8

The auction house was a little further north of Perentee than he’d expected. Perentee was sometimes talked about as Sunhampton’s younger sibling, though the towns had little in common except for sitting on the same part of Easterly’s map. Their proximity meant that some people lived in Sunhampton and commuted to Perentee for work, and the same the other way. Mick had been here a few times, including for Jack Cooper’s birthday a few years back when they’d covered ‘The Fox Trail’, which meant visiting every tavern in Perentee that had the word ‘fox’ in its name.

Inside the warehouse, Mick was treated to a smell the likes of which he’d never experienced before. Not just a farm aroma or that of the countryside. This was way worse. This was the stench created if someone had taken farm smells and distilled them to their essences, making them stronger than he could ever have imagined. Cow muck, horse muck, every type of muck possible. If the animal lived on a farm and had an arse, then its smell was here. This was going to take a dozen washes to get out of his clothes, he thought with regret. He might even have to pay Janey Morgan to make him some special washing powder, depending on whether that was more cost effective than just buying a pair of trousers and a shirt.

I’ll have to be even more thrifty until I find a new job he thought.

Walking around the warehouse and threading his way through the various stalls to get his bearings, Mick felt sure he’d never seen so many farmers in one place. They were everywhere he looked.

“You looking for some organic fertilizer, my treacle?” said one lady behind a stall that bore the name, ‘Rumpers Organics.’

“No, thanks.”

Moving away before she could try to reel him further into her sales pitch, he found himself caught in the middle of a crowd. People moving this way and that, some of them barely stepping out of his way to avoid barging into him. Market stalls either side of him seemed to form a barrier hemming him in.

Weaving his way out of the bustle, Mick carved out a little space for himself near the eastern wall, beside a stack of hay bales. Away from the constrictive busyness of the other people, he took a few deep breaths.

It was his own fault that he felt so overwhelmed. He had bought a book called ‘Nose for Trouble,’ from Percy Tattersall’s book store. Written by an ex-chief inspector at a guard station in Full Striding, the book was filled with techniques that a guard or sleuth could use to boost their senses. It was aimed at people who had a class token, but there were a few tricks that even tokenless guys like Mick could learn.

So, this meant that his smell and hearing were perhaps a little better than regular peoples’. In a place that smelled as bad as this and had so many people talking at once, vendors yelling, and cows mooing, it didn’t feel like improving his senses had been time well spent.

A few deep breaths left him feeling a little more settled. Mick left his semi-secluded spot and headed for a stall he’d spotted on his earlier patrol. There, a guy called Kit Henwright was selling hot coffee from beans that he grew himself. Mick treated himself to a cup, despite the price. Sure, he’d just quit his job. Yes, paying out coins for luxury coffee felt foreign to him at the best of times. But to heck with it. Today was a day for doing things differently, it seemed. His life in Sunhampton had been the same for years now, ever since he got back from traveling. And it always would have been, he realized with brilliant clarity. If he hadn’t have quit today, his life would never, ever have changed.

He was always holding himself back, working all hours of the day and evening, never treating himself, paying for the damned guard stuff out of his own pocket. Right now, right here, he wanted a good-tasting coffee, and by the saints, he deserved it.

“Gets a little bit much, doesn’t it,” said Kit Henwright, as he scraped coffee from his grinder. He dug at it with a special tool, tapped the grinder softly so that granules fell out, then got back to scraping.

“Yeah, it’s like a farmyard in here,” said Mick.

Kit laughed, though they both knew, deep down, that Mick’s joke was a five out of ten at best. Maybe he could have elevated it to a six if he found a way to get ‘moocha’ instead of mocha into it, but he couldn’t figure out a means of doing that.

Kit continued, “The trick is…well, there is no trick. Just get what you came here for, and leave. That’s the secret. Have a good day, my friend. If you’re ever in Sunhampton, you might want to check out a store. Paisley Porter – Merchant of Fine Goods. She stocks my beans.”

Mick couldn’t help smiling at this. “I think I’ve heard of the place. Maybe I will. Take it easy, fella.”

Feeling refreshed, Mick found his way to the part of the warehouse given over to auctioning off livestock. Cows, sheep, goats, rams. There were so many animals here they could have started a zoo. It occurred to him that if the animals had just a little more intelligence, they might realize that they had the numbers and brawn to take over. Maybe they could start selling the humans for auction, instead. One of them, a huge bull with furious eyes, looked like it could charge straight through a castle gate and barely feel it.

Walking around each animal pen while trying to seem casual, Mick slowly made his way to where four pigs were kept. He took a few moments to look at them, to really take their appearances in. Then, he walked out of the livestock area and back towards the market stalls.

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Taking his notepad out of his pocket, he flicked through it, trying to find where he’d taken Rohan’s description from Alister.

This bloody notepad, he thought to himself as he struggled to locate the page. What I’d give for an artificed one. Although, I s‘pose I could have just folded the page.

Finding the section he needed, he read his own shorthand. As he scanned Rohan’s description, he felt himself deflating. Of the four pigs that were up for auction, one of them almost matched Rohan’s description. The problem? This one had big, brown spots all over its body, whereas Rohan didn’t have any.

Shutting his notepad and putting it in his pocket, he was ready to chalk this up as a failed lead. Then, his instincts stirred for the second time today. Go take one more look, they told him.

Acting on what his gut told him – while wondering exactly why folks thought of their instincts being in their gut in the first place, since that was the last place Mick would have chosen to keep them – he headed back towards the animals. He made another relaxed tour, before stopping at the pig pen.

