The Elusive Taste of Kolchoan Blue
by Patrick Honovich
Chapter 3: Quiet Offers
part 2
Both guides looked behind us, and when Div nodded, I felt faint. By the chill across my forehead and the trickle behind my ears, I knew I was sweating. And it wasn’t “nerves”; I don’t get “nerves.” I brushed my ink again, through a hole in my shirt, and felt the most immediate layers of weakness recede.
The woman moved quickly, considering the poison in the air. Was it possible to build up a tolerance? I thought it likely. As she came closer, she looked a little too high-class to be someone’s lackey; she didn’t quite fit with the rest of the people I’d seen in the place.
“Ghita Cadzana. What, may I ask, is your business following my charge?” Div’s voice carried knives.
“Not yours. I have business with the lady.” Her voice was something out of the arenas and their laws of blood and payment: imperious, cruel, sharp-hooked. She blinked at the both of us, eyes dangerously sharp. “I’ll be brief. My interests may coincide with your own. I understand the two of you have some prior connection?”
Sarah glanced at me before saying, “Yes,” and I took what I thought was the hint, stepping forward to cover her back. Sarah’s hues and tints, the colors telling me how she felt, were shifting. I thought the smoke, or the excitement had something to do with it, and I put a little more of my own will into trying to be unreadable.
There was a connection between Sarah and Ghita Cadzana. I should’ve seen it in Sarah, in the way she looked at Cadzana, or the way the older woman looked back but, at the time, I thought it was just the smoke. Her colors changed when the woman spoke. I didn’t make the right connection. I should’ve been more careful, but as Master Tellrus was fond of reminding me, I didn’t always think with my mind alone.
“Whether he thinks he’s in control or not, as women you and I both know you are, agreed?”
She had the voice of a woman who would murder her husband and get away clean. Bloodless, or so hard I couldn’t read her. Her interest in “control” said she probably had some deviant practices, and more importantly, probably knew her magic.
I stepped nearer, trying to get just close enough to read her energies. “Here is my offer. At some point, you two will leave the auction house, and end up hip-deep in each other. I’ll pay twenty Crowns to watch. Good money to pretend I’m not there.”
Wait, what?? Had I heard her right? I glanced at her, and Sarah’s face went pale. Couldn’t tell what had caused it, maybe a few things at once.
The entire room began to bend at the knees — I squeezed my right wrist with my left hand, and everything snapped back into sharp relief, but I took a step back to stay standing. Sarah might’ve reacted while I was staggered, I stopped paying attention to the tag for a moment.
“Not interested, but thanks for the offer.” Ghita turned to face Sarah more directly, slightly out of my view.
“Suit yourself. I’ll be in the Open House. Maybe you’ll change your mind. Think it over.” With a clack of her heels, the woman turned and left.
“Who in all the hells was that?” I asked Div.
He sniffed. “Ghita Cadzana. A master of the Sage’s College at Latidium. I find her personally repellent.”
“Now, Div,” said Pausha. “Be fair.”
“The woman has no morals. I dare you to tell me she does.”
“By her own standards,” said Sarah. “She probably does. Let’s get on with it.”
I had suspicions, but I just wanted to get to the display case, never mind my suspicions, so I said, “Lead on,” and kept an eye on her.
She glanced again my way, but I couldn’t figure it out.
“You man enough to keep up?”
I answered with my hands: Try me.
We approached, and I looked at the goods like a mother-in-law scrutinizing her son’s new best prospect. The bottles were there, two crates with five bottles of glass smoked so dark and crusted with so much age it was impossible to tell their contents. I prayed my research had been correct, prayed hard enough that the smoke in the room made me dizzy again. I prayed no one else had gone through the records as carefully as I had. I opened the book, whose single page was blank.
“Div?”
“Make your mark here, and the mark transfers to the books elsewhere. Whether you secure your bid, or fail to do so, you will be notified once you’ve left the silent house, where upset is less likely to cause distress. You have an amount you can spend?”
I nodded.
“Make your mark, and write the amount beside it, here.” He handed me a quill. “Then write the most you can squeeze out of your letter of credit. Don’t exaggerate, don’t think you’ll be robbed, and don’t think it won’t be necessary. This is Auntighur, after all.”
I made my master’s mark, then wrote my sums beside it, so that it would appear to be his interest, his research, and my hand merely the intermediary. No one noticed the tremble as I put the quill back into the well and watched the ink disappear. I’d been expecting a list of the other bids, but the page went blank again.
I swallowed, stepped back, and looked to Div. “Is there any way to tell who else has bid on this lot?”
“Yes.” He tapped the glass. I wasn’t surprised when a list drew itself onto the display in a clear script — Master Tellrus uses a similar slate to teach. The bidding on this lot had been scattered, not many names, not much action. I was in the lead... as long as my bid didn’t make someone else curious, I might just get it. I nodded, a little woozy, feeling half-sick.
“Fair enough.” Master Tellrus had told me to watch myself more closely in the silent house. After placing the bid, I started to feel I’d overlooked some crucial detail. “I’m done here.” Was I? I hoped.
