Free Book 1 - Sweet Silver Blues by Glen Cook Page A

exchange.
    I grinned.
    “Sounds bad to me,” Morley said.
    “Thought you were staying out of sight.” I wondered
how long he had been sitting on that sack of onions listening. Not
that he had heard anything he shouldn’t.
    He shrugged.
    “They tell you where to get in touch?” I asked the
kid.
    “Yes. The Iron—”
    Old Man Tate himself materialized. I thought he never left the
family compound. He stormed aboard, shaking all over. He was winded
from his hike and so damned mad he couldn’t do anything but
sputter.
    “Sit down, Pop,” I said. “I’m working on
it already.”
    He plopped onto another bag of onions, giving Morley a curt nod.
Master Arbanos winced but kept his yap shut.
    “Here’s the lay,” I said. “We’ve
got to make the trade.”
    Tate sputtered but nodded, then wheezed, “If it was just
Rose, I’d be tempted to tell them to go to hell.”
    “Right. Look, I put the papers and whatnot in a box and
moved them out of your place so those clowns wouldn’t get
them when they broke in. I didn’t figure them for this.
Anyway, what we have to do now is set the exchange up in such a way
that we get the women back in one piece. I think I can do that, but
you’ll have to trust me on it.”
    Tate started sputtering again.
    Morley said, “He’s the expert, Mr. Tate. Permit him
to exercise his expertise.” His tone was more diplomatic than
what I usually manage.
    “I’m listening.” Tate glared at me.
    “Master Arbanos. What time are we going to take off
tomorrow?”
    “Five minutes after the seventh hour.”
    “Right. Mr. Tate, you go over to the
Iron . . . ” I snapped my fingers at the
kid.
    “Iron Goblin,” he said.
    “The Iron Goblin. Tell whoever meets you there that
he’s to deliver the women here at five after the seventh hour
tomorrow morning. Or no deal. I’ll tell them where they can
get the papers when the women look like they’ll get back to
their own people okay. In fact, if Master Arbanos will
provide me pen and paper, I’ll write the
instructions.”
    Tate wanted to argue. He always wanted to argue. The old goat
would disagree if you said the sky was blue. I let him simmer while
I scratched a note. Master Arbanos was going to get rich selling me
favors.
    “Just pretend you’re me,” I told Tate when I
finished. I folded the note and handed it to him.
“Don’t argue with them. Tell them that’s it, take
it or leave it.”
    “But—
    “They’ll take it. They won’t expect me to
trust them. They would know I’d try to set up something so
they can’t mess us around. And they’ll check around
about me. They’ll find out that I’ve done a couple of
these things before and held up my end every time.”
    That was true. As far as it went. But this time a snatch and
switch was not the whole story. This time the snatch was part of
something bigger.
    I was starting to take things personally, too.
    Tate got his spleen out, and yakked his fear into submission,
then took my note and marched off. We got the kid cleaned up and
bandaged and sent him home.
     
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17
    Vasco didn’t want to play the game my way, though he
brought the women when he came to argue. He came on time, too,
which told me that he would do it my way if I didn’t
bend.
    He left Rose and Tinnie fifty feet up the dock, guarded by a
half-dozen men, and marched aboard. “Still in there pitching
to get your throat cut, aren’t you?” I asked.
    His lips tightened but he refused to be baited. The sergeants
teach you to control your temper, down in the Cantard. He looked
around, did not see anything to disturb him.
    He should have been disturbed. It had been all I could do to
restrain Morley, who wanted to bushwack the bunch and leave them
floating in the river.
    “Before you start,” I told Vasco, “you’d
better realize that I’ve got no special need for those women.
I don’t have any for Denny’s papers, either. Which is
why I’ll make the trade.”
    “Where are the papers,