Chapter 16 Disposable

Miss Quill's jobs were the safest work I'd done in my life, and they paid like it.

A goat on a roof in the second ring, which came down the second it saw me and ran off down the street bleating. A well in a laundry yard that turned out to be blocked by a dead cat and a lot of washing. A wasp nest the size of a beer barrel under the eaves of a chapel, which I took down at night with a sack and some smoke the way Grandad showed me, and didn't get stung once. A privy behind a tannery that the tanner swore was haunted, which had a badger in it.

Nothing broke. Not a roof, not a fountain, not a railing. Miss Quill checked every job sheet before she gave it to me, with a little ruler, and drew lines through things. Brakka sat on the Guild steps every morning and watched me go off without her, and looked like a dog that's been told it can't come in the house.

Four gold and two silver, in four days.

I paid Mrs Ostry for another week on the Wednesday, which took seven silver of it. I wrote it all down in the brown ledger, the way Miss Quill had shown me. Fifty gold, near enough, in the little box at the bottom.

A hundred and fifty to go. A bit over two weeks to first frost, I reckoned, maybe less. The nights were getting colder. You could see your breath at the pump in the mornings.

I did the sum. Then I did it again a different way, because I didn't like the answer. It came out the same both times. At four gold every four days, I'd have about sixty-five gold by first frost, and that was if nothing went wrong.

I sat on the edge of the bed and looked at the ledger and thought about Duchess. About Elsie, minding her, and Tam Fulbright's face when I came home and told him the farm was gone. About Mum's apple tree with a stranger's ladder against it.

Then I closed the ledger and went to bed. There's no point lying awake over a sum. It just comes out the same in the morning.

* * *

The next day, the Guild hall was full of soldiers.

Not the Watch. These were palace guards, in dark blue with silver piping and silver half-helms, standing at every door with long spears. People were coming in, seeing them, and going back out again. Even the drinkers along the walls were sitting up straight.

In the middle of the floor, at the long table under the dome, a young woman was sitting with her back to the door, reading a stack of papers.

I wouldn't have looked at her twice. She was small, and plainly dressed, in grey riding leathers and boots that had seen some miles, with dark red hair cut short at the neck like a boy's. She was writing on the papers as she read them, quick little marks in the margins. Next to her, standing very straight, was Guildmaster Ashby in his red velvet coat, smiling his smile and looking like a man who'd rather be standing anywhere else.

The spectacled clerk caught my eye from behind the counter and jerked his head very slightly. Then he jerked it again.

I went over.

"That's her," he whispered. "Third princess. Lysandra Halvere." He blew his nose. "Ashby sent a runner to Ostry's for you an hour ago. Did you not get it?"

"I was in a privy."

"Course you were." He looked at the soldiers. "Mind yourself."

* * *

Guildmaster Ashby saw me coming and his smile got wider, which was never good.

"Your Highness," he said. "May I present Tobin Marsh. Copper rank, Level one."

The young woman finished the line she was writing. Then she put the pen down and turned round on the bench and looked at me.

She had grey-green eyes, very sharp, the colour of creek water over stones. She looked at me the way Haddie looks at a hide, and the way Miss Quill looks at a column of figures, and the way Duchess looks at a gate. Like she was working out how I'd come apart.

"This is him," she said.

"As requested, Your Highness." Ashby spread his hands. "You asked for the most expendable member of the Guild. I can assure you there is no member more expendable. He is, quite literally, the lowest-levelled adult we have ever recorded."

"Thank you, Guildmaster," said the princess, without looking at him. "You can go."

Ashby's smile stayed where it was. The rest of his face went a bit stiff. He bowed and went, and the soldiers at his door stood aside to let him into his office, and closed it after him.

The princess was still looking at me.

"Sit down, Mister Marsh."

I sat on the bench opposite. The cleaver clunked against the edge of the table. She glanced at it, then back at me.

"I'm going to tell you exactly what I want," she said. "Because I've found that people do a job better when they know it's a bad one. Is that all right?"

"That suits me fine, Your Highness."

"Good." She put her hands flat on the papers. "The Crown runs a licensed crystal depot at a place called Coldwater, four days east of here, on the edge of the Greywild. Frontier trappers bring in the crystals they find, the depot buys them at a fixed price, and the crystals come to Harrowgate under seal to light the city. For the last nine years, Coldwater's purchases have been going down. Last year they bought almost nothing. And in the same nine years, the black market in this city has been flooded with frontier crystals. Bright ones. Better than anything the depot ever bought."

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"Someone's buying them before they get to the depot," I said.

She stopped. Looked at me a moment longer.

"Yes," she said. "Somebody is. My father's council has decided this is a matter for a commission of inquiry. And since it's a long way away and very dull and nobody important wants to go, they've given it to me." She said it without any feeling at all, like she was reading out a weather report. "I'm the third princess. I get the dull jobs. I've had dull jobs since I was twelve."

I didn't say anything to that. There didn't seem to be anything to say.

"I have a royal warrant," she went on. "It gives me authority to inspect the depot's books and question anyone I like. Whoever is buying those crystals won't want me to use it. They may try to take it from me. They may try to make sure I never arrive." She reached under the table and brought up a long red leather case, the kind you'd keep a rolled map in, with the royal crest stamped on it in gold, and laid it on the table between us. "This is the warrant case. You'll carry it. Openly, on your back, where everyone can see it. You'll ride near the front of the column. If anyone comes for the warrant, they'll come for you first."

"And the real warrant?"

The corner of her mouth moved, just slightly.