“Pausha? The lady’s business? Your master’s business has been completed here, Mr. Nosso, am I correct? Then we should turn to Ms. Bailick for our where-next.”
The smoke in my lungs began to burn, and my knees trembled. I took a deep breath, knowing it wouldn’t help, and bent to fiddle with my boots. Fingertips brushed the ink on my calf above the top edge of the boot’s cuff, and a welcome few minutes of calm fought off whatever was saturating the air.
Sarah glanced my way for the thinnest of moments, then back at her guide and smiled. I checked my tag, which told me more surely than the slight twitch of her hands, she was much more upset than she was allowing.
“I’m ready.” No more, no less. She could’ve been speaking to the old sparrow leading her around, or to me, but I suspected the latter.
As we walked to another section, this one identified with a worked silver globe on a thin pedestal, the charm lighting the case I’d bid on went out, and the lot sank down through the floor. I started to ask, then thought better of it. Either way, good news or bad, the results were likely to stir up the blood, so I saved the question for later.
“What are we looking for?” I asked Sarah.
“Silver section, lot twenty-four.”
“Which is?” I asked.
She flashed me the hand-sign for Leave it alone. “Which is my business and not yours.”
Pausha grinned, tiny teeth and all. “Well said, Ms. Bailick.”
I wondered if Pausha would ever let the rest of us in on the joke. It might matter, but she probably wouldn’t explain. Whatever put the glow into the tiny woman, about Sarah, or myself, or Div, she wasn’t sharing, just tottering along with her amusement and her tiny grin.
Taking measured half-steps through the darkened hall, smoke eddying around thighs and waists, we cut over three rows, then back two. Pausha and Div stopped at a case with the right numbers in silver-leaf on the lower corner of the front panel of cut glass. I looked into the case, at the three books on glass pedestals, then at Sarah. I understood part of why Pausha smiled: the titles of the books — two of the three, at least, the third so old the spine was in tatters, the letters worn away — were written in the lost tongue of the Jakkans. It was possible my wines and her tomes came from the same find.
“How do the bids stand?”
Pausha rapped the stone in one of her rings against the glass, then stepped back. Starting at the top of the pane of glass and scrolling down came a short list of names and numbers. It was Sarah’s turn to look faint.
“Okay.” My magics showed a bright fear in her, but she hid it well. “Put it all into my bid and make a note I’m willing to negotiate if...”
Pausha nodded, humming a little half-melody as she pulled a quill from one of the inside pockets of her robe, then made a few scratches into the bid-book. Done.
“Perhaps Div can give us a history lesson.” As she turned to Div, Pausha’s tone of voice said she was teasing.
Div scowled. “Perhaps not. You should warn your charge about what negotiations here can entail.”
Pausha didn’t miss a beat, answering without a pause. “She knows what she can trade and what she can’t. Perhaps you should warn your charge about the open house.”
Div sighed, looked at me, shook his head, and adjusted his grip on his cane. “Mr. Nosso, don’t take this personally, but I don’t trust you. Pausha is right in this, you should be warned. If you embarrass me, I will have your hands pressed in a vise.”
He put some force behind the delivery. With the smoke swirling around us, I probably would’ve been knocked out by the exertion, but Div didn’t waver. I wondered again if it was possible to build up a resistance to this particular poison, but with the smoke swirling around us, I couldn’t wonder too long.
“Do you speak for yourself, or for the house?” I asked. “And what do you mean by ‘embarrass’?”
“I speak for myself, Mr. Nosso. Don’t be a fool.”
I looked again at Divezha. Underneath the silver hair and wrinkles and age-spots, I saw Hessar blood, and from the way he held the stick, I knew he could use it for more than just balance. I wasn’t worried about a beating; Master Tellrus had thrashed me senseless more than a few times, I’d learned to take my lumps. However, if he did take it into his head that I’d somehow misspoken or misstepped, I might lose my chance to bid in the open house, and whatever nastiness Divezha had at his command would dwindle away like a wetted wick compared to what my master would do.
“Let me remind you: I heal faster than you do. I don’t plan to embarrass anyone.”
He didn’t sound like he believed me, not a bit, as he answered, “You may not have much of a choice.”
We crossed the long hallway to the doors on the other side. A plume of warmer air rolled out, intermingled with raised voices, strange scents, and the sound of music. It swirled around our bodies, brushing away some of the silent house’s smoke.
No one seemed to notice our entrance when we passed through the doorway, and it was easy to see why. As we entered, Div, consulting his ring, told me, ‘You have your silent lot.’ There was enough smoke left in my lungs that I nearly retched. I felt my knees begin to give, then swallowed, mastered myself, and stood up straight. I was halfway to my goal, but halfway is a great distance away from real success, and Tellrus had trained me to refuse half-measures. I thought ahead. I’m not superstitious, but I crossed my fingers and my toes inside my boots.
Copyright © 2023 by Patrick Honovich
