Bone Jack

According to Breuer’s Tradecraft6—required read for all Bone Jacks—the two sorts of people who might catch sight of you when you sneak about quick and quiet are those who see you on accident and those who are looking. An obvious axiom that attracted plenty of sarcastic remarks from the young students of the Orphan’s Academy. When the jibes finished with the wisdom, it showed itself to be good wisdom anyway by surviving as much ribbing as Bone Jacks could throw at it. After all, it’s only one type of people who will cause the quiet and sneaking person trouble.

The person who sees you on accident, of course. For it is clear, Breuer would go on to explain, that the person who is looking for you and succeeds searching is going to be trouble on a different order of magnitude, and they therefore require a different approach entirely7. In certain circumstances, therefore, it made more sense to attend to avoid attention from accidental observers before attempting to evade the notice of people who probably already watched you and only left you alone to see what you would do next.

And, as everybody knows, sometimes the best place to hide is in the open air. To do that, Itzal lost a fight. It was easier than he would have expected, and he hardly had to act at all when the leader of a gang of young street urchins got tired of the way he was staring and taught him a useful lesson in the politics of that particular street. If this was the performance of the head of a gang of urchins patrolling the streets, Itzal did not envy anyone intent to invade the city and square off against its proper guards.

The gang summarily dismissed him with a few choice words in the talk of the Tal Khumuus. Itzal only understood a little Yaria8. One of the words he knew, for no reason he could easily remember, was kherem, which meant squirrel.

Itzal picked himself up from the puddle of mud. He’d picked the street to pick the fight especially for this mud. It would be excellent camouflage. In a muddy city, he’d look less out of place. He felt rather proud of himself for scraping off only a little bit of it and for cringing only slightly. The cringing might help with the image. To complete the camouflage, he held himself as nervously and child-like as he could manage—not hard, given that any semblance of confidence he’d displayed lately had been an act. Then he did what he could to dart around in the way that anyone who was not Tal Khumuus did in the streets of Khuurai Dalain.

Being a pale-skinned Kelt of the mountains did not make him stand out very much in that city. In the busier portions he saw people from as many places as he could name and as many again that he could not. The main population was Tal Khumuus, with their thin facial hair and caramel-brown skin. They’d dress in conglomerated furs and feathers and sport hunting trophies and emphasize scars. Lesser Khans of the Tal Khumuus would dress in clean linens, and greater Khans would dress in silks and go about in carriages or palanquins. The Tal Khumuus lorded it over every other ethnic group Itzal saw, and for as long as he kept his hood up and eyes averted, and kept replenishing his mud, he could flit about listening to conversations without attracting any more attention than it took to aim a kick or a squashed vegetable.

They made it rather easy to blend into the background. Easier than he expected.

Before sneaking out of Ganzorig’s house (where he’d done the only proper sneaking of his investigation, in order to get off the grounds and past Ganzorig’s guards without alerting them) before sneaking out of Ganzorig’s house, Itzal had asked Ben what to investigate for. They were on Khuurai Dalain for Ben’s property, after all, and if Itzal could find it and identify its defenses it would go a long way towards preparing them for recovering it, however that recovery might be accomplished. Itzal did not go so far as to suggest stealing it, but he thought it.

Ben had explained that Itzal would be able to find his property by the Ben’s mouse-and-slandersword mark that would still be on it. It would take the skill of a slandersmith to deface the mark from the property, and it stood to reason that people stealing the property of slandersmiths did not have a slandersmith of their own.

“These are full rigs, mind,” Ben had said more than once. “You’ll be able to tell when you see them.”

Itzal supposed he would. He did not know what “full rigs” meant, but supposed by Ben’s tone that it was through his own fault. He had asked no deeper about it, presuming he’d understand when he saw these “full rigs.”

After learning a little more about the property, Itzal had asked what Ben knew about the Tal Khumuus who had taken the property. In that area, Ben had limited knowledge, saying that the people who’d been in charge of delivery had not been forthcoming with information.

