Chapter Six

W HEN ULCETHA got home, Salathgarad was on his doorstep.

“No,” Ulcetha said, digging in his pocket for his key. “Whatever it is, no.”

“Now, Ulcetha,” said Salathgarad. “Is that any way to speak to your former employer?”

“The crucial word in that sentence is ‘former.’ I quit. You must have realized.”

“Now, Ulcetha,” Salathgarad said again. “You needn’t think I hold a grudge about your quitting without notice, because I don’t.”

That was a lie. Salathgarad held grudges about everything.

“I don’t care whether you hold a grudge or not,” Ulcetha said. That was also a lie. Salathgarad could do a lot of damage if he wanted to. Salathgarad could probably get him kicked out of the University again, this time for good. But Salathgarad was a bully. If you knuckled under right away, he only browbeat you more. Ulcetha had watched him do it to a series of Barizheise clerks, none of whom lasted more than ten months. Ulcetha, however, had taken several classes with Osmer Chenovar, who was the same way, and he had stood up for himself from the first, with the result that Salathgarad merely yelled at him.

On the other hand, no one ever won a fight with Salathgarad, and Ulcetha did not delude himself that he was going to win this one. Salathgarad had too much leverage against him and knew it. He sighed. “What do you want?”

Salathgarad’s smile was full of teeth. “I need you to write a provenance.”

* * *

Ulcetha had not started out writing provenances for Salathgarad’s fake artifact smuggling business. But Salathgarad had promised to pay him a bonus for every provenance, and a percentage of the profits for every artifact with one of his provenances that sold, and he was desperately in need of the money. Ethics and pride alike took a hard fall.

It was a simple enough matter. Salathgarad had a source for fake elven artifacts: incomplete earring sets, belt buckles, things that plausibly could have been handed down in a family for generations only to be sold in a desperate moment. Or coins. Coins with the heads of pre-Edrevenivar rulers were especially popular in Barizhan, and those someone might have found in a place like Cleth: abandoned palaces, ruined cities, temples to gods long-forgotten. Ulcetha had had his choice in making up stories about how the artifacts had reached Salathgarad’s hands. He had, in a perverse way, come to enjoy it.

This time, the artifact—which Salathgarad insisted Ulcetha come back to the shop to look at—was a small hoard of coins, such as you might find tucked behind a loose brick, four with the head of Prince Rinava, the last prince of Cairado, and one with the head of Prince Ulriva, who had ruled fifty years earlier. Ulcetha felt that that last coin was a nice touch on the part of the fake-crafter; it gave the whole thing just that much more verisimilitude.

“Lots of things coming from Cleth these days,” said Salathgarad, in what might have been a suggestion or an order; Ulcetha was never sure with Salathgarad. It was a good suggestion, too. Treasure hunters would be everywhere in the Cleth Valley, now that the historians had taken what they wanted and gone—a decision which Ulcetha passionately disagreed with but (Osmer Aidrina, who would have agreed with him, being dead) could do nothing about—and nothing was more plausible than that one of them would stumble across a little hoard like this.

It made the provenance very easy to write. Found in the ruins of the Summer Palace at Cleth. And then some dates for Prince Ulriva and Prince Rinava, and a little history about the burning of the Summer Palace and the arrival of Edrevenivar, before whom Cairado, taking good notice of her sister Vasthorno, had surrendered without a fight.

“You didn’t need me for that,” Ulcetha said. “What is it you’re really after?”

“Well, since you’re here, ” Salathgarad said, suddenly looking shifty, and Ulcetha braced himself. “There’s another artifact, but this one isn’t a fake.”

“I thought you only dealt in fakes,” Ulcetha said. It was, in a weird backwards way, part of how he had squared things with his conscience: only fakes, not actual thefts.

“Mostly, yes,” said Salathgarad. “But a friend of a friend had this thing fall into his hands and I’ve got a sure buyer.”

“Where do I fit into this?”

“It still needs a provenance, even if it’s the real thing,” Salathgarad said. “We can’t tell the truth. ”

“No, of course not,” Ulcetha said. “What is this thing?”

“Here,” Salathgarad said, going to his desk, which had, Ulcetha thought, more secret drawers than regular ones. Ulcetha did not see what Salathgarad did, nor which drawer slid open, but in a moment Salathgarad returned to the clerk’s desk where Ulcetha was sitting and said, “Here.”

Ulcetha stared. He knew what it was because he’d seen drawings of it in manuscripts from the reigns of Prince Armetha and Prince Ulpava.

“Where…” he said. “How…”

“The Star of Cstheio,” Salathgarad said with considerable satisfaction.

Ulcetha took off his glasses to examine it more closely.

The Star of Cstheio was a diamond the size of Ulcetha’s thumbnail, the same perfect blue as the Orb of Cairado, set in an elaborate silver ring, currently much tarnished. The Orb and the Star had always been considered linked gems in Cairado, ever since they had arrived in Princess Hathi?n’s dowry, and the gift of the Star of Cstheio to the Cairad’athmaza by Prince Altheva had been considered extremely symbolic, a sign that the mazei of the city would never turn against its prince. It was considered equally symbolic when the Star was lost, and several mazei had narrowly escaped angry crowds before the mayor and Valentis Athmaza (the successor to Corica Athmaza) had frantically invented a ceremony for the mazei to swear friendship to Cairado and its people.

“You’re going to sell it?” Ulcetha blurted.

Salathgarad’s eyebrows went up. “What else should I do with it?”

“It belongs to the Cairad’athmaz’are,” Ulcetha said, knowing it was futile.

Salathgarad hooted with laughter. “You think I should give it back to the Cairad’athmaz’are? And what will I get in return? Sincere thanks? The mazei are as poor as a ragman’s dog.”

“It would be—” Ulcetha started, and bit his tongue on the right thing to do .

“No, my friend,” said Salathgarad. “I am selling this to someone who can pay me what it’s worth.”

“You must not be planning to say it’s the Star of Cstheio,” Ulcetha said, slowly and unhappily. “Because that makes it priceless.”

“We all know it’s the Star of Cstheio,” Salathgarad said. “There’s no need to put it in writing.”

“And that’s what you want me for. A provenance for a silver ring with a cut blue diamond the size of my thumbnail.”

“Exactly!”

Ulcetha considered saying, I won’t do it . He considered saying, I can’t do it . But either way, the next step—the thing they both knew and so there was no need to say—would be Salathgarad threatening to go to Osmer Harcenar and tell him exactly what Ulcetha had been doing for the past five years. He could imagine the air of injured innocence with which Salathgarad would explain that he had discovered Ulcetha was using his, Salathgarad’s, perfectly upright and legal business as a blind for his, Ulcetha’s, smuggling operation, and he could also imagine the satisfaction with which Osmer Harcenar would accept that story.

Once a thief, always a thief.

“All right,” he said. “But I can’t do it now. I need time to think.”

“How much time?”

“A day or two,” Ulcetha said. “If it’s going to be plausible, there are books I need to consult.”

Salathgarad gave him a long, suspicious look, but said, “All right. But not more than a day or two. My buyer is eager.”

“Of course,” Ulcetha said. “Who wouldn’t be?”

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