The Dreamer's Curse (Book 2) (24 page)

“You weren’t there while he was learning
how
to be
charming. I swear it was just like dealing with an eight year old.”

“Your Princess Hana didn’t think so.”

“You didn’t get to see that awkward courtship either,” she
retorted, although she laughed as she said that as it brought back memories.
“Ohhh, if I ever wanted to make an easy million, I’d write a book about him
staying with me. Parts of it were downright entertaining.”

He quirked his brows at her, smiling at her smile. “Oh?
Well, we have something of a walk ahead of us. Why don’t you regale me with the
story?”

If it kept him from sweet-talking her, gladly. She started
from the beginning, what she knew of it, and weaved the story for him. Truly,
though, she didn’t pay a great deal of attention to what she said. What lay
ahead of them took up most of her interest. She hadn’t seen the market in four
years, and in that time, it had grown significantly.

A good indication of the state of the world was the black
and gray markets. The more unrest, upheaval and disorder there was, the more
these two markets thrived as people were forced to go outside the law to buy
the basic necessities. If this market was anything to go by, then Belen’s
economy was in very bad shape indeed. Four years ago, the various tents,
booths, and vendors took up a city block or so. For a black market, it was sizable
and it thrived with sound and activity as people went about their business. But
it didn’t compare to this. Now, Sevana would say it had grown five times over
and covered at least three or four acres. The sounds of humans conversing, work
being done, and goods being traded created such a din of noise that she had to
raise her own voice to hear herself. But more than that was the smell. With
this press of unwashed bodies and ill-prepared food, it stank to high heaven.
She instinctively flinched.

“Oh, I have grown so accustomed to it, I nearly forgot.”
From a breast pocket, de Luca pulled out a vial and passed it to her. “Extract
of orange. Place a dab under your nose otherwise you’ll faint from the vapors.”

She whispered a quick revealing spell as she accepted the
vial, but nothing reacted, so it was indeed what he said it was. (Not that he
had ever tried to drug her, but since she trusted the man about as far as she
could throw him.…) She dabbed a significant quantity under her nose before
passing the vial back to Sarsen, who took it gratefully.

“I’ve tried putting some regulations in here to help with
the smell,” de Luca sighed in true aggravation. “But it’s mostly the people
here who are the problem, and what can I do? Say they must bathe properly
before entering? I feel like an overbearing parent.”

“They obviously need one.” Sevana could still smell some of
the stench past the orange extract although it helped significantly. It made
her nose want to revolt and her stomach churn. Orange-scented rotting fish is
what it reminded her of. How charming.

The tents lined up on either side, crammed together to take
up as little space as possible, and were huddled so close together that there
wasn’t much of a path in between them. A crowd of people shifted through, literally
shuffling along as it was impossible to make any real headway, with absolutely
no breathing room whatsoever. Even with the guards around them, they were
pressed together tightly, although the people who noticed the count’s guards
tried to move out of the way as best they could. Really, anyone that had issues
with either enclosed spaces or crowds would have had a fit just looking at this
place.

It seemed like they didn’t make any progress at all, but soon
enough de Luca turned toward a particularly garish tent of red and gold stripes
and hailed the burly man working there with an upraised hand. “Master Yawas!”

The man looked up from the customer he was helping and his
prominent eyes flew wide as he recognized who called to him. He instantly
ducked into a respectful bow. “My lord! You honor me.”

The guards forcibly shifted people aside so that she and de
Luca could approach the table and stand directly in front of it. Sevana took in
her first deep breath since entering this madness.

Extending a hand to her, de Luca purred out the
introduction. “My fiancée, Artifactor Sevana Warran, has come to make an
inquiry of you.”

For that, she stomped firmly on his foot with the heel of
her boot. He made a squeaking noise in the back of his throat in pain, teeth
gritted. Her eyes shot to him in warning. “Make that introduction one more
time, and I shall surely cut off
all
ties with you.”

This threat panicked him more than anything else she had
said before, and he put a hand to his heart and half-bowed in apology. “Take my
words as nothing more than meaningless wind.”

“I shall do so,” she assured him coolly. To the waiting
merchant—who, judging from his expression, seemed impressed by how she handled
the count—she said simply, “I am looking for a magical artifact. We are told
you have something in your possession that resembles it. It stands roughly this
tall, is seemingly made of gray porcelain, and has white engravings on it?”

