“The fee is five standards a question,” she said.
“That’s a bit steep,” Eli said. “One is traditional.”
“Maybe in the city,” the woman sneered. “This far out, customers are few and far between. I have to eat. Besides, you don’t pay the doorman in gold if you’re bargain shopping. Five standards or get out.”
“Five standards then.” Eli smiled, flashing the gold in his hand. “But I expect to get what I pay for.”
“You won’t be disappointed,” the woman said as the man took Eli’s money. “I’m a fully initiated broker. You’ll get the best we have. Now, what’s your question?”
Eli leaned forward. “I need the location and owners of all the remaining Fenzetti blades.”
The woman frowned. “Fenzetti? You mean the swords?”
Eli nodded.
“A tough question.” The woman tapped her fingers against her knees. “Good for you I had you pay up front. Come back in one hour.”
“No worries.” Eli smiled. “We’ll wait here.”
Neither the woman nor her guard looked happy about that, but Eli was a paying customer now, so they said nothing. The woman stood up and disappeared into the back room. The man took up position by the door she’d gone through, watching Josef like a hawk.
“Well,” Eli said, fishing through his pockets, “no need to be unfriendly, Mr. Guard. How about joining us for a game?” He pulled out a deck of Daggerback cards. “Friendly wagers only, of course.”
The guard glowered and said nothing, but Eli was already dealing him a hand with a king placed invitingly faceup. The guard’s expression changed quickly at that, and he moved a little closer, picking up his cards. After winning the first five rounds, the guard had warmed up to them immensely. So much so, in fact, that he scarcely noticed his luck going steadily downhill after his initial streak. Eli kept things going, asking him innocent questions and distracting him from the cards in his hand, which only seemed to get worse as the rounds went on. To Josef, who was used to Eli’s fronts, it was clear that the thief’s attention was only half on the game. His real focus was the door the woman had disappeared behind and the strange sounds that filtered through the thick wood. The noise was hard to place. It sounded like a sea wind, or a storm gale, yet the torches outside the tiny, grimy window were steady, burning yellow and bright without so much as a flicker.
Almost exactly one hour later, by Josef’s reckoning, the door opened and the woman came back into the room. By that point, the guard had been losing for nearly forty minutes, and four of Eli’s five gold standards were back in the thief’s own pockets. The woman shot her guard a murderous look, and he jumped up from the bench, leaving his hand unplayed (a good thing, too: his pair of knights would never have beaten Eli’s three queens) as he dashed to his place behind her. Eli only grinned and gathered his cards, tucking them back into his pocket before he turned to hear his now greatly discounted answer.
With a sour expression, the woman flipped open a small, leather-bound notebook. “I was able to get the locations of eight Fenzetti blades,” she said. “You don’t look like the sort who’s trying to buy one, so I’ll skip over the part about how none of these are for sale. Of the eight I could locate, five are held by the Immortal Empress.”
Eli made a choking sound. “The Immortal Empress? Couldn’t you start with something in an easier location? Say, bottom of the sea?”
“You paid only for location and owner,” the woman said. “Them being impossible to get is your problem.”
“All right,” Eli said, sighing. “Well, that’s five out of the way. How about the other three?”
The woman ran her finger down the page. “One is owned by the King of Sketti.”
“Sketti, Sketti,” Eli mumbled, trying to remember. “That’s on the southern coast, right?”
“It’s an island, actually,” the woman said, nodding. “Large island in the south sea. Four months from Zarin by caravan, five by boat.”
Eli grimaced and motioned for her to continue.
The woman flipped to the next page in her book. “There’s rumored to be a Fenzetti dueling dagger in the great horde of Del Sem. It hasn’t been seen in eighty years, though, not since Rikard the Mad lived up to his name and started giving out his family’s treasure to anyone who promised to banish the demon he was convinced lived in his chest.”
Eli frowned. “So that one could be anywhere, really.”
The woman nodded and closed her book. “I’d say Sketti is your best option. Would you like to buy another question?”