The Brazen Gambit (Dark Sun: Chronicles of Athas 1)

"Yes, great one," he replied with absolute sincerity. But it had worked-his simple plan had worked! The days of mind-bending, magic-resisting ravers were numbered in Urik. That was all he'd wanted. It never paid to think too much about the middle when the ends were clear. "As far away as I can get," he assured his taskmaster, then started to stand.

"You can do something for me, Regulator, since you're so good at tracking things into shadows."

Pavek's heart sank and so did his body. He barely caught himself before he broke the flimsy tripod. "Anything, great one."

"We've had complaints," Metica let that unprecedented notion hang between them. "Complaints about the Ral's Breath powder our licensed apothecaries are selling. Seems it's not doing the job it's meant to do."

Pavek shrugged, and nearly lost his balance. "What job? Ral's Breath doesn't do anything. Tell a sick 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. "Itinerants: 'Come today and gone away. Come again? Who knows when?'"

"They registered last night at Modekan."

Coincidence? Pavek felt an invisible noose settle around his neck. He gulped; it didn't budge. Modekan was another of the villages that lent its name to one of Urik's ten market days. Today, in fact, was Modekan's day.

Coincidence? Not unless his luck had suddenly gotten a lot better.

King Hamanu didn't like surprises in his city. The massive walls and gates were more than convenient places to carve his portrait. Nobody came into Urik without registering at one of the outlying villages. Nobody brought a draft beast into the city; the streets were crowded enough with people, and hard enough on that account to keep clean. Nobody stayed inside the city after the gates were closed at sunset unless they paid a poll tax or could prove residence.

The great merchants paid the tax. For them, it was a pittance. Just about everyone else, including itinerants, stopped in a market village, stabled their beasts, announced their intent to visit the city to a civil bureau registrator conveniently assigned to the village inn, and then set out for Urik the following morning.

He assessed the angle of the morning sun streaming onto Metica's worktable. If he assumed the itinerants had set out from Modekan at dawn and weren't crippled, they should be approaching the gates right about now. He'd rather lose every thread of orange and crimson in his sleeves than poke his nose into Rokka's affairs, but he owed Metica. She'd made that perfectly dear.

"How many? Names? Descriptions?" He hoped for anything that might give him a chance to get out of this without earning the dwarf for an enemy.

"Three. One female, two males. A cart, four amphorae- large clay jugs with pointed bottoms-filled with zarneeka. They should be easy to spot coming through the gate."