Chương 8: What He Carried

Knife in hand, I looked down at the old beggar. My notes, my report, described an approximate age, some possessions and some mysteries. But who was he? It is what I always try to keep in mind; this person was once a child. If he was from around here, he would have spent his days hearing the same bells ring the same tones at the same time every day, as they were still ringing.

He might have woken cold in a full orphanage dormitory, played with sisters and brothers, neighbours and nephews, in the streets and alleys just outside this very piazza. He had lived a life. He had shyly fallen for a girl, dreamed of ambitions and things he would do when he grew up. Maybe he mastered a craft, after years of toiling as an apprentice. Perhaps he had travelled far and seen places and people I would never even know existed. I looked down at the old beggar, and began a conversation.

"Three days, you have been listening to my questions," I muttered.

"Here is one more." I kept my voice down, knowing Nello was not far away.

"Where did you walk?" I said.

"Those soles. I have never seen anything quite like them. How many places in the world are there, to walk for so long?" Plenty, boy. Varenza is a corner of a fragment, forgotten and unimportant. I walked from here to where the grand silk caravans unload after their journey from the East. Twice I even joined them on their return; once just to see their road and once to explore their source.

Another time I walked North, to places where the pine trees dominate horizon and sky, half the year covered in snow as deep as a man. Once I even walked the deck of a ship bound for the land of the Afri; back and forth, I walked the wooden decking, for days and then weeks. You cannot imagine the colour of their deserts.

"How many years did you spend walking?" All of them. And now, I will keep walking. I set the knife down beside the arm and flexed my fingers open and shut over the brazier at the end of the bench, and held them there until they would close properly. Then back to the arm.

"But your hands, Ser," I said.

"This pattern of calluses. Fingertips, first knuckles, web of the thumb. I have never seen this before. What did you do?" Net-mending.

"Nets? Nets don't make this pattern." Hooks, really. Small hooks attached to a gut line. You hold the line between thumb and finger and the hook does the work. You just wait for the fish.

"Hooks don't callus the first knuckle. I've dressed fishermen. I know what cord does to a hand. What else?" Awl work, then. Leather.

"Leather. So what did you make?" Saddles, for a while. You push the awl with the web of your thumb and the stitching marks the fingertips. A saddle master in Ostrena taught me when I was young and I thought I wanted to stop walking for a while.

"You said nets." That was after. I had a lot of trades. There were many times I thought I should stop with the walking. I turned the hand over, palm up, observing the pattern in the hand again.

"The beard," I said.

"It was cut by a barber, properly, and recently. And you had hardly any money, and you cherished a crust of old bread. Who pays a barber and then sleeps under the Silk Guild arcade?" How do you know I cherished that bread?

"Don't change the topic on me, old man. What is with the barber and the beard?" A man needs standards.

"Standards cost." A shave is three coppers. It is nothing. I could be hungry. I could not be unkempt.

"Priorities." Exactly, boy. I had no answer for that, and my mind was on the arm I was studying.

"The coat," I said.

"It was filthy outside, and inside it, silk. An expensive summer coat, worn in winter. Foreign silk, an embroidered bird, from past the western straits. Did you visit the western straits yourself?" The voice hesitated, before answering. No… But I heard of them from a friend. The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

"What friend?" A sailor. He owed me money and paid in cloth instead. I had the coat, and I sewed the patches in where nobody would cut them off me.

"And the bird?" Another pause. A bird? Is that what it was? Yes, I remember now. Something with a long neck. I never knew what kind of bird that was. I turned the arm to the light. Under my thumb I traced the light scar.

"You said you sewed it yourself, inside the lining," I said.

"Those were good stitches. So you were also a tailor, adept with thread and needle?" My sister sewed it. She had the better hand. I stopped. The lantern popped and settled. I took up the knife. And then, I cut. The skin parted with a sound like a wet seam, and I registered the smell of the man even as my hands kept going. The cold was back in my joints, and with that, that small numb pain which had been growing for the past year.

I had worked on corpses with hands crooked and clawed by the disease I suspected was creeping into my bones, but for now I could work.

"The bread," I said.

"You never answered me." That was Anna's bread.

"Anna?" She baked on Thursdays. There's a trick to it, a second rising, I never learned it. I always asked for a cut from the end, the piece with the most crust. When you think about it, crust is really the point of a bread. I was saving it.

"Saving it." You never eat your last food, boy. I did not press that one. The lantern needed to be trimmed, and I did so, and the room brightened ever so slightly.

"What about the teeth," I asked.

"Nobody pulls out their teeth without a very good reason." Nothing.

"Four teeth, all pulled out together just days before you died. And by someone who almost knew what they were doing. Who took your teeth, and why? Where are they now?" My sister helped me sew the patches on. Did I say that? She had the better hand.

"I'm not asking about the silk. The teeth. Who took them?" The lantern burned. The brazier at the end of the bench ticked as it cooled. The next man on the bench had his hands folded and a red strip round his ankle.

"Four teeth," I said, again.

"Tell me." But no answer came back. (If you ever find yourself in conversation with a dead man, keep your questions to those with answers that you already know.)"Fine," I said. I worked around the shape rather than into it, and the object came free with a surprising lack of resistance. A ring. Black, plain and heavy. No stone, no engraving that I could see in that light, no hallmark. It sat in my palm. In one moment it felt too light and in the next, too heavy. And it was warm against my hand, near hot.

This had been carried inside dead skin for three days, and its temperature should have aligned to that death-cold, but somehow… What is this thing? I looked up and to the side, and quickly unwrapped the red strip of cloth tied to the ankle of the old man's bench-mate. Carefully I folded the cloth into a square before putting it down. Then I placed the ring carefully down on the cloth, and studied it. And the ring was… a ring.

For a moment I thought I saw writing on the inside of the band, and I brought the lantern closer to inspect it more closely. But nothing more than the dull black looked back at me. Then I activated my skill. RECOGNISE PERSONAL EFFECTS No information available. Nothing. Absolutely nothing. No readout. No name, no value, no owner's weight of meaning. In twenty-two years that skill had answered me for every object that had ever passed across my table. Every coat, every button, every crust of bread hoarded in a pocket.

Cherished things and incidental things and stolen things and made things. The skill was overpriced and narrow and everyone had laughed at me, but it had never once been silent, and it was mine, and I had somehow built a life around it. And now it was quiet? I tried the tunic. RECOGNISE PERSONAL EFFECTS Sackcloth Shirt Subjective Value Negligible Objective Value Less than 1 florin Instant. Correct. Flat and ordinary. I put my hand back over the ring where it sat on its square of red cloth and asked again. Nothing.

"That's twice," I said.

"You've never once been silent. Not once in twenty-two years." I drew my hand back from the ring.

"Come on, then, old man. Anything. You tell me what this is about." The voice I had built for him did not answer that either. It was not being coy. It was gone. I tried my skill again, and got nothing again. And at this point, as my curiosity had turned to disappointment, my frustration was nearing a point of anger. I folded the red cloth around the ring and put it into my pocket, picked up the lantern and left the tavern.

The impatience could be heard in the echoes ringing from my steps as I walked the long way from the tavern to the Regesta, which was the formal name for what had been Sinon's office for the past thirteen-or-so years. It was also where the Misericordia kept our Mandate Ledger.