The Belly of the Bow (29 page)

‘That’s right.’

‘Which is stuffed so full of fish and fishermen that you can virtually walk across it from one fishing boat to the next on a
carpet
of premium-quality tuna, whiting, mackerel—’

Venart sighed. ‘You’re missing the point,’ he said. ‘Granted, the Island has a thriving fishing industry. Granted, fresh fish is plentiful and cheap. Now, if you’ve been listening to any of the things I’ve been telling you about trade, you’ll have spotted the crucially important word I just used.’

‘Plentiful? Cheap?’

‘Fresh,’ Venart replied. ‘
Fresh
fish you can hardly give away. Salted fish, however, is a different matter entirely.’

Vetriz stopped for a moment to look at a display of rugs. They were imported, but she wasn’t quite sure where from; the patterns were unusual and the texture finer and thinner than the Mesoge rugs that fetched such good prices on the Island. Before she could ask the price, however, Venart moved her on.

‘All right,’ she said, ‘so there’s not much salt fish sold on the Island. Maybe there’s a reason for that.’

‘You’re being obtuse,’ Venart said severely. ‘Look, we’ve got an established market for fresh fish, everyone lives on the stuff, but it’s so commonplace it’s boring. People will always try something different, so long as it’s not
too
different. Hey presto, salted fish. We could be on the verge of making a fortune.’

‘Or complete idiots of ourselves. Have you thought of that?’

They left the main thoroughfare and passed under a low arch into a narrow street that went sharply uphill. Suddenly, it was dark under the low eaves of the house. ‘Trust me,’ Venart said calmly. ‘I mean, it’s not just the novelty aspect, there’s also the practical side. Fresh fish you’ve got to eat immediately. You can’t keep it.’

‘You don’t need to keep it. You just go out the next day and buy some more.’

‘And,’ Venart continued, as he dodged under a line of wet washing, ‘there’s the flavour. Entirely different flavour.’

‘Yes, it’s salty. Very salty.’

‘And not forgetting,’ Venart ground on, ‘value for money. If we can buy it at the right price, we’ll be able to make it so our salt fish won’t cost any more than the fresh stuff. That’s a very important consideration.’

Vetriz sighed. The infuriating thing was that Venart was quite probably right. She remembered the sun-dried-beef craze that had swept the Island a few years ago; sun-dried strips of prime beef steak, imported from Colleon, had been the only fashionable thing to serve your guests, in spite of the fact that it tasted like rawhide and broke your teeth, and the cattle-boats from the Mesoge were ploughing across the sea half empty. And then there was the imported-water craze, and Nean goat’s milk cheese, and the live cuttlefish fetched all the way from Ria in huge terracotta vats, when you couldn’t fall off Founders’ Pier without coming up with three cuttlefish in your pocket.

The epicentre of the salt-fish trade on Scona was the inner courtyard of a small anonymous inn tucked away in an alley leading off the dark, narrow street they were walking up. They missed the turning the first time; it was little more than a doorway, in a street where most of the doors were open all the time, and it was only when Vetriz insisted on stopping and asking someone (much to her brother’s disgust) that they found the right one. The alley was as narrow as a corridor, and they had to step over two or three old women who were sitting in the middle of it, completely blocking the way and appearing not to hear when politely asked to move; they were completely engrossed in their work, which was lacemaking. It was so dark in the alley that Vetriz could hardly see what they were doing, and the thought of them squatting in the shadows forming the tiny, intricate stitches made her feel sick - she had three beautiful lace collars back at the inn, which she’d bought in the market the previous day.

They found the inn, which also appeared to be entirely composed of corridors, and just when they were sure they’d taken another wrong turning and were about to head back, they stumbled through into the courtyard.

The first thing they noticed was the sunlight, and after that a beautiful cherry tree, which stood in the middle of the grass. Under it sat a very fat man, who appeared to be taking no notice whatsoever of the forty or so men and women who sat on stone benches on all four sides of the covered portico that surrounded the courtyard. They were mostly sitting still and staring vacantly at the sky or the ground, though a few were doing calculations on strings of tally-beads or writing laboriously on plain cedar-backed wax tablets. They showed no inclination to shift up and make room when asked to do so, and in the end Venart and Vetriz had to perch awkwardly on the end of a stone bench.

