The Grandmaster's Gambit

23. Three Knocks

[Day-24 (22:00)]

(Hatter's Yard, off Ironmongers' End, Sector 9, Alexandria)

"Key," said the hatch.

The voice came up through a brass flap low in the edge of an iron plate, a slot the size of a letter box. It was a man's voice, level and not unfriendly. The flap had opened on the third knock. Kai had not been sure it would open at all.

*Three. It was three. Brilliant.*

Hatter's Yard was four tenement stairs round a standpipe, with washing strung across it on lines and not moving. Someone had chalked squares for a game on the flagstones. A woman called a child in from a stair, twice, and a door shut on the second call. The plate lay beside the standpipe. Its stencil said WATER BOARD, MAINTENANCE, but it had been painted over so often that the letters were a ridge. There was no handle.

It had taken him four nights to find it. He had read the ledgers on the back landing, one book at a time, with a candle stub and his shoulders against the wall. Oren slept through it. Each book went back under the third board before the first bell. There were nine of them and not a number in any. Aeron had kept his accounts in strokes: bars of five, a gate across each bundle, a letter after it for the thing bought. A small ring at the end of a line meant it was still open. Inside the cover of the first book was a drawing of a pump, a square of flagstones and a plate, with H.Y. under it in a hand that pressed hard.

*That's the where. Now the how. Beside every date, three little strokes. Seventy-seven dates, so seventy-seven lots of three. If they were visits it'd be one each. So it's not a tally. What is it? Something you jot when you've just done a thing with your hand, so you remember how. Hang on. Three. Knuckles.*

*If I'm wrong the flap stays shut and I've had a walk.*

And the letter had said *bring the key*.

*I've got the one key. It opens my front door. You don't tell a man to bring his own front door key.*

He crouched and fed it through the slot. The brass was still warm from his pocket. It went with room to spare, on its loop of string, and the string slid after it.

*Front door, then. All that thinking. Hang on, though. That's my door he's got now.*

Oren was upstairs on the floor with his boots on, and he slept lightly. Anyone who wanted that room would have to get past him first. It was a thin comfort, and Kai kept hold of it anyway.

Something heavy slid back under the flagstones. The plate rose a hand's width on a counterweight, and a smell of cold tea and wet paper came up with a thread of amber light.

"Mind the pipe," said the voice.

Eleven steps, steep and slick. At the bottom a pipe ran across the ceiling and ticked, as if the building were drinking, and he ducked it by luck.

The room was low, and one lamp lit it. The lamp hung on a chain, amber glass with a thin brown flame, and shelves of grey cloth files ran back into the dark on three sides. In the middle stood a desk built from six metal cases, two high and one across, with their stencils scraped off. There were two stools. Behind the desk, with his back to an iron fire door, sat a man.

He was about thirty-five. He had the kind of face you fail to describe afterwards: brown hair, neatly parted, a mouth that gave nothing, skin that had not seen a street lamp lately. He did not get up. His cardigan was grey-green with one wrong button, and there was ink on the middle finger of his right hand. A cup of tea stood at his elbow with a skin on it.

"Sit," said Dace.

Kai took the stool nearer the stair. His key lay on a square of grey cloth beside the lamp, with the string curled round it. Dace did not touch it. He reached behind him without looking and brought out a flat bundle tied with white tape, as thick as a loaf. He squared it on the case in front of him. On top he laid a cream envelope sealed with a dull blob of wax. Across it, in block capitals, was written LAST ANSWER.

"Fifteen years," said Dace. "And three commissions. You'll know them."

*Nine books, and they'd go back that far if he kept them from the start. Three rings.*

"The open ones," said Kai.

Dace's eyes came up for the first time. They were an ordinary colour. Kai looked at the lamp, and when he looked back he could not have said which.

"Open," Dace agreed. "Two watches and the envelope. I put a boy on a street for each watch, and I fed them on your promise until I ran out of promise." He settled both hands on the file. "What did you pay for the first sighting?"

*Page one. A stroke, a letter, a ring shut. One stroke.*

"One token."

"Yes."

Dace wrote nothing down.

*Too easy. He wouldn't ask me something I can just answer unless he wanted to see how I answer. Fast or slow. I did it in a breath. Is that good, or is that rehearsed?*

His stomach gave a small loud complaint in the quiet. Dace's face did not change.

"You stopped coming," Dace said.

"I was hurt."

"So the Row says. The Row says a great deal." He turned the file a quarter inch. "Fill in the slip. You know the form."

A narrow slip lay under the lamp with a pen beside it. It was ruled, with a line for a name and a line that said VISIT NO.

*Know the form? Name, easy. Visit number. Seventy-seven dates in nine books, so this is seventy-eight. He wants to see that I know how many times I've sat on this stool. Fine. I can do that.*

He wrote with his left hand, slowly, the way Aeron signed. *A. Cross.* Then *78*. He put the pen down and pushed the slip across.

