She wrapped the deck once more and returned it to its hiding place. And then went to another, this one made by her husband — perhaps indeed he’d thought to keep it a secret from her, but such things were impossible. She knew the creak of every floorboard, after all, and had found his private pit only days after he’d dug it.
Within, items folded within blue silk — the silk of the Blue Moranth. Tor’s loot — she wondered again how he’d come by it. Even now, as she knelt above the cache, she could feel the sorcery roiling up thick as a stench, reeking of watery decay — the Warren of Ruse, no less, but then, perhaps not.
She reached down and edged back the silk. A pair of sealskin gloves, glistening as if they had just come up from the depths of some ice-laden sea. Beneath them, a water-etched throwing axe, in a style she had never seen before — not Moranth, for certain. A sea-raider’s weapon, the inset patterns on the blue iron swirling like a host of whirlpools. The handle was an ivory tusk of some sort, appallingly over shy;sized for any beast she could imagine. Carefully tucked in to either side of the weapon were cloth-wrapped grenados, thirteen in all, one of which was — she had discovered — empty of whatever chemical incendiary was trapped inside the others. An odd habit of the Moranth, but it had allowed her a chance to examine more closely the extraordinary skill involved in manufacturing such perfect porcelain globes, without risk of blowing herself and her entire home to pieces. True, she had heard that most Moranth munitions were made of clay, but not these ones, for some reason. Lacquered with a thick, mostly transparent gloss that was nevertheless faintly cerulean, these grenados were — to her eye — works of art, which made the destruction implicit in their proper use strike her as almost criminal.
If she confronted him, she knew, he would tell her the truth. But that was not something she would do. Successful marriages took as sacrosanct the possession of secrets. When so much was shared, certain other things must ever be held back. Small secrets, to be sure, but precious ones none the less.
Tiserra wondered if her husband foresaw a futurel need for such items. Or was this just another instance of his natural inclination to hoard, a quirk both charming and infuriating, sweet and potentially deadly (as all the best ones were).
Magic flowed in endless half-visible patterns about the porcelain globes — another detail she suspected was unusual.
Indeed, whatever were they thinking?
Two empty chairs faced Kruppe, a situation most peculiar and not at all pleasing. A short time earlier they had been occupied. Scorch and Leff, downing a fast tankard each before setting out to their place of employment, their nightly vigil at the gates of the mysterious estate and its mysterious lady. Oh, a troubled pair indeed, their fierce frowns denoting an uncharacteristic extreme of concentration. They’d swallowed down the bitter ale like water, the usual exchange of pleasant idiocies sadly muted. Watching them hurry out, Kruppe was reminded of two condemned men on the way to the gallows (or a wedding), proof of the profound unfairness of the world.
But fairness, while a comforting conceit, was an elusive notion, in the habit of swirling loose and wild about the vortex of the self, and should the currents of one collide with those of another, why, fairness ever revealed itself as a one-sided coin. In this fell clash could be found all manner of conflict, from vast continent-spanning wars to neighbours feuding over a crooked fence line.
But what significance these philosophical meanderings? Nary effect upon the trudging ways of life, to be sure. Skip and dance on to this next scene of portentous gravity, and here arriving hooded as a vulture through the narrow portal of the Phoenix Inn, none other than Torvald Nom. Pausing just within the threshold, answering Sulty’s passing greeting with a distracted smile, and then to the bar, where Meese has already poured him a tankard. And in reaching over to collect it, Tor shy;vald’s wrist is grasped, Meese pulling him close for a few murmured words of possible import, to which Torvald grimaces and then reluctantly nods — his response sufficient for Meese to release him.
Thus sprung, Torvald Nom strode over to smiling Kruppe’s table and slumped down into one of the chairs. ‘It’s all bad,’ he said.
