Chapter 8. "The Gate"

* * *

In the silence, she could hear a gadfly buzzing in the distance. A crow cawed farther away as if expecting a quick meal.

"We don't know anything about that."

"Pity," Ranyan didn't seem to expect any other answer. "Do you mind if I take a look?" the fighter pointed his gloved hand toward the cart.

"I'm against it," the foreman sulked. "What we bring in is our business. And the wounded man is there."

Santelli was in his right - Profit is Profit. What you find is yours, you can show it to the world, and you can hide it as far away as possible by hiding it in a hiding place. Ranyan was well aware of that. But from all indications, the mercenary had almost failed another assignment and was ready to go to any extreme. And extremes in the wastelands are commonplace. What no one saw has never happened.

Ranyan pursed his lips, tugged the reins as he did so, and the horse stepped over with its heavy, shod hooves, barely visible from beneath its thick wool, like those of a true heavy-haired knight. It was clearly not a fast animal, but it was hardy and accustomed to combat. If a fight broke out, the four-legged opponent would be no less dangerous than the rider.

Santelli felt a bead of sweat roll down his temple and into his braid. Kai, as usual before a fight, was breathing particularly hard, whistling. It's hard to live with a broken nose, even if it's restored with magic.

"I insist, with all due respect," Ranyan said very calmly, very politely.

Santelli shook his head.

"That's our cart," he said just as calmly, and it was the calm of a string stretched to the limit. "Show it to you today, and tomorrow everyone will know that the brigade is unpacking to the first person they meet. Then there will be a second encounter. And a third."

It sounded like the truth, especially since it was, in fact, the truth. Give weakness once, and then everyone would take it as a rule.

"Pity," Ranyan remarked gloomily, very thoughtful as if deciding what to do next. Maybe he was deciding. Maybe he was just stalling for the right moment. The axe seemed heavy as if it were made entirely of stone. Santelli looked between the eyes of the interlocutor - only the interlocutor so far - and thought about the next action. A sharp throw of the axe, however, at the horse's head, not Ranyan's. And then...

Then many things would happen very quickly, bloodily, and irreversibly. Shena, to put it mildly, looked at life with excessive optimism. The forces were by no means "nearly equal". Six horsemen against foot soldiers, and Bizo was no warrior after all, made the outcome of the battle a foregone conclusion. Just like this morning's "duel" between Kai and the redhead.

But the brigade had Santeli's reputation on its side. And a direct consequence of that reputation was the obvious fact that more than one of Ranyan's mercenaries would die in the fight, and the rest would have to heal their wounds for a long time.

Thus, it came down to how much of a rush the hair-brained brether is. How much he believed the brigade could really hide something. And how much the mercenary is willing to drop his credibility among his own. To give up on the tarred ones is also a defeat, however small.

Lena's heart was pounding so hard it was a wonder the whole neighborhood hadn't heard it yet. Including the terrifying killer with the deep, strong voice of a professional actor. Lena felt a small shiver sweep over her hands and crawl over her face. The girl was immensely scared. Trying to calm her trembling fingers, she accidentally touched the sleeping Codure, who moaned through a half-dream and muttered something. But to Lena's great happiness, he did not wake up.

Hearing a moan from beneath the bunting, Ranyan tilted his head quickly, like an owl that catches every sound in the night. His team moved the well-trained animals forward.

"I told you, we're taking the wounded," Santelli repeated.

An axe right in the horse's face. And back to the cart, where secluded, but, at the same time, available stashed another weapon, more suitable for the skirmish with the horsemen. Or vice versa, with a dagger to finish. If luck is on and the swordsman's horse will fall. And the rest is as it goes. Brigadier looked at the brether and clearly understood that all his thoughts are obvious, like a gallowsman on the gate. Just as Ranyan understands perfectly well that Santelli understands... And so on. And it would end fast, bloody, messy.

But instead of bringing the horse forward and trying to stomp the brigadier at once or, on the contrary, jumping down to impose a foot battle, at which the brether was very good, Ranyan did quite a different thing. He drew from behind the wide sash of his glove a small object like a monocle - a lens with a tiny, two-finger handle and a scrap of the narrow chain of a dozen links. The frame and all the metal parts of the monocle reeked of antiquity - crossed with scratches and patina. The monocle seemed to have been a thing of history long before the Calamity. The lens, on the other hand, looked like it had come out of the grinder's grindstone yesterday. The absolute cleanliness of the glass was striking, especially in contrast to the frame.