"Is somewhere else," she said. "You're the decoy, Mister Marsh. Your job is to be the most obvious target on the road for four days, and to stay alive long enough that the real target gets to Coldwater. I asked the Guild for the most expendable man they had, because I don't want anyone's death on my conscience that I can avoid, and a man nobody will miss is the closest I can get to that. It's an ugly sum. I've done it anyway. Guildmaster Ashby has given me you." She looked at me steadily. "I'm sorry. I don't expect it's very flattering."

"No, that's fair," I said. "I am Level one."

Something moved behind her eyes. She didn't say what.

"The pay," she said, "is a hundred and fifty gold crowns. Thirty now. A hundred and twenty when we return to Harrowgate. If you don't return, the hundred and twenty goes to whoever you name."

I didn't hear anything she said after that for a bit.

Thirty now and a hundred and twenty later. With the fifty in the ledger, that was two hundred. That was the tax. That was the whole tax, near enough to the copper, in one job. That was Duchess and the chooks and the apple tree and Dad under it, and Elsie not having to tell anybody anything.

"Mister Marsh?"

"Sorry," I said. "Yes. I'll do it."

"You don't want to think about it?"

"I've been thinking about it for a month, Your Highness," I said. "Just not this exact job."

She was quiet for a while. Then she held out her hand across the table, which I didn't expect, and I shook it. Her hand was small and hard, with ink on the second finger and a callus from a pen.

"Lys," she said. "On the road. Not Your Highness. Your Highness gets people shot."

* * *

Miss Quill came down the stairs from the north gallery about three seconds after the princess stood up. She was moving faster than I'd ever seen her move, with her satchel bumping on her hip and a sheaf of papers in one hand, and she arrived at the table a bit out of breath.

"Your Highness," she said. "Hesper Quill. Senior Auditor."

"I know who you are, Miss Quill," said the princess. "You audited my household accounts two years ago. You found the steward was skimming the candle budget. My father was very pleased." She tilted her head. "I wasn't. He was the only steward who let me read in the library at night."

Miss Quill went a bit pink. "I'm sorry, Your Highness."

"Don't be. He was skimming." The princess looked at the papers in Miss Quill's hand. "What are those?"

"Guild regulations. Section fourteen, sub-section six. When a member of the Guild is hired directly by a royal commission, the contract must be overseen by an auditor of the Guild for its whole duration, to make sure the terms are met." She held out the page. "I'm afraid that means I have to come with you."

The princess took the page and read it. It didn't take her long.

"Who wrote this sub-section, Miss Quill?"

"I did, Your Highness."

"When?"

Miss Quill hesitated, about the length of a blink.

"This morning," she said.

The princess studied her. Then she laughed. It was short and surprised and sounded like it didn't get out much.

"All right," she said. "Bring a warm coat. It's cold out east."

* * *

It wasn't until the princess had gone, with her soldiers and her papers and her red leather warrant case, that I found out who was leading the escort.

Miss Quill told me. We were standing on the Guild steps, and Brakka had come across from where she'd been sitting and was standing behind me like a wall. Miss Quill had a copy of the commission, and she read it out in a voice like a bad smell.

"Commander of the escort. By order of the Lord Chancellor. Sir Gareth Vantrell, Knight-Captain."

Brakka said something in her own tongue that made Grosh, across the square, turn round and look shocked.

"He's her betrothed," Miss Quill said. "It was announced last spring. It's apparently very romantic." She folded the commission. "The Lord Chancellor's office appointed him personally."

"Well," I said. "He knows the roads. He's a hero. I expect he's good at escorts."

Miss Quill looked at me sideways.

"Mister Marsh," she said, "you don't actually believe that, do you?"

I thought about Gareth's ale running down my collar. I thought about his horse, and the scavenger, and the word from him that'd mean nobody in the city would give me a dog to find.

"It's a hundred and fifty gold," I said. "I'll believe what I have to."

Brakka put one huge hand on my shoulder.

"I am coming," she said.

"Miss Quill says no warband."

"Miss Quill," said Brakka, "can say what she likes to the warband. I am not the warband. I am the wife." She looked down at Miss Quill, who came up to about her collarbone. "You will not stop me, little warlord."

"I wouldn't dream of it," said Miss Quill, and wrote something down.

* * *

Pip found me at the bottom of the hill. She'd heard already. Pip hears everything about a minute before it happens.

"A decoy," she said. "You took a decoy job."

"It pays a hundred and fifty."

"It pays that much because decoys get killed, you great lump. That's the whole point of a decoy. You walk in front and somebody shoots you, and then the important person doesn't get shot." She kicked the wall. "Shit. Shit. Who gets the money if you die?"

"I haven't decided."

"Mag," said Pip, who'd heard me talk about Mag. "Put Mag. She lent you the three gold. And the lift tickets keep going while you're away, and I'm keeping your ten percent for you, in a tin, so don't argue." She glared up at me with the gap in her teeth. "And don't die. I've got stock."

"What stock?"

"Never you mind," said Pip, and went.

I counted out the princess's thirty gold that night on my short bed. It came in a purse of soft blue leather with the royal crest on it, and the coins were new, so new they still had the shine.

Fifty and thirty. Eighty gold. A hundred and twenty more when we got back.

I wrote it in the ledger. Then I looked at the little box at the bottom of the page, and I did a thing I hadn't done since the Crown rider came up the track. I let myself think about going home.

Coming up the track with the tax paid. Duchess in the home paddock, giving me that look. Mag on her veranda with her pipe and a proper bottle on the table beside her, one with a cork in it.

There was a soft tap at the window.

I didn't need to look. I got up and opened it anyway, and there was nobody on the ledge. There was a small black envelope on the sill, with a red seal, smelling of roses and something older.

Inside, on a card, in very elegant handwriting:

Coldwater is a long way. The roads are not safe. I am NOT following you. E.V.

I put it under the bed with the others.