After a little while, a rear doorway curtain parted and a smiling, silver-haired man entered. “What can I do for you, gracious sirs—” His smile faltered as he took in Jeff’s common soldier uniform, but it collapsed completely when he looked at me. “My lord?”
“Hallo,” Javes said from a corner, with his bugger me silly smile. “Guarez?”
The man nodded, still staring at me.
“I am Captain Javes and this is my aide, Lieutenant Lord Rabbit Chause e Flavan—”
My face froze.
“—and we are here to purchase furnishings for the new Border embassy.” Javes patted around his body. “Hang on, I’ve got a letter from the bank somewhere.” He found it and handed it to the furnisher, who accepted it with a limp hand. Javes allowed him to scan it, then filched the letter back. “But first, do you use Border wood?”
“Uh, no.”
“Oh, splendid.” Javes beamed. “Cause the ambassador is a little touchy about it on account of when you cut down a Border tree, you kill its sprite.” He looked around the shop. “I’d hate to bring back one of your excellent pieces and have him say it’s the body of an old friend, what?”
The furnisher now stared at Javes. “We use no material from the Border.”
Javes cranked his smile up another notch. “Then you won’t mind if Lord Rabbit takes a gander, eh?”
I took my cue and began to walk around the shop, examining the furniture. “He’s from the Border too, you know,” Javes continued, his voice confidential. “Fourth son of Lord Rafe ibn Chause and Lady Hilga eso Flavan, right, Lord Rabbit?”
I paused in my circuit. “I am their seventh child, sir.” Damn if I’d let him dismiss my sisters.
“Oh, yes,” Javes said. “There are eight altogether.” He looked as if he had just remembered the secret of life. “Looks awfully like his papa, doesn’t he?”
“His grandfather,” Guarez said. I felt his eyes sweep over me, taking in how my uniform hung on my lean frame. “He even wears his clothes the same.”
I finished and shook my head. “There’s no Border wood here, sir.” I looked at the curtained door that probably led to the workshop and Javes waved a hand.
“No, no need. If it’s not out here, I’m sure it’s not in there either.” Javes’ smile changed, becoming narrower, yet showing more teeth. “And I’m also sure that the good furnisher won’t offend either Ambassador Laurel or Lord Rabbit ibn Chause by selling us smuggled spritewood, what?”
“No, gracious sirs—”
“Splendid.” Javes beamed again.
Javes sat down with Guarez and was soon immersed in genteel dickering for the complete furnishing of the embassy. I went back to the middle of the room to Jeff. I wanted to think on why I had been displayed, and what plans I had thwarted when I couldn’t accompany Captain Suiden to the bank yesterday. Also creeping around the edges was the remark about me looking like my grandda, and I found myself checking that my uniform was straight. I was so involved that it took me a while to realize that Jeff was quiet and not trying to make my present interesting with sounds, snickers and low-voiced comments, no matter that the captain had ordered us not to talk. I gave him a look and met a cold stare. I sighed, then shrugged. I hadn’t known that Javes was going to thrust my parents’ nobility down the merchant’s throat.
Javes stood up. “Excellent, Guarez. We will await you at the embassy this evening.” He waited until the furnisher bowed. “And thank you for the recommendations.” He turned and signaled us. “All right, men. To our next destination.” He checked a list that was on store stationery. “Which should be right around the corner.” Guarez escorted us to the door and gave another bow to Javes and then one to me. “Captain, my lord.” He shut the door so close behind us that I felt my trouser cuffs shift in the breeze.
The performance was repeated at the carpet, window coverings (something called blinds, made of thin, polished wood slats, bleached almost white), porcelain, silversmith, linen, and other shops. Captain Javes asked if they had any Border contraband, introduced me as a lord, had me check around, and then bargained hard for the supplying of me embassy in whatever the shop sold. He flashed around the letter of credit, careful not to let the shopkeepers drool on it, then had them agree to come to the embassy that evening to “see the scope of the job, what?” He never mentioned, though, that the ambassador was a mountain cat who walked on his back legs. I figured that there was going to be a whole lot of screaming in the old place that night.
We walked out of the last shop, the sun high overhead hitting us hard, and I was glad of the wide-brim hat. I glanced at Jeff, but he stared straight ahead, still in a snit over “Lieutenant Lord Rabbit.” We mounted our horses and he fell in behind Javes and me when we started moving.
“I think first we should water our horses and then find something for us. I’m feeling a little peckish,” Javes said.
I looked sideways at the captain. He caught it and raised an eyebrow. “Spit it out or let it go. But do not sulk, Lieutenant.”
My ma would accuse me of the sullens, usually when she pushed into where I didn’t want her to be. I didn’t care to hear the same from the captain. “What can I say, sir?”
“You can ask what the blazes is going on instead of playing the sacrificial victim.”
“It would have been nice to be informed before what is going on went on, sir.”
“So you would’ve been, if you hadn’t been taken sick yesterday morning.”
“Before I was to go to the bank, sir?”
Javes looked at me sideways. “Suiden was right. You’re not as naive as you sometimes act, Lieutenant.” That did not answer my question and I stayed silent. We turned down a street and saw a square where a fountain bubbled into a trough. We rode up and the citizenry moved back, giving us clear access to the water. I frowned—in Freston the army had to wait its turn just like everyone else. “Does the army here always get to go to the front of the line?” I asked Javes.
“Oh, no, Lieutenant Lord Rabbit,” Javes said, dismounting. He tried to lead his horse to the water, but the animal needed no help. He shouldered the captain out of the way and bent down into the trough, drinking noisily. Jeff and I had to quickly dismount too or we would have been dumped into the water as our horses hastened to follow the captain’s. Javes looked around. “No,” he repeated, “they don’t do this because of us.” He gave a slight smile. “It’s because of you.” I blinked and stared around, meeting the eyes of one man who was holding his horse back while ours drank their fill. He flinched, then gave a low bow.
“Between our clergy traveling companions, Gherat’s clerks, any letters that came from Gresh, Dornel, and Freston, plus our just finished shopping trip, I am sure that the city knows that a grandson of Lord Flavan and a nephew of the current Lord Chause is a lieutenant in the Royal Army. And you heard Guarez this morning, you’re the spitting image of the old lord.” He lifted his quiz glass and peered at my trousers. “Even down to the creases. Tell me, old boy, how do you get them so sharp?”
“You know, sir, Slevoic asked me that very question.”
The silly ass went away and the wolf stared back at me. “Careful, Lieutenant.”
“Yes, sir.”
Our horses, having done their best to suck the trough dry, were finished and we mounted. Javes once more led us down a street, and now that I wasn’t concentrating on finding tailor shops or wondering what the captain was up to, I noticed that I was garnering my fair share of attention, some even pointing me out to companions. It was as if a target had taken up space on my back, and I had to fight not to hunch my shoulders.