The Broken Man Read online

  Josen’s grin faded at the thought. “Look,” he said apologetically, “it’s good to see you, Tori, but this is a really terrible time for me. We’re kind of in crisis mode. Vale and Master Montiel are waiting downstairs, waiting to see what magical solution I have to a problem that may not be fixable. God’s tears, I’m so tired of always having another problem to fix.” Josen grimaced.

  “I don’t think you’d know what to do with yourself if you didn’t have a problem to throw yourself at,” Tori said, her expression tired and put out by his lackluster welcome, but he didn’t know what else to do.

  “I’m sorry,” he said lamely.

  “It’s fine,” she said, looking away. “I get it. You’re busy. You’re important now.”

  “Tori, it’s not like that—”

  “It’s exactly like that. I knew you’d be busy. I just … Just be careful.”

  That surprised Josen. “Um, I will?”

  “I’m serious Josen. While you’ve been playing your Reverate game here in Ceralon, I’ve been digging to find out what really happened the night of the Parose job—who set us up and who had Saul killed. Josen, what we did for Saul—the thieving and the confidence work—that was only the tip of what Saul was involved in. The barest, most innocent tip. I’ve managed to insert myself into some of what he left behind, but …” she trailed off, shaking her head.

  “Crime Lord Tori, huh?” Josen asked, not sure what to make of the sudden dour turn in her demeanor. “Has a nice ring to it.”

  “It has its perks,” she said. “It seemed like the best way to get information. But … Honestly, some of it scares me, Josen. And I feel like I’m still only scratching the surface. He was involved in rub running—a lot of it—but I can’t get any kind of a finger hold there. Any time try, I get told to keep my nose out of it or worse. Usually worse.”

  “Hmm. Any word on Aboran, whoever he is?”

  Tori shook her head. “No. Not really. I’m sure he’s real, and I’m sure he’s connected to the rub trade, but not much else. He’s too persistent. I hear about him from too many people in too many places for him not to be real. People whisper his name everywhere I go, like he’s some kind of half legend. But he’s a ghost. Everyone knows of him, but no one knows anything about him—not that they’re willing to say, at least. The few people I’m sure know more, they won’t talk about him. They shut down the moment I start to ask any kind of serious questions.”

  “I heard he murdered a Reverate in Jurdon,” Akelle said. “Took his place to see if he could. And that he runs the entire rub trade in Sefti. They say even the Magisters’ Court there won’t do anything about him.”

  “Sounds like a ghost to me,” Josen said. “Grand Corlier and Serge Trolusse run the rub in Sefti.”

  “Grand’s dead,” Tori said. “Turned up dead in some rich Seftish nobleman’s house about a month ago. Poor guy came back from a vacation in Kendai to find Grand’s corpse in his front room, bloated and covered in flies. I haven’t heard Aboran’s name connected to that, but Grand ran half of Sefti’s rub. And last I heard, no one has seen Trolusse in weeks. Fled the city after Grand turned up dead, most people say. People are too afraid of Aboran for him to be a myth. Some people talk about him that way, but the people who know … You can tell they’re scared of something real, something that can reach out and touch them. And it seems to come back to rub a lot.”

  “I haven’t caught anything,” Josen said, “not even a hint of anything weird going on since we ran from Ludon all those months ago. Has anyone come after you?”

  Tori paused, then shook her head. “No,” she admitted. “But that doesn’t mean anything except we still don’t have any idea what is going on.”

  “Tori, if someone was trying to have us killed, don’t you think they would have tried again by now? And if they were trying to get Saul out of the way, don’t you think they would have tried to get rid of you when you went back and picked up where he left off?”

  “I don’t know Josen. I told you I don’t understand it. I’m just saying be careful. Whatever happened, it’s not over. I can feel it. It’s building strength, even if it’s being quiet about it.”

  Josen opened his mouth to protest more but stopped at the look of utter earnestness on Tori’s face. Whether or not she was right, she absolutely believed what she was saying. If nothing else, the intuition of someone like Tori, who had grown up on the streets of Ludon, wasn’t something to dismiss lightly.