Dace looked at it for a long time. He did not look at Kai.

"Your hand is different," he said. "The sevens."

*The sevens? There's one seven. It's got a top and a stem, it's a seven. What's he...*

*Oh, you idiot. Nine books and not a number in any of them. I never saw him write one. I never saw him write anything but strokes.*

Dace squared the slip against the edge of the file with the sides of both hands.

*Aeron crossed his sevens. Fifteen years of slips and every one had a bar through it, even the day he came down with his hand shaking. This one doesn't. A man can learn a new hand in a month. He can't learn it in a day, and he can't lose the old one in a night. I deal in what. I don't ask who.*

"I hit my head," said Kai.

Dace did not answer. He leaned back, and the lamp swung a little on its chain as the chain felt it. Light slid along the shelves and came back. Then Dace's right hand went under the desk.

*Under the desk. A bell? A knife? A cord to somebody behind the fire door? No, the door's behind his own chair, he'd have to turn round. A drawer. It's a drawer.*

His left hand, the one that had written the seven, had started to shake on his knee. He pushed it between his knees and held it there.

Dace came up with a flat tin box. He took one slip out of it and laid it beside the new one, turned so the two faced the same way.

*VISIT NO.*, and a number in a hand that leaned to the left. *77.* Both sevens had a short firm bar through the stem.

*Oh, there. Both of them, like a crossed stick. That's what he saw. Now he'll be polite about it. A knock to the head can take a lot, which side, which day. Each question smaller than the last, and every one of them ending in the same place. So don't answer the next one. Ask mine. What does he sell? Quiet. Then what's it cost?*

"A knock to the head can-" Dace began.

"What would you charge to forget this?" said Kai.

Dace stopped. He looked at the lamp. Then he took the cuff of his cardigan and rubbed one pane of the glass until the flame shook.

*He's cleaning it. It was clean already. Why would he...*

"Forget what?" Dace said at last.

"That's what I'm asking."

The pipe ticked twice. Dace laid his cuff down. When he spoke it was quietly, and to the file, not to Kai.

"I don't deal in who. I deal in what."

*Oh, that's neat. I've never seen a question refused so politely.*

*He knows. Course he knows. And he's decided he doesn't, which I've just bought for nothing, so it cost something. I don't know what yet.*

"Visit seventy-eight," said Dace, in his ordinary voice. He entered it in a narrow book in a small neat hand, put both slips into the tin box and shut the lid. Then he tapped the envelope. "This stays sealed until it's paid in full. That was your rule, not mine."

"What's owed?"

"Four hundred. And a question you were afraid to ask."

*Four hundred. That's the note. Do not pay D. the last 400. So that's what it was about. Don't pay him, and the envelope stays shut. Did he want it shut? He bought an answer in ones and twos for fifteen years and then wrote himself a note not to collect it.*

*Fifteen years of tokens and you couldn't open it. You went and died with it shut, and now it's me sat here looking at it, you stubborn sod.*

*Don't ask which question. Everything I ask in this room goes in a box.*

"I haven't got four hundred," said Kai.

"I know what you have." Dace said it mildly, as a man gives the time. "I also know what you could have." He pushed a small slip across the case, one line in his neat hand. "Two Watchmen need a third hand for a dive. A man called Marcus, a woman called Cass. They knew you."

*Knew... Another pair of people who know a man I've never met.*

The slip read: *Copper Kettle, Ashen Quarter. Draftday, 7th bell.* In *7th* the seven had a bar through its stem.

*He crosses them too. Everyone here does. Of course they do.*

"Day after tomorrow," Dace said. "Four hundred and ten a head if all three come back up. I take my f*e in what you see down there."

"And if I don't go?"

"Then you don't. The four hundred will still be here." He picked up his tea, found the skin, and put it down again. "My book doesn't lapse. You know that. It's why I wrote."

Kai folded the slip into his pocket. Dace slid the key across to him on its square of cloth, and the brass had gone cold.

"Your door," said Dace.

Kai took it. He stood, and the stool scraped on the stone. At the foot of the stair, with a hand on the wet rail, he stopped.

"Yes?" said Dace.

"Nothing. Thank you for the-" He did not know the end of it. "For the key."

"The watches are stopped," Dace said, as if Kai had not spoken. "The boys have gone home. I'm not charging you the ten weeks."

"That's kind."

"It isn't kindness. It's housekeeping."

The lamp was still swinging when the plate came down behind him.

Kai crossed the yard under the dead washing. At the corner of Ironmongers' End a lamplighter was working down the street with his pole, one shutter at a time. Kai said it to himself, *Copper Kettle, Draftday, seventh bell*, and then again to check he had it right. At the pump he said it a third time, in case the second had been luck.