Swords and Scoundrels by Knight Julia

Author:Knight, Julia [Knight, Julia]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Orbit
Published: 2015-10-06T04:00:00+00:00

Bescan Square was packed to bursting, making any passage through tricky and fraught with random elbows and pickpockets. Yet, for all the people there, no one seemed to be buying much. Vocho kept his head down and his hat firmly pulled over his eyes. Especially near the storytellers.

One had a prime position near the main entrance and had a crate to stand on. At her feet a young boy had a sheaf of papers – selling the news for a copper a time. Another storyteller had set up over the way, and the two of them were competing to see who could be the loudest and most sensational, if not especially truthful if past experience was anything to go by. Rumours flew around this square like sparrows, and always had. These weren’t stories they were telling, but bits of news, opinions, gossip. Anyone could pay them to say anything – and Vocho had, in the past. More than once. A name doesn’t make itself, after all.

The woman was telling everyone that there was no war brewing, that the prelate was in full control. Ikaras would no doubt agree to negotiations and all rumours to the contrary were just the whinings of nay-sayers. She then moved on to the pirates that were ravaging the coast, pushing up the price of spice.

“Balls!” someone in the audience shouted. “Ain’t been no pirates since I were a boy.”

A general muttering seemed to agree with him.

“Only reason the price of spice is going up is that the prelate said we all got to buy it,” the shouter said.

The woman ignored him and moved smoothly on to something else.

Over the way, the other teller was clearly not quite so in the prelate’s pocket. “Taxes on everything,” he said, “or taxes on everything the rich don’t buy, but the poor need or are made to buy. When did you last see a rich man wearing clogs? Why does a poor man have to buy half a pound of spice a day and pay the same in taxes as a rich man what does the same? To support the sailors, the Reyen traders, Bakar says, but who’s supporting us? And flags, we all got to have a purple flag to wave, so the flag makers put up the prices, and purple dye gets a tax on it too!”

It all sounded crazy to Vocho, but a quick look at a stall showed him that purple cloth was double the price of any other colour. At other stalls, there were plenty of people looking and plenty selling, but no one buying. Bread was scarce and expensive with an angry crowd around the baker’s door, sugar almost non-existent and going for more, pound for pound, than gold. The only stall that actually looked like it was doing a brisk trade was the spice merchant’s, who stamped a little booklet for every customer so they could prove they’d bought their spice for the day. A few guards were randomly checking people’s booklets, and Vocho made doubly sure to stay out of their way.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.