Setting Out on the Trade Run
A sound spilled from the mask. It passed straight into his mind, the way telepathy does, and no one else could hear it.
Chris held his silence. Ever since he had left the ruins, calls from Stan—Agent No. 1—had come often, and not once had he answered. Stan went on shouting at regular intervals all the same.
There had been a time, when Chris fought Sheikh with his life on the line, that David took Sheikh's side and came at him as well. Chris had poured everything he had into a shout through Mask No. 5. He had screamed. The shock of it struck David's mind, and that was how he won the fight.
No. 1 was driving his will just as hard as Chris had then, but Chris was not shaken the way David had been. Distance had thinned the force. Had No. 1 been standing right beside him, he could not have stayed this calm.
He never answered, but now and then he connected. When the mask fell quiet, Chris slipped in. Only four windows were there to see.
Right after he came out of the ruins, only his own fourth window had shown, along with the second—the window of someone who had never entered the ruins at all. As the years passed, the first window and the third brightened. Stan, and Emerick, whom he took for No. 3, had made it out.
The fifth window, the fiend Tenbo's, was empty. The presence had vanished completely. Either Tenbo still had not left the ruins, or he had gotten out, knew how to erase a being from the world inside the masks, and had cleared the window himself.
Of the two, Chris put his weight on the latter.
What's Tenbo doing? Strutting through Mick Magic Tower while he plays at being Randal? Or did someone catch him and kill him?
He was still watching the first, second, and third windows when he sensed someone coming. He cut the connection and stepped back out, straightened his clothes, and waited.
A man in his late forties, frost at the temples, came swaggering over. Supervisor Lapin of the Senfo Merchant Guild.
Chris bowed his head.
"Good day, Supervisor Lapin."
"You're joining tomorrow's trade run too."
"It's only been two days since I got back from the last one..."
Lapin cut him off, cold.
"When I tell you to go, you go."
Chris indicated his foot.
"My ankle's been hurting..."
"Boy, in my day, if a superior told you to jump into a fire, you jumped. You lot these days have too much to say."
"Supervisor."
"Don't like it, leave. Plenty of people to do the work besides you."
Chris lowered his head.
"Understood."
"Give a cripple a job and he doesn't even know how to be grateful."
Lapin shot him a sidelong glare and left.
Chris sat on the wooden platform and rubbed his calf. He loosened the straps and pulled, and the foot slid free of the ankle. He set the prosthetic aside and worked oil into the stump.
In the five years since the ruins he had trained hard in Acrian magic, but his skill had not grown far enough to make a ruined body anew. The severed foot stayed gone.
Alex got his arm back... Once I reach Ring Binding, I ought to be able to restore it too, shouldn't I?
He was still at Seed Cultivation. For the first year or two the slow progress had eaten at him; these days he kept his mind easy. Not one of his peers had reached Seed Cultivation. There was no need to fret over a ring he could not yet bind.
He was the one out in front. Last among his cohort to sense mana, first to reach Seed Cultivation, and now looking toward Ring Binding. People said you never could tell how the world would turn, and this was why.
He wiped the oil from his hands on a cloth and lay back, one arm under his head, watching the clouds go by. They hung thick and heavy. Rain would not be long. He had just drifted off when the sound of someone approaching opened his eyes.
A boy with his hair cropped short called out in a clear, bright voice.
"Kamin, I heard you're joining the trade run tomorrow?"
Still on his back, Chris smiled bitterly.
"That's how it went."
After the ruins he had crossed into the Britan Kingdom and taken work at the Senfo Merchant Guild. To keep trouble off his back, he had changed his face as well—into something ordinary, the sort of face you forgot if you didn't look twice.
He had learned from Tenbo how to reshape the mask, so he no longer had to cut skin and saw through bone the way he once did.
Come to think of it, I learned a great deal from Tenbo.
Fit to be called a teacher. He felt no gratitude for it.
The boy, Art, looked at Chris's severed ankle with worry.
"Kamin, does it hurt a lot?"
Chris had taken the name Kamin. Set aside his birth name, and it was the fifth he had used.
"It's old, so I'm all right. Phantom pain now and then, that's all."
"How did it happen?"
"I stepped in a trap a hunter set for game. Bad luck that stuck."
He sat up, fitted the prosthetic to the ankle, and drew the straps tight.
The Senfo Merchant Guild was in an uproar from before dawn. Men tending horses, men checking wagons, men hauling loads, men tallying goods, men trading greetings—all of it tangled into one noisy mess. Chris was stacking crates on a freight wagon.
Supervisor Lapin muttered behind him.
"Cripple's got some strength, I'll give him that."
Supervisor McKeon tapped him on the shoulder.
"Watch your mouth."
"If I don't call a cripple a cripple, what am I supposed to call him?"
"Supervisor Lapin."
McKeon's face went stern as he went on.
"Keep that up and he'll hear you."
"I'm not wrong. And if he hears, what's he going to do about it?"
McKeon shook his head.
"Aigoo. I should have kept my mouth shut."
The Senfo Merchant Guild kept shops across the country and sold goods on a grand scale. Covering that much ground meant transport was essential, so the guild had formed five transport units of its own and handled the logistics that way.
