Turning Points (33 page)

He shook the handle a second time and kicked the door. When that produced no response, Bezul berated himself for imagining that his quest would end any other way. He should return to the changing house: His own business was suffering and his brother would return. Men like Perrez landed on their feet and on the backs of their families.

Bezul turned away from the shop; and as he did, he noticed that the door beside it—the alleyway door between the shop and its leftside neighbor—was not completely closed. By Ils’s thousandth eye, Bezul was a cautious man and, to the extent his profession allowed, an honest man. Undoubtedly, there were objects on the changing house shelves which had not been placed there by their legitimate owners, but Bezulshash, son of Bezulshash, did not knowingly trade for suspect goods. He did not venture into another man’s domain uninvited, or he hadn’t before. After glances toward the Processional and away from it, Bezul slipped into the alley and pulled the door back into its almost-shut position.

The alley proved to be a tunnel running beneath the upper floors of the aromacist’s building. Bezul scuttled as quickly as he dared through the darkness, emerging into a tiny fenced-in square with another door to his right. This door had been properly closed and bolted, but the bolt was on Bezul’s side. The aromacist, then, was more concerned about escape than invasion. After listening for sounds of life on the far side, and hearing none, Bezul slid the bolt from its housing. Still gripping the bolt, he lifted the door so its greater weight was in his hands, not on its hinges, then eased it open.

Bezul stuck his head into what looked, at first, to be a long-abandoned garden, strewn with discarded barrels, crates, and overturned furniture. On second glance around, Bezul realized that while the garden was, indeed, abandoned, the other wreckage was more recent. Perhaps very recent: There were puddles in the dirt around a broken barrel. Bezul eased the rest of the way into the garden. He grabbed the nearest chunk of sturdy wreckage and used it to insure that the door remained open.

Bezul was taking his time, assessing everything in sight, when he spotted a broken barrel-stave with a scrap of red-stained cloth caught in its splintered end.

“Perrez?” he asked himself, then, louder: “Perrez?”

He heard the sound of a heavy object thudding to the ground. The shop’s rear door, Bezul realized, was open and the sound had come from within. He ran across the garden.

“Perrez! Per—!”

Horror, relief, and anger were only three of the emotions that bottled Bezul’s voice in his throat. He’d found his younger brother, found him alive, but bloody. Beaten bloody, bound with ropes and rags, gagged, and hung from a roof beam were he swayed like a dripping pendulum, an overturned bench beneath. Not—thank all the gods that ever were—hanged by a noose around his neck, but slant-wise with from a noose that passed under the opposite shoulder. The shoulder-slung noose wouldn’t make much difference, if Bezul didn’t cut through it quick. Perrez was already wheezing for air.

Bezul righted the bench and went to work with his knife. He freed his brother’s wrists with a single slash, then hacked through the hanging rope. Bezul meant to keep hold of the loose end and lower

Perrez gently to the floor, but the rope wasn’t long enough. Perrez hit the floor with a moan—but he was breathing easier even then.

“Hold still!” Bezul commanded as he slipped his knife beneath the gag and for, perhaps, the first time in his life, Perrez obeyed.

“Bez…Bez!” the battered man gasped. “Father Ils! Never thought… you’d find…”

“Save your thanks.” Bezul had gotten a closer look at his brother. On the ground, it was clear that none of Perrez’s wounds was close to mortal and that meant Bezul could vent his anger. “I don’t know which is worse: that you cheated the Nighters or that you got cheated by some Ilsigi fly-by-night yourself.”

Through the bruises and blood, Perrez protested his innocence.

“I’ve talked to Mother,” Bezul snapped. “I’ve talked to a wench at the Unicorn who seemed to remember you well enough. And I’ve done more than talk to that Nighter.”

“What Nighter? What are you talking about, Bez?”

“Don’t ‘Bez’ me. You knew he’d come looking when you didn’t show up to return his damn lucky so you pointed him at me. What did you expect? That I’d keep him out of your way until you had your seventy royals? Or was that just a number you threw at Mother? Did your aromacist friend make you the same sheep-shite promise you gave the Nighter: Give me what I want and I’ll make you my partner? By Lord Ils’s thousandth eye, what
else
have you been doing besides making us the guarantor for every bet in Sanctuary?”

