Free Goblin Moon by Teresa Edgerton Page A

considerably more
pronounced, and he winked broadly. “That’s the way, Mr. Jenk—no
need to be specific. No need for you to go naming out loud what I
shouldn’t have nor you shouldn’t want. I like a man as knows the
value of discretion.”
    He led Jenk into a grimy little room at the back of
the shop where he opened a tall cabinet so deep and narrow that it
reminded Jenk of the coffin back at the bookshop.
    “Well, now, ain’t that a shame and a pity?” said
Prodromus, after searching the shelves for several minutes. “Seems
I sold the last of that lot, and I can’t rightly predict when
there’ll be a fresh supply.” He shook his head mournfully. “It’s
these new laws Mr. Jenk, they’ll be the ruin of me yet. There ain’t
near so many private executions as there once was, and bribes to
the hangman is very dear. But look here . . . I got sommat else as
might please you.
    Prodromus dived back into the cabinet and emerged
holding a glass jar. “The hand of a Farisee, pickled in brine. A
rare item and a fine specimen.”
    Jenk eyed the bloated contents of the jar with
extreme distaste. The hand was losing its shape; the brine had
acquired a yellowish tinge. Either it was very old, or it had been
inadequately preserved. “Thank you, but I have no use—“
    “It don’t matter,” said the shopkeeper, with
unimpaired good humor. “Just take a look at this.” He returned to
the cabinet, replaced the jar, and came out holding something
shriveled and leathery, about the color and size of a dried
apricot. “The mummified ear of an Yndean prince. Forty wives, this
one had, and two hundred little ‘uns.”
    “Mr. Prodromus!” The bookseller could not contain his
outrage. “I am a widower these seven and thirty years, and a man of
sober habits. If you cannot provide what I ask, I must bid you good
day.”
    Jenk left the building in some little haste; he was
not sorry to emerge into the light and air. He made several more
calls that afternoon, and a few small purchases—as could be seen by
the odd bundles, wrapped in brown paper, which distorted the
pockets of his full-skirted coat—but his energy dissipated as the
day wore on and he trudged back to the bookshop in the early
evening with a grey face and a discouraged step.
    As Jenk walked through the door, a silver bell
tinkled to announce his presence. The shop was dimly lit. The
diamond-paned windows were filled with glass so old and dark they
permitted no light to enter from without, and the smoky old
lanthorns hanging from the beamed ceiling did little to penetrate
the gloom. In a corner at the back of the shop, in a chair tipped
backward against the wall, sat Caleb Braun, with his cloth cap
pulled down over his eyes and his stubbled chin resting on his
breast, snoring lustily.
    Jenk stood for a moment looking down at him. In his
faded and patched blue coat, with his bearded cheek and his
grizzled pigtail, Caleb little resembled the brisk, ambitious young
footman who had entered the Jenk household fifty years before.
Memories of that younger Caleb made the bookseller gentle as he
touched the old river man on the shoulder and softly spoke his
name.
    Caleb pushed back his cap, opened his bleary eyes.
“Had ye any luck in obtaining the tinctures?”
    Jenk shook his head, drew up a high stool, and sat
down with a weary sigh. “No, Caleb, I had no luck today. The prices
Koblenz and Jakob demanded were beyond all reason, and Mistress
Sancreedi—who might have lowered her prices had I offered a
convincing plea of poverty—was unwilling to sell me the tinctures
at any price, unless I would reveal to her my entire purpose.”
    At the name of Sancreedi, Caleb shuddered
elaborately. “I’d as soon we had no dealings with that woman.
There’s sommat uncanny about her . . . them big yellow eyes like a
cat or an owl, and never a sound when she enters a room.”
    “Uncanny indeed; ‘tis said the Sancreedi’s have
Farisee blood,” Jenk agreed. “And yet they