  “Okay,” he said. “I will.”

  And apparently that was enough for Tori. She looked relieved immediately. “Good. I’ll let you know as soon as I find something more concrete.” She glanced over her shoulder toward the window. It was dark outside, even the stars hiding behind a thin layer of high clouds. “I know you’re in a hurry,” she said, stepping toward the window. “I can show myself out.” She quietly slid the window open and swung a leg out.

  “You don’t have to do that. No one will think anything of it if you just walk down the stairs and out the front door in a few minutes. Probably less—”

  Tori swung her other leg out the window and grinned. “That’s no fun. Goodbye, Josen.” And she dropped out of sight.

  “Starving hells,” Akelle said, admiration in his voice.

  “What?” Josen asked, looking at his young friend. “You’re kidding,” he said, seeing the smitten look on Akelle’s face. “I thought you were all about chasing Claret?”

  “Are you saying you want me chasing your sister?”

  “No, but—”

  “Claret’s nice, but … She’s not my type, if you know what I mean.”

  “Because she’s nice.”

  “Way too nice. I don’t even know how she does it. Besides, she went with your mom to Kendai to spend a couple weeks at the vacation home, whatever that is.”

  “What?” Josen said. “No one told me they were leaving.”

  “But Tori,” Akelle continued, obviously not paying any attention to Josen, “Tori’s something else entirely.”

  “Tori would rip your eyes out if she caught you ogling her.”

  “I know,” Akelle said dreamily. Josen couldn’t tell if Akelle was being serious. “Like I said. Something else entirely.”

  “Whatever,” Josen said, deciding he didn’t care at the moment. “How’d the drop go?”

  Akelle’s demeanor shifted instantly. “Great,” he said, but the way he said it made Josen take a step back, wary of his suddenly hostile young friend.

  “Is that so?” Josen asked.

  “Yeah, you starving, bloody-handed son of plague and famine. I got to the drop and the buyers were waiting there for me. They say, ‘Are those the barrels?’ and I say, ‘Of course these are the barrels. Where’s the money?’”

  “Okay,” Josen said.

  “I’m not done. They looked me up and down, and one of them got a real sneaky look on his face, the dirty weasel. He grinned at me and said, ‘Don’t like buying off freelancers. Lots of risk in a thing like that. I think we best check the barrels first, make sure they’re the real thing.’ So, they crack open a barrel and start drinking. Then they say, ‘This stuff tastes like river water, like barrels full of horse piss! This can’t be Gennio whiskey! Are you trying to cheat us? We’ll pay forty heavy gold. For all of them.”

  “Forty?” Josen practically yelled. “Those barrels were worth over a hundred a piece! What did you do?”

  “I took their forty and left. What else was I supposed to do? There were six of them, and two of them were wearing pistols.”

  Josen let out a long string of curses, anger burning hot. First the mess with the diamonds, now this.

  “We need to find some other way to go about fencing, Josen,” Akelle said. “I know we like to think the Broken Man name carries a lot of weight, but it doesn’t. Not yet.”

  “Okay,” Josen said after one last—slightly shorter—string of curses. “We’ll figure it out. Let’s go. Montiel and Vale are waiting for us.”
r />   “Wait, what? Why?” Akelle asked. “Did something bad happen?”

  Chapter 24

  “You realize,” Vale said, “this is all your starving fault.” She paced around the room, back and forth between the couches, between Josen and Montiel. “Bleeding, starving hells,” Vale swore.

  Josen said nothing, weathering the storm while his sister unleashed her vitriol. Nothing to do until she was good and done. Across the room, Sam stood in the corner, fidgeting like he was watching a carriage ride off a cliff in slow motion, unable to look away from the impending carnage. Josen glanced at Akelle, directing him to Sam with a look. Akelle, who seemed to be enjoying the show, got up reluctantly and pulled the other boy aside, engaging him in a whispered conversation.