Behind the cart, Bizo breathed noisily, sucking in air through clenched teeth like a whale taking in a stream of water with a school of fish. The alchemist clearly understood what it was. Yes, and Santelli had heard of such lenses, too. The secret of making them was long lost, and there were a handful of such artifacts left in the world. Whoever was looking for the mysterious maiden was very... no, VERY wealthy, had good connections, because just for the money "the Eye of Alzor" did not get. And the mysterious employer wanted very much to find the right person...

Ranyan wiped the lens with a piece of suede. Sunteli saw how much the brether didn't want to use it. No wonder. All magical artifacts, in one way or another, are charged for their use. Some required a sacrifice or a drop of blood, and others required a light memory to be turned into its opposite, while others simply reduced the user's life by weeks or even months. Either way, Ranyan finally finished polishing the glass and looked through it at the cart. At that moment, he and his hair looked like an aristocrat, eyeing an actress in the theater to see whether or not she was worthy of the honorable role of a passing infatuation for a couple of nights.

Time stood still. Santelli could literally feel Bizo's hand squeezing the lever of the crossbow and the sturdy leather bowstring barely hanging on the edge of the "nut" - the knurled wheel with the grip. Nor could the brigadier see Kai, but he could sense that the swordsman was frozen with his weapon, ready to rush forward. Kai could move very fast, and more than once, he had cut down cavalrymen who were too sure that looking down from above gave them undeniable superiority over the infantry.

The mercenary stared at the cart through his monocle, and the whole wasteland seemed to stand still in grim expectation. The thin line between life and death now passed through the small glass in the brether's hand. Ranyan stared indefinitely, though really, of course, for a matter of moments. Then he shook his head and hid the monocle back. And nothing else happened. Brether turned his horse around, tossed "Good luck and good riddance" over his shoulder, and moved on, riders one by one stretching out in column behind their master.

Santelli exhaled noisily and with a gasp, realizing that the brigade had once again happily parted with ... not death, but big trouble for sure. He was also well aware of the look on Ranyan's face before the mercenary turned back. And it was obvious to the brigadier that the brether had not retreated in the face of force. Ranyan did not see through the lens what he had expected, and he was quite surprised. He was saddened, too, because the result would be a new ride in the Wastelands. And finally, there was a third thing, something that Santeli again realized and which he saw confirmed in Bizo's eyes when he returned to the cart. Ranjan could not see through the lens of a redhead named Hel. Which meant she had no magic, no magical gift. Not even a tiny drop.

The small group continued on their way as if nothing had happened.

After another hour or so of travel, Bizo grumpily remarked that it would rain by evening, but the crew should make it, even with plenty to spare. Santelli looked critically at Hel, who was still hiding under the tarpaulin, and remarked that the crew had no human clothes for her. Let her sit under the rag until the Apothecary.

In the meantime, the scenery was gradually changing. The mountains came closer, and now the gray-green peaks with narrow tongues of glaciers could be seen. Slowly, almost imperceptibly, step by step, the heath was taking on the features of a more or less settled place. The road from a nominal direction became a real tract, well-traveled. From time to time, there were even foot, horse, and cart travelers. Not so often, but enough to understand that this place is inhabited.

Then Lena saw the first houses or rather huts. They were all one-story, very stocky, with windows at about belly level and low thatched roofs. Around each house was usually a garland of outbuildings laid out haphazardly, obviously according to need and situation, without a plan or aesthetics. The houses with additions looked ugly but inhabited, reliable, and even decorated to a modest extent. There was a weathervane in the form of a wooden animal that looked like a cat (Lena shuddered at the memory of an angry "cat"). There's a rope with flags made of faded multicolored scraps.

There were many vegetable gardens. The girl was completely ignorant of rural flora, but carrot tails, something else that looked like dill, and bushes, one and the same as cucumber and potato bushes, seemed familiar to her. She began to wonder how the agricultural seasons were related here, and how productive agrarianism was in general, with a steady and dim sun and a huge moon, which must have an effect on something.

The gardens were scattered in outward disarray but carefully fenced with ... barbed wire? In Lena's head at once, like a rewinding film, ran a kaleidoscope of frames inspired by fiction. The decline of technological civilization, high-tech artifacts, and savages with smallpox inoculations and barbs. But a closer look revealed that it was not metal wire but the long whiskers of some vines or ivy stretched as a barrier between the wooden posts. It was a very long mustache covered with sharp thorns.

