Dragon Soup, page 7
“That’s not necessary. I’ll send someone.”
Perrin picked up the cage with the magic sniffers.
The poor things had copped the full blast of the mixed drinks that had fallen over their cage.
Fergus hid under the straw, Yaro stood in the corner, hissing, dripping, his back arched, his tail bushed up, his eyes wide. The smell of alcohol wafted from the cage.
“Shhh,” Perrin said to the animal.
He put the cage down and scoured his pockets for something to dry the poor thing.
But as he did so, he met the eyes of the waiter, also on his knees.
Was that an expression of guilt on the man’s face?
Magic.
That was why Yaro had bushed up his tail.
During their brief training, the inspectors had been told that not all magic sniffers reacted in the same way when they found magic, but that magic caused a change in the animals’ behaviour.
There was magic in the drinks.
Wait—when he had sent Yaro into the wizard’s room at Bella’s inn, he had also behaved like this. He’d assumed the animal had been upset because of the whore’s screaming that there was a rat in her room, but it was because it had detected magic.
Chapter 9
Well, that showed how much Perrin had been right about the wizard visiting The Happy Dragon and asking for dragon soup. The man was still around town, was a visitor to the fair, interacted with the rich and powerful organisers, and he was clearly up to something. But what was going on and what could he do about it?
The man and the woman still seemed to be interested in talking to him, but Perrin excused himself and took his cage with the wet magic sniffers through the crowd.
If possible, it had gotten even busier, and it was hard to move. People had to shout at each other to be heard. The music was getting louder, and right now many of the guests had drunk so much that they had little regard for others.
Perrin remembered going to these types of functions and felt sorry for the waiters who were trying to dodge people stepping in their way or suddenly waving their arms.
However hard he looked, he couldn’t find the wizard again. It was too crowded, and Perrin wasn’t tall enough to look over the crowd.
He did, however, run into Verbena. She raised her eyebrows at the wet magic sniffers and the stain on the front of his shirt.
“Had a bit of an accident?” she asked. She had to shout for him to make out the words.
“Have you seen a man with long grey hair and a blue robe?”
She laughed. “That could apply to almost half of all the men here.”
“I am serious. This is the fellow I mentioned before.”
She frowned at him.
And then Perrin realised he had not told her about the incident in The Happy Dragon at all because he had been so embarrassed about Inspector Carbin tearing a strip off him after Bella’s complaint.
So he took her aside to a slightly quieter spot under the overhang of the gallery and told her in a few sentences.
He ended with, “I now know this guy does magic, because I saw the magic sniffer come out of his room acting exactly the same and as it just did when the magic drinks were spilled over it. He’s up to something. We have to keep an eye on him.”
“Do we?” Verbena went kind of cagey all of a sudden. “If Inspector Carbin told you not to worry about it, you probably shouldn’t.”
“Why, though?”
“Because there is already an investigation going? I don’t know. When someone like her tells me to back off, I do. I don’t want to get into trouble.”
“But he’s clearly up to something.”
“Rich people usually are. And if it turns out they don’t like your sticking your nose in their business, they can squash you like…” She was carrying her cage with one hand so she slapped her free hand into her thigh and rubbed it around like she was grinding an ant into dust. “Me, I just want to pay the rent and not starve to death, you know? I shut up, because when you meddle with rich people’s business, nothing can help you. Not the laws, not the guards, not the mayor. Nothing. Because they don’t care about you. The mayor and them only care about the rich people. And we are dirt to all of them.”
“Then tell me this: what are we actually doing in this job?”
She met his eyes. “You asked that before. Inspecting magic, of course.”
“But we’re not supposed to talk about the actual magic. Just about the magic that ordinary people buy, by accident, or because they’re just shiny little trinkets. We’re common people punishing common people for something that’s not that important and is not actually dangerous, just so that the council can slap fines on us for using magic that’s not actually the type that’s dangerous.”
Verbena gave him a blank look. “You know you make my head hurt sometimes?”
“Don’t you ask yourself that question at night?”
“I sleep at night, and when I come home, I’m far too busy yelling at my nephews.”
“Why did you take the job?”
