Adamat sniffed. The smell of his own piss was somehow less bearable now this his hands were untied.
"Working," he said.
"On?"
"I report to Field Marshal Tamas, and him only. You should know that."
The eunuch tapped the side of his jaw with one finger, considering Adamat through narrow, unfeeling eyes.
"We're on the same side, aren't we?" Adamat said. The question came out just a little too desperate for his liking.
"In a few minutes my master will have decided what to do with you. If he decides to let you live, I suggest that you keep this little run-in to yourself."
"‘If'?"
The eunuch shrugged. "I would like to know if we are working at cross-purposes. There are rumors about you, Adamat. Finding you where we did could mean one of two things."
Adamat waited for the eunuch to elaborate on what those two things were. He didn't. "That I'm with you, or against you?" Adamat hazarded a guess.
"These things are rarely so simple as ‘with or against.'"
"I was following a hunch," Adamat said. "Trying to find someone."
"Lord Vetas?"
Adamat watched the eunuch for several long seconds. No tic. No hint. No giveaways. He was as unreadable as polished marble. Was the Proprietor working with Vetas, providing enforcement and tails, as Adamat feared?
"Yes."
"Why?"
Adamat looked at his hands. In the dim light he could see the dark welts where they'd been bound. His fingers all still worked. For that he should be grateful. He knew he wouldn't feel the real pain and ache until he tried to walk. He looked back up at the eunuch.
Still unreadable. The truth could get him killed in this situation. There were a hundred lies he could tell. Adamat considered himself a good liar. But he could get himself killed with the wrong lie, even one told well, or if the eunuch even suspected a lie.
The truth it was.
"He took my family," Adamat said. "Blackmailed me, and he still has my wife and oldest son. I want to get them back, and then kill him slowly."
"A lot of violence planned, for a family man," the eunuch said.
Adamat leaned forward. "‘Family,'" he said. "Remember that word. There is nothing that will make a man more desperate and more capable of violence than endangering his family."
"Interesting." The eunuch seemed unmoved.
A door opened. Light poured into the opposite side of the cellar, and footfalls thumped down the steps.
"The master says bring him up, gov'na," Tinny said.
The eunuch scowled. "Now?"
"Yeah. Wants to see him."
Adamat smoothed the front of his soiled jacket. He didn't think he could be more nervous than he'd been when sitting in a basement, tied to a chair, at the mercy of who-knew-who, but he was.
"I'm to meet the Proprietor?"
"It appears so." The eunuch extended a hand and helped Adamat to his feet. "Don't worry," he said. "There are three men who know his face in all the Nine. You won't be one of them."
Adamat wasn't reassured. He looked down at his pants, at the cold, wet stain sticking his trousers to his legs. "How will … "
"Ah." The eunuch gestured Tinny over. "Adamat is now a guest. Have a couple of the girls clean him up, and take him to the master in twenty minutes."
Tinny shifted from one foot to the other. "He seemed awfully insistent."
"Have you seen the master's new rug?"
Tinny nodded uncertainly.
"Do you want it to smell like this cellar?"
"No, gov'na."
"Clean him up, and then take him to the master."
Adamat's first order of business was to get a feel for his new location. He studied the decoration and architecture, but both were utterly useless to him. Polished wood floors creaked beneath his feet. The walls were plaster over wood, the candelabras of brass. It was a spacious affair, but demurely utilitarian.
Adamat was led into a bathing room with hot running water. His clothes were stripped from him without ceremony by a pair of handmaids, so quickly he couldn't protest the impropriety of it all. When the eunuch had instructed he be bathed by a couple of girls, Adamat had expected whores. These were sturdy washing women.
His back and hair were scrubbed quickly, cold water splashed over him to rinse off the soap, and a fresh pair of trousers presented to him. When Adamat emerged from the bathing room, the same two women combed his hair and straightened his collar.
Tinny was waiting beside the door. In better light, Adamat could see he was a sickly man of medium height. He wore a cut-across, double-breasted coat with squared tails and a starched cravat. The coat, along with the cream pants and knee-high boots, were so incredibly ordinary that Adamat doubted he could pick Tinny out in a line of men on the street, despite Adamat's having memorized his face.