  “I told you,” Vale said, continuing her tirade, unaware of anything else, “‘Don’t worry about it; we can survive a slow year,’ I said. But you—” She turned, pointing at Josen. “You had to fix it. Congratulations. You fixed it to death. And why didn’t you come see me like I asked? I needed to talk to you before the Basin Council meeting, before you . . . Have you ever stopped to consider, for even one moment, that other peoples’ problems might matter as much as your own? Did you consider that I might have something important you should know before going to that meeting?”

  Wait, when had this become about the meeting? Wasn’t one crisis enough for the moment?

  “Are you done?” Montiel cut in when Vale paused for breath. Vale looked like she was going to continue regardless, but Montiel didn’t let her. “Because what you said doesn’t mean a bucket of buffalo piss now. It’s the bastard across the river who has us by the chestnuts. Stop wasting your time fighting the wrong person.”

  Vale stopped, deflated, and dropped into an overstuffed chair. “Sorry. I’m done.”

  “Good.” Montiel turned to Josen. “So, Reverate Oak. How do we proceed?”

  “Starving hells, I don’t know,” Josen said, wishing he even knew the right questions to ask. This was the second time today he found himself entirely out of his depth, and he didn’t like it. He looked from Montiel to Vale and back, searching his mind for any kind of a solution. “I don’t even know what the extra seed does to us, what it changes.”

  “Quite a bit,” Montiel said. “We’ll have to do a second and maybe even a third planting as soon as the boundary farms dry up a bit, and we’ll have to accelerate our initial planting. We’re already about a week behind on the initial planting due to unforeseen difficulties.”

  “You mean the sabotage attempts?” Vale asked, voice cold.

  Montiel ignored her. “If we don’t have first planting finished in the next two weeks, we’ll make this already tenuous situation an impossible one.”

  Vale swore loudly. “That’s not even the biggest problem.”

  “One problem at a time, Vale,” Montiel said.

  “Wait, what’s the biggest problem, then?” Josen asked.

  The aging Fieldmaster sighed and opened his mouth, but it was Vale who spoke first. “Arable land,” she said. “We don’t have anywhere near enough to plant the seed they allotted us.”

  “How much do we have? No, wait,” Josen said, holding up a hand to forestall his sister. If he let her, Vale would launch into long lists of stats and numbers that didn’t mean anything to him. “I don’t care about the specifics. How many extra acres would we need to plant all our allotted seed?”

  “Arable land was surveyed at eighty percent, give or take a bit,” Vale said. “So, ignoring the unknown person intent on sabotaging our ability to plant and farm, and the fact that we only hired enough to plant and maintain fifty percent of—”

  “Vale,” Montiel said impatiently. “Stay on topic.”

  Vale sighed. “We’re still short nineteen thousand acres, give or take. About twelve percent of our total acreage.”

  “But we have the land, right?” Josen asked.

  “Yes, but it’s not arable. Flood levels didn’t reach that far out. We have enough land, but nineteen thousand acres of it is hard, barren nothing,” Vale said.

  “Can we get enough workers to plant it all?” Josen asked.

  “I don’t—” Vale started.

  “Our low original allotment left a lot of people without work this year,” Montiel said. “Hiring on more workers this late will be expensive, and it will be a pain in my old backside, but it’s doable.”

  Josen nodded.

  “What exactly are we planning to do with the extra workers?” Vale asked.

  “Put them to work,” Josen said.

  “Doing what? Planting seed we know won’t grow?”

  “Can we just not plant it?” Josen asked Montiel. “Turn it back in at the end of the season to help fill up the silos?”

  “Won’t work,” Vale said. Montiel was shaking his head as well.

  “Why not?” Josen asked.

  “The Faithless Steward imperative,” Montiel said. “The Church levies fines for any seed not planted. It’s meant to keep Stewards from hoarding seed as insurance against some kind of disaster, but it will work against us in this case too. There’s no set procedure, but the fines are always steep. There have even been a few cases where the Arch Solon took away big chunks of land, claiming that the Stewards in question obviously didn’t need it if they weren’t going to plant it.”

  “Not planting forty-eight thousand bushels of seed isn’t an option,” Vale said.

  “Don’t do that,” Josen said.

  “Do what?” Vale asked.