A guy was in the pen with them, kneeling down and painting red numbers on their rumps. He was a tall man, all skin and bones as Ma would say. Mick had seen more bulk on a tree branch in autumn.

The man noticed him. “In the market for a hog?” he said.

“Maybe.”

“Reared these beautiful beasts myself. They’re up for auction in mebbe an hour or so.”

“Mind if I take a look at them?”

“Sure.”

Mick moved to enter the pig pen, when the man held up a hand. “Look with your eyes.”

Despite not knowing much about farming and even less about buying livestock at an auction, he felt reasonably confident in assuming something.

“You expect folks to bid on animals they haven’t inspected? This your first time?”

The man scratched his ear. “Well…I…uh…fine. Just don’t get them riled up. Had a heck of a hassle getting ‘em here.”

Mick made his inspection look as casual as possible, making sure to give all four pigs a good looking over. When he judged he’d made it look natural enough, he crouched beside the one who looked most like Rohan.

A quick glance out of the corner of his eye told him that the man was watching him like he’d just entered a jewelers store carrying a huge burlap sack. Look away for a moment or two, for saints sake, Mick urged him.

“Clive?”

Someone stepped out from the crowd beyond the pig pen and called out to the man, taking his attention away from Mick and the pigs. Mick licked his thumb, then tried to rub away one of the spots from the pig’s body.

Nothing happened, but he hadn’t really expected the paint to just come off like that. Still, it was worth a try. Looking over his shoulder to make sure that the man wasn’t looking, Mick took a glass vial and a cloth out of his inner coat pocket. Using a pipette, he dropped some liquid onto the cloth and then gently brushed it on the pig’s body.

Well, would you look at that.

He stood up, smiling to himself. The liquid was an alchemical formula Ma had bought from Janey Morgan last winter. It was a kind of paint stripper, only Ma was obsessed with knowing that any alchemical potions or salves she bought were safe for animals. Not that she encountered many, but she wanted to be sure in case of accidental contact and that kind of thing. All her plant feeds were animal friendly, for instance, so that no harm came to the cats that prowled her garden. That was Ma for you; she complained about the damn cats all night long, but wouldn’t see any accidental hurt come to them.

The pig vendor, who was almost certainly not just ‘Clive’ but ‘Clive Papworth’, was still talking to a stranger. From the look on his face, and the “Yeah, yeah. Damn. Oh, really?” noises he was making, he was doing his darndest to extract himself from the conversation.

Finally the man released him and moved on toward a nearby goat pen. Clive gave a long sigh, then turned around, resting his back against the metal railings.

“Saints alive, that guy can talk.”

“Got a question for you,” said Mick.

Clive’s face brightened, though it was a forced kind of cheeriness. “If it’s a question about pigs and I don’t know the answer, then call the guards, because I’m an imposter.”

Mick couldn’t help smiling, finding a small part of himself actually liking Clive. This fella must have had a skill tree involving persuasion, he decided. He better watch himself. Most folks with that skill tree, like Paisley and Jace Porter for instance, used it ethically. You couldn’t expect the same kind of honor from a pig thief.

“Tell me this. Is there any way that a pig’s spots might just…wipe off?” he asked.

“Might just wipe-” Clive stopped talking then, his eyes darting in the direction of Rohan. He took a step back, toward the pigpen door.

“Running will make it worse,” said Mick.

“Just who the hell are you?”

“They call me Mick Mulroon, head guard of Sunhampton. Seems we need to have a chat.”

“A thousand gold,” muttered Clive.

“Huh?”

“I should clear three thousand, easily, when I ship these porkers off. I’ll give you a third of it. You walk away with a pocket full of gold, the pigs go to some nice farm somewhere. Everyone’s smiling.”

“Apart from a friend of mine, who lost his hog. What was it? You been casing all the local farms and settled on the Tillwrights’?”

Clive dropped his amiable look now, and a devious expression, probably his natural one, took hold on his face. “Think I care a fig ‘bout their names? One form or another, they’re all the same.”

“Why pigs, though? Not a very bright thing to steal, if you ask me. Loud, what with all their grunting and squealing. Heavy as heck, hard to find a buyer for. If someone asked me ‘Mick, what’s the worst thing to try thieving?’ I’d have thought about it, then said pigs.”

“I got a way with them.”

“What?”

“Animals. They like me. A few words and big, fat pigs like these will just walk away with me, no hassle. I can’t pickpocket, I don’t have the hand speed. Can’t burgle someone’s house – even a guy like me has morals. Don’t like creeping around in folks’ homes. But animals? They trust me.”

So this guy was good with animals, huh? Mick suspected a skill tree of a different kind now. Or if not a skill tree with an actual token, but some kind of innate talent that could have led to a skill tree one day if he’d chosen the right path. Still, Clive had picked his route. He’d committed to it, and that was his problem.

“You gonna come with me, or do you want to make things difficult? Either way’s fine with me,” he said.

“Go where, exactly?”

“Perentee’s got a jail. Think you’ll be holing up there for a few days before they get you to court in Striding.”

“Two thousand,” said Clive. “That’s me practically giving up my cut. I ought to have you arrested for daylight robbery.”

Mick could have done a lot with two thousand gold. With some of his thrifty tricks, he could make it spread quite far. All he had to do was walk away, and tell Alister that he hadn’t managed to find Rohan.

He shook his head. “I don’t wanna hear a peep out of you until we get to Perentee. Then, my advice would be to cooperate with the guards there. Tell ‘em where you got the other pigs from. Things might go easier for you.”