“Because I can read and write and it pays better and is less dangerous than any jobs where you don’t need reading and writing. And because I need to help my sister pay the rent.”
“What about the father of the children?”
“The last one shot through with another woman, because he said the child my sister is having soon is not his, and no one will employ her in the state she’s in, so we need the money.”
And, of course, he had taken the job for exactly the same reasons, minus the recklessly expanding family. He needed money.
He lifted his cage, where the magic sniffer still visible was shivering.
“I need to look after these poor things. They are wet and cold and I need to clean and dry them.”
“Of course. You don’t want to get into trouble with Inspector Carbin.”
And keeping out of trouble with Inspector Carbin was, clearly, the only level of responsibility she felt about this job.
Perrin left the venue through the main entrance, still trying to see if he could find the wizard, but it was dark.
The main square was the scene of one of the many fashion shows that usually accompanied the fair, where the people from town who weren’t dressmakers could watch a parade of strange and wonderful garments.
The market stalls had been pushed to the side to make way for a raised platform where men and women of many shapes and sizes, elves and trolls and dwarves demonstrated the creations. A sea of townsfolk crowded around the platform to loud drumbeats.
Someone had set off a smoke bomb that produced vile red smoke in the square. Flapping torches produced a hellish red glowing smoke, from which emerged a woman in a dress with frills and ruffles, all coal black.
The crowd fell silent.
Perrin stopped to watch.
The woman spread her arms and slowly turned around to give the spectators a good look at her dress. Sleeves of beautifully crafted black lace with glittering beads barely covered her pale-skinned arms. The bodice and top of the skirt sat snugly around her shapely form. The skirt widened out from the knees, ending in a ruffled hem that brushed the wooden platform.
This was genuinely a magnificent creation. Elro Katando’s, Perrin heard, while trying to push through the watching crowd. People speculated about the price the garment would fetch at the auction at the end of the fair.
By the time Perrin reached his home, Dorella had shut the shop, but she was still in the kitchen cleaning.
“You’re late,” he said.
“It was very busy today. And you’re back early. I thought you said you’d be out until late.”
“Yes, we had a bit of an accident. Could I borrow a tub of warm water? Someone spilled a drink on my magic sniffers.”
“Oh, poor things! Come to the kitchen.”
Perrin followed her into the kitchen, where the benches still overflowed with dirty bowls and spilled flour.
“I’m sorry about the mess. I haven’t had the time to clean it up.”
“You don’t have to apologise. It must have been very busy indeed.”
“Well, yes.”
She said nothing further, but a haunted look came over her face.
“Did anyone harass you?”
She sighed, while taking an empty tub out of the cupboard under the sink. She turned on the tap, and poured boiling water from the kettle that always sat on the stove. “There was just this group of out-of-town visitors, apparently acquaintances of the guy in the room opposite yours. They weren’t rude, but they wanted to try every cake on the menu while they waited for their friend to turn up, and he never did. I ran out of some cakes, and I had to make new ones while also serving everyone else. But I won’t complain. They paid me well. It was a good night. Here you go.”
She handed him a tub of steaming water, which he carried up the stairs and set it on the table.
Perrin took the magic sniffers out of the cage one by one.
It was amazing how their little bodies relaxed when hanging over his hand in the warm water. He used his free hand to rub the fur while the creature shut its eyes, the ears and whiskers drooping.
There was a knock on the door, and Dorella came in with more warm water.
“Oh, they are so cute.”
“Cute and annoying.”
“What happened?”
He had to explain the incident to Dorella, and she seemed to find it funny.
“But there is magic in the drinks,” he protested.
“Dear Perrin, there will be magic in most of the things that people sell at these fancy venues. How else do you think it all looks so dazzling? Nobody is going to worry about a little magic as long as it doesn’t harm people.”
Except the inspectors were told to worry about it. And he was concerned, at the very least, because even illusion magic could become dangerous when it interfered with other types of magic. “Do you use magic in your shop?”
She didn’t answer that question immediately, but after a while she said, “I am not a magic inspector and it’s very hard to tell. But for some things that I get in for special occasions, the dazzling cakes for some business person’s birthday or a special wedding, I am sure that there is magic in those. However, as I said, I wouldn’t know how to tell that there is.”