“Three horses,” Ben said. “I could only get that out of them. It had been a Tal Khumuus ship. It had been a Tal Khumuus crew. And they sailed under the common standard of Galzuu Khan.”

“How do you know that it wasn’t just turned over to Galzuu Khan?” Itzal asked.

Ben, after a drink, had responded. “I don’t. If it has then this whole venture’s just as well shoved up a prairie whale’s jacksy. So let’s just assume the best case scenario till we can’t do that anymore.”

“Your best-case scenario is that some unfamiliar Tal Khumuus house has laid claim to your property and that they will simply give it up to you? Assuming they haven’t sold it and scattered it to the wind by now,” Captain Younes said, smoking a cigarette near the window of their room of Ganzorig’s house. “And I took you for a pessimist.”

Armed with that information and their opinions about his spying abilities that had not warmed much from the initial moment, Itzal went into Khuurai Dalain almost certain he had a workable plan of action.

First, he had to learn a little more Yaria than he knew. And to do that, he went to the markets. There he heard a thousand languages, including the skipping and trilling words of the Tal Khumuus, haggling prices and sharing news. He already knew the Yaria word for “two.” He went up to a booth that sold ears of boiled maize, and he took up three of them.

“Khoyor,” he said, as if to tell the booth keeper how many he wanted.

A rapid tirade sprinkled on him with almost more force than the thin stream of spittle that came with it. In the midst of it all, he heard several words repeated. Guilgachin was one, but he thought that sounded like the wrong word. Still, he logged it away with the word gurvan as possibly meaning “three.”

Then, fleeing the switch made of broom straw that the booth owner had, Itzal darted through the crowd toward the ripe smell of well-fed horses.

He didn’t need to start a conversation. Here, the conversation spoke for itself. Around the edges of a wide pit that was open on one side to a ramp down to the docks, men and women gathered to look down. Down, in the pit, sellers of horses led the animals around, shouting about the advantages of theirs over everyone else’s. Itzal assumed he heard a lot of technical jargon and local slang. He let the mass of chattering conversation roll over and around him, attending to no particular part of it and moving around listening to all of it. He heard azarga, and he heard guunii, and he heard unagany, and he heard muu shud, and he heard saad barryeli9. After his rounds, he found a shady spot to crouch and parse the Yaria he had heard. After a bit of sorting and matching and putting words and expressions together, he decided that the most probable word for “horses” was aduu.

Which served Itzal only if he could find somewhere the people talked more about politics than about commerce. He’d heard the phrase gurvan aduu spoken several times already, but it seemed to be in reference to how many horses people had or meant to buy.

If Fitilu’s Observances of the Plains People was any authority on the matter, Itzal would be able to find the stewards of various houses meeting for gossip over hookah somewhere. Going away from the ripe smells and frenetic sounds of the marketplace, Itzal followed some quiet. When he got to a quiet square with a dry fountain in the middle of it, he took a long breath, holding his eyes half closed. On a faint brush of wind he caught a hint of the spiced smoke smell of hookah and started in the direction of it.

Here, he would most definitely attract too much attention covered in mud. Along the way he leapt into a canal used for irrigation and barge transport. He emerged soaked, but soaked in water was slightly easier to explain than covered in mud, since it was a hot day and he’d seen more than one person turn whole buckets over their fully-clothed selves to cool down. He noticed a few lads a bit younger than himself going quickly through the crowd with the purpose of messenger-bearers. Itzal modified his posture to be like one of them. Moving fast and keeping quiet, he followed the smells of spiced smoke.

When he eventually found a hookah lounge they tried to turn him away. A man in a fur hat and red robes and the air of a valet held a hand out to keep Itzal from going into the lounge. The valet chattered at him in Yaria. Itzal had no hope of understanding. Playing on a gamble, Itzal said in his usual language, “I’m sorry. I don’t know Yaria. I’m on an errand. My Khan has a message for the Steward of Gurvan Aduu. I was told to find him here.”

