Jade Mouse

Chapter 16

Buildings flitted by the window of my carriage as we left the palace, and I had Tarryl take a different route than normal. I had a few unscheduled meetings with a couple of Fences that worked near Tucat Keep, having decided that I would check in with a few of them on my way back home.

Fences were an odd bunch, probably because of the nature of their business. It took a certain sort of person to be successful at that kind of thing, and that sort of person was almost always a little quirky. Sometimes they were fun to deal with, sometimes not.

Six months ago, before the unexpected expansion of the property I was responsible for, I'd had a total of three fences working in my modest-sized territory. I knew them by name back then, and was fairly comfortable with the relationship I'd maintained with each. It was best to keep your relationship with fences on positive terms, considering that these were the fellows who kept their eye out for property that had been magically marked with the symbol of your family name. Visiting those three odd fellows had become part of the weekly routine I'd settled comfortably into at the time.

That was six months ago.

I now had twenty-seven fences working for me. And that was after two of them had moved away once I'd taken possession of my new territory.

Visiting each of them regularly was no longer feasible, and in order to keep them all happy I'd ended up trimming a significant portion of the monthly tithes they paid me. Generally speaking, if you're a tenant, the only thing that's better than a decent face-to-face relationship with your Lord is a non-existent one . . . and when it's accompanied by a generous discount, there's very little to complain about.

My fences' shops were spread out over my territory, and visiting all of them and checking their inventory for my stolen knick-nacks was going to take time, although Cyrus would probably be able to help out. Theo might manage to help covertly as well, looking for those few inconsequential items that had been stolen from him without seeming to be doing so.

Theo would have to stick to territory that bordered his. A Lord could theoretically go anywhere in Harael he wanted, but if he was poking around territory that he didn't personally manage, people started talking. Speculation regarding their reasons for being there often times ran rampant, sometimes causing a problem where none had existed. Standing outside a shop, inside of a restaurant, even walking down a particular street that didn't belong to you could lead to serious misunderstandings eventually. It was always worthwhile to think about what those types of activities might mean to other Lords if word ever reached their ears.

Of course, I knew that Theo wasn't going to try to muscle into my territory, but everyone else (my own house knights included) would probably be put on edge and suspect the worst. Best if that sort of thing were avoided, really.

As I traveled in my carriage towards the shop of one of my old fences whose shop was nearby Tucat Keep, I started planning out the best way to divide my territory amongst the three of us so that we could cover ground effectively. There was a chance Theo might still be in my basement, working with Cyrus or helping him go over the items that had been retrieved, so I wanted to get back quickly so I could share the news and begin the hunt for the stolen trinkets as soon as possible. With my luck, it was overwhelmingly likely that if we did discover anything, it would only be after visiting the twenty-fifth fence, or the twenty-sixth.

So, imagine my enormous surprise as I stood there staring at Theodore's jeweled statue, the same one I'd given him just over three years ago, which was sitting in the display window of a fellow named Garrett – a friendly and trouble-free tenant of mine, the very first fence on my list.

At first I couldn't quite believe it, standing there outside of his small, sun-battered shop, looking through the lone shop window. The small wolf-like dog statue was staring up at me with its ruby-red eyes, sitting atop the beige satin cloth that had been draped on the display counter.