“You’d need one of these,” he said, nodding at Yaro in his hands.
“What would it solve, though? The people still want the cakes. If I don’t get them, the customers will go elsewhere. Many shop owners won’t worry about a little petty magic here and there. After all, they don’t understand what harm there is from buying and selling these items.”
That was a good point.
“Do you understand why?”
“Because we’re a Magic Free Zone. Magic is forbidden, and if you get caught, you have to pay a fine.”
“Yes, but why is it forbidden? Why did the council declare this a Magic Free Zone?”
“So that people don’t fool innocent people with magic tricks.”
“That’s true, but the most important reason is that Tamba is like a heart of a daisy. The realms are the petals. They’re all attached to the heart, and they all spill their type of magic into it. Which means that every type of magic works in Tamba. If you mix animal magic of Gaminia with illusion magic from Validor with high magic from Solania, nobody knows anymore what the boundaries of magic are. The interference can even create new kinds of magic. It’s dangerous.”
She looked at him and nodded. “Has anyone ever seen any of that happening, though?”
He couldn’t answer that.
She handed Perrin a towel so he could dry the animals. They looked ridiculous once he’d done that, with their fur all messy.
“Oh, by the way, I got some news from that place Traveller’s Rest,” Dorella said. “The rumour is that the young girl actually owns the place, strange as it sounds.”
“What? Laeticia?”
“Yes. It’s only a rumour, mind, but a baker told me that there is a story going around that she just went to the old guy who owned the vegetable shop that used to be there before, and offered him a lot of money for his shop. He took it and left.”
“Where would she get the money?”
“I don’t know. An inheritance, they said.”
“A waitress?”
“I don’t know. I’m just telling you as I heard it. If you listen at the inns, there is a bit of talk about it, especially because she started another eating house next to her old employer.”
“That is a bit strange, isn’t it?”
“That makes you wonder: what did Columbina do to her? As far as I know, she is a fair boss.”
“Yeah. I agree she is fair. Well, thank you for the information.”
Perrin returned the magic sniffers to their cage, cleaned the straw and shut the window to make sure that it was not too cold. He didn’t know what to do next. It was too early to go to sleep, and without his magic sniffers, he could not work.
He couldn’t stop thinking about the wizard. He needed to know more about this person, like his name and where he came from and why he had given a waitress two gold coins and how she’d apparently used the money to buy the eating house next door to the one where she was already working.
Something didn’t smell right about it, and of course there were no inspections right now and even so, he’d probably have trouble trying to arrange with Inspector Carbin that he could inspect the venue.
But there were a few other people who might be able to give him some information. With a bit of luck, he could find Riana on the street in the harbour.
The magic sniffers had gone to sleep in the straw in the cage, so he grabbed his coat and went outside.
“I’m going for a walk,” he said to Dorella, who was still in the kitchen.
“All right, just come around the back when you return, because I’m about to go to bed. Tomorrow is going to be another busy day.”
She usually got up very early to start baking for the day.
Perrin walked out into the street, strolling with his hands in his pockets. The atmosphere in the street was busy and relaxed, and he remembered how much he used to enjoy walking after dark with Atreyo.
They would look at the ships that had arrived, and Atreyo would tell him what they carried and who had bought it and what it was for.
But no matter how much Perrin walked through the harbour, he couldn’t see Riana anywhere. Maybe she had been engaged by parties from the Dressmakers’ Fair. He didn’t think she was the type, but who knew?
Eventually, he mustered the courage and asked someone. The man laughed in a most uncomfortable way. Men who asked about Riana were only interested in one thing, right?
The man said, “The rumour is one of her sugar daddies gave her a lot of money and she left town to lead a respectable life.”
Perrin laughed.
He didn’t fancy women, but in his experience, people who engaged in Riana’s “occupation” would often resort to dubious kinds of income in older age, because their reputation had spread far and wide. Just leaving and leading a “respectable life”—whatever that entailed—was usually not an option.
But yes, another man confirmed: Riana appeared to have had a career change.