A large cart loaded with dried fish rumbled past. Somehow it was headed away from the unknown Gate, though logically, it should have been the other way around. Probably the owner had purchased a large consignment for some of his needs. The fish were small, yellowish, and almost transparent in appearance.

"Yes. It's going to rain," Santelli reported into the void, drawing in the cool, damp air. "Clouds are coming in from the ocean."

"It'll pour for a couple of days," Bizo added. "Hardly more than that."

"Just right," summed up Santelli as a matter of course.

Lena snuggled even deeper under the covers.

There weren't many people around, and she couldn't say anything special about them. People were like people. They were rare, usually on foot, occasionally on low, funny-looking animals that looked like donkeys with short rabbit ears. They were dressed conventionally medieval, in clothes with a predominance of brown shades and an abundance of all sorts of laces and ties. "Medieval," in the sense that if Lena had seen something like this in movies about the events of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries of Earth's history, she would not have been surprised at all, taking it for granted. Almost no one wore hats, mostly hoods with a long "ponytail" at the back, which just hung along the back or foppishly wrapped around the neck like a scarf. The footwear was mostly wooden boots pounding on the rutted road.

The poorer-looking travelers had wooden shoes all the way around. The richer ones had only the soles, but the tops seemed to be leather. They knocked almost identically, though. And they were probably equally uncomfortable to wear. Yeah, it seems that she can't find shoes with supinators here...

And then there was the fact that everyone, absolutely everyone, was armed. There were knives, clubs, heavy staffs, and axes like the one Santelli wore.

The brigade ignored the passers-by, just as the wayfarers ignored the bandit crew. Everyone gave way to the cart, but the brigade didn't shy away from anyone. No, once a small cavalcade of horsemen, like the hunters for the unknown woman, rode by. Except that they had bigger horses and more metal on their clothes. The brigade not so much gave way as moved with the cart to the side of the road, and Santelli made a sort of polite half-bow. Judging by the fact that he, in turn, was not answered, the rules of politeness here were strictly one-sided, from the bottom up, or very different from those Lena was accustomed to.

The girl wondered what her unexpected traveling companions were really doing. Who were they? And then she remembered Santelli's grim warning that she had better demonstrate her medical talents, or else...

Or what?

No one guarded her. No one tied her back to the cart. Even the surly and distrustful Shena had lost all interest in the redheaded Hel. It seemed self-evident to the brigade that this was the best place for her, in the cart and under the burlap. They didn't even think about the fact that all she had to do to escape was slip out from under the blanket and dive over the side without getting caught by her traveling companions.

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And that self-evidently kept Lena in place better than any restraints.

"The Gate," Bizo murmured, adjusting his hat and getting a little dewy-eyed. "Finally..."

Lena dared to poke her nose a little further out from under the cloak. As she did so, she struck again at Codure. This time he came to his senses almost immediately and looked at his companion with a quite sensible look. Lena, in turn, eyed him warily. They were lying very close to each other, just a little out of the embrace. The wounded man was hot as a stove, but it was not a painful fever. Just the high fever of a sick man who'd already moved away from death.

Codure was even somewhat handsome. The affliction had sharpened his features and dilated his pupils. She could see clearly now that the wounded man was still very young. No older than twenty by Elena's standards, and God knows how many years old in the local calculation.

"Are you an angel?" the young man whispered unexpectedly.

"No," replied the girl automatically, also almost whispering.

"Angel," Codure repeated, licking his parched lips. "I remember... you hurt me... very badly. I was burning like I was on fire. But then I saw death step aside and say, "Not today." You chased it away from me."

Lena listened to the hurried whispering and tried to figure out how to explain to the young man that he was hallucinating from blood loss, fever, and, apparently, the poison in the wound. On the other hand, reasoning sensibly, a properly applied splint and disinfection did ward off death. So she really is an angel.

The horse's horseshoes, as well as the wheels, tapped on something hard and ringing. It seemed that the paved part of the road went on.

"The Gate," Codure's thoughts meanwhile jumped to another subject. The young man licked his lips again and whispered. "Home. We are home."

Home, Lena repeated to herself and looked outside again. Now she saw it, too.