It was Adamat's Knack, after all. He never forgot a face, and he wouldn't forget the Proprietor's either. Just one glance was all he needed.
Tinny handed Adamat his pocketbook.
Adamat flipped it open. The fifty-krana note was still inside. Along with Adamat's false mustache.
Adamat took a proffered coat from one of the women and stuffed the pocketbook inside. He did it all without looking away from Tinny. The man returned his gaze with a slight sneer and looked Adamat up and down.
"It'll be good enough," Tinny said. "At least you don't smell of piss no more." He gave Adamat a mean grin. "You've got a mark there on your face."
From where Tinny had struck him. Charming.
"I see you cleaned the spit from yours."
Tinny's grin turned down at the corners, and he gripped Adamat's coat. In a low voice he said, "Master gives the word and I'll carve you up. It'll take me three days to kill you. I know who you are. Copper. Don't like your kind."
This close Adamat could smell the wine on Tinny's breath. That hadn't been there before. Was Tinny so terrified of the eunuch he'd gone to get a drink? Interesting. Of more interest was the way Tinny stood; a slight lean to his left, caused either by his left leg being shorter than the right or by favoring an injury to his right.
Adamat jerked his coat from Tinny's grip.
"After you," Tinny said.
"I insist." Adamat waved his hand forward.
Tinny gave him a mocking bow and stepped into the hallway. Adamat watched his legs. A definite limp, favoring his right.
Adamat lashed out without warning, his boot connecting solidly with the side of Tinny's right leg. Tinny folded sideways, his yell of surprise muffled by Adamat's hand over his mouth. Adamat took most of his weight and lowered him to the floor, putting one hand firmly against his throat.
"Don't threaten to kill a man unless you know without a doubt you'll have the opportunity," Adamat whispered. "Now, I've spent the entire summer with the most powerful people in all the Nine breathing down my neck. Do you think I care about one limping henchman? Do you think I have the time for you?
"I'm going to go talk to your master. If it goes badly, he'll kill me, I have no doubt. But I promise, if they put me alone in a room with you, that it doesn't matter how securely they bind me – I'll get loose and I'll kill you."
Adamat released Tinny's neck and mouth.
Different kinds of men responded differently to those with power over them. Some got angry. Some took it silently. Some were so terrified they'd believe anything you said, no matter how outlandish.
From the look in Tinny's eyes, Adamat believed him to be the last of these.
Adamat made his way into the grand hall. His whole body ached from the night spent tied to a chair, and he worked to suppress his own limp. He passed a dozen men and women. Dressed unremarkably, just like Tinny. Probably messengers and the like.
Adamat had been in the lairs of perhaps half a dozen crime bosses in his life. Every one had either been an opulent palace or a scum-ridden den of iniquity. The Proprietor's headquarters was so ordinary that it almost shocked him. It might have been the offices of some powerful but money-conscious nobleman, for all he could tell.
In the grand hall there were enforcers. Big men, scowling at everyone, pistols in their belts. They flanked the front windows and door. Adamat saw a woman he recognized, a whorehouse madame from the east side of Adopest who'd once told Adamat where to find a killer. She was dressed in her very best, and she sat on a bench beside the front door. She looked like a girl waiting to see the headmaster.
Someone gripped Adamat's arm. He surprised himself by not leaping out of his skin, and turned to look up into the face of one of the big enforcers.
Before the man could speak, Adamat said, "I'm looking for the eunuch. He just sent me for a bath and I seem to have lost my handler. I'm to see the Proprietor now."
The enforcer opened his mouth, then closed it. He scowled. Obviously not what he'd been expecting.
"Adamat," a voice came.
The eunuch drifted across the grand hall and nodded to the enforcer. In the light of the day, Adamat could see that he was wearing a tailored brown suit with long coattails and an emerald cravat. The big man stepped away, and Adamat let himself be led down a side corridor by the eunuch.
"Where is Tinny?" the eunuch asked.
"He tripped. Fell down some stairs. I told him I'd find you myself."
"Ah." The eunuch didn't seem like he would dispute Adamat's story. "Well, if you'd step inside, the master will see you now."