He bobbed his head in recognition. “Yes, my lady Artifactor,
I know what you’re describing. I received it this morning.” He turned and
rummaged in a box off to the side. “I wasn’t quite sure I should put it out
yet, as I didn’t know the value of it, but I paid a pretty penny for it. My
nephew’s a magician trainee, and he said it had strong magic attached to it.”

Well, that sounded promising, or it would if there weren’t
spells that could fake ‘strong magic’ just to rook people with. She waited with
baited breath as he pulled out a wooden box and unwrapped the blue cloth to expose
the item.

As soon as the top was revealed, she let out the breath she
held in disappointment. While it was tall, and gray, it was nothing more than a
cylindrical vase with pretty white lines in a swirling pattern painted on it.

De Luca waited anxiously for her reaction, but when she did
nothing more than stare at it, he seemed to know without her saying anything.
“That’s not it.”

“It’s not,” she admitted. Reaching out, she plucked the vase
out of the box entirely and gave it a good, thorough look. “Master…Yawas, was
it?”

“Yes, my lady.”

“I hope you didn’t pay too much for this, because if you
have, you’ve been rooked.”

Yawas’ brows slammed together. “What is it?”

“It’s a disappearing vase,” she answered, studying the
bottom of it, looking for a maker’s mark. “It’s used in magic shows, usually.
You drop something in this vase, and it’ll come out in its twin. I’m afraid
that one is entirely useless without the other.”

Yawas looked ready to murder someone right there. “And the
magic my nephew sensed?”

“Oh, that’s there,” she assured him. “He wasn’t wrong about
that. There’s nothing wrong with this vase. In fact, I’m sure it would function
perfectly if you had the full set. But without its pair, it’s only good for
vanishing things into the great unknown.”

“You bought this from an unknown supplier?” de Luca
inquired.

“Yes, my lord,” Yawas confirmed unhappily. “He left me with
a name, which I bet now is fake.”

“Make a report about him anyway and give a description,” de
Luca ordered. To Sevana he explained, “If I let bad dealers come in like this,
then the level of goods will drop and the market will suffer terribly. It’s
hard to catch men like this, as they seem to only appear once and make off with
what they can, but when I do catch them I make them pay dearly.”

For good reason. Sevana approved of his methods although not
particularly his reasons. She handed the vase back to Yawas and waved a hand.
“Let’s go to the next.”

Sevana went through two more fakes in the next hour, each
one better and more convincing than the last. The disappearing vase could very
well be dismissed as a coincidence simply because it matched the description
she gave and nothing more. But the next two had obviously been made to look
like the gadgick. They had the right shape to them, the right color, but the
designs weren’t right. In fact, they weren’t anywhere near right. It reminded
her of an illiterate child trying to copy an adult’s handwriting. They could
more or less reproduce the same letters but it would come out sloppy and barely
legible. The same could be applied to the fakes—the designs carved into the
sides were beautiful but completely useless as far as magic went. Only a
skilled magician would be able to tell the difference.

These fakes served as a magnificent red herring and annoyed
her no end. They would,
of course
, be on opposite ends of the market as
well. After so much walking, she felt a little footsore and the dabs of orange
scent under her nose had ceased to work a good hour ago. In sheer self-defense,
her nose shut down completely. She felt further aggravated that they had to go
from one side and then trek all the way to the other just for another forgery.
But as irritated as she felt, it did give her hope. For the forgeries to be
this good, this accurate, the real gadgick had to have come through this
market. If any luck were with her at all, it wouldn’t have sold yet either.

With them in the center of the market like this, new
information came through Sarsen’s Caller via the magician that served de Luca.
Sevana saw absolutely no point in trudging all the way back to the house only
to have to wade through these crowds again later. Still, night had fallen hard
over the land, and the only lights came from the bright moon overhead and the
multitude of lanterns strung up to light the way. She well understood that the
black market did more business at night than during the day, but actually
seeing it in action was something else entirely.

She was jostled on one side—although the guard did his best
to shield her—and slammed her shoulder into de Luca’s. The count, having decent
reflexes, caught her and steadied her about the shoulders. “Are you well, my
dear?”

“Someone jostled me,” she explained while straightening. “Is
it my imagination or is this place becoming
busier?”

“We’re at the rush hour now,” he responded cheerfully, the
businessman in him glowing with greedy anticipation. “It’ll be like this for
some hours yet before it wanes again. Sometime around the pre-dawn hours it’ll
be much more peaceful.”

Sevana felt particularly glad that she’d slept most of the
way here. What was it about this job that came hand in hand with sleep
deprivation? Even with Bel and a mountain full of guests, she’d had more than a
nodding acquaintance with her bed!

