Company of Strangers, #1 Read online

  After a couple of quick steps, she turned back to face Sienne and cocked her head inquiringly. “Well?”

  Stunned, Sienne hoisted her pack and hurried after her rescuer. They walked rapidly down the street, surrounded by bundle-toting women and hurrying men, taking turns at what to Sienne was random. Finally, when Sienne couldn’t bear it any longer, she said, “Why did you do that?”

  “I don’t like bullies,” the woman said, not pausing. “You’re an idiot, but you don’t deserve to be robbed just because of that.”

  Sienne took a closer look at her. It was the woman who’d been leaning against the wall in the Lucky Coin. “So I shouldn’t have called them on their cheating?”

  “You shouldn’t have done it so publicly. But it doesn’t matter. Here, come in and I’ll buy you a drink.”

  “Thanks, but—” Sienne’s heart sank as she reached up to clutch a coin pouch that wasn’t there anymore. That was it. The end. No money, no prospects, and after this morning, nowhere to sleep. “All right,” she said. She might as well have a drink, if she was facing the end.

  The tavern the woman had led her to was near the port and as unlike the Lucky Coin as a tavern could be. The low-ceilinged taproom was ringed with expensive glass windows letting in the clear morning light. Brightly varnished pine tables stained a dark red invited a customer to draw up a chair and settle in for a companionable drink. It smelled of the ghosts of a hundred thousand kegs, an oddly comforting smell that soaked into Sienne’s bones and made her think of fireplaces on a chilly night, so far from this sun-drenched coastal city.

  They had the place to themselves. The woman rapped sharply on the bar. “Two pints, Giorgo,” she called out, then pulled a chair away from a table near the center of the room and gestured to Sienne to join her. “I’m not trying to get you drunk,” she said.

  “I doubt a couple of pints of new beer is enough for that,” Sienne said.

  The woman shrugged. “Everyone’s got their limit. I’m Dianthe.”

  “Sienne,” Sienne said. She’d learned early on that no one was offended if she didn’t offer her surname, which she absolutely was not going to do. No money, no prospects, but she wasn’t that desperate.

  A round little man, presumably Giorgo, bustled out to the bar and drew off a couple of pints, then brought them to their table. Dianthe took a healthy swig and set her mug down. “Good stuff,” she told the man.

  “It always is,” Giorgo said, bustling away.

  Sienne took a rather smaller drink. It was good, smooth and light. “Thank you for rescuing me.”

  “I had selfish reasons,” Dianthe said, leaning back. “You’re a wizard?”

  Sienne nodded.

  “Were you serious when you told May you could grow her twenty inches in height?”

  “Who?”

  “The barkeep at the Lucky Coin. You said you could give her twenty inches.”

  “Oh. Yes, that’s true.”

  “Can you do it the other way? Shrink someone?”

  “Yes, it’s—yes.” This woman wasn’t interested in the details of the spell.

  “Damn.” Dianthe took another drink. “And you’re a scrapper?”

  Sienne felt she owed Dianthe the truth. “Trying to be. Nobody’s hiring.”

  “That’s not true,” Dianthe said. “I am.”

  2

  “You…want to hire me?” Sienne said. Her heart sped up, and she had to make herself breathe slowly.

  “As it happens, I need someone who can make people smaller. It’s a fairly quick job, assuming we have that spell. Three days into the wilderness, to a well-charted ruin, in and out and Jack-a-dandy. You get fifty lari and an equal cut of any salvage, not that I expect there to be much. You interested?”

  “I—” Her instinct to leap up and beg Dianthe to hire her warred with common sense that said she ought to play at least a little hard to get. “Why me? It’s not an uncommon spell.”

  Dianthe smiled. “Surprisingly, all the wizards I’ve found who know that spell aren’t interested in traveling into the wilderness to raid a ruin from the before times. And…let’s just say not a lot of scrapper wizards are interested in working with me and my partner, even for the promise of learning a new spell for free.”

  “Why not? Is there something wrong with you?”

  Sienne regretted her words immediately, but Dianthe only smiled wider. “My partner doesn’t like wizards. We generally don’t work with them. This is a special case.”