When he came past the two inns side by side, Columbina was already cleaning up, while the dining room of the Traveller’s Rest was still full of people. He wanted to go into The Happy Dragon and tell Columbina that he didn’t think the lack of customers had anything to do with her, but he neither had all the knowledge nor any skin in the game and it would just look stupid or worse, an attempt at getting information out of her.
So instead, he walked to the guesthouse where the wizard was staying, but he didn’t go inside because he didn’t want to run into Bella again and cop more of her anger. The door to the room on the gallery was closed.
Perrin sat on the bench under the tree for a while, but nothing happened and he was getting cold. There was nothing to be learned here.
And he felt like he was both missing something and also that he was a coward for not doing more.
Chapter 10
Perrin was angry on Columbina’s behalf. He considered her an honest person, like Dorella. They were good people. Both had owned their respective businesses for quite a while and had weathered storms before, but to pressure an old man into selling his shop just so that you could set up a rival business next to one of the town’s established eating houses… well, that reeked of ulterior motives. To do it while every magic inspector was looking the other way during the Dressmaker’s Fair… that was too much of a coincidence, right?
This sounded like some vengeful person had it in for Columbina and all the other inns in town, most of which were owned by the city’s rich. The mayor and his family, and the most successful merchants. Some family had probably fallen out with some other family. And ultimately it was all some rich person’s game and the common people like Columbina and Dorella paid the price. As with the magic inspections, as with his dealings with Atreyo’s family. There was a rule for the rich and powerful and there was the law for everyone else.
This unfair situation coloured his entire life, from the court case, to his inspections, to the fact that he had to live above the tea shop.
He could already hear Verbena to tell him to let it rest, but that was not how he liked to lead his life. When people told you to forget about something, it meant that the powerful didn’t want you to ask further questions. That they benefited from the current situation.
Well, in that case, they were messing with the wrong person.
He’d make sure that this matter was looked at.
Sure, he’d done what inspector Carbin had wanted and had written his report in the big green book, but the piece of paper he’d so carefully inserted between the cover and the first page still sat exactly as he had left it. No one had looked at those reports.
There was only one way he was going to be able to find out what was going on in the Traveller’s Rest, and that was to do his own investigation. And there was no better way to do that than to inspect the venue.
Perrin picked up the cage with the magic sniffers.
The poor things had copped the full blast of the mixed drinks that had fallen over their cage.
Fergus hid under the straw, Yaro stood in the corner, hissing, dripping, his back arched, his tail bushed up, his eyes wide. The smell of alcohol wafted from the cage.
“Shhh,” Perrin said to the animal.
He put the cage down and scoured his pockets for something to dry the poor thing.
But as he did so, he met the eyes of the waiter, also on his knees.
Was that an expression of guilt on the man’s face?
Magic.
That was why Yaro had bushed up his tail.
During their brief training, the inspectors had been told that not all magic sniffers reacted in the same way when they found magic, but that magic caused a change in the animals’ behaviour.
There was magic in the drinks.
Wait—when he had sent Yaro into the wizard’s room at Bella’s inn, he had also behaved like this. He’d assumed the animal had been upset because of the whore’s screaming that there was a rat in her room, but it was because it had detected magic.
Chapter 9
Well, that showed how much Perrin had been right about the wizard visiting The Happy Dragon and asking for dragon soup. The man was still around town, was a visitor to the fair, interacted with the rich and powerful organisers, and he was clearly up to something. But what was going on and what could he do about it?
The man and the woman still seemed to be interested in talking to him, but Perrin excused himself and took his cage with the wet magic sniffers through the crowd.
If possible, it had gotten even busier, and it was hard to move. People had to shout at each other to be heard. The music was getting louder, and right now many of the guests had drunk so much that they had little regard for others.
Perrin remembered going to these types of functions and felt sorry for the waiters who were trying to dodge people stepping in their way or suddenly waving their arms.
However hard he looked, he couldn’t find the wizard again. It was too crowded, and Perrin wasn’t tall enough to look over the crowd.
He did, however, run into Verbena. She raised her eyebrows at the wet magic sniffers and the stain on the front of his shirt.
“Had a bit of an accident?” she asked. She had to shout for him to make out the words.
“Have you seen a man with long grey hair and a blue robe?”