Abruptly she realized that while she might have slept,
Sarsen hadn’t. She turned sharply to look up at him over her shoulder. Uh-oh.
Far from being tired, he looked around with glassy eyes, an unnatural grin on
his face, and did he just bounce on his toes? “Sarsen…”

He beamed down at her. “Hmmm?”

“You’re dry-drunk, aren’t you?” she meant that to sound
accusing, but in truth she was nervous. Sarsen had a history of doing
remarkably stupid and reckless things while in this state.

“No, no, I’m just strangely alert,” he assured her.

That’s what I meant by dry-drunk!
She wailed
internally. Her first instinct was to send him back to de Luca’s and force him
to sleep, but she honestly couldn’t afford to. Who knew what kind of move the
count would make with the pesky chaperone out of the way? She gripped her wand
through the sleeve in reassurance. It was fine. This whole situation was fine,
really. Nothing had gotten out of hand. If Sarsen started something, well,
she’d freeze the whole place and get him out of here before anything truly
serious happened. Yes, alright. That was a good plan.

“Oooh, that looks fun.” Sarsen went up on tiptoe to see over
the crowd better. “Hey, while we’re waiting for word of another prospect, I’m
going to go try my hand at that.”

That? She grabbed his arm with an iron grip before he could
move an inch in any direction. “What’s that?” she demanded.

“That,” he said again while pointing somewhere off to the
right. With this wall of people, she couldn’t begin to figure out what he
meant. “That person swallowing swords. I want to learn how to do that.”

Her grip tightened. “
No
.”

He blinked down at her like a child denied a treat. “But it
looks fun!”

“No,” she maintained firmly. Sweet mercy and miracles, he
thought swallowing a sword looked
fun?
What would he think of next?

“Then what about the other one? He’s blowing fire out of his
mouth.”

She’d just had to ask, didn’t she? “
No,
Sarsen. And
if there’s anyone over there sticking their head in a lion’s mouth, you’re not
doing that either.”

“Oh, you can see that?” he asked her ingeniously. “It’s a
beautiful lion but it looks very tame.”

She slapped a hand to her head. “Listen to me.
Thou shalt
not leave my side
. Your job is to be here as a chaperone, remember? You
can’t wander off.”

He snapped his fingers in remembrance, acting for all the
world as if for a moment he truly had forgotten his role here. “Oh, right.
Right, right. Well, leastways I can watch, eh?”

Sevana breathed out a prayer of thanks. As off-kilter as he
might be, he still retained enough sense to listen to reason, eh? Good, good.

De Luca took his eyes off of her long enough to truly study
Sarsen. In a stage whisper he said next to her ear, “I’ve never seen him act
like this before.”

“None of us have gotten proper rest while on this job,” she
whispered back. “He’s sleep deprived, and that’s a very worrying state. He
loses all sense of danger when he’s like this.” She said this in warning and
hoped de Luca would take it that way. Earlier, with the sword fight, Sarsen had
taken it easy on him and it had still almost ended disastrously. Right now, if
challenged, she had no way to predict how Sarsen would respond.

Her warning did not have the effect she intended it to. The
count seemed intrigued by this information and she could see the wheels turning
in his mind. In an effort to distract him, she turned the conversation to an
entirely different topic. “Why forgeries?”

He blinked, mentally switching tracks, and looked back at
her. “Pardon?”

“Why forgeries?” she repeated, glad her hook worked. “I understand
that forgeries are good for making money and that there are some who make a
full career out of it. But wouldn’t it be considered foolish to have multiple
forgeries of the same thing in the market at the same time?”

“Ahh, I see your point.” In an effort to keep them from
blocking the road and thereby becoming squashed, he urged the group back into
motion as he spoke. “You see, my dear, money is only part of the reason. I
haven’t made a study of it but I have spoken to many forgers during my time, and
it seems to me that their motivation is resentment.”

She had just broached the subject to distract him, but that
last sentence intrigued her. “Resentment?” she parroted, surprised. “What do
they resent?”

“On that, the list seems endless. They resent others’
wealth, their abilities or training, the fact that these people once possessed
the genuine article of whatever they are forging, the fact that their skills
can
only
create forgeries, etcetera.” Pleased to have her genuine
attention for once, he preened a little under her eyes. “In truth, they tend to
be people that are simply unhappy with life and resent everything. But they
also conversely take pride in making a forgery so exact, so skillful, that even
an expert eye can be fooled.” He let out a soft chuckle, expression smug.
“Although they certainly haven’t been able to fool you.”

