Adamat jerked the door open, cane in hand. Three men stared back at him. Two of them wore the faded coats and simple brimmed hats of street workers. The one’s knees and shirtsleeves were stained black—likely from shoveling coal into a furnace—and the second, the lockpick, wore clothes much too big for him, the common practice of a street thief who wanted to secret a number of things about his person. The third man was richly dressed, a gray overcoat over a sharp black waistcoat, and had shoes shined well enough that one could check one’s teeth in them.
The lockpick gaped up at Adamat from his knees.
“You’re making enough noise, you might as well have knocked on the front door,” Adamat said. He sighed and lowered his cane and spoke to the best-dressed of the three. “What do you want, Palagyi?”
Palagyi seemed surprised to see him here. He pushed at a pair of round spectacles that rested more on his chubby cheeks than on his thin nose. The man was an oddity, with a body that would seem more at home in a circus than anywhere else. He had a round belly that hung far over his belt, but his arms and legs were no thicker than a sapling. It made him look like an oversized cannonball with sticks for arms.
He was a longtime street thug who had just enough ruthlessness to rise to legitimate businesses and not quite enough intelligence to leave his dark life behind him. Aptly suited as a banker. Adamat cataloged his criminal record in his mind in an instant.
“Word had it that you’d skipped town,” Palagyi said.
“You mean the word of that inbred you’ve had skulking around my house for the last couple of weeks?”
“I have a reason to keep my eye on you.” He seemed annoyed that Adamat was actually still there.
Adamat gave a long-suffering sigh and watched Palagyi grind his teeth. Palagyi hated when he wasn’t taken seriously. He’d changed little since he was just a half-drunk loan shark. “I’ve got two months until my debt is due.”
“There is absolutely no way you’re going to gather seventy thousand krana in two months. So when I hear your family is skipping town in the middle of the night, I think perhaps you’ve decided to take the coward’s way and run for it.”
“Careful who you call a coward,” Adamat said. He reversed his grip on his cane.
Palagyi flinched. “I took my last beating from you long ago,” he said, “and you’re no longer protected by the police. You’re just one of us now, an ordinary gutter rat. You shouldn’t have taken out a loan with me.” He laughed. It was a tinny sound that grated on Adamat’s nerves.
It was Adamat’s turn to grind his teeth. He’d not taken out a loan from Palagyi, but from a bank belonging to a friend. That friend proved a bad one when he sold the loan to Palagyi for nearly one hundred and fifty percent of its worth. Palagyi had promptly tripled the interest and sat back and waited for Adamat’s new publishing business to fail. Which it had.
Palagyi wiped a tear of mirth from his eye and snorted. “When I learn that one of my biggest private loans has sent his family out of town just two months before his loan is due, I check on it personally.”
“And try to break into his house?” Adamat said. “You can’t clean me out and throw us onto the street until after I’ve defaulted.”
“Perhaps I got greedy.” Palagyi smiled thinly. “Now, I’m going to need to know where your family is so that I can check in on them.”
Adamat spoke through clenched teeth. “They’re at my cousin’s. East of Nafolk. Check all you want.”
“Good. I will.” Palagyi turned to go, when he stopped suddenly. “What’s your girl’s name? The youngest one. I think I’ll have some of my boys bring her back, just in case you try to slip onto one of those new steamers and make for Fatrasta.”
Palagyi had just enough time to flinch before Adamat’s cane cracked over his shoulder. Palagyi cried out and stumbled into the garden. The coal shoveler punched Adamat in the belly.
Adamat doubled over from pain. He’d not expected the man to hit so fast or so hard. He nearly dropped his cane, and it was all he could do to remain standing.
“I’ll have the police on you!” Palagyi wailed.
“Try it,” Adamat wheezed. “I still have friends there. They’ll laugh you into the