Chapter 14: The Good Racket

Frankie

By the sixth week, people were complaining about prices instead of executions.

I considered that progress.

The miller complained about his new scales. The carters complained that repaired roads made customers expect deliveries on time. Dren complained that now his men received regular wages, their wives knew exactly how much they ought to bring home.

“That’s a domestic matter,” I told him.

“They disagree.”

“They usually do.”

His mother had taken over half our laundry. She was built like him, except more frightening, and informed me that blood ought to be soaked immediately rather than hidden beneath a waistcoat until evening.

I told her we were working on reducing the supply.

She did not find me funny.

People had started making plans.

Around here, that took nerve. Farmers bought seed instead of burying coins. Merchants ordered stock they expected to live long enough to sell. People repaired houses without first asking whether soldiers planned to burn them.

The Boss’s share went up. So did mine, and everybody ate.

It was a good racket.

Oren, our night watchman, disagreed whenever a late customer woke him before his shift. He had a wife, two children, and the firm conviction that a tavern ought to close shortly after supper. I told him he’d picked a hell of a business to expect an early night.

He told me his youngest had asked whether the skeletons needed blankets in winter. We settled on letting the boy give one a scarf. Oren tied it himself, making the knot twice because his fingers were stiff from an old injury.

The skeleton wore it through three warm afternoons before somebody remembered to take it off.

* * *

Liora delivered my new suit on a Thursday.

I put it on and nearly forgave the world for everything it had done to the old one.

The dark cloth sat properly across my shoulders, the waistcoat fitted close, and the pockets were exactly where my hands expected them.

The crease in the trousers could have settled a dispute.

“Turn,” Liora said.

I obeyed.

She inspected the back with the severity of a priest reading a particularly interesting confession.

“Acceptable.”

“It’s beautiful.”

“I said acceptable.”

Brannik came in carrying a box of cartridges.

He had reproduced the cases and worked out a local propellant, with help from an apothecary who charged extra after the first explosion. Each cartridge carried a tiny stabilizing mark. We had tested them behind his forge until his patience and my shoulder both wore out.

“These are the reliable ones,” he said.

“What happened to the others?”

“You don’t need to know.”

“How many?”

“Enough that wasting them should still offend you.”

I liked a craftsman who respected a budget. Then he gave me the bill.

Mara came through the door with a stack of letters and stopped.

For once, she didn’t have anything ready to say.

I straightened the lapel.

“What?”

“Nothing.”

“That looked like something.”

“You look like yourself.”

I hadn’t realized how much I missed that until she said it.

Liora reached out and removed a loose thread from my sleeve.

“It is clothing,” she told Brannik. “If he asks whether it stops an axe, the answer is no.”

Brannik looked disappointed.

I made a note to keep the two of them apart when they were bored.

* * *

The paladin made his move on tribute day.

I knew because Mara knew a woman whose cousin had lent the church a wagon, and the cousin could not carry a secret across a room without stopping to show somebody.

Aldric meant to halt the grain carts before they reached the fortress and insist upon inspecting every load. After the prisoners, I couldn’t call the idea unreasonable.

I could call it inconvenient.

I invited him to inspect the grain before departure. He came with three church volunteers. Hobb opened every sack they pointed at. Brannik explained the scales. Mara gave them copies of the totals and the amount retained for winter stores.

Aldric inspected everything.

Meanwhile, the iron, lamp oil, and other tribute traveled by the north road.

Dren returned with the signed receipts before Al finished.

“You distracted me.”

“I satisfied your concern about the grain.”

“And concealed the rest.”

“The manifests were on the table. You were welcome to read ’em.”

He had been. I’d put them there myself. Al checked the ledger.

“You have learned.”

“Got an expensive lesson in the square.”

“Those supplies still strengthen Azrath.”

“They also meet the town’s obligations without anybody getting hurt.”

He glanced at the winter stores.

Every bin was full. He could count as well as I could.

“You make every bad choice arrive with a good reason.”

“You got a way out that don’t get somebody killed, let’s hear it.”

“That does not make the reason sufficient.”

He helped load the last cart before leaving.

The irritating bastard.

* * *

Two days later, he broke the lock on my watch house.

Dren had arrested a man named Senn for carrying messages between villages that withheld tribute. The warrant was real. So were the messages.

Senn had also helped collect medicine for the church. When his wife went to Al, the paladin came down to hear why we were holding him.

Dren told him to wait for me.

He didn’t.

The door lay flat in the street when I arrived. Nobody had drawn a weapon. Dren had remembered the skeletons in the square.

Senn stood beside Aldric with his wrists free.

“He will answer questions here,” Al said. “In daylight. With witnesses.”

“Last time I checked, this wasn’t your office.”

“Last time, you held a man’s brother until you got what you wanted.”

Behind him, Corven was packing up his stall.

I looked away first. Hated that too.

“Senn carried orders for an ambush,” I said.

“And I have told you he will answer for what he carried.”

“After you decide where and how.”

“Yes.”

People had stopped to watch. They always stopped when it was me.

I could have ordered Dren’s men forward. Six living guards this time. Men with wives in the crowd and wages I had promised would buy them a better life.

Al stood without touching his sword.

He knew I wouldn’t spend them on him. I hated knowing he was right.

We questioned Senn on the steps. He admitted carrying the messages. Said he hadn’t opened them. Gave us a meeting place that proved empty by the time Dren reached it.

