Colours in the Steel by K J. Parker

Author:K J. Parker [Parker, K J.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780748113934
Publisher: Hachette Digital
Published: 1998-01-01T08:00:00+00:00

—All with the first word of the title picked out in red, the page number, the appropriate cross-references, and the occasional scribbled addition where the previous owner had added in a few well-favoured precedents of his own; the whole thing for only one and a half gold quarters, guaranteed to make it so you’d never again have to think what to say, no matter how bizarre the circumstances. Athli couldn’t resist that, so she bought it, having first negotiated half a quarter off the price and bullied the stallholder into throwing in the carrying case for nothing.

She sat down on a stone bench in the shade of an awning and was just about to see what her guide recommended for Letter to unmarried niece politely declining request for contribution to dowry when a shadow fell across the page and she looked up.

‘Hello,’ said a voice coming out of a black shape silhouetted against the sun. ‘Excuse me, but aren’t you Master Loredan’s clerk?’

The voice was female, foreign and quite pleasant; Athli blinked and squinted a little. ‘I know you, I think,’ she replied. ‘You’re the na—’ She recovered in time and swallowed the rest of natural. ‘You’re the merchant’s sister, from the Island. We met in the tavern the day Loredan fought Alvise. Vetriz?’

‘That’s right,’ Vetriz nodded and sat down on the bench beside her. ‘Fancy you remembering.’

‘Necessary skill of the clerical profession,’ Athli replied, budging up a little. Ordinarily, of course, she’d have forgotten the dratted female completely by now; but Loredan’s account of his weird conversation with Patriarch Alexius in the Schools not long before the cavalry expedition had vividly refreshed her memory. Now, of course, she was filled with a strange mixture of instinctive revulsion and insatiable curiosity; unlike Bardas, she had no doubts at all about the existence and power of magic, and wasn’t this female somehow supposed to be the most powerful witch in the world? Something like that, anyway.

‘I came here to buy an inkwell,’ Vetriz said, with a trace of bewilderment in her voice. ‘But there’s such a choice I don’t know where to start. At home there’s plain inkwells and fancy inkwells, and that’s about it.’

Athli smiled politely. ‘So long as you remember never to pay the asking price, you won’t go far wrong,’ she said, and then remembered that this female was a merchant’s sister, probably a seasoned trader in her own right; certainly not the sort of person who needed advice on bargaining techniques from a fencer’s clerk. ‘How long are you staying?’ she went on.

‘I’m not sure,’ Vetriz replied. ‘We brought in a load of preserved fruit, and prices are extraordinary; because of the invasion, of course. If only we’d known, we’d have filled two ships. Anyway, we sold the fruit in no time at all, and my brother’s going round trying to decide what to take back. We spent all of yesterday and most of today looking at rope—’

‘Rope?’

Vetriz nodded. ‘Rope,’ she repeated. ‘And there comes a point

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