The Brazen Gambit Read Online Free PDF

man he's
getting better long enough and either you're right or he's dead." ... though he'd bought a few of the yellow powder
packets himself. Work in the customhouse was usually more strenuous than tossing salt sacks, and Ral's Breath was
cheap enough even he could afford it. "Stuff tastes awful until it numbs your mouth. Then you're so busy trying not to
bite your tongue, you forget what else hurts."
    "Well, apparently it doesn't taste as bad as it's supposed to and the rabble isn't forgetting, they're complaining.
Our great and mighty king tolerates the sale of Ral's Breath because it's lucrative and because, unlike just about
anything else that could be ground up and sold, the seeds it's made from can't be used to make anything else-anything
    veiled"
    She alluded to the Veiled Alliance, a loose-knit association of magic-users that was banned in Urik and
everywhere else in the Tablelands.
    Templars got the thrust for their spells directly from their sorcerer-king. Templar spells, Pavek knew from his
archive research, belonged to the broad tradition of what the archive scrolls called clerical or priestly spellcraft.
    And, as Metica had pointed out, since the outlawed Alliance magicians could wreak spells with just about
anything, any substance that was useless to them was noteworthy. Small wonder, then, that King Hamanu allowed
Ral's Breath to be sold for city profit. Except
     
    "If these seeds are so useless, how can anyone truly tell if the Ral's Breath has been overcut?"
    "Useless to the Veil, Regulator, but as you said, the zarneeka seeds have a distinctive taste and numbing texture.
Someone's shrinking the amount of zarneeka that goes into every packet of Ral's Breath. You'll find out who, and why,
and then you'll tell me. As a favor to me... for my inconvenience dealing with the dead-heart. Simple?"
    The sinews holding the tripod together creaked protest as all the implications of Medea's "favor" sifted down
through Pavek's thoughts. Harmless, practically useless Ral's Breath was a city commodity, stored in the customhouse
and sold to the licensed apothecaries who resold it in their shops. If, the bitter, numbing ingredient in Ral's Breath was
zarneeka-a word Pavek had never heard before-then zarneeka was also a city commodity, stored in the selfsame
customhouse. Either the suppliers who sold zarneeka were shorting the city or the templars who made up the Ral's
Breath packets were pilfering yellow powder. Pavek had his suspicions between the two possibilities-and his hopes.
    "Where do we get zarneeka, great one?"
    "Itinerants trade it directly for salt and oils."
    Pavek couldn't resist a frown: itinerants weren't merchants who paid city taxes and spelled out their names with
trade tokens (and probably knew city-script, just as every civil templar knew the token code). Itinerants didn't even live
in market villages where their lives were lived under constant observation. Itinerants dwelt beyond civilization, deep in
the wastelands, in places that had no names. They were dirt-poor and as free as a man or woman could be.
    Direct trade meant no coins changed hands when the itinerants exchanged their seeds for the other commodities,
and that meant procurers from the civil bureau handled the whole transaction. There were at least twenty procurers
working Urik's customhouse, but when Metica wouldn't meet his eyes, Pavek knew which one handled the zarneeka
trade: the dwarf, Rokka.
    If Rokka's dwarven focus-that innate need dwarves had to organize their lives around a single purpose-wasn't
greed for gold, it was only because Rokka'd found something more valuable.
    But zarneeka? Seeds that turned a man's tongue into a useless lump? Seeds that King Hamanu himself certified
were useless?
    Not if gold-hungry Rokka was involved.
    Had Pavek been anywhere but Metica's chamber, he would have spat the evil thought into the nearest hearth.
    Instead he recited an old street rhyme as casually as he could.