“I’d have split the royals with you, Bez… with you and the frackin’ froggin’ Nighter!” Perrez studied his torn, stained sleeve before cursing softly and swiping his face with the cloth. He ignored the jibe about his oddsmaking activities. “It was a fair deal, Bez, a good price. That ‘lucky’ wasn’t any ordinary piece of glass. It’s an
attractor
. The fish-folk made them: hollow bulbs filled with their magic. If you want something bad enough it’ll bring it to you, or lead you there. Worth their frackin’ froggin’ weight in gold when the fish-folk made them and ten times that now. Nareel—”

“Your buyer? The aromacist? The man who strung you up?” Perrez hesitated, then nodded. “Nareel will get a thousand for it up in Ilsig… once we’d gotten the crabs out of it. Shalpa! Those Nighters were using a fish-eye attractor as bait in their crab traps! Now, there’s a waste, Bez, a true crime. Once we got it focused on gold-”

“What ‘
we
,’ Perrez? I should think it would be clear—even to you—that this Nareel has plans that don’t involve you.”

Perrez wanted to disagree; Bezul could see the arguments forming, then fading on his brother’s face. It was painful to watch, but Bezul did, in icy silence, until Perrez broke.

“I should have come to you,” he admitted. “As soon as I realized what the Nighter had baiting his traps, I should have come to you and let you handle everything: getting it away from the Nighter and finding a buyer, too. But it was going so well… I was going to come to you with the seventy royals, Bez, I
swear
I was. I’d lay them down on the counter and you’d be
proud
of me. Shalpa, Bez—I don’t want to be Nareel’s partner. I want to be yours. I want you to trust me with the changing house. You’ve done so well, and what do I have to show for myself?” From his knees, Perrez reached up to take his elder brother’s hand. “Help me, Bez. I know where Nareel’s gone, I think. If you confront him, he’ll honor his bargain. I’m begging you, Bez. Our honor’s at stake, here. You can’t let Nareel get away with what he’s done.”

It was a good speech and it might have melted Bezul’s heart, if he hadn’t heard similar speeches too many times before. He withdrew his hand. “Nareel’s robbed a thief. Where’s the honor on either side in that? That glass never belonged to you. No, it’s over. The aromacist’s made a fool of you, and there it ends. Stand up. We’re going home. Be grateful you still have one… and
pray
you’ve figured the odds right. What little I hear, it’s not going the way anyone expected.”

With a whimpering groan, Perrez rose unsteadily. His brother could not tell how much was genuine pain, how much just another part of the act.

“What about Dace?” Perrez asked. “If the attractor wasn’t mine, then it belongs to the Nighter, not Nareel. We can’t walk away, Bez. We’ve still got to get it back.”

Bezul scarcely believed what he was hearing. “Don’t you—” he cut himself short. The aromacist’s workroom was no place to continue an argument with Perrez, who would neither listen nor change. “I gave Dace one of Father’s glass bulbs to replace his ‘red lucky.’ ”

He returned to the garden. Perrez followed.

“You can’t do that, Bez. You can’t replace a fish-eye attractor with a bulb of ordinary glass. It’s not going to catch crabs. I mean, a few nights, and he’s going to know it’s not their frackin’ froggin’ lucky.”

“Maybe; maybe not.”

“No maybes. The attractor’s got
pull
, froggin’ fish-eye sorcery. There’s nothing in Father’s chest to compare with it, nothing in the whole shop. Dace’ll be back… with his relatives. I’ve seen ‘em. The gimp’s one of the
normal
Nighters, Bez. You’ve got to think they’ve been screwing rats and trolls—”

Bezul opened the gate. He had the impression of a face and a yell, then he was reeling as something surged past him. The fence kept Bezul upright. Perrez was not so fortunate. He was on his back, bellowing panic and pain, beneath not the mysterious aromacist, but Dace, who attacked him with wild fury. Bezul seized the youth’s shoulder, hoping to pull him off Perrez, but he underestimated Dace’s determination, not to mention his skills and his strength. The Nighter broke free with an elbow jab between Bezul’s ribs.

With greater caution and an eye for self-defense, Bezul tried again and succeeded.

“He can’t say that!” Dace growled while struggling to get his fists on Perrez again. “He lied. He stole the lucky.”

Realizing that he couldn’t break free, Dace twisted about and attacked Bezul. Bezul successfully defended his groin and his gut, but lost his grip when Dace stomped his instep. Still, he caught the Nighter before he laid into Perrez.

“Enough!” Bezul gave Dace a shove into the fence that nearly toppled it and quieted the youth. “Yes, he stole it and lost it, because he’s a frogging fool, but, you’re no better. You gave it to him for a scrap of cloth and a promise! Let it be a lesson to you both.” He shoved Perrez, who’d just gotten his feet under him, at the open gate. “Start moving.”