The valet looked no less as if it went against every ounce of good taste he had, but he at least hesitated. Itzal would have sighed from the relief of it, if it had been in character. Give him an inch, you give him a yard.

In the same language as Itzal, the valet said, “What house?”

In the most imperious tone he could conjure, Itzal said, “It does not please my khan to make himself known in so public a place.”

“This is a small town,” the valet said, smiling but leaving his frowning eyes out of it. “Surely he knows that someone here will know you.”

“It is not likely,” Itzal said. “I have not been in his employment long. I’m only lately come to Khuurai Dalain.”

“He must place great trust in you,” the valet said as if he did not believe it. “He must if he sends you on his errands, though you are so young.”

“He must indeed,” Itzal said, making an attempt at a similar mistrusting smile. It proved easy to smile in a fake way; Itzal only hoped it looked fake in the right way. The valet gave no signal about it.

Itzal began to worry this gamble wouldn’t pay out. He wanted to abandon it and simply run away. It took a good deal of willpower to stand there and be calm. He’d read a book called Architecture in a Hurry, which was about engineering things in battle situations, like bridges when you only had twenty minutes to build them or something. Something the author (an experienced campaigner whose name Itzal forgot) said more than once in the book was: run the numbers. Sometimes you’d doubt something would work, he said in the book, which might threaten your resolve. To counteract it, the author advised running the numbers. You might not think you’d picked the right course of action, but if the math supported your choice, he argued, you’d at least have that to bolster your confidence.

Those concepts proved useful in other areas. So Itzal had run the numbers, looking at the valet’s shifty self-assuredness. Itzal could just about see the valet’s cogs ticking away behind his eyes, weighing the possibilities. He didn’t know Itzal, but then he didn’t know everyone, and could he risk displeasing any of the khans? Businessman that he was, relying on the custom of those who preferred costlier past times. On the other hand, Itzal was sure he didn’t look local. Itzal ran the numbers, and he couldn’t say he felt confident about the results.

Itzal shook his head. He reminded himself that he did not have to be done. Absenting himself from the conversation at this point would do the numbers no good, in fact.

“You are a man of commerce,” Itzal said. “I think it would be fair to tell you that my Khan has recently severed ties with his importer of mu’assel.”

“Oh?” the valet said. His suspicion thinned and let tendrils of profit-mongering through.

“It is not my place to broker deals of that kind. I would be taking liberties,” Itzal said. “It might come into the conversation, though, how I was treated here.”

The valet sucked on the insides of his cheeks, thinking.

“Are you trying to manipulate my greed?” the valet asked.

Itzal smiled and spread his hands, committing to nothing while acknowledging it.

“It’s working,” the valet said.

Itzal clenched things at this point. He clenched his jaw, keeping his silence. No call to ruin this progress by talking. He clenched his fists around the ends of his sleeves, to keep control over the trembles that got worse every moment. And he felt as if he clenched his toes, as if he needed to hold himself down on the ground.

The valet led Itzal a winding path around mounds of pillows—some velvet, some suede leather, many leaking with tassels or glinting with embroidery, and all of them a little overused and shabby but in a most comfortable-looking way. Men and women lounged on the pillows, seeping smoke as slow and leisurely as themselves. The elements of the wardrobe of these people had in common the practicality of the working man, but done up in fine cuts and good linen. These were the social ambassadors, those who talked regularly to lords and vassals alike, who served tea from crystal pitchers in one instant, then helped repair carriage wheels a moment later. In another culture they might be called gentleman servants. In most cultures they’d be called stewards. Itzal thought of them as the brain stems of society.

The valet stopped in a deep corner of the lounge, far enough from all the open sides of the building that it was in shadows. As it was early in the day, they had not lit any lights, leaving the darkness thick and confusing. The sunshine from the street cast a few glinting shapes, making it more confusing rather than less.

