Thieves' World: Enemies of Fortune Read Online Free PDF Page A

huge sums to the guild for the privilege of being slave labor for at least five years.”
    Pay for the right to make things? He shook his head. “Impossible.” Not even if he had the money.
    “There must be some way around it. Look at this, Bezul. He’s done his time. How long, child? How long have you worked with Harnet?”
    His eyes went funny, his head light. He hadn’t heard Grandfather’s name in over five years. Had learned not even to think it. Secrecy, Kadithe. It’s our only chance.
    “S-since I was four … five ..” He couldn’t remember the first time he’d sat next to his grandfather, high on a stool, a tiny mallet clutched in his hand. “Something like.”
    “There. You see?”
    “And where is he? Harnet’s been gone for five years and more. Is he a paying master, boy?”
    He shrugged. Shook his head.
    “But he’s still alive.” His wife persisted.
    Bile rose in his throat. Fear such he hadn’t known for many long years. He began to shake, tried again for the door, and found himself ensnared in her arms.
    “Please,” he whispered, in the hoarse voice that was all he had left these days, “please, may I just have the blanket. It—” He choked and got the words out, owing these people who spoke fondly of Harnet Mur at least that much. “It’s for my grandfather.”
    She set him back on his chair. “Why didn’t you just say so? Pride is a shortcut to hell, child.” She picked up a slate and began writing. “Blanket. Shirt. What else?”
    “You’ll trade then?”
    “Wasting time, young man. What else?”
    Bezul nodded and slipped out the door, evidently counting the deal closed—or in the hands of a master.
    “P-pissing pot?” he whispered, his face hot as ever it could get, and she added it to her list with only a hint of a twitch to her kind mouth. One by slow one, he added those small items they’d done without for so long, waiting for her to stop him, unable to believe the necklace could possibly be worth as much as she was allowing. When he asked, hesitantly, for an iron skillet and she agreed, he began to suspect charity, and closed his mouth, firmly, resenting the position she’d put him in, wondering what her angle must be.
    “So,” she said, scanning the list. “Fair enough, though if you’d used anything better than agates in it, I’d owe you. Think you can carry all this at once?”
    “Safer if I made more than one trip.”
    Safer was not lost on her. Bezul’s shop was in the Shambles, opposite the Maze. Safe was a concept she well understood.
    “I’ll get Ammen or Jopze to deliver it. Where do you live?”
    “I’ll come back,” he said firmly. No way he was leading these people to home.
    Again, that gentle smile that saw through him. “Good enough. I’ll get it ready”
    As she left, Bezul returned, carrying something in his hand. It was a spool. A spool of fine, copper wire.
    “You know what to do with this?” he asked, and Kadithe, unable to take his eyes from that treasure, nodded. “I want you to take it. Make beautiful things. Bring them here to me. I don’t want you or that grandfather of yours wanting. Ever. You need something, you come and ask. We’ll work it out. Understand?”
    Understand? He understood nothing except that he’d betrayed Grandfather’s trust. And yet, as the numbness in his mind eased, somehow … some god must be smiling on him, because it was just possible that it would all work out for the best.
    Still not altogether certain he wasn’t dreaming, he gathered up the beautiful wire, stammered something he hoped was thanks, and escaped.
    He was home before he remembered the two bundles lying beside the doorway of Bezul’s Exchange.
     
    T he rocky reef had one high point about the size of a ship’s boat when the tide was in, one rock a man could sit on that was above the fetch of the waves with a south wind driving. So Camargen sat, sodden down to his boots. A man could freeze, in such a wind, even under the burning