Perrez, who hadn’t actually lost anything that could have been called his in the first place, went through the gate without protest. Not so Dace. The Nighter retreated toward the aromacist’s workroom.

“I’m stayin’. That Nareel comes home, I’m gettin’ the lucky back. Don’t care ‘bout no royals.”

By that Bezul assumed Dace had overheard his entire conversation with Perrez. “You don’t need sorcery to bait crabs, Dace. The lucky’s not worth dying for,” he told the youth and silently chided himself for caring. He turned around and nearly walked into Perrez.

“We don’t have to wait. I know where Nareel’s gone—he’d brought a map with him from Ilsig. He was looking for some dead shite’s hoard. Fastalen—something like that. The map didn’t match with what he found in the quarter. There’s not a house up there now that was standing when whoever drew Nareel’s map. That’s where the attractor came in. He and I were going to use it to find the hoard. Said it had to be today—couldn’t wait ‘til tomorrow, something about the sun. He’s up there now—I swear it—and we don’t need an attractor to find a man rooting through rubble.”

“We don’t need anything,” Bezul replied. “We’re going home to Wriggle Way.” But Bezul stopped short of shoving his brother toward the gate again. He wasn’t blind to the allure in Perrez’s argument. “Look at yourself,” he said in one last attempt to free them all from temptation. “Clothes torn. Face bloodied. And don’t tell me you’ve got full use of your right arm. The aromacist has already beaten you once today, Perrez—”

“Because I wasn’t ready. This time, I’ll be surprising him… and you’ll be with me.”

“No.”

“Bez—”

“No.”

“You’re getting
old
, Bez. Ten years ago, you’d have led the way.”

“Not a chance,” Bezul said confidently.

Children hadn’t changed him, marriage hadn’t changed him, even the Troubles hadn’t changed him. He’d changed the day his father abandoned their uptown shop for Wriggle Way. Perrez couldn’t remember that day; he’d been a toddler, younger than Lesimar; but Bezul had been old enough to see the despair on his parents’ faces and it had burnt the wildness out of him forever.

“Let it go, Perrez. Come home. Chersey will bind up your ribs and cuts.”

“No. It’s the Nighter’s lucky and
our
gold, not Nareel’s. Tell Mother I’m coming home rich, or not at all.”

Dace—Father Ils bless his limp and his stubbornness—had hobbled out of the workroom to stand beside Perrez, all but announcing that they were partners again. Bezul closed his eyes. He imagined himself returning to Wriggle Way: sober, righteous… alone. Wealth had never tempted him. It still didn’t, but the tide had turned regardless.

“If we’re going,” he conceded, “we’d best get started.”

Between Dace’s withered leg and Perrez’s bruises, the three men crossed Sanctuary slowly. Bezul considered that their prey might be flown by the time Perrez got them to the right quarter. He kept his thoughts to himself. If they missed the opportunity, then they missed the danger, too.

“Not far now,” Perrez assured them as they trudged up one of the steepest streets in the city.

They’d paused for water at a communal well where Perrez had washed the worst of the blood from his face, which only made the bruises more noticeable, and the swollen kink in his nose. Bezul was a grown man with children of his own, but he’d always be the elder brother. He reserved the right to pummel Perrez; he conceded it to no one, especially not an
aromacist
from Ilsig.

Perrez led them down a treacherous alley to a courtyard that had seen better days, much better days, a generation or more earlier. Patches of fresco murals clung to the weathered walls, none of them large enough to reveal a scene or subject. The windows and doorways were empty, stripped of everything valuable or moveable.

“Where to?” Dace asked.

There was no need for Perrez’s answer. They could all hear a man shouting, “Slowly… Slowly, you worms!” with the rounded accent of old Ilsig.

“Nareel!”

Perrez grinned and Bezul had to move quickly to stop his brother from racing to a confrontation.

“Slowly’s a damn good idea, Perrez. Slowly and
quietly
. He’s not alone.”

“You first,” Perrez urged and Bezul obliged.

There was a sameness to the ruins of Sanctuary. After beams burnt and walls fell, it could be difficult to say if the ruins had been a mansion or a hovel. For Bezul, it was enough that there was rubble to hide behind and see around in a deeply shadowed corner not far from the gaping doorway. He motioned to Perrez and Dace and they joined him.