What little conversation there was seemed to have nothing to do with fish. An ancient and disturbingly thin woman whose forearms were encircled with massive gold bangles from wrist to elbow was telling a rambling story about her daughter’s bad experiences in childbirth, which nobody was listening to. Two stocky bald men were playing checkers on a tiny board balanced on the points of their knees; the board was made of tiny tessarae of lapis lazuli and ivory, and the pieces were coral and amber. A bewildered-looking young man with long, tangled hair was working his way with dedicated efficiency through a tall brass jug of dark-red wine, which he held at arm’s length and poured into his mouth, drenching his beard and tunic. A nice-looking old man with snowy white hair and a brand-new pair of red boots was softly playing a mandolin. The place looked like a cross between some versions of the earthly paradise and a lunatic asylum.

Then, quite unexpectedly, the fat man in the middle looked up from the book he was reading and started talking about cod. He said that because of the recent bad weather and the activities of pirates in the Belmar Straits, good salt cod would quite soon be at a premium. There was a moment of dead silence, almost as if the fat man had said something obscene, before a huge, ferocious-looking individual with a head like a skull replied that he had a warehouse full of barrels of the very finest salt cod, the best that money could buy, and fairly soon he was going to have to throw it all in the sea just to make room for something he might one day have a chance of selling. He was interrupted by a handsome middle-aged lady on the other side of the courtyard, who said in a very matter-of-fact voice that because of the vast quantities of unsaleable cod that were constipating her barn she was staring bankruptcy in the face and considering doing away with herself. A nondescript man with a short grey beard added that he’d invested his daughter’s dowry in cod a short while back and accordingly was resigned to having the wretched girl on his hands for the rest of his life.

The fat man nodded, was silent for a while, and then announced that, owing to the unprecedented demand, he was afraid he would have to ration his customers to a maximum of fifty
elmirs
of cod apiece for the foreseeable future, and the price would henceforth be seventeen quarters an
elmir
-

(‘What’s an elmir?’ Vetriz whispered.

‘I haven’t the faintest idea,’ Venart replied.)

- which was strictly non-negotiable, cash in advance, no notes of hand or letters of credit. A little wizened man in a corner, who was so tiny that Vetriz had to look quite hard before she managed to see him at all, called out, ‘Fifteen quarters.’ The fat man ignored him, repeated his price, and went back to his book. The dignified lady called out sixteen quarters, half on delivery, half in thirty days. Without looking up, the fat man said ‘Sixteen, cash.’ Everybody started to talk, and then shout, at once. Venart didn’t hear the closing bid above the din, but apparently the bidding was over, because the fat man prised himself up off the ground, brushed off the seat of his trousers, waddled across to one of the checkers-players and started a lively but muffled conversation with him. A cheerful-looking woman with improbably red hair stood up, walked over to the tree, sat under it and produced an embroidery frame.

‘Yes, but if we don’t know what an
elmir
is,’ Vetriz hissed, ‘we won’t have a clue how much we’re buying.’

‘Excuse me.’ Venart looked over his shoulder. The man who’d just spoken was a tall, stern-looking individual with short grey hair and a magnificent beard that flowed down his chest like an iron waterfall. ‘You aren’t familiar with our weights and measures?’

‘Not entirely,’ Venart admitted.

‘It’s quite simple,’ the man replied. ‘We use the Colleon
elmir
, which is a volume measure, exclusively for cod; one
elmir
is roughly two Scona hogsheads, and the Scona hogshead is more or less nineteen City gallons. For all other fish, except herring, we use the Shastel
elmir
, which is approximately two and a quarter Scona hogsheads, or when it’s more convenient to deal by weight, we deal in Scona hundredweights, which are nine-tenths of the City standard, though for accounting purposes we convert that into Shastel hundredweights, which are eleven-tenths City. A Scona hogshead of cod is just over one Shastel hundredweight, if that’s any help to you. Of course,’ he added, ‘it’s all completely different for dealing in fresh fish, which is important to remember when you’re buying fresh fish to salt down.’

Venart nodded helplessly and thanked the man for his advice, just as the cheerful woman under the tree announced, apparently to her embroidery, that she had four hundred
vezants
of prime tuna, but she was probably going to hang onto it until the price rose to something like the level she’d bought it at.

