A Plague of Giants (Seven Kennings #1) - Kevin Hearne Page 0,121

a plan, though.”

“Oh, indeed! My delight is boundless. So vast that I cannot think how best to express it. Do I get to hear the plan?”

“We’re taking you back to the chowder house you visited a couple of days ago. It’s quite busy now thanks to the bard telling everyone about it.”

“It will be a terrible place to work, then.”

“But a great place to be seen and attacked.”

“What? I guess I should have asked if your plan was a good one. This does not sound good.”

The longshoreman grinned at me. “It’s going to be fine as long as you don’t get killed.”

“Look, that could just as easily be said of pudding or sex or life itself. It’s not the hallmark of a good plan.”

“It’s the pelenaut’s plan, all right? He wants you to live, believe me. Just have some lunch and write your story. But keep an eye on your surroundings. You wouldn’t want a dagger slipped between your ribs when you’re not looking.”

“This is not comforting.”

“Don’t worry; you’ll have some company keeping a closer eye on you than normal. You’ll be totally safe. Probably.”

“You’re kind of a rotten whale dong, you know that?”

The longshoreman threw his head back and laughed. “Yes, I know.” He pointed out a pair of extra mariners loitering inside the doors of the High Tide Chowder House and two more sitting at a table closer to the kitchen. There were few seats available and a line that threatened to extend outside very soon. Fintan already was seated in the far corner across from a young woman and smiled as he waved me over. It was a larger table with benches for seats, graced with two orange candles instead of one. I approved of the location and took my seat next to him with our backs to the wall; no one would be able to sneak up behind us.

“I’ve already ordered you a bowl and a beer,” he said, and then nodded toward the woman, who had her hair cropped short around her skull and appeared to be amused. I wondered what Fintan had told her about me before I joined them. “Master Dervan du Alöbar, I present to you Gerstad Nara du Fesset. She’s part of the story, actually. You’ll be hearing of her adventures later.” She snorted in response to this, then smiled at me, dimples on either side of a wide mouth, pearls in her ears gleaming by candlelight.

“He’s exaggerating. Eating this chowder is going to be the most adventure I’ve had in months.”

“Nice to meet you. A gerstad, eh? We rate an officer now?”

“For today, anyway,” she said.

“Why aren’t you in uniform?”

Her eyes shifted around, and then she put a hand to the side of her mouth as if someone might be lip-reading. “We’re being clever,” she said in a loud, dramatic whisper. “They’ll never know what hit them.”

“Who are they, exactly?”

“If they show up, we expect most of them will be dockside fish heads desperate for coin. But one of them should be a Nentian bruiser the Lung has identified as the tip of the harpoon on these attacks. He’s a semiretired caravan guard from Ar Balesh, and it’s his former employers who are financing this.”

“Old, rich expatriates of Ghurana Nent who live here for the clean water and access to hygienists?” Fintan asked.

“Precisely. He’s been either spotted or reported to be involved in the attempts to assassinate you, but we haven’t been able to isolate him yet.”

“Why not go after the money?” I asked.

She paused while a server deposited bowls of chowder in front of us and returned with beers and a board of bread and butter. “The pelenaut likes taxes,” she said, “especially right now, and the Nentian expatriates pay plenty of them. So the objective is to go after the errand boy. If the elderly have no one to do their dirty work, then it won’t get done.”

“But why not put pressure on these Nentians to stop seeking my death?” Fintan asked.

“They’re so obvious and loud about what they’re doing that it’s pointing us to criminals that the constabulary has been seeking out for a long while. They’re leading us to some truly dangerous fish heads, so we don’t want them to stop. But don’t worry: the Lung is positioning someone to take over operations once we eliminate their current man. The Nentians will pay him to hunt you down, and he will pass on the money and information to us and do nothing. The pelenaut looks at