At first they had moved only their own goods. In time they began hauling for other guilds as well. What had started as consignment work, meant to fill empty wagons, had turned lucrative enough that lately there was talk of expanding the units from five to seven.
Around the time a pale dawn began to break, the wagons rolled out of the guild yard. Waiting to pass the main gate, Chris tilted his head. He had never seen all five transport units leave the main house on the same day, at the same hour. Unusual conduct had a way of turning into accidents no one expected.
They say that when a man's time to die draws near, he starts doing things he never did.
An ill feeling settled over him.
"Cripple. The wagon's moving. Don't just stand there gaping—move."
At Lapin's jab, Chris started walking. Just outside the city the transport units split into two groups, and at the next village they split again.
Chris sought out Supervisor McKeon, a man famous for his kindly nature, and spoke.
"What are we hauling this time?"
He had carried crate after crate, and he still had no idea what any of them held.
"All sorts. Cloth, clothes, ornaments, weapons, tea... some spices in there, too."
"All five units setting out at once is unusual, isn't it?"
"It is."
"Running the units without a rest like this is... a bit much, isn't it?"
"Why? Finding it hard?"
"A little, yes."
"That's how things stand."
"How do you mean?"
McKeon pointed a finger at the sky.
"We got on the wrong side of the royal family, and they hammered us with taxes. A few of the ships we invested in went down. Bandits cleaned out a transport unit, too. Money's a bit tight, from what I hear."
"Ah. Yes. I see."
A kindly smile rested at the corner of McKeon's mouth.
"Doesn't mean the guild's going under, so don't you worry."
"Yes. Thank you."
Chris bowed and went back to his place, and a crease gathered across the bridge of his nose. McKeon had told him not to worry. He worried anyway.
On the third night of the run, Chris opened his eyes in the middle of his meditation. His station was low, so he had been given a room near the stables, where the smell was foul, and an unnatural sound had come from that way. No one else heard it. Chris, whose senses were keen, did not let the noise slip past.
A thief?
He remembered the freight wagons lined up across the open ground in front of the stables and got to his feet. He slipped out of the room and headed for the stables. He nearly used the concealment magic he had learned from Tenbo, then held back. When you meant to pass for an ordinary man, you did it thoroughly. Use magic too often, and you might cast it without thinking where other people could see.
By the wagons, a man in a black mask had climbed aboard and was rummaging through the cargo. On his way out Chris had allowed for the chance that some employee had forgotten a thing and come late to check a wagon. One look at the mask, and it was a thief for certain.
The build was familiar. So was the way the thief unpacked a load and bound it up again. He used the Senfo Merchant Guild's own method of knotting, and he used it with an easy hand.
An insider. Who?
Running through men of a similar build, Chris drew closer. He meant to seize the man by the scruff, then pulled his hand back at the last instant. The thief's behavior had caught his interest. Silver coins had come out of a crate, and the man hadn't taken them. He wrapped the crate again and opened another.
He's after something in particular. What?
Something worth more than silver, at the very least.
Just then he heard someone behind him. Heavy footsteps, rough breathing—no one whose skill Chris needed to fear. So he pretended not to notice.
Something split the air on its way down toward the back of his head, and still he didn't move. Unless the man was a knight, even a blow taken wide open would not leave a wound.
Thwack.
A wooden club smashed into the back of his skull, hard enough to crack an ordinary man's head and kill him. At the sound, the masked man spun around in surprise. The man with the club spoke.
"This one was about to jump you. You ought to watch yourself."
The masked man looked down at the fallen figure by moonlight.
"Is that Kamin?"
"Yeah."
The attacker swallowed and went on.
"Did you find it?"
"Not yet."
A light came on then in the house where the stablehand lived. The two of them tensed and met each other's eyes, and a voice drifted out from inside.
"Who's out there?"
They started and fled. The stablehand came out to look, saw Chris lying there, and screamed.
"Aaagh!"
The scream shook the quiet rooms of the inn.
A short while later, Ortin, leader of the Senfo Merchant Guild's Fourth Transport Unit, and Hammonds, the vice-leader, sat in the reception room. Chris lay at their feet.
From the moment the club struck him until they carried him into the reception room of the lodgings where the leader was staying, Chris had gone on feigning unconsciousness. He wanted information.
Vice-leader Hammonds was gnawing at his nails.
"Do you think word got out?"
Ortin's voice was tangled in worry.
"Most likely... yes."
"We never should have taken the consignment."
Ortin nodded, then shook his head the other way.
"They named a sum no one could refuse. Succeed at the haul, and every money trouble we've got goes away."
"Do you know what it is we were entrusted with, Leader?"
"Only that it's something extremely precious."
"Not even a guess?"
"No."
Listening to the two of them, Chris understood why all five transport units had left the main house at once.
They don't want anyone knowing which unit is moving the treasure.
A clever man doesn't leave a job to chance. If the thieves were any good, they would have sent men to all five.
"What happens if we lose the goods?"
"We owe an enormous penalty."
"Do we have the money to pay it?"
"No."
"So it's bankruptcy."
"Yes. Bankruptcy. Whatever happens, we have to keep those goods safe."
The talk broke off, and a heavy silence followed. Both of them looked thick with worry.