She laughed. “That could apply to almost half of all the men here.”
“I am serious. This is the fellow I mentioned before.”
She frowned at him.
And then Perrin realised he had not told her about the incident in The Happy Dragon at all because he had been so embarrassed about Inspector Carbin tearing a strip off him after Bella’s complaint.
So he took her aside to a slightly quieter spot under the overhang of the gallery and told her in a few sentences.
He ended with, “I now know this guy does magic, because I saw the magic sniffer come out of his room acting exactly the same and as it just did when the magic drinks were spilled over it. He’s up to something. We have to keep an eye on him.”
“Do we?” Verbena went kind of cagey all of a sudden. “If Inspector Carbin told you not to worry about it, you probably shouldn’t.”
“Why, though?”
“Because there is already an investigation going? I don’t know. When someone like her tells me to back off, I do. I don’t want to get into trouble.”
“But he’s clearly up to something.”
“Rich people usually are. And if it turns out they don’t like your sticking your nose in their business, they can squash you like…” She was carrying her cage with one hand so she slapped her free hand into her thigh and rubbed it around like she was grinding an ant into dust. “Me, I just want to pay the rent and not starve to death, you know? I shut up, because when you meddle with rich people’s business, nothing can help you. Not the laws, not the guards, not the mayor. Nothing. Because they don’t care about you. The mayor and them only care about the rich people. And we are dirt to all of them.”
“Then tell me this: what are we actually doing in this job?”
She met his eyes. “You asked that before. Inspecting magic, of course.”
“But we’re not supposed to talk about the actual magic. Just about the magic that ordinary people buy, by accident, or because they’re just shiny little trinkets. We’re common people punishing common people for something that’s not that important and is not actually dangerous, just so that the council can slap fines on us for using magic that’s not actually the type that’s dangerous.”
Verbena gave him a blank look. “You know you make my head hurt sometimes?”
“Don’t you ask yourself that question at night?”
“I sleep at night, and when I come home, I’m far too busy yelling at my nephews.”
“Why did you take the job?”
“Because I can read and write and it pays better and is less dangerous than any jobs where you don’t need reading and writing. And because I need to help my sister pay the rent.”
“What about the father of the children?”
“The last one shot through with another woman, because he said the child my sister is having soon is not his, and no one will employ her in the state she’s in, so we need the money.”
And, of course, he had taken the job for exactly the same reasons, minus the recklessly expanding family. He needed money.
He lifted his cage, where the magic sniffer still visible was shivering.
“I need to look after these poor things. They are wet and cold and I need to clean and dry them.”
“Of course. You don’t want to get into trouble with Inspector Carbin.”
And keeping out of trouble with Inspector Carbin was, clearly, the only level of responsibility she felt about this job.
Perrin left the venue through the main entrance, still trying to see if he could find the wizard, but it was dark.
The main square was the scene of one of the many fashion shows that usually accompanied the fair, where the people from town who weren’t dressmakers could watch a parade of strange and wonderful garments.
The market stalls had been pushed to the side to make way for a raised platform where men and women of many shapes and sizes, elves and trolls and dwarves demonstrated the creations. A sea of townsfolk crowded around the platform to loud drumbeats.
Someone had set off a smoke bomb that produced vile red smoke in the square. Flapping torches produced a hellish red glowing smoke, from which emerged a woman in a dress with frills and ruffles, all coal black.
The crowd fell silent.
Perrin stopped to watch.
The woman spread her arms and slowly turned around to give the spectators a good look at her dress. Sleeves of beautifully crafted black lace with glittering beads barely covered her pale-skinned arms. The bodice and top of the skirt sat snugly around her shapely form. The skirt widened out from the knees, ending in a ruffled hem that brushed the wooden platform.
This was genuinely a magnificent creation. Elro Katando’s, Perrin heard, while trying to push through the watching crowd. People speculated about the price the garment would fetch at the auction at the end of the fair.
By the time Perrin reached his home, Dorella had shut the shop, but she was still in the kitchen cleaning.
“You’re late,” he said.
“It was very busy today. And you’re back early. I thought you said you’d be out until late.”
“Yes, we had a bit of an accident. Could I borrow a tub of warm water? Someone spilled a drink on my magic sniffers.”
