Free Sweet Silver Blues by Glen Cook Page A

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.
     
     

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, Garrett?”
    “Where are the women?”
    “Right there. You can’t see . . . ?”
    “I don’t see them on the boat.