  “Throw around giant numbers I didn’t ask for. Keep them to yourself.”

  “Look, if you want my help—”

  Montiel cleared his throat, and Vale stopped. “Thank you. We can’t overplant either. If we plant more than two and a half bushels per acre, the ceral plants will choke each other out—aggressive bastards. We’d lose two thirds of the whole crop if we tried.”

  Josen hadn’t even thought of overplanting yet, but it was good to know it wasn’t an option, he supposed.

  “Can we meet quota without expecting to harvest anything from the extra seed?” Josen asked.

  “In a perfect year?” Vale asked. “Barely. Assuming nothing major goes wrong, and we can find enough men to get our workforce up where it needs to be. Quickly.” Josen pursed his lips, searching for something else—another angle, another option, some way to give them a better chance. He found nothing. Vale and Montiel both waited expectantly.

  “Fine,” he said after a moment. “Master Montiel, get hiring. Do the best you can with the quality of workers, but we aren’t in a position to be choosy. Plant everything that is viable. Plant right up to the banks of both rivers, if you can. Vale, look at past cases where the Faithless Steward imperative was applied. See if you can find a pattern that might tell us how much we could expect to be fined for every bushel we don’t plant. I want to know how much of a hit we can afford to take, if it comes to it.”

  “Sounds like a good start,” Montiel said.

  “It won’t be enough,” Vale said quietly. “This isn’t about seed or arability. Or land or money or workers.”

  “Then what is it about, Vale?” Josen asked.

  “Berden wants to bury us,” she said. “And he has some kind of a plan. He’s played us handily so far. He ensures a low allotment so we have to go begging to him for more. We ask for a sixty percent allotment and he agrees, only to raise the allotment by sixty percent, instead of to it. He’s making us look greedy and incompetent at the same time. What’s to say we aren’t walking right into his next trap?”

  She was right, Josen realized. They had been manipulated expertly thus far, and for all they knew, whatever choice they made next could be playing right into Berden’s hands.

  But the only alternative to action was to stand and watch, paralyzed by fear. Josen wouldn’t let that happen. If he was going to fail, he would do it in almighty fashion, not watching from the edge of the room while it burned down around him.

  “Well, then w
e have to be smarter than him,” Josen said.

  “You’re going to try to fix it again,” Vale said, tone flat. Josen nodded. He didn’t see that he had much of a choice. Vale stared for a moment, then stood up and walked toward the door. “Be careful,” she said.

  “I’ll be fine,” Josen said.

  “I’m not worried about you,” Vale said, and left without another word.

  Montiel rose wordlessly a moment later. He paused on his way to the door and put his rough, calloused hand on Josen’s shoulder.

  “This is your job, your duty as chosen by the God of the People.” Montiel touched two fingers between his eyes, then placed his hand over his heart, a devout gesture rarely used outside of religious ceremonies. “Listen carefully. He will guide you.”

  Josen shut his eyes and sighed. Fantastic. The fate of the Oak house was on the line, along with a large fortune, thousands of jobs, and the faith of at least one devout man just to make things more interesting. No need to set the stakes too low. Let’s see how many people you can disappoint, Reverate Oak.

  “I’ll do my best, Master Montiel,” Josen said finally. “We’ll figure out something.”

  “Yes, we will.” And he left.

  Montiel’s faith in Josen was touching. And terrifying. He could think of few things more devastating than destroying someone’s faith.

  God’s tears, what a mess. He wasn’t meant for this kind of thing—the politics, the backstabbing, the double dealing. Life as a thief had been far simpler. And more exciting.

  “Reverate, sir,” Sam said, making jolting Josen out of his thoughts and making him jump. He assumed the boy had left with Montiel and Vale—he hadn’t even noticed Sam sitting across from him until he spoke. “When my father was a young and ambitious man, he was approached by a man offering to sell him a huge quantity of land. It was beautiful farmland, the man said, but he had been unlucky and lost everything. He said he was desperate. He had debts to pay and needed to sell the land quickly. So, when my father offered to buy the land at a very low price, the man accepted readily.”