Four men sat on cushions around a hookah as tall as Itzal made of tarnished silver and dark green glass. Itzal could just make it out. It bubbled from the sucking of the men holding the pipes. The coals glowed orange on top of it. Three of the men lounged. The fourth leaned forward on his enormous pillow, more perching than sitting, as if he expected to leap up at any moment.

The valet spoke a few words of Yaria to the perching one. Clouds of smoke floated from his nose and mouth. The smoke smelled of pears and cinnamon. He listened to the valet, and he looked at Itzal. Itzal felt distinctly observed. He tried to reveal the things he wanted and not the ones he wanted to hide.

“I am a poor man with no property to barter with your khan,” the perching steward said from the shadows.

“As I am,” Itzal said. “You see before you a servant with nothing to his name but his honor.”

Itzal saw a shift in the shadows about the steward’s face that looked like the twitching of a smile. The Tal Khumuus appreciated formality. The steward gestured to an unoccupied cushion.

“What does my khan possess that piques curiosity?” the steward asked, “and perhaps more importantly, what does your khan possess that would pique curiosity?”

“The answer to your second question depends on the quality of the answer to your first question,” Itzal said.

“You do not wish me to know anything about your khan,” the steward said. “Shrouded negotiations do not come overburdened by trustworthiness.”

“And if my khan wished to make a spectacle of his interests, he would not have sent a servant of no reputation to negotiate his terms,” Itzal said. He felt certain that the whirling of his thoughts would start a fire in his hair soon. He only hoped he would be able to catch up with his mouth before the end of the conversation.

The words seemed to entertain the steward, who laughed a few mild chuckles.

“Shall we call the pleasantries dispensed, then?” the steward said. “This is a good time of day to talk business, when the wits are comforted by good tea and a fair westering wind.”

“Yes,” Itzal said, trying as hard to mask his relief as he still tried to stop his nerves. He felt he had passed the initiation, and that the steward would be willing to do business with him. It was a lucky thing this steward liked wordplay. “That would be well indeed.”

“A proper speaking servant,” the steward said. He signaled to the valet to bring Itzal tea. A cup made of etched crystal with a silver handle and base came to rest on a small table at Itzal’s elbow. The valet poured hot tea into it. The steam smelled of mint and sugar and hot afternoons that lulled to naps filled with dreams of adventure in faraway places. Itzal held the hot tea under his nose and smelled it for a while, just about forgetting where he was and remembering a favorite chair in his library, about as soft as the cushion where he sat now. In his chair in his library back home he remember long afternoons of nothing but tea and books.

“Perhaps your khan knows of loot brought back from Oya Furu10. There are many choice pieces still in his possession,” the steward interrupted.

Itzal shook his head, bringing himself back to the hookah lounge with a sigh. “I take it you’ve got some trinkets for sale,” he said.

The steward grunted. “And I take it that your interests are not so aesthetic.”

“No, I’m afraid they are more…shall we say, useful,” Itzal said.

“In all honesty, my khan is not over-fond of redistributing useful things,” the steward said. That only stood to reason. Tal Khumuus culture was primarily a meritocracy, in other words an exercise in domination. Anyone who came into possession of useful things would keep hold of them with all their power, especially if the useful things could be used in military fashion.

Itzal composed his next statement with care. From his reading, he knew that the thing that any Tal Khumuus valued above any other thing was their family name. They believed in immortality by remembering—it was a main tenet of their spiritual lives, and they were highly spiritual. To offer your family name, to put yourself under another family’s name, was among the dearest things any khan might offer in trade. Itzal didn’t know whether it would smack as too dear at this juncture, so he spoke with care. It would not do to imply that this imaginary khan he served was so weak as to be shunned. At the same time he needed to sound desperate enough to warrant the risk that came with offering his name in trade, because this fictitious khan risked losing his house. Not even life was as precious to a khan.

He took a deep breath and shaped the words.