97 - In which expert hagglers haggle

“I never saw you fight like that, hating every instant,” Mana said to me, when we’d gone out to the woods by different ways again. “You fight in such a way that it’s clear as water it’s wrong that you are there. To me at least; maybe not to anyone who does not know you so well.”

“Me, or fighting,” I said. “Others have mentioned things.” Koree had passed on to me, for instance, that the Director thought I should express more flair in the Ring, as he was certain a barbarian cockerel like me had it in me. “I’m just telling you what I am ordered to,” Koree had said, to my look.

“I wear my heart on my sleeve, Mana; when did I not?”

“True.” Wheels within wheels, is my life. Yes, I wear my heart on my sleeve about all but one thing, the biggest.

“You don’t fight like you hate every moment,” I said. “You just decided, ‘He’s going to kill me, same as on the field against Laka, so kyash on him,’ and that was that, didn’t you? I tried to do it that fast, and have three more scars.”

“It’s different, Cheng. I’m not semanakraseye. In you, war-training is a more sacred thing, so of course it was going to be harder.” Else it’s that I’m a thick-headed idiot and you’re just being kind, I thought. As if he read my mind, which was often the case, and so knew he should press his point, he said, “Your life has always been about the most sacred things. Now you are forced to make it about the most profane. That’s why you resist.”

So true, I suddenly wanted badly to lie down. He opened his arms, and I let him hold me, leaning my head on his shoulder with my eyes closed.

“So, we’ll get you out of here,” he said, his voice resonating through his chest into my head as from earth. “Oh, and, while we’re at it, me too.”

“Yes,” I said, lifting myself out of his arms, and throwing the doldrums out of my heart by will, as I had to so often, now. Strength. “I’ve got good news for you, there.”

If you pretend to drink (while pouring it into the plants) in seedy-enough taverns in Arko, read well enough who can be trusted and quietly put it out that you are looking for a criminal of a certain type, who will be well-recompensed, as will the person who connects you to him, you will find one, even if you are utterly without experience in such dealings. I had an appointment with such a gentleman this evening, I told Mana, and invited him along.

†

A tavern in Yeola-e or even Brahvniki is an open place, welcoming the sun and the outdoor breezes through wide windows thrown open, at least in good weather. In Arko, where the weather is almost always warm, even fancy drinking-shops are mostly dark and dank warrens, shut away from the rest of the world by windowless stone walls and thick wooden doors, chokingly smoky from katzeriks, full of flickering yellow light from candle-chandeliers or lit by faint blue kraumaks that make everyone look like an imbibing ghost, in the case of the fancy ones.

Virtually every place also has a secret entrance, such as an unmarked door that leads to a roofed alleyway or tunnel, so that you can get into the tavern from the street without anyone knowing you have.

I understood when I thought it out: in Arko, it is considered wrong to be free with emotion, of any kind, so that getting drunk itself is seen as something of a sin, to be hidden away shamefully. Of course shame and furtiveness attracts other shame and furtiveness, so the taverns of Arko are the meeting-places of crime as well.

I didn’t mind all this, of course, because it suited my purposes well. From the full daylight of an early summer evening we crept into the darkness first of a moldy alley, and then a place so ancient and squalid it was made of undressed fieldstone and had a floor of straw-strewn earth, and so rough it employed no fewer than five barrel-chested and oak-armed peacekeepers. People were here to ease pain and despair, but of course brought it with them; you could feel centuries of layers of it leached into the stone, see it carved with sharp edges into the smooth-worn, battered old tables.

The taverner had one of his serving-people usher us to a hidden corner, unseen even by others inside, since we so stood out and were somewhat famous, especially me. (I’d got Skorsas to acquire a plain black hooded cloak for me by this time, telling him it was to hide myself from Mezem fans on the street.) When a serving-man with a brass ring in his nose came to ask us what we’d like, Mana did as always, except, since his Arkan was more elementary than mine, he asked me to translate. “Tell him I order for both, and you want… do they serve anything worth drinking?”

“No, no, Mana,” I said in fast Yeoli, “I’m not what I am at home here, remember? I know, I know... in your heart, I am that, no matter where I am. I am in my heart, too, but I must not be in Arkan eyes. I’ll pay for my own.” I opened my belt-pouch to show him the chains, and he took a deep breath.

We’d drunk a little and Mana had berated me for bespoiling my lungs with katzeriks when the man we’d come to meet arrived. He looked about forty-five, and had a ring in his nose and through his eyebrow too, thinning fessas-length hair somehow held into twisted tendrils—with wax?—and a thick gnarled scar from the line of his hair over his craggy narrow brow to the bottom of one of his jowls, including through his eye, which was gone, leaving just a weeping cavity. Bowing his head with an obsequious grin, in the way of Arkans who consider you a superior, he greeted us, though only his mouth grinned, not his one grey eye. I felt as if I were in a story that was playing out live, with Mana and me as characters. Well, why not? What did we live for, in the eyes of Arko, but the excitement, the drama?

