I nodded. “It’s just odd, is all. The number of times I went in there, and never knew.”
I looked over the rest of the list. There were places spread out all over the City, and I recognized a couple from having walked past them, but there were no others I’d actually been in.
“Now what, Boss? Put the list on the wall, throw a knife at it, and see where it lands?”
“Something like that, yeah.”
“This is liable to get you killed, you know. You’re in no shape—”
“Sit on it.”
He psychically grumbled, but shut up.
“What do you know of these?”
“What do you want to know?”
I hesitated. “I’m not sure what to ask. I know so little of the Left Hand.”
“As do I. As do they.”
“Hmm?”
“Part of the secrecy thing; most of them know very little other than their own business.”
“Oh. Um, how little do they know?”
“What kind of question is that?”
“I guess I’m asking if I were to show up at one of these places, would the individual running it know who I am?”
She considered. “I don’t know. Maybe. My guess is not, except by coincidence. Don’t bet your life on that, though.”
I nodded. “Uh, how do I do this, Kiera?”
“You’re asking me?”
“I don’t mean that part. But say, this one—” I tapped the list. “It’s an inn. Do I walk in and ask for a certain drink? Or—”
“Oh. Sorry. I’d have thought you knew. If you want to reach someone in the Left Hand, ask to see the mistress of the house, and deliver three silver coins, one at a time, with your left hand.”
“Left hand,” I said. “How clever.”
“Imaginative, even.”
I sat on the edge of the bed and considered. I took the knife from my right boot, pulled the coarse stone from my pack, and started working as I thought.
“You aren’t lubricating it,” said Kiera.
“Superstition,” I told her. “You don’t need to lubricate the stone, you just need to clean it when you’re done.”
“I know. I wondered if you did. What sort of edge are you putting on that?”
“Five degrees a side.” I stopped and studied the knife. It was a wicked thing that I’d found in Shortrest, near Tabo. There was a cheap and worthless enchantment on it that was supposed to help it find a vital spot, and the point wasn’t much, but it had a lovely edge and the wrapped antler fit my hand like it had been made for an Easterner. I worked some more, checked the bevel, switched to the other side.
“Where did you learn to do that?” she asked.
“Where did we first meet?” I asked her.
“Oh, right.”
I nodded. “Sharpening knives was what I first learned to do after I learned to wash pots and pans, bring trash to the midden, and clear tables. I had one knife I kept a dual edge on: front three-quarters for slicing, back quarter for cutting. Best knife I’ve ever had.”
“Where is it now?”
“Cawti has it. She still uses it. I showed her how to do the dual edge. She—” I stopped and went back to sharpening, switching to the extrafine stone.
“Sorry,” she said.
“No, no. Don’t worry about it.”
“If you slip and take a finger off, I’ll feel bad.”
I held up my left hand. “That happened once. I’ve learned my lesson.”
I finished sharpening the knife, nodded to myself, and stood up. My rib hurt like—it hurt.
Kiera hesitated, then said, “Do you want me to back you up?”
“Not your skill,” I said. “And it won’t be necessary. This should be pretty easy.”
“As you say.” She didn’t sound convinced.
She followed me out of the room, and walked down the stairs with me. I went slowly. She said, “I’ll be waiting in the courtyard to hear how it went.”
I nodded but didn’t say anything; most of my concentration was involved in not moaning with each step. Rocza took off from my shoulder and flew in slow circles overhead; Loiosh remained on my other shoulder and was looking around constantly.
In the wide boulevard in front of the Imperial Wing near the park, there is always a line of coaches; on one side those with markings on the door, on the other those that are for hire, all of which get special exemptions from the ordinance forbidding horses near the Palace. I think there are so many exemptions they might as well not bother with the ordinance, but maybe I’m wrong.
I spent some time studying the coaches for hire, trying to decide which looked like the most comfortable, then picked one and made my painful way to it. The coachman was a young woman, a Teckla of course, with the cheery smile and easy obsequiousness of the happy peasant in a musical satire on Fallow Street. I climbed in and gave her the address. She looked at Loiosh, then Rocza as she joined me in the coach, but merely bowed and climbed up to her station. Then she clucked and the horse started plodding along, a lot like I’d been walking.
“Boss, I don’t care what Kiera says, you’re in no shape—”
“I’m not going to be engaged in any acts of violence, Loiosh, so you can relax.”
“You’re not?”
“No, the plan changed.”
“When?”
“Yesterday, when I was talking to Morrolan.”
I settled back for the ride. It was a good coach—the jouncing didn’t make me scream.
I stepped out and paid the coachman, who bowed as if I were Dragaeran and a nobleman. She probably thought it would increase her tip, and I guess it did at that.
I was now in a part of the City called the Bridges, probably because the main roads from three of the bridges all led to this area and crossed each other at a place called Nine Markets, which was in fact only about a hundred yards from where I stood. Tymbrii’s shop was nestled in among the simple three-and four-room houses of tradesmen, with a few larger rooming houses and an open-air shrine to Kelchor.
“Okay, you two get back in my cloak.”
“Do we have to?”
“I don’t need to walk in there with two instant identifications on me.”
“You think they won’t know you just because we aren’t with you?”
“Something like that.”
“You’re dreaming.”
“In, both of you.”
I felt him start to argue, but he cut it off. The two of them ducked into my cloak as the coach pulled away.
The door itself held a sign that suggested I feel free to enter, so I did. It smelled a bit dusty, and there were oily smells mixed in. It was a single room, well lit, with bolts of cloth and those bunches of yarn that people who use yarn call skeins. There was an elderly gentleman sitting in a straight-backed chair, looking as if he had been doing absolutely nothing until the door opened. Once I entered, he rose, took me in, and did the facial dance I’d come to expect from merchants who don’t know quite how to place me, followed by the polite bow of those who decide coins bring more happiness than snubbing one’s inferiors. That’s the difference, you know, between a merchant and an aristocrat: The true aristocrat will always prefer to snub his inferior.
“May I help you, my lord?”
“I hope so. I’m looking to see the mistress of the house.”
He frowned. “I beg your pardon?”
Clink. Clink. Clink.
“I’ll see if she’s available.”
He vanished through a doorway in back, and I looked around at brightly colored cloth. Exotic. That’s what Cawti had called these colors: exotic. I guess they were at that. Bright blues and searing yellows and some as dark orange as the ocean-sea.