The Astrologies

Chapter 17: Marta Quits Her Job

"Marta!"

A white cloud billowed around her as Marta shifted the weight of the sack of flour to her knee. She lifted her head above the edge of the sack and breathed deep to yell back, but choked on the dust that leaked from the badly spun cloth. She heaved the sack to the ground in another cloud of dust, and coughed until her eyes watered.

"Marta!"

Leward panicked easily. Boisterous sounds from the early dinner crowd filled the hallway. There were only a handful of rolls left from the morning, and probably everybody's mug was empty. Marta wiped her eyes and saw that a large trail of flour had poured from the bottom of the bag, back all the way to the store room.

"Marta." This voice was soft, directly behind her.

"Cadras!" She spun around. He still had not slept. His hair was greasy and stuck out in a few directions. A couple days of stubble bristled around his cheeks and his eyes were red and sunken. He pulled a plug of something from his pocket and began to chew it.

"Your eye is twitching." She told him.

"Marta!" Leward called again.

"More ale!" Somebody cheered from the other room and the call was immediately echoed by a dozen other voices.

"Ale!" Came the particularly loud call of a particularly drunk patron.

Cadras eyed the door to the front room, and grabbed hold of her arm, more roughly than he intended.

"I want you to work for me." He was whispering, for no apparent reason. "I'll pay you five weight gold a month."

"Gold?" Marta whispered back, thinking he must have misspoken. Cadras nodded, looking over her shoulder toward the main room. Marta had been working for Cadras for a long time. Their agreement had always been two silver every week, scant weight if she was light on information or he was light on cash. Cadras wanted to know everything, and Marta knew everybody in the Valley. Children in the Valley— the ones that survived, anyway— had to find niches. Marta had done a bit of thieving here and there, but had found at an early age that some people would pay her for secrets. She had created an odd trade, bartering information. Even as good as she was at listening, at getting people to confide in her, and at deducing people's motivation, her occupation had been a rather poor and unpredictable one. Cadras had helped when he put her on retainer, but here she was choking on flour and getting yelled at by drunk old men.

"Five gold pieces?" She whispered again.

Cadras shook his head and corrected her. "Five weight. Scrip."

It was odd for anybody in the Valley to deal in the Empire's paper money, but Marta knew where to get a good deal on an exchange.

Cadras nodded again and pulled out a cigarette. He took out his strange vial, full of irradescent liquid, and pulled off the cork. A small, blue, flame shot out of the top of the glass vial and he held it up to light his cigarette.

"When?" Marta asked.

"Now."

A dozen men were yelling her name from the other room. She could picture Leward's exact expression, standing over the pots, muttering to himself with his brow furrowed, and scowling over his shoulder every few seconds to look for her. Even after thirty years of fairly successful cooking, Leward always seemed to be on the verge of crisis when he was in the kitchen.

"I can't just leave Leward like this." She said, but then, with barely a pause, "My things are upstairs."

"Go get them, I'll be in back." Cadras was holding a gold coin that was at least a double weight. He set it down on the broken flour sack, saying, "This will make it up to Leward."