East concluded his transaction and we all shuffled closer to the counter.
“I’ve considered it,” I said. Actually I hadn’t. Something about the things rubbed me the wrong way and, despite the fact that a soldier would properly signify my status to the other traders on the floor and the unwashed beyond it, I had no intention of having one of the things follow me about. “I would be concerned over loyalty, though. How could I trust such a . . . mechanism?”
“How does one trust any man? Especially when his loyalty is purchased?” The mathmagician drew his robes about him as if cold, though Umbertide sizzled beyond House Gold’s walls and the relative coolness within would be considered hot by any sane man. “The Mechanists’ automata are ‘reset’ when sold. A machine, of which two working examples are known to exist, is used to form an impression of the new owner and creates a thin copper rod, no longer than my finger, in which striations may be seen, presumably encoding the new owner’s particulars in some manner. This rod is inserted through a small hole in the soldier’s head casing and the transfer of ownership is complete.”
“Fascinating.” Or at least marginally less dull than watching the back of the neck of the Nuban in front of me, a fat fellow smelling of unfamiliar spices. “Still, I’d prefer a man of flesh and blood as my bodyguard.”
“A sword-son, Prince Jalan. Buy the contract of a sword-son. You’ll find no finer protector. At least not one that bleeds.”
I made a note to invest in the services of a sword-son. Given that my profits all depended upon a “system” for delaying the payment of taxes and transaction charges via a complex network of traders and sub-traders, all of whom existed only on the forms necessary for their part in my scheme, it seemed likely that I would soon need to turn my paper money into gold and leave the city unobserved. If my timing proved to be off then I might very well need someone to bleed for me—because I was damned sure I didn’t want to do the bleeding myself.
TWENTY-FIVE
Summer rests upon Umbertide’s rooftops, sizzling on the terracotta, dazzling across whitewashed walls where lizards cling, motionless, waiting as all of the city waits, for the sun to fall.
? ? ?
For three nights the same dream haunted me, making those that had recurred during the three weeks before seem mild in comparison. By day I felt a modicum of distress about Hennan—I’d liked the boy and hadn’t wished any harm to him, but I hadn’t signed on as his guardian or adopted him into the Kendeth family. The child had run off, as many children do, and it was hardly my duty to hunt him down amid the vastness of the Broken Empire.
Apparently my conscience disagreed—though only past midnight. Three mornings in a row I woke exhausted and harrowed by endless visions of Hennan in torment. Most often I saw him captured, many hands seizing him and dragging him screaming into the dark. I saw him curled about his misery on a filthy floor, ragged, little more than bones wrapped tight in a pale skin, the fire gone from his hair, eyes dull and seeing nothing.