(‘
Vezants?
’ Venart whispered.

‘Four and an eighth Colleon
elmirs
,’ his neighbour replied. ‘Some people find it a more convenient measure for large quantities. She’s lying, of course,’ he went on, ‘she’s only got about a quarter as much; but if she manages to sell it all, she’ll buy in the rest of what she needs later on in the day.’)

Eventually, after an hour or so (it was hard keeping track of time) Venart managed to join in the bidding, and went away with a verbal agreement to buy twelve City hundredweights of salt mackerel at fourteen quarters the Colleon
elmir
from the young man with the brass jug. When they got up to leave, the whole assembly looked up and formally wished them long life and prosperity.

‘I make that seventy-two quarters,’ Venart said, as they found their way out of the alley back into the light and noise of the main street. ‘Which is quite a good price, if you ask me.’

‘Fifty-six,’ Vetriz corrected him. ‘Twelve City hundredweight is ten and four-fifths Shastel hundredweight, which is ten and four-fifths Scona hogsheads, or five and two-fifths
elmir
. Fifty-six quarters. From what I could gather, it’s slightly on the high side of the going rate.’

‘Oh,’ Venart said. ‘In that case, let’s go back to the inn and have a drink to celebrate. I think we’ve earned one, don’t you?’

There was nobody to be seen when they got back to the inn, and they gave up all hope of getting a drink and collapsed into two rickety chairs in the common room. Venart produced his tablets and was laboriously going over the calculations when he looked up and saw a man in military uniform standing over him.

‘Venart Auzeil?’ the man asked.

‘That’s me.’

‘You’re under arrest,’ the soldier said.

‘I think it’s broken,’ said Venart sorrowfully, dabbing at his nose with a scrap of bloodstained cloth he’d torn off his sleeve. ‘In fact, I’m sure of it.’

‘Don’t be such a baby,’ Vetriz replied scornfully. ‘You’d know it all right if it really was broken. And anyway, it’s all your own fault.’

Realising that he couldn’t expect any sympathy from his sister, Venart turned away and looked round the room. It wasn’t a dungeon cell or anything like that; as far as he’d been able to gather, they were in some kind of waiting room at the end of a couple of miles of corridors, somewhere in the head office of the Bank of Scona. But a room with four bleak stone walls, no window and a heavy closed door can call itself what it likes; if you happen to be in it, it’s a cell.

‘You really are an idiot, Ven,’ Vetriz went on. ‘What on earth possessed you to talk to that man like that?’

‘How was I to know?’ Venart protested bitterly. ‘Ever since we arrived on this horrible island, all everybody’s been telling me is, “Don’t take any notice of what the scuffers say, they’re just trying it on to get money.” So, quite understandably—’

Vetriz sighed. ‘If you can’t tell the difference between a customs official and a palace guard, I’m amazed you’ve lasted this long in commerce. It was obvious he wasn’t just an ordinary - what was that word you just used?’

‘They all look the same to me,’ Venart replied bitterly. ‘Great big useless idiots in a uniform. And there was no need for him to hit me; all I did was say I wasn’t coming.’

‘That’s not quite true,’ Vetriz pointed out. ‘You said - rather rudely - that you weren’t coming, he tried to grab your arm, you shoved him—’

‘I didn’t shove him. He just sort of collided with my arm.’

Vetriz made a rude noise and folded her arms tightly around her chest. ‘Have you been in places like this before?’ she said. ‘I mean, do you know what happens next?’

Venart shrugged. ‘No idea,’ he said. ‘I suppose they’ll have us up in front of a judge and we’ll be fined a lot of money. That’s what it’s all about, I imagine, getting money out of us.’

Vetriz shuddered slightly. ‘I only hope you’re right,’ she said. ‘Assault on an officer of the state in the execution of his duties . . . You don’t think they’ll hang us, do you? Or lock us up for years and years?’

Venart scowled. ‘This is a bank,’ he replied, trying to sound confident. ‘How much business do you think they’d do if every time there was a misunderstanding with a foreign trader they slung him in jail? You just don’t do that sort of thing if you want to deal with people.’