The Alchemist of Souls (Night's Masque, #1)(91)

Footsteps sounded on the stair outside, and the door to the apartments flew open.

"Sir Francis!" Leland strode into the room, beaming. "To what do we owe this honour?"

"You will forgive me if I do not rise," Walsingham said. "This damp weather gets into my bones."

Leland made a sympathetic noise.

"I came to pay my respects to the ambassador," Walsingham went on. "Alas, I fear I timed my visit very poorly. I had quite forgotten that His Excellency would be seeing no one tonight."

"Damned peculiar custom," Leland replied. "Still, we have to respect our guest's wishes, eh?" He turned to Mal. "Any trouble at the theatre today?"

"No, sir, not a thing," Mal said, taking his cue from Walsingham.

"Excellent, excellent." He bowed to the spymaster. "Would you join me for a cup of wine before you leave, Sir Francis? I would appreciate your opinion on some plans I am drawing up."

"Of course."

Walsingham gestured to Mal, who helped him out of the chair.

"Please pass on my greetings to His Excellency," he told Mal. "I will endeavour to return at a more auspicious time."

"I am sure you will be very welcome, sir," Mal replied.

After they had gone, Mal paced the dining chamber, deep in thought. Walsingham apparently did not trust Leland enough to reveal his knowledge of the plot against the ambassador; did that mean he suspected the lieutenant of being involved, or had the spymaster become over-cautious in his old age? Leland made no secret of his contempt for the skraylings, but on the other hand he seemed too blunt and straightforward a man to plot in secret. Either that, or he was a better actor than any at the theatre.

The door to the ambassador's bedchamber stared at him accusingly. He was just putting off the inevitable. Kiiren had to be told, and watchwords agreed on. He would keep Sandy's name and identity out of it, though. He was not ready to discuss his brother – or his past – with a skrayling, no matter how friendly. And there was still this Erishen business to get to the bottom of. No, he would play his cards close to his chest, and see what more he could find out. Sandy's life might depend on it.

Coby headed west from London Bridge, but not along the Strand. It occurred to her she could defer her decision, and be useful to both sides, by investigating the disappearance of Master Catlyn's brother. Ned Faulkner had said he didn't see which way the coach went after the wherry returned him to Bankside, but perhaps others had been more observant.

Reaching the head of Three Cranes Stairs, she looked around. The first crush of playgoers returning across the river had long dispersed, and a number of wherries bobbed idly in the current, awaiting new passengers. She thought of asking if any of them recalled seeing Sandy and his captors, but the wherrymen had a poor view of the lane from the river.

She turned into the Vintry, a triangular quay surrounded on its two landward sides by warehouses. The quay swarmed with sailors, dockhands and customs officials, as well as the whores and pickpockets who infested every crowd like lice on a beggar. The larger ships could not sail this far up the Thames, but lighters ferried wine and other luxuries to the warehouses around the Vintry. Though it was some distance from their camp, many of the skrayling merchants also rented storage here, away from the stink of Billingsgate and the coal market.

Coby ducked as a crane loaded with wine barrels swung overhead. As she turned away she collided with an ebony-skinned dockhand. The man grimaced through the sheen of sweat and grime coating his features and swore at her in a fluent mix of English and Arabic. She backed off, muttering an apology; the man was twice her size, with biceps as big as her head.

Heading away from the riverside she noticed a group of perhaps half a dozen skraylings at the doors of a warehouse. Their leader was arguing with a short, red-faced man, punctuating his Tradetalk with angry gestures towards a barge moored at the quayside.

"What's going on, mistress?" Coby asked a middle-aged woman in the fine woollen gown of a merchant's wife.

"My husband just inherited that warehouse from his cousin," the woman said, "and now the foreigners want to pay their rent to his widow, as if it belonged to her."

"They do seem to have a lot of respect for women," Coby replied.

Not that she knew a great deal about their customs, but if Lodge's play were anything to go by, skrayling queens were revered more than any Christian king.

"Perhaps I can help," she said. Getting on a good footing with these people might help her investigation.

Before the woman could protest, Coby stepped forward.

"Excuse me," she said to the red-faced man. "In the name of the Queen's peace, perhaps we could come to some agreement here?"

The man stared at her. "Who are you to butt in here, whelp?"

"I am a servant of the Duke of Suffolk, and have assisted in his transactions with Merchant Cutsnail."

"You? You are scarcely more than a boy. Be off with you, before I call the watch!"

The skrayling merchant held up his hand and addressed her in Tradetalk. "You know Qathsnijeel?"

"I have drunk aniig with him."

This appeared to satisfy the skrayling.

"These English think they can change our contract," he said, baring his teeth, "because of the death of one of their men, and now they try to double our rent."