Chapter 65
On the fourth morning of his captivity, Tristan Abrascal began the plan.
It was quiet, despite Rhea’s attempt to welch. All it took was beginning to raise his voice while speaking of cards in sleeves and she folded, leaving him to disappear into the crowd and then past it. The thief lay back against the warehouse wall, eyes on the cramped tables where hostages were tearing through breakfast in rotations of thirty. Patiently he watched, chewing on the old black bread he’d swiped on his way through. Taking his time. If he didn’t, he might just choke on this veritable stone he was wetting against his teeth.
“I don’t get it,” Fortuna muttered, standing next to him. “She’s bad at this and you stole the knife yourself, so why aren’t you doing it this time?”
The Lady of Long Odds had changed her dress again, going native. She wore layers of scarlet silk, a sprawling peplos dress like on old Trathekan statues, over which she had laid some sort of half-cloak pinned to her right shoulder by a golden brooch. A matching red shawl and tinkling golden bracelets rounded off the look, lending her a respectable air in an old-fashioned sort of way. Alas, long acquaintance with the goddess in question precluded Tristan falling for such a blatant misrepresentation.
He didn’t immediately reply, continuing to chew on his bread until one piece was wetted and mulched enough to actually consume. Only when he swallowed did he cover his mouth to hide a murmur.
“That is exactly why I told her to do it,” Tristan replied.
Both their gazes slipped past the pair of tables where the hostages crammed their faces with the fare of the revolution – mostly beans, but also some chicken – to the sprawl of bedrolls where an almost painfully shady Rhea of Tratheke was stealing a bottle of rotgut on Tristan’s behalf. That liquor would be smuggled into here was, of course, inevitable. Over a hundred people winning coin every five days with nothing to spend it on except gambling, held captive solely by mercenaries and merchant guards?
The amount of smuggling that’d ensued was almost obscene, though the mercenary officers at least had the good sense to come down hard on anything even vaguely weapon shaped.
Anyhow, finding out who brought in liquor had been trivially easy considering there were at least a dozen bottles floating around the warehouse at any time. Finding out who had bought some of that liquor had been slightly more difficult, given that the guards did in fact confiscate contraband if they caught hostages with it. Drink was shared with your circle, though selling out another hostage would see you made a pariah – as some had learned the hard way.