He could think of no sensible reply to that, and blinked silently at her.
“I’m going to open a tea shop,” she said. “I’m going to import my favorite teas from the Small Kingdoms. I used to buy them from a trader named Vezalis who came to deal with Nabal; I’d ask him to bring me a new variety each trip he made, and to bring more of the ones I liked. I hadn’t known there were so many kinds until I met him!”
“That’s Ezak’s uncle,” Kel said. He had no idea why she was telling him about her plans, but he thought she might want to know.
“What?” That seemed to have jarred her out of her planned speech.
“Vezalis, the trader your husband dealt with. He’s Ezak’s uncle. That was how we found you.”
She stared at him. “You’re serious? I thought it was just a coincidence that they were both named Vezalis.”
“Yes. The trader is Ezak’s uncle.”
“That stupid, troublesome…” She stopped abruptly, took a deep breath, let it out slowly, then said, “Never mind that. My point is, I’m going to open a tea shop.”
Kel nodded. She had already said that.
“I’m going to spend a lot of my time dealing with tea merchants, and trying out different blends.”
Kel nodded again. He knew almost nothing about running a tea shop, and in fact had never seen a tea shop, but this sounded reasonable.
“I’ll need an assistant to look after the shop when I’m busy elsewhere. I’d like to hire you as my assistant.”
Kel blinked; at first the words didn’t seem to make sense. Eventually he managed to work out their meaning, but it still didn’t seem reasonable. “But I’m a thief,” he said. “No one hires a thief!”
“You wouldn’t be a thief anymore,” Dorna said. “You’d be a tea shop assistant.”
That was too bizarre to grasp immediately, but Dorna was looking at him, clearly expecting a response. “I don’t know,” he said.
“The position would include room and board, and pay a round a sixnight to start,” she said.
“Room and board?” He glanced back at the tunnel mouth, remembering the room they had just visited, where he had so often lived.
She nodded. “A room above the shop, and at least three meals a day,” she said.
That knocked all thought of the room out of his head. Kel had never in his life eaten three meals a day; he had trouble comprehending such luxury. He stared at her, only just barely keeping his jaw from dropping.
“Why don’t you give it a try?” Dorna said. “You can always quit if you don’t like it.”
Kel tried to imagine how someone could dislike eating regularly and sleeping indoors, and decided maybe someone could, but he was not that someone.
On the other hand, he knew someone who would look on this with a great deal of suspicion. “What about Ezak?” he asked.
She shook her head. “I’m only offering to hire you, Kel. You helped me when you could, and you’ve been as honest with me as a thief could be.” She smiled wryly at that, then continued, “You’re smarter than you realize, and I think you deserve a chance to use your wits for something better than stealing old clothes.”
“But Ezak helped me,” Kel said. “He’s always helped me.”
“But he stole from me. And he did nothing to help me or you after he sent the fil drepessis off looking for something to fix.”
Kel hesitated.
Dorna saw his uncertainty and sighed. “Think about it,” she said. “For now, get me out of here and back to the Three Feathers before it’s too dark to see where we’re going.”
That was something Kel could understand and accept. “This way,” he said.
By the time they got back to Grandgate and found Irien sitting in a quiet corner of the inn, Kel had made up his mind. Three meals a day! A dry room! And some money! How could he resist?
He couldn’t. He didn’t. He was hired on the spot, and given his own room at the inn at Dorna’s expense.
He hoped Ezak wouldn’t be too upset.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Kel had never realized how complicated starting a business was.
Irien took charge of finding a suitable location, while Dorna set about selling some of her husband’s magic to fund the tea shop. Both of them used Kel as an errand boy, a job he had done before, but it was different this time-he didn’t need to hold out his hand for a coin after each errand, and at the end of the day he sat down to a generous supper without worrying about how to pay for it, or where he would sleep.
He also served as a local guide for Dorna as she roamed up and down Wizard Street, talking to sorcerers and sorcerers’ suppliers, gathering references and making appointments, and dickering over prices. He sometimes accompanied Irien as she traveled around the city, talking to landlords and property owners and magistrates and tax collectors about what spaces might be available for rent or purchase, what debts might be attached to them, and so on. He went along on several visits to the city vaults under the north barracks, and helped carry various sorceries to prospective buyers. Every night, when his work was done, he slept in a good bed at the Three Feathers, a bed he had all to himself, with no rats or roaches or centipedes around.
It was nice to have all that space and comfort, but sometimes at night he missed Ezak, and wondered where he was and what he was doing. Dorna and Irien kept Kel too busy to go back to Smallgate and check.
A sixnight after his return to Ethshar, Dorna informed Kel that he was now going to escort her to Vezalis’ house, so that she could make arrangements for the trader to supply the shop with the teas Dorna wanted.
“I can show you which house it is,” he said.
“I want you to talk to him with me, too.”
“That might not be a good idea,” Kel warned her. “He doesn’t like me.”
“That doesn’t matter,” Dorna said. “This is business.”
Kel did not find that entirely convincing, but he did not argue further. He led Dorna back to Archer Street, but this time without any shortcuts-since Kel knew where they were going, they turned onto Archer at its northern end, in Grandgate, and walked it for the full length of Soldiertown, with no need to dodge through alleys and courtyards. When they neared Vezalis’ house, Kel pointed it out. It was much like the other houses on the street-two stories with a steep-gabled attic, half-timbered, with painted plaster between the heavy wooden beams. The paintings on the trader’s house were of ships under full sail, though, rather than the more customary gardens and crockery.
“It’s not very big,” Dorna remarked.
Kel turned up an empty palm. He was no judge of house sizes; they all seemed big to him.
“You’re sure that’s it?”
Kel nodded.
“All right,” Dorna said. “Come on.” She marched toward the door.
“Maybe I should wait here,” Kel said, staying in the middle of the street.
Dorna stopped and beckoned to him. “No,” she said. “You’re coming with me. I told you that. You work for me, and you’ll probably need to deal with him later, so you might as well get used to it.”
Reluctantly, Kel followed her.
This would be the first time he ever approached Vezalis the Merchant with anyone other than Ezak present. It would be the first time he had come to this house when he was neither accompanying Ezak, nor looking for Ezak. He was not at all sure how Ezak’s uncle would take that; would he think Kel was a traitor, abandoning the friend who had raised him?
Dorna waited on the front step until Kel came up behind her, then knocked loudly on the big red door. Kel waited apprehensively.
“He may not be home,” he said, when no one answered Dorna’s knock immediately. “He travels a lot.”
“I know that,” Dorna said, annoyed. “Does anyone else stay here when he’s traveling?”