The Pharoah Contract

Dark fell before Ruiz finished his ale, which had an unpleasant resinous quality and was sour. But eventually his hunger grew to exceed his weariness, so he stirred himself and went into the inn’s adjacent dining room. He found a table in a dark corner and sat down expectantly. Time passed, and the room filled with local craftsmen, and a few well-off farmers who presumably preferred the inn’s cuisine to that of their wives.

Plates of aromatic stew, loaves of dark bread, and tall tankards began to appear in front of these customers, fetched in by two skinny young slaves. No one came to take Ruiz’s order.

The serving boys began to turn uneasy glances toward him as they passed back and forth. Still, they didn’t pass closely enough for Ruiz to reach out and snag one, so finally he sighed and rose from his seat. He followed one of them into the kitchen, where Vilam Denklar supervised three sweating cooks.

On noticing Ruiz, Denklar whirled to stare at him in annoyance. “What do you want? I can offer no employment.”

Ruiz smiled in a friendly manner. “What about supper? Can you offer that?”

Denklar scowled. “You can pay? I’ll take none of your potions in trade. It’s a fool who buys oil from a wandering nonesuch.”

Ruiz produced two worn silver coins, caused them to ripple across the back of his hand and then vanish. “Will that buy me a supper, a night on clean bedding, and breakfast?”

Denklar no longer scowled, though he didn’t smile, either. “Might be so, if they’re real. One felk in advance; that buys you supper, if you’re not too famous a trencherman. The other in the morning — for lodging and porridge with water and scirfruit.”

“A bargain,” Ruiz said. “I’ll return to the dining room, aquiver with anticipation.”

“First the coin.”

“Certainly,” Ruiz said, and caught a silver felk from the air. He laid it respectfully on the counter and returned to his table.

A few moments later the serving boy set a plate of stew before him. In a thick white gravy floated pieces of pale meat and waxy chunks of some mottled pink and blue root.

Ruiz attempted the authentic cuisine of Pharaoh for the first time, beginning cautiously, and then proceeding more enthusiastically. It was, he decided, not nearly as bad as he might have feared, though rather heavy-handedly spiced with pepper and some unfamiliar bittersweet herb.

When Ruiz was finished, a serving boy came and conducted him to his room. They passed Denklar in the hall, where the innkeeper was berating a charwoman for some minor offense.

“You set a fine table,” Ruiz said, smiling. “As good as the Acorn’s Ancestor, almost.” The Acorn’s Ancestor was a widely esteemed establishment convenient to the League’s Dilvermoon headquarters, frequented by League crew on furlough. Ruiz fixed a significant glance on the innkeeper, and then winked.

Denklar’s mouth fell open briefly, but he clamped it shut and returned to abusing his employee. Ruiz went on.

The room was hardly bigger than a broom closet, but the straw was clean and even the blanket appeared free of vermin. The only window was protected by close-set iron bars; it overlooked the Place of Artful Anguish, which was empty but for several upright man-sized iron boxes. Ruiz lit the small oil lamp that sat on the corner table, set his splinter gun/magewand within easy reach, and pulled off his sandals. His feet were a bit tender, so he rubbed them with a soothing ointment while he waited for Denklar to appear.

A moth with gauzy green wings emerged from some crevice and circled the lamp. In the minutes that followed, Ruiz finally began to feel the precariousness of his position — alone on a strange and dangerous world, without friends or allies. The feeling was not precisely self-pity, but it was close enough that Ruiz felt somewhat disgusted with himself.

Many times he had found himself in similar situations, and not succumbed to such maudlin thoughts. What was wrong with him? The image of Nacker came to him suddenly. What had Nacker done to him, that he should suddenly feel so vulnerable? He shook his head and tried to empty his mind of distraction. To some extent he succeeded, though he was still conscious of a formless discontent.

When Denklar came through the door, Ruiz snatched up the splinter gun.

“Why do you point your wand at me?” Denklar said heavily. “Will you transform me into a hoptoad?”

Ruiz twitched the wand to the side and fired a splinter into the doorjamb. The masonry shuddered from the impact, and Denklar paled slightly. He raised empty hands. “No offense. Just an attempt at humor. And I hope you don’t hold it against me, the way I acted earlier. Just staying in character, doing my job.” His voice had changed, become lighter and more fluid, and he spoke in the pangalac lingua franca.

Ruiz frowned at this carelessness. “Can anyone hear us here?”