It was once a building of enormous proportions. No statues, like in The Lord of the Rings, nothing pretentious or symbolic. Only walls and towers. The wall was at least fifteen meters high, with towers of red and gray stone pushed forward. The wall stretched left and right as far as one could see. Even now, the overall appearance was imposing, though little remained of the wall, and the towers looked as if they had been chewed off by some giant. Lena did not know much about stone construction, but she got the feeling that the cyclopean fortress had not been crushed by enemies, but dismantled quite peacefully, year after year, like ants on a dinosaur skeleton.

A defensive structure whose power has been undermined by time and man, but is majestic even in its current sad form.

The two largest towers, polygonal as a pencil, remained almost the same, only the cones of the roofs had sagged, partially collapsed, and the tiny scales of shingles gaping black holes at this distance. On either side of the towers, the walls dropped sharply downward, passing into solid foundations many meters thick, about the height of a man or slightly lower. The towers had probably been hewn with special care, and there was a stone pass between them. There was a bridge between the towers, a sort of superstructure with battlements and projecting balconies. Apparently, once there was a huge gate between the towers, under the bridge. Now there is not even a hinge left of it. Now all that was left was a thoroughfare, through which footmen and men on donkeys hurried and carts of every kind, among which no two seemed alike. Without a doubt, this was the Gate. Home to the Santelli gang and probably many, many more.

Lena exhaled in shock. She tried to estimate the approximate size of the structure, but nothing worked. There were no familiar landmarks, like cars and buildings, for the eye to cling to and build a system of coordinates. The sight of the huge and abandoned Gate evoked sadness. One look at it, and then at everything else in the area, was enough to realize that this world had seen far better days. Or, at least, this visible part of the world. Once giant fortresses had been built here, but now the walls were being torn down into stones and ugly vegetable gardens with thorny vines...

Sad.

"Home," she repeated quietly after her traveling companions, with only her lips.

Home...

* * *

It is possible (and even certain) that Matrice once had a name, perhaps a beautiful one. And some dark secret, too, which is what drove a mature woman to the Wastelands, leaving all her past life behind.

Possible...

Now she had no name, no age, no past. Just "Matrice," that is, "mother of the family," the matriarch. Known throughout the Gate and far beyond, the owner of an Apothecary, a gobbler of rare artifacts, and a mediator of many difficult issues. A person who was able to hold her own and rise in the harsh world of the Wastelands, where there were no stifling shop rules, but no courts with written laws to protect the honest mercantile and artisan.

Santelli had been working with the Apothecary for a long time. It wasn't as profitable as dealing with other fence-sitters, but it was stable and gave a nice bonus in treatment. And someone who goes into the gray desert for Profit, sooner or later, always needs the services of a good medic.

Real medicines, made from good ingredients, not ashes mixed with urine and tinted with Pantocrator know what for glamour. Potions that kill fatigue give strength and night vision. Mixtures for pain and many other things without which the life of a brigade on the wastelands would be short and very sad. It was all available at the Apothecary, at Matrices. That was why the first place the brigade's cart always stopped at. One of the inconspicuous barns with sturdy walls and tightly caulked slots, where they could always lay out their goods without haste, evaluate them, and negotiate a reasonable price. And a lot of other things as well.

This time the brigade's booty was meager, and Codure's treatment would eat up a good part of the income. His career as a Proffitt hunter was over - you don't go into the dungeons with a leg like that - but if you brought him back, it was decent and good manners to pay him at least some care. That's how you get a hard reputation as a good foreman and also as a decent team of "tarred" men.

On the other hand, some silver must have wormed its way into the purses, and a tip on the Grey Shadow's lair would draw gold all by itself, even if it turned out to be only an empty cobwebby field. So they didn't go in vain. And, of course, a strange acquisition in the form of an incomprehensible redheaded Hel.

So at the cart, everything went in the established order. Under strict supervision, the loot was extracted one item at a time by the clerks, who worked naked at the waist - so that there were no sleeves, in which it is so convenient to "accidentally" put small useful items. Then it was stacked on a special long table along one of the barn walls, numbered and written in a special book. It was troublesome and cost money - rag paper, good ink, and quills were only imported. But with Matrice, everything was fair and strict. This, in turn, attracted customers.

This time, contrary to usual practice, Santelli did not take part in the inventory, leaving the procedure to Bizo. He and the redheaded guest were sequestered in a small room where Matrice was conducting particularly important negotiations and measuring powders and elixirs that were either particularly valuable or might cause a stare even here, in a place where written laws had not been seen for hundreds of years and would not be seen again for an equally long time.

