Chapter 53: I Bought Forty Two Pounds of Ice to Find a House

"Nobody sells ice out of charity and nobody buys it without leaving a trail."

Zelina put the city map on the table and four sheets from the ice market on top of it.

"Four warehouses in the capital. All four keep books."

"And?"

"And in three of the four there’s no account for forty two pounds a week year round." She put her finger on the fourth. "In this one there are eleven."

"Eleven."

"Eleven identical accounts, eleven different streets, eleven names that don’t exist." She straightened. "This man isn’t hiding a house. He’s hiding eleven, and even the iceman doesn’t know which is the real one."

"What are the other ten?"

"Ten addresses that receive ice and nobody collects it." She rapped the map with a knuckle. "Ten empty houses that have looked lived in for years."

"What does that cost?"

"A hundred and twenty crowns a year." Zelina looked up. "That’s a senior clerk’s wage. This man has spent twelve years earning a salary and spending all of it on not existing."

Miralys leaned over the map and stayed quiet a while.

"May I?"

"Go ahead."

She covered nine of the eleven points with an open hand.

"These nine are inside the old wall." She lifted her hand. "Streets three carts wide. A man who moves twelve carts of ring mail in four days doesn’t live where three don’t fit."

Two left.

"The left one has the river behind it," Lunara said from the other side of the table. "No back way out."

"So?"

"So he doesn’t care about a back way out." She put her finger on the right hand one. "This one has three side streets and a market fifty paces off. I’d put a man there if I wanted to move him fast."

"And a man who wants to see who’s coming?"

Lunara and Miralys looked at each other.

"Then the river one," they said, out of step, and neither of them laughed.

"Explain it to me," I said.

"A man who wants to run picks the market." Miralys tapped the right hand point. "Fifty paces to a crowd, three ways out, and nobody remembers a face."

"And the river?"

"The river has one approach and it’s four hundred paces of open bank." Lunara traced it with her finger. "You can’t come at that house without being watched the whole way in."

"That’s a trap."

"That’s a window." Lunara didn’t move her finger. "A trap is for killing. He doesn’t want to kill you, or you’d have died in February. He wants to see how you walk up."

Zelina looked at the two of them and then at me.

"Eleven weeks ago these two weren’t speaking," she said.

"They still aren’t." Miralys took her hand off the map. "We just agree about ground."

Saoirse arrived at noon with the answer none of us had thought to look for.

"Forty two pounds," she said, instead of hello. "I’ve run it three times."

"And?"

"Forty two pounds a week cools a room twelve by fourteen to eight degrees, if the walls are stone and there’s one door." She set the notebook open. "That isn’t a larder. That’s a workroom."

"For what work?"

"Mine." She looked up. "Silver matrices crack above twenty degrees. If you’re going to etch one outside the guild, you need eight."

A silence went round that table that lasted exactly as long as it takes four people to understand something at once.

"He’s making matrices," I said.

"He’s trying to. Not the same thing." Saoirse sat down for the first time. "I’ve had ten years and I can’t etch one. Nobody outside the guild can."

"His father could."

Zelina said that, and she didn’t say it cruelly.

"Halric Vosk measured ceremonies," Saoirse said slowly. "An overseer doesn’t etch. An overseer measures."

"An overseer measures for seven hours and draws the curves by hand," Zelina said. "How much do you learn in seven hours watching from close range the one thing your guild won’t let you touch?"

Saoirse didn’t answer right away.

"Everything," she said finally. "You learn everything. That’s why they’ve sent two overseers since year six."

"Since year six?"

"Since one of them died." She closed the notebook with both hands. "I joined at nine and they taught me that rule on the first day and I never asked where it came from."

We went to the river house at seven in the evening, twelve men, no banners.

We found the door open.

We found a room twelve by fourteen, stone walls, eight degrees, a long table and eleven empty silver cases.

Saoirse got to the table before anyone and passed her hand over it without touching.

"He worked here last night."

"How do you know?"

"Because the silver dust is fresh and the shavings are sorted by size." She pointed at three small heaps. "That’s what somebody does when they’re coming back."

"And the eleven cases?"

"Eleven attempts." She crouched to look inside one. "Ten cracked and one missing."

"How do you know the missing one isn’t cracked?"

"Because he left the ten cracked ones here." She stood slowly. "You don’t carry off the rubbish, Vaelion. You carry off the one that works."

And on the table, set in the center so it would be the first thing anyone saw, a jar of honey from the palace garden, from the batch Calista keeps on the windowsill.

With a note underneath, in the fast ugly hand.

That jar raised your integrity by a point, Majesty.

I keep accounts too.

Nobody touched the jar for a long time.

Zelina went to it first and looked without lifting it.

"March batch. Calista wrote the label."

"Can you tell when it was taken?"

"I can tell it wasn’t today." She pointed at the rim. "It’s been in a cold room for weeks. The wax on the seal has gone hard."

"Weeks?"

"Weeks." She straightened. "Vaelion, this man walked into your garden, took a jar off your wife’s windowsill, and stored it here waiting for the day you came down to this room."

Miralys came in from the stairs with her hand still on her bow.

"Nothing upstairs. Five rooms, all empty, none of them dusty."

"None of them dusty?"

"They’re cleaned." She looked at the table. "Vaelion, this house is in use, and he knew we were coming, and he still left the door open and the eleven cases out."

"He wanted us here."

"He wanted us here and he wanted us to see exactly what we’ve seen." She adjusted her glove. "When somebody shows you his workshop, he’s either selling or measuring."

"Which is this?"

Saoirse answered from the long table without lifting her head from the shavings.

"Both," she said.

I picked up the jar myself, which nobody wanted me to do.

The wax was hard and the label was in Calista’s hand, the small careful print she uses on everything she puts away for the winter.

"He didn’t leave this for me," I said.

Zelina looked over.

"He left it for her."

"Vaelion."

"Read the note again." I set it down. "It says the jar raised my integrity. He isn’t telling me he can count. He’s telling me he knows which of my wives cost him a point."

Miralys took the note out of my hand and read it twice.

"Then he’s been in that garden," she said.

"He’s been in that garden."

"And he waited until we’d all left the palace to tell us." She folded the note along its own crease. "Twelve men down here and five of us. Vaelion, who’s at home tonight?"

Nobody answered that.

We went back at a pace that ruined two horses, and the palace was exactly as we’d left it, and the honey jars were still in a row on the windowsill with one gap in the middle where a jar had been missing since March.