The night of the smugglers’ meeting was unexpectedly wretched. The suffocating air went suddenly cool and breezy for an hour after sunset, while lightning licked the far edge of the sky; then the monsoon began to whip the palms half over on their sides, and the rain beat down so hard it stung. Telemakos went out wearing only shirt, kilt, and sandals. He never expected to be cold in Adulis, and a shamma would get tangled in the thorns or mire him as he crawled through the culvert. Nor did he feel confident climbing and hiding when he was wearing boots. He was wet as a drowned cat, and freezing, five minutes after he left the governor’s mansion.
When Telemakos had first found the spillway he used as a passage into the mint, it was clogged with dried grass and sand, and he had wondered why anyone had bothered to build such a substantial drainage system in torrid Adulis. Now he knew. Rainwater poured in rivers through the gutter. He hated getting in anyway; he had already made several trials, and though it got easier, he never felt any better about it. The culvert was not long, but it was unforgivingly narrow. Some part of Telemakos’s body—either his head or his feet—always stuck out one end or the other, making him vulnerable. He could not crawl through the channel without a feeling of deep dread that someone was going to catch hold of his feet and pull him back.
Once through in either direction it was all right. There were wonderful places to hide within the walls of the mint: vats and work baskets, open fretwork beneath trays and benches, stone cupboards and niches, spaces that seemed too small for anything bigger than a mongoose. Telemakos’s chief fear tonight was that he would leave trails of water wherever he went.
The dogs gave him no trouble. With Medraut’s help he was able to drug them, all but two. One of these was usually chained, and made a great deal of noise at intruders, and the other always lost interest in Telemakos after a few minutes. These two were his decoys. With the rest of them quiet, Telemakos was free to make his way through the building at will.
He was there first. The smugglers used a different room for each meeting, he knew, so he could only wait for them before he chose a spot to settle in. He prowled through the likely workshops, scouting for good hiding places. He ended in a corner where he found a banked fire. It was under a roofed porch, open to the air at the side; but it was in the lee of the wind, and Telemakos could not resist the glowing furnace.
Neither could the six men who were meeting there. They came straggling in wringing out their shammas and cursing the weather. Telemakos lay full length beneath a granite trough meant for channeling molten metal, and silently cursed with them. The fire was too far across the enclosure to make much difference to him.
He watched and listened. The men drank steaming cups of honey wine and complained loudly that the mint was losing money because of the emperor’s order to debase his own gold coins. One of them seemed to be lamenting gold coinage as a lost craft; Telemakos thought this man a pompous oaf, trying to impress the others. Telemakos was beginning to shiver. He wished they would get to the point.
So did their leader, a foreman from the mint. “Stop moaning,” he told them. “The new year will bring far Sasu’s best gold ore, and then it won’t matter to you what Gebre Meskal puts in his coins.”
“If the Lazarus can put through the warrant for the shipping of the gold.”
“He will. He brings the warrant himself from the Authority.”
“He won’t. He doesn’t like to touch it. He’ll ask the Authority to send it by imperial courier. Word is the Lazarus will go straight to the Afar salt mines next season, and bypass Adulis. He’s scared of Adulis. The emperor has watchmen here; there are too many people who might know him.”
The Authority? The Lazarus?
“The Lazarus isn’t scared of the emperor’s sleuthhounds,” the pompous craftsman sneered, and spat. “He’s scared of plague. He doesn’t trust his own racket to keep it out. He barely missed being caught in Deire, and now he stays away from the coast.”
Telemakos could not stop shivering. He tried to curl himself into a ball, but there was not enough room.
“What’s that?’ asked the craftsman.
The foreman answered, “Rats. They’re everywhere, this close to the water. The dogs have grown fat and lazy feasting on them. So now, tell me again what you said, because I have not heard your news. Do you mean we shall not see the Lazarus at all next season?”
“I said, he’s going to the Afar mines himself, to oversee the cutting. But he won’t pick up his payment here. We’re to send it to Aksum.”
Who in blazes is ‘the Lazarus’?
“And the Authority’s payment?”
“All of it.”
“Damned rats,” said the man who had not spoken a word since the wine was poured. He scooped up a handful of the scrap tin nuggets that lay about the mouth of the furnace and began to sling them low across the yard, into corners and alcoves. He lashed one straight into Telemakos’s face.
It caught the edge of his eyebrow. For a moment he thought it had hit him in the eye. He whipped his head around and sank his teeth into his forearm. The noise of wind and rain and rats covered any sound he might have made.
“It’s not rats,” said the cynical know-it-all with the news. “Someone’s listening. Adulis is full of spies.”
Lying half-blinded and freezing beneath the stone trough, Telemakos had the presence of mind to realize that they had neither seen nor heard him: they were simply nervous. The silent one stood up and strode to the edge of the covered porch, where the rain blew in. He peered into the dark factory yard.
“I think you’re right,” he said.
I think I’m leaving, Telemakos told his friends the rats, silently. Make a lot of noise.
But he was so cold he could not make himself move. The foreman got to his feet and joined the man who was already standing at the edge of the enclosure.
“Let’s sweep the yard,” he said. “You watch the walls; if there’s anyone here, he’ll try to go over. I’ll get one of the dogs.”