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.”
Pavek supposed he should be grateful that the registrator had recorded so much extra information. He wondered, idly, how much Metica paid for that extra knowledge. And whether she’d told him everything she’d bought. “Anything else?”
The administrator pretended not to hear the question, instead of answering she selecting a stick of ordinary sap-wax from a supply in an expensive wooden box. She sparked, a little oil lamp—also expensive—and held the wax in its flame until it softened and shone. Pavek watched with morbid fascination. Metica was preparing to give him an impression of her personal seal.
He could think of worse omens… maybe…
If he tried hard.
“What else?” he rephrased the question as she dropped a viscous bead on a piece of slate and flattened it with a roll of her carved turquoise seal.
Metica rehooked her cylindrical seal onto the thong around her neck, where it hung beside her gold-edged medallion. She blew on the impressed wax to hasten its hardening, and smiled sweetly at her debtor.
Pavek held his breath.
“The amphorae are bonded—sealed at their point of origin. Be careful when you break them open. Take this to the gate—” She held out the molded lump of wax. It was about as long as Pavek’s thumb and half as thick. He took it like a death sentence. “You’re clever, Regulator. You’ll think of something. Don’t forget who you’re working for. I’ll be waiting for you tomorrow.”
“I’m off tomorrow,” he replied, feeling like a fool as the words left his mouth.