“Oh, poor things! Come to the kitchen.”
Perrin followed her into the kitchen, where the benches still overflowed with dirty bowls and spilled flour.
“I’m sorry about the mess. I haven’t had the time to clean it up.”
“You don’t have to apologise. It must have been very busy indeed.”
“Well, yes.”
She said nothing further, but a haunted look came over her face.
“Did anyone harass you?”
She sighed, while taking an empty tub out of the cupboard under the sink. She turned on the tap, and poured boiling water from the kettle that always sat on the stove. “There was just this group of out-of-town visitors, apparently acquaintances of the guy in the room opposite yours. They weren’t rude, but they wanted to try every cake on the menu while they waited for their friend to turn up, and he never did. I ran out of some cakes, and I had to make new ones while also serving everyone else. But I won’t complain. They paid me well. It was a good night. Here you go.”
She handed him a tub of steaming water, which he carried up the stairs and set it on the table.
Perrin took the magic sniffers out of the cage one by one.
It was amazing how their little bodies relaxed when hanging over his hand in the warm water. He used his free hand to rub the fur while the creature shut its eyes, the ears and whiskers drooping.
There was a knock on the door, and Dorella came in with more warm water.
“Oh, they are so cute.”
“Cute and annoying.”
“What happened?”
He had to explain the incident to Dorella, and she seemed to find it funny.
“But there is magic in the drinks,” he protested.
“Dear Perrin, there will be magic in most of the things that people sell at these fancy venues. How else do you think it all looks so dazzling? Nobody is going to worry about a little magic as long as it doesn’t harm people.”
Except the inspectors were told to worry about it. And he was concerned, at the very least, because even illusion magic could become dangerous when it interfered with other types of magic. “Do you use magic in your shop?”
She didn’t answer that question immediately, but after a while she said, “I am not a magic inspector and it’s very hard to tell. But for some things that I get in for special occasions, the dazzling cakes for some business person’s birthday or a special wedding, I am sure that there is magic in those. However, as I said, I wouldn’t know how to tell that there is.”
“You’d need one of these,” he said, nodding at Yaro in his hands.
“What would it solve, though? The people still want the cakes. If I don’t get them, the customers will go elsewhere. Many shop owners won’t worry about a little petty magic here and there. After all, they don’t understand what harm there is from buying and selling these items.”
That was a good point.
“Do you understand why?”
“Because we’re a Magic Free Zone. Magic is forbidden, and if you get caught, you have to pay a fine.”
“Yes, but why is it forbidden? Why did the council declare this a Magic Free Zone?”
“So that people don’t fool innocent people with magic tricks.”
“That’s true, but the most important reason is that Tamba is like a heart of a daisy. The realms are the petals. They’re all attached to the heart, and they all spill their type of magic into it. Which means that every type of magic works in Tamba. If you mix animal magic of Gaminia with illusion magic from Validor with high magic from Solania, nobody knows anymore what the boundaries of magic are. The interference can even create new kinds of magic. It’s dangerous.”
She looked at him and nodded. “Has anyone ever seen any of that happening, though?”
He couldn’t answer that.
She handed Perrin a towel so he could dry the animals. They looked ridiculous once he’d done that, with their fur all messy.
“Oh, by the way, I got some news from that place Traveller’s Rest,” Dorella said. “The rumour is that the young girl actually owns the place, strange as it sounds.”
“What? Laeticia?”
“Yes. It’s only a rumour, mind, but a baker told me that there is a story going around that she just went to the old guy who owned the vegetable shop that used to be there before, and offered him a lot of money for his shop. He took it and left.”
“Where would she get the money?”
“I don’t know. An inheritance, they said.”
“A waitress?”
“I don’t know. I’m just telling you as I heard it. If you listen at the inns, there is a bit of talk about it, especially because she started another eating house next to her old employer.”
“That is a bit strange, isn’t it?”
“That makes you wonder: what did Columbina do to her? As far as I know, she is a fair boss.”
“Yeah. I agree she is fair. Well, thank you for the information.”