Lena did not understand a word. The Brigadier and the fat lady, the apparent owner of a barn with solid walls on a stone foundation, spoke quickly and in some jargon. The lady was a very picturesque person and aroused curiosity. She was not fat but rather what she called chubby. Her hair was carefully arranged under a wide cap, and she wore a leather apron over a shapeless dress. It was stained with many stains, but they looked more like the marks of chemical experimentation than unkemptness. The face was smooth, almost entirely devoid of wrinkles, which made the hostess look like a kindly glossy doll. And her voice was rather pleasant. All in all, the lady looked more like an aunt from some good family movie about a broken-hearted innkeeper with a good heart.

Except for the look... When the kindly aunt with the face of a smooth baby doll looked at Elena, she was at once reminded of the look in Santelli's eyes at the fire and his unctuous reasoning regarding the sale. It was at once clear that for this nice lady buying and selling people was a common occupation.

"That's the way it is," Santelli ended the short story as he rolled up the long cloak he had wrapped Hel in to bring her here without arousing suspicion. "I think some aristocrat who got her memory washed away with powerful magic and tossed through a portal to the Wasteland. The good calculation, but no one knew we'd make the detour there and then."

"Portal, memory..." brooded Matrice, looking at the huddled Hel in her ridiculous jacket and sleeveless brothel shirt. "An expensive treatment."

"The rich have their own quirks," put in Santelli.

"It's still too expensive. There is so little magic in the world that not every Great House can afford portal sorcery."

Santelli just shrugged his shoulders, as anything can happen.

"So you say she can heal?" clarified Matrice with great doubt, crooking her cheek so that one eye almost closed.

"She knows some special tricks. They're very good," Santelli emphasized the word "very." "I've never seen or heard of those. Neither have you, I bet. The Apothecary could use them. A Cave Flier broke a leg of one of ours and clawed it. She made it so he would remain lame, but he could walk. And the wound was not inflamed. Not at all."

Matrice again grimaced skeptically but was clearly interested.

"What else does she know?"

"She says she can't remember anything else," Santeli said with a wave of his hands. "But she might remember in the future."

"That's not serious," Matrice grimaced for the third time.

"This is serious," the foreman push his line steadfastly and persistently. "You'll need her, even if she can't remember anything at all, ever. I remember you complaining that there was no one to grind powders. The apprentices' hands are either too rough or too weak. Look at her fingers."

"All things counted, Honourable," the clerk reported from behind the dense curtain, with due respect in his voice. Santelli didn't see him, but he was sure the man was bowing in a half-bow. And the turn of phrase he used was distinctive - "distinguella" - literally it meant "distinguished". It was a way of referring to lawyers and guilds, treasurers, accountants, and others of ungenerous origin but irreplaceable in their place. Matrice held her household in a strong and heavy hand.

"Wait," the hostess replied briefly.

Matrice took Hel's palms without sentimentality and raised them higher under the light of a good three-wick lamp. The redhead grimaced but remained silent and did not interfere with the inspection.

"Hmmm..." Matrice stared at Hel's hands, rubbing her fingertips, her smooth palms without a blister. The redhead bit her lip but remained silent.

"Well, let's face it, the merchandise isn't as good as you described," Matrice huffed, releasing the victim's hands, and Santeli grinned. The bargaining had definitely begun. "It's also very hot, it burns!"

"Ranyan, we met him on the road," there was no point in denying it, nor did Santelli deny it.

"Exactly. You don't hire a routier like that to show off. Someone's looking for this girl. Someone's looking for her. By the way... why didn't you sell her right there?"

"I don't like that kind of deal," the foreman scowled. "Too murky."

"You don't like the money?" grinned Matrice.

"I'm very fond of money," Santelli frowned even more. "But I prefer to know exactly what I'm selling and to whom. Here's me selling you her hands, two good healing tricks, and maybe something else she'll remember later. A good deal with clear rules."

"Ranyan would have paid more. Much more."

"Maybe. But how do I know it's not actually worth twice as much? Ten times? Or that a Rutier won't pay at all and will rush into battle as soon as he sees it? It's a murky business, and in such cases, they pay with iron far more often than with gold."

"Reasonable," Matrice agreed, frowning her forehead as if she were rolling over-complicated, heavy thoughts with an effort of will. "That's why I like you. You always know exactly what you're willing to sell and buy and for how much."

Santelli grinned, letting her know that he appreciated the slight flattery, and while it was pleasant to the heart, it would not affect the negotiations. Matrice returned the smile, just as light and cold.