He gave his name just as Erilas, one-upping us as fessas did. When the serving-man came he just said “The usual,” which was understood.

“I hope you will forgive me for my awkwardness,” I said, in my best Arkan, equal-to-equal, “as I’ve never done this before. And I’ve only just learned Arkan, so I will do my very best to make sure we have no, em… when people don’t, you know, understand…”

“Misunderstandings, yes, yes, of course, barbarian lad,” he said, with an affability that also did not reach his eye. It was as if that one moist, sky-grey bit of his face were as incapable of any expression, other than a distant cynicism, as that of a polished stone bust. “Not to worry, this one and yourselves shall make everything doubly clear, of course, of course.”

I made my usual request. “Will you do me a favour, and speak with me equal-to-equal? It’s easiest for me to understand.”

It seemed to make him squirm as if he itched, as it did most Arkans—except that unchanging eye—but he said, switching modes, “Of course, of course, sin though it is. It’s not as if, my little professional God forgive me, I have never committed any others.”

When I’d gone over that two or three times in my mind so as to make sure I’d understood it right, I saw, or was pretty sure I did: he was leading into the dealing we must do. “Your God forgive you, I hope, yes,” I said. “We have some need of services of yours.”

“Of course, of course, this one understands—er, sorry, this one should say, I understand absolutely, young fighter. If your fine self—you, sorry, would care to explain how precisely, I’m sure we can come to an arrangement.”

“Well… you usually get things that aren’t… I mean… things out of the city, yes? Do you ever get out… people?”

For the first time I saw something in his eye, a flash of alarm, gone in a moment, while the rest of his face put on a look of disappointment. “Oh, foreign lad, foreign lad… I think I can discern what you, and your fellow-fighter, would ask of me. Yourselves… yes?”

“The two of us, out of Arko, yes,” I said, to make it very clear. His shoulders twitched, though his eye did not change; I gathered I’d said it too loudly. “Sorry,” I whispered.

“Young barbarian… it breaks this one’s, er, my heart, to ever refuse a customer… but… it’s not that I never remove people, but… well, I don’t know how to put this any way but plainly. You can’t afford it. Even the two of you… of that I am sure.”

I took a deep breath. “Pardon me, Erilas.” Mana was elbowing me, hissing, “What’s he saying? What’s he saying? If you’re haggling, do not do it without my help, because I know you; in your ignorance of all things financial and your generosity, you’ll let the straw-haired degenerate rob us blind.”

“He’s saying we can’t afford what it would cost.”

“Ah, of course, good start, good start!” Mana lowered his brows and crossed his arms at Erilas hard, as if to say, “It’s me you’ll have to really reckon with, Arkan.” Not only the smuggler’s eye, but his whole face, stayed utterly unchanged at this.

“Excuse me, Erilas, but you cannot know what we can and cannot afford,” I said. “I can’t know either, unless you say how much.”

“Of course, of course, true, fair enough, young foreigner. I couldn’t do it for less than a thousand gold chains.”

“Ah.” I should actually be acting shocked he's asking that much, I thought, to haggle properly. I probably would be shocked, if I had the first clue how much it is. “He’s saying a thousand gold chains,” I said to Mana in Yeoli. “I don’t know—”

“Saint Mother’s kyash on a digging stick,” he hissed. “Is he kevyalin serious? We can’t afford even what we could haggle him down to, with a first price like that, if he is.” Trust Mana to have learned about Arkan money already. I’d never even seen an Arkan gold chain, only Minis’s silver ones, which had seemed to impress people plenty. At my blank look, he said, “Che—Raikas, an Arkan gold chain is worth seven Yeoli gold ankaryel.”

“Saint Mother’s kyash is right,” I said. In Yeola-e, you could buy a whole house big enough for three or four families to live in, for what he was asking. “On a digging stick too. Erilas”—I switched to Arkan. Of course he’d be expecting this. “That seems a little, em, like a lot.”

“Of course, of course, I know, young barbarian. But there is reason… the risk to this one, em, myself, and anyone else involved.” He dropped his voice very low. “Aiding ring-fighters in escaping is a very grave crime in Arko. Have your—you, either of you, ever happened to walk up to the Great Gate, and see the wall on the way?”

We both had. A series of murals depicts, in the lovingly-rendered detail and brilliant colour that is typical of Arkan art, agonizing tortures and executions. There are men being flogged, having their limbs torn off, being flayed, being raped, and other things I’d done my best to forget since I’d seen. Above and below the pictures is Arkan writing which, at that point, I hadn’t yet become good enough at reading to understand.