  “Oh.” It still sounded too good to be true. “Is it dangerous?”

  “Anything worth doing is.” Dianthe shrugged. “It’s known territory, and the ruin has been explored thoroughly. So it’s not like we’d be facing wereboars or carricks or anything like that.”

  “If it’s been explored, what’s the point of going in?”

  “Our client is convinced there’s unrecovered salvage there. In our initial attempt, we discovered a concealed section of the keep. We’re pretty sure no one’s been in it since it collapsed four hundred years ago. There’s always a chance we’re wrong, but my partner is willing to take the risk.”

  “So do I still get paid if there’s nothing there?” She hoped she didn’t sound too eager, but the absence of her coin purse burned against her chest.

  “The fifty lari is yours no matter what we do or don’t find. So, you in?”

  Sienne didn’t have to think about it again. “I’m in.”

  “Great.” Dianthe swilled down the last of her beer and stood, slapping some coins down on the table. “This time of year, we sleep outdoors, but you can share a tent with me. You have supplies?”

  Sienne didn’t answer quickly enough, and Dianthe smiled again, amusement lighting her brown eyes. “You really are new to this, aren’t you?”

  Sienne’s chin went up. “I’ll learn.”

  “Even so, you’ll go to the market with me. Lots of people try to cheat the babes in arms—the new scrappers—and you don’t need to be burdened with the crap they’ll want to foist on you.”

  The missing coin purse burned hotter. “I don’t—I can’t,” she began, her face hot with embarrassment.

  Dianthe eyed her. “The money is paid up front,” she said, “if that’s what’s worrying you.”

  Sienne eyed her right back. She might be rubbish at crack-stones, but she knew when someone was telling a whopper. And how were you going to pay for your gear otherwise? she chided herself. “Oh,” she said. “All right.”

  Dianthe reached into a pouch hanging from her belt and drew out five gold coins. “Here,” she said, handing them to Sienne. “I’ll show you where to shop, then I’ll take you to meet my partner. I should warn you, he’s rather…abrupt…in his manner.”

  “That’s all right.” She wasn’t sure that was true. If this mysterious partner didn’t like wizards, it was unlikely he’d be very friendly. Sienne didn’t have any romantic illusions about scrapper teams being like family, but she was sure the successful ones weren’t at each other’s throats. And if Dianthe was willing to pay her out of her own pocket, that suggested a level of desperation not evident in her speech. So what wasn’t Dianthe telling her?

  Sienne stood. It didn’t really matter. Even with having to buy supplies, the payment for this job would keep her going for a while longer, and if she did well, that was the beginning of building a reputation that would get her more jobs, and ultimately, independence.

  They left the tavern and walked side by side down the broad streets leading from the port to the market. It was going to be another hot day, tempered only by the constant cooling wind that blew in off the harbor. Sienne drew in a deep breath of salty air and felt a knot of tension loosen at the base of her spine. Which avatar, she wondered, was responsible for her last-minute reprieve? She wasn’t a very religious person, paying her devotions to each on their name-days, but otherwise not troubling them with requests. Her mother, a devout worshipper of Kitane, would say God never considered Her petitioners a trouble
. Sienne scowled. Her mother had lost the right to meddle in Sienne’s life, even in memory.

  The din grew louder as the streets narrowed, until Sienne and Dianthe were walking between the semi-permanent booths and stalls that made up Fioretti’s world-famous market. Here, everything was for sale, from ordinary household items to luxury goods and everything in between, even humans, if indentured servitude counted as sales. Sienne hadn’t paid much attention to the things people sold before, because she’d had her sights set on the jobs board at the market’s center. Now she slowed to match Dianthe’s leisurely pace and openly gawked at the kind of things people were willing to buy. The noise of hundreds of merchants hawking their wares and hundreds of buyers arguing price with them ebbed and rose like the distant tide, soothing to her soul.

  Dianthe slowed to look at a stall whose tables held bits of tarnished metal studded with dull, sometimes cracked cabochon stones, jasper and onyx and a couple of garnets. “What do you think?”

