The Liar's Key (The Red Queen's War 2)

We came up to the front doors, palatial things, gilded and ornate. First you pay the doorman. Everything costs in the debtor cells and only the rent is added to the slate. If you want a bed, want to eat, want clean water, you pay. If you can’t pay you sell what you have. The servants in the front apartments are selling their services. Further in they sell their clothes, their bodies, their hair, their children. And at the far end, emptied from tiny and cramped cells, come the corpses, skeletally thin, naked, sold to feed pigs, the credit removed from the final summation of their debt.

I knew these things because the debtors’ prisons, and there are many in Umbertide, seemed my likely destination should my adventures on the commodities markets turn sour. It’s not in my nature to over-investigate the downsides of any vice I entertain, and gambling has always been to the fore of my weaknesses. I do, however, like to explore all the escape routes, and that necessitated finding out more than a little about establishments like the one run by Firenze Central Bank. The conclusion of my study was—don’t get caught.

That conclusion held me there on the steps, the sun pounding down on my head, my shadow puddled black about my feet, Ta-Nam impassive behind me. I’d come here to buy freedom—but what had led me here? A slip of parchment. A note given to me by a man whose services were for sale to anyone with coin or credit. Given to me on the day the banks had refused my paper.

“It would be an irony if I came here thinking to help an inmate and found I was handing myself into custody.” I said it loud enough for Ta-Nam to hear but he made no answer. I found myself suddenly dry mouthed—the city rising about me like a grasping hand. Running was the only thing I wanted to do. Forget the plan. Forget the diamonds. Drop the damn gold if need be. Just run. The visions that had haunted me for three nights returned to swim before my eyes—Hennan wasting away, rotting like fruit left in the sun.

I turned to face Ta-Nam. He stood immobile, sweat gleaming on ebony arms, watching everything, even me.

“I’ve got a . . . a child under my care in there.” Silence. “I should go in and see him released.” Silence. “It . . . it could be dangerous.” This wasn’t me. Friends were ballast, to be cast overboard if you start riding low in the water. Not you, I’d told Hennan, not you, other friends—but of course I’d meant him too. And yet I couldn’t quite turn away. Perhaps the dreams scared me.

Ta-Nam regarded me with the same eloquent silence, no hint of judgment in him, as if he’d carry me to the city limits in his arms if I ordered it, and set me on a fast horse without the least reproach. Damn him. I tried to focus on what Snorri would do to me if he discovered I’d left Hennan behind. Going in felt slightly more sensible when set against the background of the Norseman twisting my arms off.

•   •   •

In the prison foyer three heavyset but impeccably dressed men-in-waiting took the surrender of Ta-Nam’s chrome-steel daggers and my own stiletto, its hilt tastefully decorated with blood-rubies from the Afrique interior. The largest of them then approached us with some plasteek device almost like a gaming racquet but without the catgut stringing required to hit the ball.

“What is it?” I stepped sharply behind Ta-Nam, prepared to let him earn his contract-price for once. The moderns are fearsome keen on their Builder artefacts, scavenged from time-vaults across the empire: it’s hard to find a modern with any significant holdings who doesn’t have some device from before the Day of a Thousand Suns, a fone perhaps so they can talk to God—probably to complain—or some nameless thing of wires and parts and glass. Corpus kept some strange machine of rustless silver-steel, two interlocking tear-drop cages that rotate each through the other when a handle higher up the device is turned. He would hold it up on the trade floor, spinning the cages when seeking to place an order. I peered at the approaching footman. “I don’t want that . . . thing . . . near me!”

“It finds concealed weapons, sir.” The thug smiled reassurance at me as if I were some country squire. He waved the device across Ta-Nam’s thick arms and down across his front.

“Well, I don’t like it!” And I didn’t, but when he’d finished with the sword-son he came my way waving his bat. The thing started squealing the moment it drew near me, an unearthly tone, a pure note, higher than any castrato ever reached. That set all three of them advancing on me, grim as you like, and ready to manhandle me despite my station.

It soon transpired that the Builders’ toy considered gold to be a weapon—which to be fair it is in many regards—and so, to the bemusement of the staff, I had to strip three hundred and eighty double florins from about my person and let them rifle with greedy fingers through the three thousand and twenty-six additional coins in my case.