“Please take the fish with you.”
Reynald studied the note.
They’d been gone for two hours; so long that I was beginning to worry Drugh had jumped them somewhere. When they’d finally returned, we had gathered in the kitchen. Gort was sketching something on a large piece of paper spread on the kitchen table, while Kaiden tinkered with some small object in the corner, perched on a chair cross-legged.
“Are we paid up with Taryz?” Reynald asked.
“Yes.”
A few days ago I went up to Taryz Teahouse, passed a noma to the proprietor, and told her I wanted the “favorite customer” service. If anyone left a note for us, they would pass it to us, and if we wanted a private room, we could have one at a moment’s notice. Should something unpleasant happen in that room, Taryz wouldn’t ask questions and might even get rid of the evidence if the tip was large enough.
“Gort, you and the family need to go to Taryz tonight and drink some tea,” Reynald said. “Be seen. Let the waiters know that if someone were to come asking, you drink tea there just about every evening at seven bells.”
Gort nodded.
“Do you have anything on Drugh?” Reynald asked me.
“Yes, but he’s stubborn and it might not be enough.”
“No matter,” he said. “I’ll make sure it will suffice.”
“If you say so.” He had promised me he would handle the complications. Drugh and his two hundred mercenaries were definitely a complication.
“This concerns me more.” Reynald frowned at the note.
Same. “Could be someone among the Shears.”
It sounded thin even as I said it.
“Whoever wrote this knows too much about us,” Reynald said.
We needed to solve this mystery. And I had no clue how to go about it.
“Done.” Gort straightened.
I went to look. He’d drawn a map of the Knight Vanquisher Plaza in black ink. The plaza was roughly egg-shaped and depicted from above, with two streets that ran north stretching from its wider end, and a single street at its narrow end going south. In the center the statue of the Knight Vanquisher reared. It wasn’t just a drawing, it was a piece of art, beautifully inked in delicate detail, down to traces of the cobblestones on the street. I’d had no idea a brush that tiny could even fit into Gort’s steel pincer fingers.
“The lay of the land,” Gort said.
“It’s beautiful.”
“Thank you.”
“You should’ve been an artist.”
“To make a living, I’d have to do portraits, and I can’t paint people to save my life. When it comes to living creatures, I paint what I feel, not what I see. Maps are easier. Straightforward.”
“Do you see the problem?” Reynald asked.
I studied the map. “No.”
“Look at the buildings.” Reynald traced the border of the plaza with his fingers, sliding them over the roofs.
The buildings were close together. They formed two continuous walls that bordered the edges of the plaza without any gaps. What was it he wanted me to see . . .
“No places to hide?”
Reynald nodded.