  Sienne scanned the table. Artifacts from the before time, none of them complete enough to hint at what they might have been for. “Nothing,” she said. “Trinkets.”

  “I beg your pardon?” the stall owner said. He’d been hovering nearby in the attitude of someone who knew how to strike a careful balance between selling too hard and letting a sale slip away. “My wares are of the highest quality, miss.”

  “Without any trace of magic left,” Sienne said.

  The man drew himself up to his full outraged height. “I have never claimed otherwise!”

  “Thanks anyway,” Dianthe said, taking Sienne’s arm and pulling her away. Sienne caught the amused look in her eyes. That had been a test, hadn’t it? Dianthe knew perfectly well there was nothing magical about those things and wanted to see if Sienne would claim otherwise to make herself look more skilled. Well, there wasn’t any skill in lying when the other person knew the truth. And it wouldn’t have occurred to Sienne, anyway. She wondered how many wizards would have fallen for it.

  They turned down one of the narrow paths that passed for streets in the market, and Sienne smelled warm leather and metal heated by the sun, climbing toward its apex. All the booths in the market were arranged according to what they sold. And this, apparently, was where scrappers went to be outfitted. Booths selling outdoor gear, tents and bedrolls and blankets. Booths selling pots and pans and all manner of cooking supplies. Booths selling fishing equipment, traps, and snares. One place that sold nothing but rope and rope-related items. Booths selling things Sienne had never seen before and couldn’t imagine a use for.

  She stopped to admire a knife vendor’s wares and was hustled along by Dianthe. “Not there,” she said. “If you’re interested in weapons, there’s a shop my partner and I use. She’ll give you a good deal.”

  “I can use a knife,” Sienne said, trying not to sound defensive. Dianthe’s expression had suggested she didn’t think a wizard was any good with weapons. Which wasn’t true, in general. Sienne had had plenty of classmates who excelled at swordplay. It was just coincidence she wasn’t one of them.

  “You won’t need a tent, as I said,” Dianthe went on, “and we’ve already got cookware. Bedding, definitely, a mess kit, and a compass, just in case—”

  “There’s magic for that,” Sienne said.

  Dianthe raised her eyebrows. “Really? You’ll have to demonstrate. I’m afraid I don’t know much about a wizard’s capabilities.” She stopped at a stall displaying bundles of canvas and cloth. “Don’t overburden yourself. We’ve got a pack animal, but anything beyond the basics, you have to carry yourself. Though I suppose if you can shrink things, that would help.”

  “Not things, just people. They’re different spells. I don’t know the other.”

  “Too bad.” Dianthe picked over the rolled-up bedding tied with hemp rope and handed one to Sienne. “Take an extra blanket, too.”

  “It’s true summer. Won’t it be too hot?”

  “You never can tell. Besides, you can use it as a pillow if you want.”

  Sienne chose a woolen blanket that didn’t feel too heavy, woven in a pattern of dull greens she thought wouldn’t stand out in the wilderness. She could have chosen the bright red one that appealed more to her, disguising it however she liked with one of the many confusion spells she knew, but that felt like showing off. Dianthe didn’t comment on her choice, so it was probably a good one.

  “You probably want one of these,” was all the woman said, handing Sienne a leather belt pouch. “Seeing as the last one was stolen. Sorry about that, by the way.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Sienne said. The new pouch was larger and had an abstract design impressed on it. She self-consciously hung it around her neck and tucked her money into it. Back country girl—she could almost laugh at the irony of that.

  Her arms full, she followed Dianthe to a larger booth hung with shirts and trousers. “I already have clothes,” she said.

  Dianthe looked her over. “Are they all as fancy as what you’re wearing now?”

  Sienne flushed in embarrassment. “These aren’t that fancy,” she said, though she was conscious as she hadn’t been before of the fine linen of her shirt, the soft woven cotton of her trousers.

  “You need new clothes,” Dianthe said firmly, and proceeded to choose plain shirts of ivory cotton, suede leather sleeveless tunics that laced up the sides, and twilled cotton trousers considerably heavier in weight than what Sienne was currently wearing. “You know how to sew? You’ll probably want to alter these to fit closely.”

