He grinned; Cleapho had a nice way of putting things, for a Torcean. And it was the answer he'd wanted: side with Cronan against Allectus and do it soon, before Allectus had a chance to get established north of the Mahec. He scouted around for his inkwell and pen and a piece of paper, and wrote: Feron Amathy, merchant venturer, to Cleapho, touched by the Divine; greetings, good health amp;c.
Thauscus is, of course, an excellent authority, and your point about the Ascetics is well made. I seem to remember something in Pevannio's commentary about the moment just before the sun breaks through the clouds being the most auspicious time for reading auguries and casting lots; do you think that might have any bearing on the matter?
He sprinkled sand and sealed it up, called for the guard 'Wake up.' The guard was standing over him, calling him. 'It's after sun-up, for God's sake, you should be on the road by now.'
'What?' Poldarn rolled over. 'Oh, right. Sorry, I was having a dream-'
The guard scowled at him. 'Do it on your own time,' he said. 'Cunier Mohac wants that reply on its way as soon as possible. You've missed breakfast,' he added with a definite touch of malice.
'Have I? Damn.' Poldarn yawned. 'No chance the kitchen could put me up something for the road, is there? Or would that be against the law too?'
The guard shrugged. 'I'll ask,' he said, 'no promises. Depends on whether they've thrown the scraps out for the crows yet. I told the stables to get your horse ready, there may just be time. It'll be bread and cold bacon if they can manage it, maybe a slice of cheese if you're lucky.'
'That'll do,' Poldarn said. 'I'm not fussy.'
Chapter Twelve
'Terrible,' said Falx Roisin, looking up from the column of figures he was working on. 'He'd been with the house sixteen years. I'll miss him.' He frowned, and drew a little line on the ledger to mark where he'd got up to in the sum. 'And you're sure it was just bandits?'
'That's right,' Poldarn replied. 'As soon as they attacked, I ran for it, and they didn't seem at all interested in me.'
Falx Roisin nodded. 'It was the right thing to do,' he said. 'The letter was far more important than the cargo-that's what insurance is for, after all, though in this case… It just strikes me as odd that they didn't actually take anything.'
Poldarn shrugged. 'Maybe they decided they didn't want twelve barrels of copper rivets,' he said.
'Maybe. But they're worth good money, there's a shortage. Of course, they may not have known that.' Falx Roisin rubbed the tip of his nose with the palm of his hand, an indication of serious thought. 'Now if they'd hit you on the way back, they'd have got a nice sum in cash and twenty bales of best Mahec valley wool. That's good,' he added, 'implies they don't have a source of information inside the house. At least, not this particular outfit. No way of knowing how many gangs there are working that stretch of road.' He glanced down at his figures, then looked up again. 'Mind you,' he said, 'it's also possible they thought Gatto was the courier, not you. Anyway, no use crying over spilt milk, as my mother used to say.'
Poldarn nodded. The dead man's name was Gotto, not Gatto; Poldarn had only known him for a couple of days, not sixteen years. Still, when it came to a good memory for names, he was hardly in a position to criticise someone else. 'Maybe it was just the horses they were after,' he said, for the sake of saying something.
'Didn't you hear?' Falx Roisin looked at him for a moment. 'We found the horses, they'd just been run off, not stolen. Hadn't gone far, either. Now there's another thing. All right, they didn't want the rivets, so they left them. But why unyoke the horses and run them off? Doesn't make sense.'
'Maybe they panicked,' Poldarn said. 'People do all sorts of weird things when they panic.'
'Maybe,' Falx Roisin replied. 'Not that I'm complaining, mind. After all that, we didn't lose the shipment, or the cart, or the horses. It's just a terrible tragedy about poor Gatto, that's all.'
Poldarn left him to his grief and went for a walk. In the back of his mind he was still a little worried about wandering about the town, just in case any of the men who'd broken up his meeting with Cleapho were still hanging around, but they weren't watching the gates now, as he'd proved when he'd passed through on his way to Mael Bohec, and since he didn't really have a clue who they were or what they wanted, it seemed pointless to spend the rest of his life hiding from them.
Nothing to do for the rest of the day, money in his pocket and all the delights of Sansory to explore. Having thought about it for a while, he decided that the only thing he really wanted was a new coat, to replace the one he'd given to the man who'd called himself Tazencius; he supposed he could go and get a replacement from the bins in Eolla's storeroom, but the idea didn't appeal to him. Just for once, it'd be nice to have something that hadn't previously belonged to someone who'd died by violence.
Buying a coat in Sansory turned out to be far more complicated than he'd imagined. At times it seemed as if the whole city was made up of clothiers' stalls, every single one of them cheaper than the last, all of them offering a better, brighter, warmer, more exactingly specified product for a fraction of the price of the one he'd just looked at and decided to buy. As if that wasn't bad enough, he found out that the act of standing in silent thought between the rows of stalls in the market was enough to attract swarms of tailors, who swooped down on him from their shops and booths like crows on a dead body and swore blind they could make him the coat of his dreams to measure for a third of what he'd pay for some piece of off-the-peg rag. Since all the coats he saw looked perfectly good and excellent value for money, he was soon utterly bewildered and bitterly regretting getting involved in such a horrendously complex issue. By noon, he'd almost resolved to give it up and make do with anything Eolla offered him that didn't have a brown-edged hole exactly halfway between the shoulder blades. Instead he bought a pancake and a mug of cider from a sad-looking man behind a barrow and sat down on the corn exchange steps to rest his aching feet.
From where he was sitting he had a clear view down a row of stalls. The stuff on them wasn't anything that interested him much-luxury fabrics, mostly, with some jewellery and almost-jewellery, a couple of men behind benches mounted with lasts who presumably made women's shoes, one or two specialising in mirrors and combs and boxes to put them in He looked back, and frowned. Then he swallowed the last of his pancake, got up, returned the empty mug to the man behind the barrow (who looked sadly at him but didn't seem to hold a grudge) and made his way down the alley until he came to the stall he'd noticed where a woman was arranging a display of mirrors.
'Copis?' he said.
Copis looked up at him. 'Oh,' she said, 'it's you. Hello.'
For some reason, she didn't seem particularly pleased to see him. She leaned out over the table and looked up and down the alley to see if anybody was watching, then scowled at him and said, 'You can't have it back.'
That threw him. 'Have what back?' he asked.
'Don't be stupid,' she said. 'Your great big lump of solid gold, of course, the one you hid in the back of my cart. Bastard.'
He really couldn't see the logic. 'What's the matter?' he said. 'What did I do?'
She looked daggers at him. 'All that bullshit about having lost your memory. I believed you, you creep, I was actually sorry for you. And all that time you were using me as cover to get past whoever you stole that thing from. No wonder people were forever trying to kill us.'