I couldn’t prove he’d warned anybody.

Al wouldn’t let me hold him while I tried.

That evening I paid for another door.

Dren put the broken lock on my desk.

“I can arrest most men,” he said. “That one, I can ask.”

I turned the lock over. The iron had run like candle wax.

“You could try a cell without metal,” Brannik said when I asked him.

“And when he knocks the wall down?”

“Put him somewhere he wishes to remain.”

Wonderful. Everybody had a joke.

I wrote the report myself and left out the crowd.

For three nights, I woke thinking about Al standing in front of my guards. The way he had said yes. Like the decision was already made and I was only there to hear it.

I had brought him to the grain. Got him to work with us in the flood. Kept his church from burning.

He could still walk into my town and open any door I closed.

Sooner or later, the Boss was going to ask why I needed a badge.

* * *

Hobb didn’t drink on payday.

I noticed because he sat in a tavern holding the same cup of water for an hour while everyone else celebrated being able to afford terrible decisions.

I sat beside him.

“You look like somebody owes you money.”

“Somebody owes me a brother.”

I kept my mouth shut.

He rubbed his thumb along a scar across his knuckles.

“Mine collapse. We were opening a new shaft. I said the supports would hold.”

“Did you know they wouldn’t?”

“I wanted the bonus.”

I looked at his big hands. He’d probably tried to dig his brother out with them.

I left the question alone.

“He listened to me,” Hobb said. “Always did.”

Around us, glasses clinked and somebody laughed while Benny argued that a man could not pay for the same meal twice just because he had forgotten eating it.

“The pit didn’t bring him back,” I said.

“I noticed.”

“Nearly kept you from being around when we needed somebody to hold that ladder.”

Hobb looked toward the kitchen. Della was carrying clean linen through the doorway, talking so fast Rosella had given up trying to answer.

He watched her for a while.

“Brannik wants a second opinion on the new ceiling supports,” he said.

“Then give him one.”

“He says I am excessively cautious.”

“Charge extra.”

He laughed a little. I left him with his water.

Next morning, he was at Brannik’s before the forge opened and made him check the supports twice.

I paid for the extra timber.

* * *

The harvest supper wasn’t a harvest supper, according to Mara.

It was too early.

I said people had food and wanted supper, which covered most of my understanding of the occasion.

Tables went into the square. The church lent benches. We supplied stew, bread, and wine. A fiddler arrived and wanted payment in advance because, he explained, audiences frequently reassessed the value of music after hearing it.

I respected his honesty.

Elias helped carry bowls. He had begun spending mornings at the church and afternoons working for the carters. Al got his soul. I got somebody who knew where the deliveries were.

It was a workable arrangement.

Mara moved from table to table. Wherever she stopped, people had news for her. Nessa had sent a letter from her sister’s. Jory was apprenticed to a wheelwright. Old Tem had enjoyed doing nothing so much that he was considering a second day.

I knew all this because Mara told me.

Then a young cooper asked her to dance.

My first thought was that the cooper ought to reconsider his life.

My second thought was that I was being an asshole.

She looked toward me.

I lifted my glass like I hadn’t been watching.

Hadn’t asked her myself. Couldn’t very well break the fellow’s legs for having better manners.

Benny set a glass beside me.

“You’re making that face.”

“What face?”

“The one men make before doing something their wives later explain was obvious.”

“I ain’t married.”

“The face isn’t particular.”

Across the square, Mara laughed when the cooper missed a step. He laughed too.

Nice fellow. I disliked him on principle.

When the tune ended, I got up before the cooper could find another excuse to hold her hand.

“Mara. This one’s mine.”

I offered my arm.

She looked at it, then up at me.

“I wondered how long you meant to sit there.”

“Had business.”

“With that poor glass?”

She slipped her hand through my arm.

The cooper found somewhere else to be.

* * *

We had different ideas about dancing.

I knew the steps to a foxtrot. This wasn’t a foxtrot.

Mara seemed willing to risk her toes while I worked that out.

“You are thinking too much,” she said.

“Usually people complain about the opposite.”

I drew her closer and settled my hand at her waist.

She missed a step.

Nice to know I wasn’t the only one.

We moved around the edge of the square. Her hair brushed my chin when she turned. I could smell soap and a little woodsmoke from the kitchen.

“Better?” I asked.

“Marginally.”

“High praise.”

“Don’t become arrogant.”

Too late for that, probably.

When the music slowed, neither of us stepped away immediately.

Her eyes dropped to my mouth.

All right. Even I could figure that one out.

Then a courier approached carrying Azrath’s black seal.

Mara’s hand loosened.

“Business,” she said.

“Yeah.”

I took the letter.

The Boss congratulated me on the improving revenues. He knew the winter stores were full. He knew about the supper.

At the bottom, he had added a line.

I am pleased to see you enjoying the rewards of good stewardship.

I looked across the square toward the road to the fortress.

No windows faced us at this distance.

The seal on my coat felt briefly warm beneath my hand.

Then the feeling passed.

Mara was waiting beside our table. Someone had moved her chair to make room for a barrel.

I moved it back next to mine.

The letter went into my pocket.

I ordered another glass for Mara and asked Hobb whether he danced.

He looked at me like I’d offered to cut off his feet.

I kept the letter in my pocket.