“But those things aren’t fabulous museum masterpieces to them,” Mulreany says. “They’re just routine luxury goods that it’s their everyday business to make and sell. Look at it from their point of view. We come in here with a sackful of miracles that they couldn’t duplicate in a hundred years. Five hundred. They can always take some more gold and some more emeralds and whack out another dozen necklaces. But where the hell are they going to get a pair of binoculars except from us? And Coke probably tastes like ambrosia to them. So it’s just as sweet a deal for them as it is for us, and—Hello, look who’s here!”
A stocky bearded man with coarse froggy features is waving at them from the other side of the street. He’s wearing a brocaded crimson robe worthy of an archbishop and a spectacular green tiara of stunning princely style, but the flat gap-toothed face looking out at them is pure Milwaukee. A taller man dressed in a porter’s simple costume stands behind him with a bag of merchandise slung over his shoulder. “Hey, Leo!” Mulreany calls. “How’s it going?” To Schmidt he explains, “That’s Leo Waxman. Used to carry the merchandise bags for me, five, six years ago. Now he’s a trader on his own account.” And, loudly, again, “Come on over, say hello, Leo! Meet the boys!”
Waxman, as he crosses the street, puts one finger to his lips. “Ixnay on the English, Mike,” he says, keeping his voice low. “Let’s stick to the Grik, okay, man? And not so much yelling.” He casts a shifty look down toward the end of the block, where a couple of the ubiquitous Bulgarian Guardsmen are lolling against the wall of a mosque.
“Something wrong?” Mulreany asks.
“Plenty. Don’t you know? The word is out that the Emperor has ordered a crackdown. He’s just told the imperial gendarmerie to pull in anybody caught dealing in sorcery-goods.”
“You sure about that? Why would he want to rock the boat?”
“Well, the old man’s crazy, isn’t he? Maybe he woke up this morning and decided it was time finally to enforce his own goddamned laws. All I know is that I’ve done a very nice day’s business and I’m going to call it a trip right here and now.”
“Sure,” Mulreany says. “If that’s what you want. But not me. The Emperor can issue any cockeyed order he likes, but that doesn’t mean anyone will pay attention. Too many people in this town get big benefits out of the trade we bring.”
“You’re going to stay?”
“Right. Till sundown tomorrow. There’s business to do here.”
“You’re welcome to it,” Waxman says. “I wish you a lot of joy of it. Me, I’m for dinner at Charlie Trotter’s tonight, and to hell with turning any more tricks here just now, thank you. Not if there’s a chance I’ll miss the last bus back to the Loop.” Waxman blows Mulreany a kiss, beckons to his porter, and starts off up the street.
“We really going to stay?” Schmidt asks, when Waxman has moved along.
Mulreany gives him a scornful look. “We’ve still got almost a bag and a half of goods to trade, don’t we?”
“But if this Waxman thinks that—”
“He was always a chickenshit wimp,” Mulreany says. “Look, if they were really serious about their sorcery laws here, they’d have ways of reaching out and picking us up just like that. Go into the bazaar, ask the dealers who they got their Swiss Army knives from, and give them the old bamboo on the soles of the feet until they cough up our full descriptions. But that doesn’t happen. Nobody in his right mind would want to cut off the supply of magical nifties that we bring to town.”
“This Emperor isn’t in his right mind,” Anderson points out.
“But everybody else is. Let Waxman panic if he wants to. We finish our business and we clear out tomorrow afternoon as scheduled. You want to go home now, either of you, then go home, but if you do, this’ll be the last trip across you ever make.” It’s a point of pride for Mulreany to max out his trading opportunities, even if it means running along the edge occasionally. He has long since become a rich man just on the twelve and a half percent he gets from Duplessis and Kulikowski’s placements of the artifacts he supplies them with, but nevertheless he isn’t going to abort the trip simply because Leo Waxman has picked up some goofy rumor. He detests Waxman’s cowardice. The risks haven’t changed at all, so far as he can see. This job was always dangerous. But the merchants will protect him. It’s in their own best interest not to sell the golden geese to the imperial cops.
When they get back to the hotel, the innkeeper grins smarmily at them out of his cubicle next to the stable. “You sell a lot of pots and pans today?”
“Pretty good business, yes,” Mulreany allows.
An avid gleam shines in the lone eye. “Look, you sell me something, hear? I give you a dozen girls, I give you a barrel of fine wine, I give you any damn thing you want, but you let me have one of the magic things, you know what I mean?”
“Gods be my witness, we are but ordinary merchants and let there be an end on this foolishness!” Mulreany says testily, thickening his yokel accent almost to the point of incoherence. “Why do you plague us this way? Would you raise a false charge of sorcery down on innocent men?” The innkeeper raises his hands placatingly, but Mulreany sails right on: “By the gods, I will bring action against you for defaming us, do you not stop this! I will take you to the courts for these slanders! I will say that you knowingly give lodging to men you think are sorcerers, hoping to gain evil goods from them! I will—I will—”
He halts, huffing and puffing. The innkeeper, retreating fast, begs Mulreany’s forgiveness and vows never to suggest again that they are anything but what they claim to be. Would the good merchants care for some pleasant entertainment in their room tonight, very reasonable price? Yes, the good merchants would, as a matter of fact. For a single silver argenteus the size of a dime Mulreany is able to arrange a feast of apples and figs and melons, grilled fish, roasted lamb stuffed with minced doves and artichokes, and tangy resinated wine from Crete, along with a trio of Circassian dancing girls to serve them during the meal and service them afterward. It’s very late by the time he finally gets to sleep, and very early when half a dozen huge shaggy Bulgarian Guardsmen come bashing into his room and pounce on him.
The bastard has sold him to the Emperor, it seems. That must have been him in the bazaar at lunchtime, then, watching them go in and out of the fancy shops. Thwarted in his dreams of wangling a nice Swiss Army knife for himself, or at least a fifth of Courvoisier, he has whistled up the constables by way of getting even.
There’s no sign of Anderson and Schmidt. They must have wriggled through their windows at the first sound of intruders and scrambled down the drainpipe and at this moment are hightailing it for the interface, Chicago-bound. But for Mulreany there’s a cell waiting in the dungeon of the imperial palace.
He doesn’t get a very good look at the palace, just one awesome glimpse in the moment of his arrivaclass="underline" white marble walls inlaid with medallions of onyx and porphyry, delicate many-windowed towers of dizzying height, two vast courtyards lined by strips of immaculately tended shrubbery stretching off to left and right, with crystalline reflecting pools, narrow as daggers, running down their middles.
Then a thick smelly hood is pulled down over his head and for a long while he sees nothing further. They pick him up and haul him away down some long corridor. Eventually he hears the sound of a great door being swung back; and then he feels the bruising impact of being dropped like a sack of potatoes onto a stone floor.
Mulreany remains weirdly calm. He’s furious, of course, but what good is getting into a lather? He’s too upset to let himself get upset. He’s a gone goose and he knows it, and it pisses him off immensely, but there isn’t a damned thing he can do to save himself. Maybe they’ll burn him or maybe, if he’s lucky, he’ll be beheaded, but either way they can only do it to him once. And there’s no lawyer in town who can get him out off and no court of appeals to complain to. His only salvation now is a miracle. But he doesn’t believe in miracles. The main thing he regrets is that a schmuck like Waxman is home free in Chicago right now and he’s not.