  “I will,” Sienne said, not saying that most of what she’d been taught was embroidery. Sewing a seam couldn’t be that hard, could it?

  Dianthe cast a glance at Sienne’s feet. “Boots,” she said. “Let’s hope we can find some ready-made that fit. We don’t have time to wait around for a bespoke pair.”

  They left the market after stowing Sienne’s new clothing in her pack. It hadn’t cost as much as she’d feared—not even a full ten lari. Sienne’s relief lasted only as long as it took to enter the bootmaker’s shop, where a wizened old woman took one look at the pair of them and said, “Dianthe. For you, or for the babe?”

  “The babe,” Dianthe said. “You’ll give us a good deal, right?”

  The woman sniffed disdainfully. “That ox of a partner of yours still hasn’t paid me for his last pair.”

  “I’m sure Alaric is good for it.”

  The woman folded her arms across her narrow chest and tapped her toe impatiently.

  “You’re going to refuse this woman service because of something someone else did?” Dianthe exclaimed.

  “It’s what he didn’t do I’m miffed about.”

  Dianthe rolled her eyes. “How much?” she asked, rummaging in her pouch.

  “Eighteen lari.”

  Sienne choked and turned it into a cough when the woman turned her impatient gaze on her. She’d never spent that much on shoes in her life! Maybe if she were her sister—she scowled and shut that line of thought down. Rance, Felice, her mother…there were a lot of people she’d sworn never to think of again.

  Dianthe pulled out a handful of coins. “Here. Now, what can you do for my friend?”

  The old woman looked at Sienne’s feet with an expression that made Sienne want to hide them. “You don’t want bespoke?”

  “We’re leaving in the morning. No time.”

  “Well, lucky for her she’s got nice small feet. Not like some oxen I could mention.” The woman turned away and disappeared into the shop’s back room. Sienne took the opportunity to look around. For all the shop was small and dark, it displayed remarkably few wares, just like the high-end, brightly lit shoemakers Sienne was familiar with—models hinting at what was possible rather than ready to wear. But that was a lifetime away, and Sienne busied herself turning a red leather boot over in her hands, warding off memories.

  “Those aren’t at all suitable for the wilderness,” Dianthe said.

  “I know. I was just looking.
Her craft is good.”

  “It’s why we’re willing to pay eighteen lari for her wares. That, and Alaric has sodding enormous feet. Yours won’t cost nearly so much, if you were worried.”

  “Not really,” Sienne lied.

  The old woman returned with a pair of knee-high boots in her hands. “This should do,” she said, extending them to Sienne. “Try them on.”

  Sienne did. They were a lovely dark brown leather, supple with the slightly greasy feel of good waterproofing, and they fit her almost perfectly. Too bad she didn’t know the fit spell for objects, or she could have perfected them, but slightly too loose was better than slightly too small. “Very nice,” she said.

  The old woman sniffed disdainfully again. “Don’t insult me. You want them? Eight lari.”

  Dianthe laughed. “She may be a babe, but I’m not. Five and five.”

  “You think I can survive by giving my wares away? Seven, and that’s because I like you.”

  “You’ve got a funny way of showing it. Six, then.”

  “What, you can’t let your friend do the talking for herself?” The old woman turned on Sienne. “Seven’s reasonable.”

  Sienne pursed her lips. “Six and two,” she said. “That’s the best you’ll get.”

  “Oh? You’re so sure?”

  Sienne raised her foot and ran a finger across the top of the toe. “These have been sitting in your store room for a long time, to get this dusty,” she said. “I’ll wager you haven’t been able to find anyone they’ll fit, since I have, as you said, nice small feet. So you can either let them go on taking up space, or you can make a nice little profit. Six and two.”

  The woman’s wrinkled face split in a smile. “And here was me thinking you were just a pretty face. All right. Six and two. And come back when you’re ready for a pair made for you.”

  Sienne handed over the coins and received her change. On the street again, Dianthe said, “That will teach me to underestimate you, just because you’re new to this.”

  “I like haggling. It keeps me sharp.” She couldn’t tell Dianthe she’d grown up never needing to ask the prices of the things she bought. “Where next?”