‘It’ll get worse,’ muttered Eseutz Mesatges, wiping her lips on her wrist. The new look for lady merchants (basically the year before last’s Warrior-Princess look, but with less gold and more leather) suited her very well, but there wasn’t an obvious place for a handkerchief. ‘There’s absolutely no reason to believe they’re going to stop there. Not unless somebody makes them,’ she added firmly. ‘They’re a damned nuisance, and something’s got to be done. And I don’t know what you’re grinning about, Hido. If the Imperial Army decides to go up the coast instead of down like everybody’s assuming, you won’t be able to give away those pepper concessions we’re always hearing so much about.’
Venart frowned. ‘That’s not likely, though, is it? I mean, surely the whole object of the exercise is to secure their western frontier. If they go north instead of south, they’ll be extending it, not consolidating.’
‘Gods, Ven, you’re so bloody naive,’ Eseutz said impatiently. ‘Securing frontiers my arse; this is crude old-fashioned expansionism, as anybody with half a brain could have told you three years ago. No, we should have stopped them at Ap’ Escatoy; dammit, we should have stopped them before that even, at Ap’ Ecy or before they even crossed the border. The further they get the harder it’s going to be, and that’s just a plain fact.’
Hido Glaia yawned and helped himself to another handful of olives. ‘If you’ll just listen,’ he said, ‘you’ll find I’m not disagreeing with you. I think they’re worse than a pest, they’re a serious danger, and thank the gods we live on an island. The comic part is you thinking we could do anything about it.’ He opened his mouth and picked out an olive stone. ‘Now possibly us, and Shastel, and Gorgas Loredan’s merry band of cut-throats down in the Mesoge, and King Temrai’s people – if anybody should be worried right now, it’s them; if I was the provincial office, I know what’d be at the top of my shopping list – if all of us got together, pulled our fingers out, really got behind Ap’ Seny and told them, that’s it, no further-’ He shrugged his broad shoulders. ‘Well, it could go either way, depending on what other calls the provincial office’s got on its resources right now (and that’s something we just don’t know, though we should, and it’s a scandal we don’t). But face facts, it ain’t going to happen. No, the best thing we can do is start talking very sweetly to the provincials about non-aggression pacts and tariffs and possibly preferred-carrier status. They aren’t savages, you know. If we could learn to love the plainspeople, we can get along just fine with these bastards.’
Venart’s sister Vetriz, who’d been lying back on her couch pretending to be bored, sat up. ‘You can’t be serious about that, Hido,’ she said. ‘Us, get into bed with the plainspeople? After what they did to the City?’
Hido grinned. ‘We trade with them. You trade with them. Even the Shastel Bank does business with them, and gods know, if anybody’s got the right to bear a grudge, it’s her.’ He leaned forward and scratched the arch of his foot. ‘Where is Athli, by the way? I thought she’d be here.’
Eseutz scowled. ‘Oh, she’s off being terribly high-powered somewhere. I don’t know; she runs that office like she owns the whole damn bank.’
‘Eseutz tried to get a loan to take up those spice options,’ Hido explained, ‘and Athli turned her down flat, bless her. I could have told you if you’d asked me,’ he went on, treating Eseutz to a warm, patronising smile. ‘Athli may dress like an Islander and talk like an Islander, she’s got a better nose for a deal than most of us who were born and bred here, but when it comes to lending money, she’s Perimadeian to her socks and always will be.’
Eseutz sniffed and reached across the table for the wine jug. ‘It’s all your fault for bringing her here in the first place,’ she told Vetriz. ‘Well, the hell with that. You can tell her I got my loan, and at only one per cent over base.’
‘You had to put your ship up as security,’ Hido pointed out. ‘Definitely rather you than me. I think Athli was doing you a favour, personally. Who the hell’s going to want to pay your prices for peppers and cinnamon once the provincial office starts dumping the stuff on the spot market at half what you’re paying for it now?’
Eseutz growled and banged the jug down. ‘If that’s your attitude,’ she said, ‘you might as well start memorising the names of the Great bloody Kings right now, so you can reel them off to impress the provincial when he comes stomping in here with a garrison.’
Hido dipped his head. ‘It might be a sensible precaution, at that,’ he said. ‘If we’re going to have to do business with these people, as seems increasingly likely, it might be sensible to learn how to crawl to their officials.’
When the evening was over and their guests had gone home, Vetriz kicked off her shoes and poured herself the last of the wine. ‘I can’t figure those two out,’ she said. ‘Are they or aren’t they?’
Her brother shrugged. ‘Both,’ he replied. ‘Which is odd, I’ll grant you. I mean, it’s obvious what he sees in her but not the other way round. Not in a million years.’
Vetriz raised an eyebrow. ‘Funny,’ she said, ‘I’d have said it was the other way round. Oh, well, I suppose that means they were made for each other after all. In which case, I can’t help wondering why they spend so much of their time trying to do each other down in business.’
Venart yawned. ‘Their way of expressing affection, I suppose,’ he said. ‘But what she was saying about the Empire, it makes sense, you know, in a way. Mind you, so does what Hido said. This Ap’ Escatoy thing’s really brought it home.’
‘If you say so,’ Vetriz replied, slowly getting up. ‘I’m going to bed while I can still move.’
‘All right.’ Venart hesitated for a moment, then continued, ‘When I was down at the Nails this afternoon, I did hear one thing about Ap’ Escatoy.’
‘Hm? Tell me in the morning.’
Venart shook his head. ‘Really,’ he said, ‘I should have mentioned it earlier, except of course it’s just a rumour, and I haven’t the faintest idea where it comes from or if there’s anything to it. I was waiting to see if Hido or Eseutz had come across it too, but apparently not.’
Vetriz yawned. ‘Oh, for pity’s sake, Ven,’ she said. ‘Stop hamming it up and tell me.’
‘All right.’ Venart looked away slightly. ‘What it is, someone was talking about the end of the siege, how it actually happened, and he said the man who finally broke through in the mines and brought down the wall was called Bardas Loredan.’
Vetriz didn’t turn round. ‘Really?’ she said. ‘That’s interesting.’
‘I thought you should know,’ Venart said. ‘Well, there it is. Like I said, there’s absolutely no confirmation or anything like that, just a rumour.’
‘Of course,’ Vetriz replied. ‘Well, I’m off to bed. Good night.’
After that snippet of information it was inevitable that her dreams should return to the mines – she knew every inch of them by now, so that her knees and the palms of her hands ached at the thought of them – and the darkness and the stale air and the smell of clay and herbs. Once again she was crawling blind towards the source of the noise, the indecipherable confusion of steel and voices; this time she hoped she’d be able to pick out one voice among them, but that was completely unrealistic. Perhaps what she’d learned explained why she had to keep coming back here, but nothing else made sense. It was just a dream where she crawled along tunnels in the dark, and sometimes the roof caved in on her and sometimes it didn’t. Maybe she’d been right the first time, and it really was divine retribution for eating blue cheese just before going to sleep.
But this time she called out his name; though whether she was telling him she was coming to help him or asking to be rescued herself, she wasn’t quite sure. All night she slithered and stomped and crawled her way through the galleries and spurs of her dream, sometimes having to squeeze past and crawl over men who’d been dead a long time, sometimes people she’d known all her life, sometimes people she recognised for the first time; but the noise never got any closer and the voices stayed confused. She woke up sweating, the bedclothes twisted round her, the pillow on the floor where she’d thrown it after thanking it for its forbearance.