The guild hall smelled of wet wool and tallow, and every third person in it was lying about their rank.
We had the table by the notice board, which is the worst table in the hall and the only one that was free. I had been at it since the eighth bell with three slips of paper in front of me.
I had written the costings on the back of each one in my own hand, because I am that sort of man and there is no cure for it.
“Granary rats,” I said. “Forty silver, two days, and nobody watches us do it.”
Dagny did not look up from her bowl.
“Tax cart to the river fork. Sixty silver, three days, clean work, four of us against nothing that has teeth.”
Pell turned a page.
“Chandler’s cellar on Wick Street. Twenty-five silver, one day, and the worst thing down there is a nest of something small and stupid.”
Silwen put her cup down. “You’ve costed all three.”
“I’ve costed all three.”
“And which one do you want?”
“That isn’t the question. The question is which one we can afford to be seen doing.”
Somebody laughed at the next table. Dagny wiped her mouth with the back of her wrist, stood up, walked to the board, and took down a grey slip.
She brought it back and put it in front of me like a woman dealing a card.
“Customs house survey,” she said. “Three hundred silver.”
“Five names on that slip and every one of them scored through.”
“Five parties who gave up.”
“Five parties who went down and did not come up to say so. That’s not the same thing, and you know it isn’t.”
Pell had the slip already, turning it over. “It’s the concession,” she said. “Under the old customs house. The guild’s been trying to get a party to take it for two years.”
“And nobody has.”
“Nobody’s had a Red Mage.”
There it was. Three faces, one of them pretending to read the slip.
“It’s three hundred silver,” Dagny said again, and then, because she is not stupid, “and it’s one stone’s worth of a thing we could do in an afternoon.”
“We’d need to buy a stone.”
“We’d need to buy a stone,” she agreed, and I understood that the argument had been over before I sat down.
Osla Fenn had the desk by the arch, a brass stamp she kept warm in her fist, and the chewed end of every pen in the building.
“Wick,” she said, reading the slip. Then she looked up at me and did not look at the slip again. “You’re the Red Mage.”
“I’m the Red Mage.”
“Sixty-one.” She said it the way other people say a compliment they mean. “I’d have put you with better than this lot.”
“Better than this lot is where I came from.”
That got a laugh out of her, short and real, and she leaned her elbows on the desk and put her hand flat over mine where it rested on the counter — not holding it, just covering it, the way you’d settle a page.
“Take the granary,” she said. “Two days. I’ll sign it myself and buy you dinner after.”
Behind me, Dagny arrived at the desk with the weight of a woman who has decided something.
“Customs house.”
Osla’s hand did not move off mine. “I’m talking to your mage.”
“You’re flirting with our mage,” Pell said, pleasantly. “It’s a different thing, and it’s not on the list.”
Silwen said nothing at all. She stood at the corner of the desk, ears back, eyes on Osla’s hand, until Osla — eleven years behind that counter — took her hand back.
“Right,” she said. “Customs house.” And then, quieter, to me: “The last party that took this came back up short two—”
“Three hundred silver,” Dagny said. “Stamp it.”
“It’s not the silver, it’s — look, I’m supposed to hand these out, I’m not supposed to be the one who explains—”
“Stamp it,” Dagny said, and smiled, and it was the smile she wears when she is frightened, and Osla Fenn looked at that smile for a moment and then did what people always do, which is give Dagny what she wants to make it stop.
The stamp came down. Ink, brass, a sound like a door being shut politely.
“Ranking member signs,” Osla said, and pushed it at me, and did not meet my eye.
Four names went on it. Mine went last.
I counted the room on the way out, the way I count everything. Pell had chosen the quest. Dagny had chosen the swap. Silwen had chosen to say nothing, which is a choice. Osla had chosen not to finish a sentence.
And I had been the last person in that hall to be asked anything at all.