“It would take a master magician to make a forgery that
would even stand a chance against me,” she informed him dryly. “No matter how
excellent their skills, these things have no magic in them and can’t be imbued
with it at all.”

“Oh? Is that why it only takes you a glance to tell?”

“That’s why.”

From behind her, she heard the muttered voice of de Luca’s
magician coming through Sarsen’s Caller. She half-turned, as much as she could,
and tried to listen as the report came through. The Callers had never been
particularly loud in volume, which was a feature that she hadn’t thought to
change until now. Usually she used them in fairly quiet areas, after all. But
in this noisy, crowded place she could only catch about half of what was said
even though she stood barely a foot away.

Sarsen nodded and put the Caller back in his pouch. “He says
there’s another report in about a vendor selling not one, but three of them.
They match your description perfectly, and what’s more, the story the vendor
tells is that this comes from Chastain.”

Her attention sharpened. No one before had told a story of
how the piece came to the market or where it was originally found. But this
person actually claimed
Chastain
, a remote village that most people in
even Windamere wouldn’t recognize by name. “Where?”

“Southeast quadrant, on the very last row.”

She let out a groan. Of
course
it would be on the
polar opposite side of where she stood now! Well, no help for it. She lifted
her chin, squared her shoulders, and started forward. “Let’s hope this is the
person we’re really looking for.”

With a great deal of shoving, calling ahead to clear the
path, threats, and some judicious use of elbows, the guards managed to clear a
path through the crowds. Sevana didn’t even bear the brunt of this path-blazing
and she still felt a little knocked about by the time they reached the
southeastern quadrant. Whatever de Luca paid these men, they deserved a raise.

The last row didn’t have
quite
the crowd that the
rest of the market did, not from a lack of good products—from what she could
tell through glimpses—but simply because the customers coming in through the
main gates hadn’t yet filtered down to this section. Given another hour or two,
it would likely pick up. But right now it had some breathing room for anyone
shopping in the area, and Sevana felt more than grateful for it. It was almost
worth the battle to get here.

All of the men around her stood taller than she, which
blocked most of her view, so she turned and asked Sarsen, “Do you see them?”

“Hmmm,” he said noncommittally as he scanned the area
slowly. “Ah! There they are, all three of them lined up in a neat little row.”

Three. That still puzzled her even after thinking about it
on the walk over here. Why three? Wouldn’t it be more valuable if he played it
off as just
one
to sell? Or was the forger going off the principle that
quantity was better than quality?

De Luca presented her to the vendor’s tent with a flourish,
an anticipatory smile on his face. “I am Romano Rizzo Conti de Luca.”

The vendor’s eyes flew wide and he immediately ducked into a
bow, although it looked jerky, as if he wasn’t in the habit of doing so. “My
lord! I am honored by your presence. The name’s Rabi.”

Rabi, eh? He looked more Kindin than Belen to her eyes,
somewhere between forty and fifty although it could be the scrawny build, rough
skin, and bloodshot eyes that made him seem so. Her eyes didn’t linger on him
long as the artifact copycats drew her eyes down to the scarred wooden table of
wares. She picked one up and gave it a close scrutiny by lamplight. Hmmm?
Interesting, this was a far better copy than the others. Lifting another, she
compared them side by side and realized with a start that one of them was
actually a closer replica to the original than the other. Almost as if with
each forgery, the maker was getting better.

Her eyes honed in on the vendor’s hands and clothes, looking
for any evidence of the suspicion that had just lodged in her mind. It took her
bare seconds to find it—specks of white and gray paint. Her mouth stretched
into a feral, satisfied smile.
Found you
.

With a slice of her hand, she knocked over all three pieces,
sending them to the ground hard and fast enough that they broke on impact. The
porcelain shattered in a tinkling of sound and made everyone jump back
instinctively to avoid the shards. She didn’t. One hand flicked and caught the
wand as it snapped out of its holster, and with the other she grabbed Rabi by
his shirt and yanked him in close. “Where is it?”

“M-my l-lady, I have no idea what I’ve done to offend—” he
stammered out.

She raised her wand and put it directly in his line of sight
and growled out in a menacing voice, “
Where is it.
This is not a question,
Rabi. I recognize these trinkets of yours for what they are—excellent
forgeries. They bear such a close resemblance to the original, in fact, that it
would be impossible to have made them without the original on hand to study.
So, where is it?”