Brandwin hired their crew, a dozen stout men and women. They were paid the going wage for their work, that much again for the occasional danger of proximity to Ivovandas’s battles, and a triple portion for keeping their mouths shut. For a week or two they excavated carefully in the wreckage of once-mighty houses, concealing whatever they took from the ruins beneath tarps on their wagons.
Next, Brandwin and Shraplin spent a week refurbishing a trio of wagons as mobile vending carts. They extended wooden skirts around them to the ground, installed folding awnings and sturdy roofs, carved signs, and painted them attractively. One of the wagons was kitted out as a book stall, the other two as food carts.
The labyrinth of bribes and permits needed to launch this sort of venture was even more daunting than the one that had preceded the excavation company. Jade outdid herself, weaving blackmail and intimidation into a tapestry of efficient palm-greasing. Whether the permit placards that hung from the vending carts were genuine articles or perfect copies was ultimately irrelevant. No procedural complication survived first contact with Jade’s attention.
With four months remaining, Amarelle and Sophara went into legitimate business for themselves. Amarelle peddled books on Prosperity Street until noon, while Sophara plied her precision sorcery for appreciative breakfast crowds on Galban Street. She cooked frosted walnut cakes into the shape of unicorns and cockatrices, caused fresh fruit to squeeze itself into juice glasses, and made her figs and dates give rude speeches while her customers tried to eat them and laugh at the same time. In the afternoon, she and Amarelle switched places.
Some days, Brandwin would operate the third vending cart, offering sweets and beer, but for some time she was absorbed in a number of demanding modifications to Shraplin’s body and limbs. These modifications remained hidden in the darkness of her workshop; Shraplin never went out in public wearing anything but one of his ordinary bodies.
One bright day on Prosperity Street, a stray breeze blew one of Amarelle’s books open and fluttered its pages. She moved to close it and was startled to find a detailed grayscale engraving of Scavius’s face staring up at her from the top page.
“Amarelle,” said the illustration. “You seem to have an unexpected literary sideline.”
“Can’t practice my former trade,” she said through gritted teeth. “Money’s getting tight.”
“So you’re exploring new avenues, eh? New avenues? Not even a smile? Well, fine, have it your way. I ought to snuff you, you realize. I don’t know who or what prompted the weirdness of the previous few months—”
Amarelle fanned the pages of the book vindictively. The illustration flashed past on each one, and continued talking smoothly when Amarelle gave up.
“… but the wisest and cleverest thing would be to turn your bones to molten glass and take no chances. Alas, I need evidence of wrongdoing. Can’t just blast sanctuary tithers. People might stop giving us large piles of treasure for the privilege.”
“My business partners and I are engaged in boring, legitimate commerce,” said Amarelle.
“I know. I’ve been peeking up your skirts, as it were. Very boring. I thought we ought to have a final word, though. A little reminder that you should stay boring, or I can think of one story that won’t have a happy ending.”
The book slammed itself shut. Amarelle exhaled slowly, rubbed her eyes, and went back to work.
On the days wore, on the legitimate business went. The women began to move their vending carts more frequently, investing some of their profits in small mechanical equines to make this work easier.
With three months left in the contract, the carts that moved up and down Prosperity Street began to cross paths with carts from elsewhere in the city in a complicated dance that always ended with an unmarked High Barrens Reclamation Consortium wagon paying a quiet evening visit to one of the mansions they were excavating.
Another two months passed, and there was no spot on Prosperity Street that Amarelle or Sophara or Brandwin had not staked out at least temporarily, no merchant they hadn’t come to know by name, no constable they hadn’t thoroughly pacified with free food, good beer, and occasional gifts of books.
Three days before the contract was due to expire, a loud explosion shook the north end of Prosperity Street, breaking windows and knocking pedestrians to the curb. A mansion in a private court was found burning, already collapsing into itself. A huge black coach lay wrecked in the drive, its ghoul-cage wheels torn open, its roof smashed, its insides revealing nothing but well-upholstered seats and a carpeted floor.
The next day, Amarelle Parathis was politely summoned to the manse of the wizard Ivovandas.
16. Bottled Malady
“Am I satisfied? Satisfaction is a palliative,” said Ivovandas, gold-threaded teeth blazing with reflected light, butterflies fluttering furiously. “Satisfaction is mild wine. Satisfaction is a tiny fraction of what I feel. Delight and fulfillment pounding in my breast like triumphant chords! Seventy years of unprofitable disdain from this face-changing reprobate, and now his misery is mine to contemplate at leisure.”
“I’m so pleased you were able to crush him,” said Amarelle. “Did you manage to get home in time for your tea afterward?”
The golden wizard ignored her and kept staring at the glass cylinder on her desk. It was six inches tall and half as wide, capped with a ground-glass stopper and sealed with wax the color of dried blood. Inside it was wretched Jarrow, shrunken to a suitable proportion and clad in rags. He had reverted (or been forced into) the shape of a cadaverous pale man with a silver-black beard.
“Jarrow.” She sighed. “Jarrow. Oh, the laws of proportion and symmetry are restored to operation between us; my sustained pleasure balanced accurately against your lingering discomfort and demise.”
“So obviously,” said Amarelle, “you consider me to have stolen Prosperity Street in accordance with the contract?”
Jarrow pounded furiously against the glass.
“Oh, obviously, dear Amarelle, you’ve acquitted yourself splendidly! Yet the street is still there, is it not? Still carrying traffic, still hosting commerce. Before I retrieve your blue crystal, are you of a mind to indulge my former colleague and I with an explanation?”
“Delighted,” said Amarelle. “After all our other approaches failed, we decided to try the painstakingly literal. Prosperity Street is roughly 3,170 square yards of brick and stone surface. The question we asked ourselves was: Who really looks at each brick and each stone?”
“Certainly not poor Jarrow,” said Ivovandas, “else he’d not find his bottle about to join my collection.”
“We resolved to physically steal every single square yard of Prosperity Street, every brick and stone,” said Amarelle. “Which yielded three problems. First, how to do so without anyone’s noticing the noise and tumult of our work? Second, how to do so without anyone’s objecting to the stripped and uneven mess made of the street in our wake? Third, how to provide the physical labor to handle the sheer volume and tedium of the task?
“To answer the second point first, we used the High Barrens Restoration Consortium. They carefully fished through the mansions you two have destroyed in your feud to provide us with all the bricks and stones we could ever need.
“A large hollow space was constructed beneath each of our vending carts, which we first plied up and down assorted city streets, not just Prosperity, for an interminable length of time to allay suspicion that they were directly aimed at Jarrow’s locus.”