“Those are the punishments meted out to those who are caught removing those things which are most severely forbidden to remove from the City,” Erilas said. “Which includes, of course, ring-fighters. You see why I must charge, to put it bluntly, an amount which would discourage such business.”

I explained to Mana. “Horseshit,” he said. “We can’t read the writing, we don’t know what those paintings are really about. He’s playing us. Make like we’re walking away.”

“What? I can’t! We can’t walk away; we have to get out of this city.”

“I said make like we’re walking away. He’s not the only smuggler in Arko.”

“But that wouldn’t be true; I’d be lying!”

“Oh for the love of All-Spirit, Fourth—heart’s brother…!” He stood up almost hard enough to knock his chair over. “No!” he said to Erilas, in his best Arkan. “No. Not. Uh-uh. Not, no and no.” He grabbed the shoulder of my cloak and started pulling me up out of my chair.

“Perhaps,” Erilas said mildly, “you young fighting gentlemen can explain your concern?”

“I’m sorry, Erilas, but it’s too much. So he says.” I added, “You’ve discouraged this business.”

“Em… this one—oh, I’m so sorry I keep slipping, barbarian lad—I perhaps wasn’t entirely clear; discourage such business, I meant, or at least ask what makes the risk worthwhile to me.”

“Which isn’t less than a thousand gold, I understand.” Mana was hauling me away from the table. “Do I?”

“Well… somehow I might be able to make it worth my while, if I strain and suffer, for eight and a half hundred,” he said. His eye was even more unchanging, if you can imagine that. He does this every day and could do it in his sleep, I thought.

“You were right,” I said to Mana, wrestling his hand from my cloak. “Now we’re haggling; he just came down.”

“He’d better come down to something more like a kyashin hundred, and then we could do it, maybe, if you sell off all that fancy satin clothing your boy drools to dress you in. Maybe… I know fighters get things from fans, have you received much yet?” Seeing my blank look again, he said, “Oh, of course you have no idea, curse your priceless mind.”

“I’ve gotten letters with money in them, and paper that apparently means money,” I said. “I let Skorsas keep track of that.”

“Right. He’s probably robbing you blind, too. So what in kyash did this one-eyed, hedgehog-haired child-raper come down to?”

“Erilas, you are right about our not affording much,” I said, ignoring Mana’s question. “Is it possible for you to make it worth your while for three hundred?”

“Three hundred?” he said. The rest of his face was aghast but his eye, if anything, had lost cynicism and gained a kind of distant bemusement. “My young, my young, my young barbarian fighting gentlemen… how closely did you look at those pictures? How much did you empathize with the sufferers in them—all of whom were real men, being punished for exactly the sort of thing you’d have me do for so little?”

I didn’t repeat what Mana had said, that he might be lying. I believed him, if for no other reason than that he’d said it knowing that I might tell him we must confirm this before sealing the deal. People don’t generally tell lies that are so easily disproven. “And how kyashin much did you just go up?” Mana hissed. “I thought I just heard three, my boy was teaching me numbers today, I heard three, didn’t I, kyash on you!” I shushed him, and he stood glowering in language-impaired helplessness.

“I suppose,” Erilas was saying, his face despairing but his eye unmoving, “I could… suffer bitterly… sacrifice myself unprecedentedly… for seven and a half…”

So it went, until we settled on six. He absolutely wouldn’t go lower than that, at least with a haggling tyke like me. Maybe Mana could have got him to four; to me it didn’t matter, since, if Mana were right, we couldn’t afford four any more than six anyway. So why not let Erilas get the benefit? From those murals, I couldn’t blame him for holding firm.

“That meant done, didn’t it!?” Mana snapped, as the smuggler and I both stood up and, without touching each other with hands, touched foreheads, the Arkan way of sealing a bargain. “Done, without you telling me how kyashin much, curse you, Fourth You-Know-Kevyalin-Who, how kevyalin much!?”

“My excellent young fighters, let me take tomorrow to consider plans,” Erilas said, a broad grin creasing his slashed face, except for his eye. It occurred to me that the disadvantage to being so jaded that you feel nothing bad is that you feel nothing good either. “May we meet tomorrow night, here, too, so as to discuss details?”

“Yes, we may, yes,” I said, swallowing my Yeoli feeling of not truly having sealed a bargain without clasping hands. “We have things to consider as well.” Ignoring Mana’s growlings, I made Erilas a proper farewell.

“Six hundred,” I told Mana when we were in the alleyway. He froze. “All-Spirit… Saint Mother… Garden Orbicular… where are we going to get that much money? It’s not as if a ring-fighter can saunter into an Arkan bank and ask for a loan!”

“I have no idea,” I said. “But we are.”

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