"What do you want?" she asked businesslike.

"A good price for the goods," Santelli began listing at once, showing that he had long considered the matter. "No 'scratched,' 'patina suspicious,' 'looks too new.' And a discount for the treatment."

"And for the girl?" the pharmacist raised an eyebrow.

"Here's what I was thinking..." Santelli lowered his voice, though no one here could overhear them anyway. "It's not worth selling her on her own. Who knows how things will turn out? But an apprenticeship with the paper would be fine."

"So you don't sell her to me as booty from the wastelands, but you give her to me as an apprentice," Matrice understood the thought at a glance.

"And everybody's happy," grinned Santeli crookedly. "It's all mercy. And I'll get my money's worth from the treatment."

"How much?"

"Half the regular price. Poisoning, wounds, fractures - all for half the price. And elixirs and other mixtures have a discount of a third of the price."

"Won't your face burst?" inquired Matrice.

Santelli ran his hand over his face and smoothed his beard.

"I think it is still in one piece," he said after a quick check.

"A quarter of everything," summed up the pharmacist, bulging and literally hovering over the foreman, though she was shorter than him by a head.

"Half discount on this bum with a broken leg and our next purchase before the raid," parried Santelli, who, of course, did not expect his first offer to be accepted.

For half a minute, the merchants stared at each other, catching the slightest weakness, looking for an opening to cut in and win back at least a little in their favor. And they didn't find any. They had known each other too long, and they haggled too often.

Hel was sniffing noisily, unaware, but guessing, that her fate was once again being decided. And for a long time.

"Deal," Matrice sighed. "Sneaky dishonest robber."

"Deal," confirmed Santeli. "Greedy spider bargain. By the way, how will you cover her?"

Now the question sounded quite appropriate, without the risk of lowering the stakes or blowing the contract.

"I don't," the pharmacist sniggered. "A lot of people have come in caravans this week. Authority taxed the peasants again in the Kingdoms, and the Church pushed, teaching them the right way to pray. So they come here, dozens at a time. They are all beggars, don't know rules, with all sorts of foreign accents. This redhead will sit away from unnecessary eyes for a month, learn how to make powders and tell her tricks. And then we can show her to people."

"Don't forget to change her clothes," prompted Santelli.

"Teach the spider how to pull the yarn," grinned Matrice, showing an amusing combination of gold teeth and lack thereof. "Well, let's go see what you brought. А ... Oh... there's something else..."

"What?" snapped Santeli, responding to the tone. That's how you tell news you should tell but don't really want to. Or you don't want to.

"There's something happened..." grudgingly stretched out Matrice. "Anyway ... your blond cherubs from Heterion."

"Yes?" the foreman's face turned petrified.

"You know, it's not the Kingdoms here. Nobody cares who's with whom or where, but even here, such things are not flaunted."

"And?" Santelli again confined himself to an interjection that was colder than a chunk of ice from the highest peak.

There was a thump on the roof. Then another and another. It was beginning to rain. The bad weather rolled in from the north in a solid wave, the echo of a terrible ocean storm.

"The boys have got their tongues wagging in your absence," sighed the apothecary. "You're a man of name and reputation, even if the crew behind you is small, but you're known and respected. The blondes are openly bragging about what's going on with you. Building up their value, say, not a little man under the blanket ... . uh ..."

"I got it."

"They did it too loudly. There were rumors. Some people started to speak out quite loudly."

"Who?" asked the foreman very gently.

"Different people. But the loudest one, they say, was Augen."

"Augen the Axe? That's strange. He seems like a smart man."

"No, the one that's very young, without a nickname."

"I know someone like that. He must be... a very brave young man."

The rain was already drumming on the roof almost nonstop, the sound of individual drops merging into a continuous thumping sound.

"He was leaving tomorrow with the first caravan to the northwest, to the Baronies. You're back a couple of days early, aren't you? So he's been running his mouth left and right. He must have thought you wouldn't meet."

"Brave young man," repeated Santelli.

"Solve it," Matrice advised me very seriously. "Don't drag it out. Such rumors are bad for business. And we have, as you remember..."

She didn't finish the sentence, but Santeli understood it perfectly.

"Shall we haggle?"

"No, Bizo will settle this," the foreman grimly decided.

"Where are you going?"

"I will solve the problem. Without dragging it out."

"That's good," Matrice smiled. And Hel shuddered at the smile, more befitting a wolf than a human.

* * *