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Show the Needlesmith Commendium to test his luck with the CountingHouses there. He'd caught up with Armand Gaundarholt in an alehouse in the Commendium's Market town of Barnsboro, just before the elder Gundarholts had died. Dressed in a patched and dirty suit of the motley worn by festival jugglers, his nose permanently skewed by a fall from a horse the year before, a dark pencil mustache decorating a curled upper lip, and hung about with numberless talismans and charms to ward off adversity, Hoqqam was avoided by everyone in Barnsboro as soon as they laid eyes on him. Then, walking along a side street, he'd seen a ripe one enter the alehouse and followed him in. It was Armand, foppishly dressed Armand, puffed and bloated, swaying on his feet at the bar and ordering the recalcitrant barmaid around in rough and sulky tones. Hoqqam saw Armand pull out the velvet pouch from inside his tunic, he saw the plentitude of coins and credits stuffed inside, and he glided over to him, signaled for a beaker of ale, and put his elbows on the surface. "A fine wench it be," he muttered quietly to Armand, "who won't jump at the beck of her betters." Armand turned to him in sleepy-eyed astonishment, having experienced little camaraderie from fellow drinkers who usually, on the contrary, gave him, too, wide berth whenever he appeared. "Betters, thou s a y e s t . . . ? " he asked suspiciously- "Aye, and I wot well a place that can give respect where 'tis warranted," the little man replied, meaning to set upon the man in the first alleyway, after they'd left the alehouse, and take his purse. Their beakers arrived, coins were collected by the affronted barmaid, and Armand placed his elbows on the bar in imitation of Hoqqam, and began 113 |
