“Watchdogs, partly,” Kel said. “Not very well trained.”
“Watchdogs?”
Kel nodded. “Three of them. Azrad, Anaran, and Gor.”
Dorna smothered a laugh upon hearing that Vezalis had named his dogs for the founding overlords of the three Ethshars. “What do you mean, not well-trained?”
“They attack anyone except me, Ezak, Vezalis, and his two girlfriends,” Kel explained. “Even if Vezalis is with them. If he had been home he would have locked them in the back room, but where he was outside with us…”
“…it would have been awkward,” Dorna finished for him. “I see.”
Kel knew he probably shouldn’t say any more, but Vezalis had loosened his tongue, and he was not quite ready to tighten it again. “There’s the merchandise, too,” he said.
“What merchandise?”
“All his merchandise. Doesn’t have a warehouse anymore. Keeps everything in his house. That’s why he needs so many dogs.”
Dorna glanced back at the house. “He keeps everything in there?”
Kel nodded. “He used to have a warehouse, long ago. But he took all his money and bought a ship and it sank, so he didn’t have any money when there was a fire at the warehouse, so he couldn’t rebuild it, and…well, now he keeps everything in his house and does all his traveling on land, with his cart, the way he came to your village.”
“That explains a lot,” Dorna said.
“He was traveling when his sister died-Ezak’s mother. They’d had a fight when she took up whoring, so they hadn’t spoken in years. He hadn’t even known she had a baby. By the time he got back and heard from the magistrate that she was dead and that he had a nephew, Ezak was living in an alley. He’d been turned away from his uncle’s house when he first went there. Vezalis found Ezak, but they didn’t get along very well. Later he got Ezak an apprenticeship, even though no one was sure whether he was really only twelve, but it didn’t work out, and Vezalis blamed Ezak for messing it up, and Ezak blamed Vezalis for trying to make him do something he didn’t want to, and they haven’t had much to do with each other since then. We stayed in his attic sometimes, because he didn’t trust us around his merchandise in the other rooms, but Ezak never liked it.”
“I can understand that,” Dorna said quietly. “You and Ezak and Vezalis have had more than your share of misfortune, haven’t you?”
Kel turned up an empty palm.
“Well, you don’t need to live in alleys or cellars or attics anymore,” she said.
Kel smiled happily at that.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Dorna’s Tea Shop had been open for business for a little over a month, and the worst of the summer’s heat had settled over the city like a thick blanket, when Ezak finally came to see the place. It was the middle of a cloudless, scorching afternoon. The big double door in the corner, facing out onto the intersection of Harbor and Aristocrat, was standing wide, and the windows on either side were open as well, to catch whatever breeze might reach so far into the city. Kel was sitting behind the counter on a stool in the back corner, idly waving a paper fan at himself as he gazed out at the dusty streets.
There were no customers; it was too warm to drink hot tea, and Kel did not yet know how to operate Dorna’s sorcerous cooling device, so he could not offer the chilled version that was becoming popular. Dorna herself was down at the docks in Seagate with Vezalis, overseeing the arrival of the latest shipment from Londa, and Irien was over in the Merchants’ Quarter, inspecting Ozya the Cabinetmaker’s latest handiwork, so Kel had the place to himself.
Ezak seemed to appear out of nowhere in the doorway, but Kel was not impressed; he knew that trick himself. Ezak had taught him when they were both just boys. “Hai!” he called, with a wave of his fan. “Come in out of the sun!”
Ezak sauntered in, looking around appraisingly at the elegant little tables, the stylish silk-upholstered chairs, the shelves of cups and teapots and canisters-and the bare spaces that had once again sent Irien to Ozya’s shop; they had not yet finished furnishing the place.
“Very fancy,” Ezak said. “Uncle Vezalis said I could find you here.”
“I’m glad to see you,” Kel said. “How are you?” He was gradually learning to talk more freely, now that he had no secrets to hide and needed to please customers. It was hard to make out details with the sun silhouetting Ezak against the door, but Kel could see that Ezak was wearing an unfamiliar tunic, one that fit better than most. His boots were still reinforced with rags, though, and the fact that he was wearing boots at all in this heat meant he had no sandals. The top of his ear was still missing, but the wound had healed, and the missing hair had mostly grown back.
“I’m doing just fine,” Ezak said. “See this?” He plucked at the front of his tunic. “Look at that embroidery!”
Kel, who knew the tunic had almost certainly been snatched off a clothesline somewhere, was no more impressed by this than by the appearing-around-the-corner trick. “It’s nice,” he said. He did not point out his own new tunic, which was plain white cotton, but had been acquired legally.
“We haven’t seen you in Smallgate lately,” Ezak said. “Nor in Grandgate Market.”
“I’ve been busy,” Kel said. “I live here in Nightside now. My room’s upstairs.”
“She’s keeping you prisoner?”
Kel blinked in surprise. “No,” he said.
“Then why are you still here?”
“I like it here!”
Ezak snorted. He looked around appraisingly, then he came closer and leaned across the polished wooden counter. “Some of this stuff looks expensive.”
“Some of it was,” Kel agreed.
“The door’s wide open, and the nearest guard’s at least three blocks away.”
Kel simply stared at him. He realized he shouldn’t be surprised that Ezak’s immediate reaction was to think about robbing the place, but somehow he was surprised. Maybe he really had stopped thinking like a thief.
“Does she still have any of her husband’s magic?”
Kel carefully did not look at the cooling talisman under the counter not three feet from his knee. “Yes,” he said. “But it’s all safely locked away.”
Ezak nodded, and looked around the shop again, completely failing to see what was going through Kel’s mind.
Kel, for his part, was realizing that he had just lied to Ezak, and Ezak had accepted it immediately. He had never been able to fool Ezak before.
“So if you took one of those fancy teapots and came home with me, could she track you?” Ezak asked.
“Probably,” Kel said. He suppressed a smile at the idea of stealing a teapot when the cash box was right there under the counter, and held at least ten rounds in copper and a few bits in silver-not to mention that there was the cooling talisman, and the various sorcerous devices in the back room, that he could take.
For that matter, the savings he had tucked away under the floorboards of his room upstairs might be more than the teapot was worth, and were almost certainly more than they could get for it from a fence.
Now, if the animated teapot Dorna had ordered had been there, that might have been worth stealing, but it wasn’t due to be delivered for another twelvenight.
“That explains why you’re here alone, I guess,” Ezak said. “She knows you don’t dare steal anything.”
“I guess,” Kel said. He saw no point in trying to explain to Ezak that it wasn’t fear that restrained him.
Ezak stepped closer and leaned on the counter, looking down at Kel. “So when are you coming home? Aren’t you tired of this yet?”
Kel blinked up at him, and thought for a moment before replying honestly, “No.”
“Oh, come on, Kel! She has you running stupid little errands and sitting here all day and saying please and thank you and bowing to all these rich bastards who come in here paying ridiculous prices for a bunch of boiled leaves. How can you stand it?”