Perrin returned the magic sniffers to their cage, cleaned the straw and shut the window to make sure that it was not too cold. He didn’t know what to do next. It was too early to go to sleep, and without his magic sniffers, he could not work.
He couldn’t stop thinking about the wizard. He needed to know more about this person, like his name and where he came from and why he had given a waitress two gold coins and how she’d apparently used the money to buy the eating house next door to the one where she was already working.
Something didn’t smell right about it, and of course there were no inspections right now and even so, he’d probably have trouble trying to arrange with Inspector Carbin that he could inspect the venue.
But there were a few other people who might be able to give him some information. With a bit of luck, he could find Riana on the street in the harbour.
The magic sniffers had gone to sleep in the straw in the cage, so he grabbed his coat and went outside.
“I’m going for a walk,” he said to Dorella, who was still in the kitchen.
“All right, just come around the back when you return, because I’m about to go to bed. Tomorrow is going to be another busy day.”
She usually got up very early to start baking for the day.
Perrin walked out into the street, strolling with his hands in his pockets. The atmosphere in the street was busy and relaxed, and he remembered how much he used to enjoy walking after dark with Atreyo.
They would look at the ships that had arrived, and Atreyo would tell him what they carried and who had bought it and what it was for.
But no matter how much Perrin walked through the harbour, he couldn’t see Riana anywhere. Maybe she had been engaged by parties from the Dressmakers’ Fair. He didn’t think she was the type, but who knew?
Eventually, he mustered the courage and asked someone. The man laughed in a most uncomfortable way. Men who asked about Riana were only interested in one thing, right?
The man said, “The rumour is one of her sugar daddies gave her a lot of money and she left town to lead a respectable life.”
Perrin laughed.
He didn’t fancy women, but in his experience, people who engaged in Riana’s “occupation” would often resort to dubious kinds of income in older age, because their reputation had spread far and wide. Just leaving and leading a “respectable life”—whatever that entailed—was usually not an option.
But yes, another man confirmed: Riana appeared to have had a career change.
When he came past the two inns side by side, Columbina was already cleaning up, while the dining room of the Traveller’s Rest was still full of people. He wanted to go into The Happy Dragon and tell Columbina that he didn’t think the lack of customers had anything to do with her, but he neither had all the knowledge nor any skin in the game and it would just look stupid or worse, an attempt at getting information out of her.
So instead, he walked to the guesthouse where the wizard was staying, but he didn’t go inside because he didn’t want to run into Bella again and cop more of her anger. The door to the room on the gallery was closed.
Perrin sat on the bench under the tree for a while, but nothing happened and he was getting cold. There was nothing to be learned here.
And he felt like he was both missing something and also that he was a coward for not doing more.
Chapter 10
Perrin was angry on Columbina’s behalf. He considered her an honest person, like Dorella. They were good people. Both had owned their respective businesses for quite a while and had weathered storms before, but to pressure an old man into selling his shop just so that you could set up a rival business next to one of the town’s established eating houses… well, that reeked of ulterior motives. To do it while every magic inspector was looking the other way during the Dressmaker’s Fair… that was too much of a coincidence, right?
This sounded like some vengeful person had it in for Columbina and all the other inns in town, most of which were owned by the city’s rich. The mayor and his family, and the most successful merchants. Some family had probably fallen out with some other family. And ultimately it was all some rich person’s game and the common people like Columbina and Dorella paid the price. As with the magic inspections, as with his dealings with Atreyo’s family. There was a rule for the rich and powerful and there was the law for everyone else.
This unfair situation coloured his entire life, from the court case, to his inspections, to the fact that he had to live above the tea shop.
He could already hear Verbena to tell him to let it rest, but that was not how he liked to lead his life. When people told you to forget about something, it meant that the powerful didn’t want you to ask further questions. That they benefited from the current situation.
Well, in that case, they were messing with the wrong person.
He’d make sure that this matter was looked at.
Sure, he’d done what inspector Carbin had wanted and had written his report in the big green book, but the piece of paper he’d so carefully inserted between the cover and the first page still sat exactly as he had left it. No one had looked at those reports.
There was only one way he was going to be able to find out what was going on in the Traveller’s Rest, and that was to do his own investigation. And there was no better way to do that than to inspect the venue.
