would not have happened in the old days. The days BDP, Cusharlain thought;
Before this Damned Prince! Far more incredibly, if there could be grades of
incredibility, Cudget had been hanged!
Prince Stupid!
‘Ah, the lad knows he can’t hope to do injury on the prince,’ someone had told
the night proprietor of the Golden Lizard, who had told Cusharlain’s old friend
Gelicia, proprietor of the popular House of Mermaids. ‘He schemes to steal from
the very Prince-Governor, and make a quick large profit in the doing.’
Cusharlain stared at her. ‘This young gamecock means to try to rob the very
palace?’ he said, feeling stupid instantly; so she’d said, yes.
‘Don’t scoff, Cusher,’ Gelicia said, waving a doughy hand well leavened with
rings. This noon she was wearing apple-green and purple and lavender and mauve
and orange, all in a way that exposed a large portion of her unrivalled bosom,
which resembled two white cushions for a large divan and which Cusharlain was
singularly uninterested in viewing.
‘If it can be done, Shadowspawn’ll do it,’ she said. ‘Oh, go ahead, tip yourself
some more wine. Did you hear about the ring he tugged from under Corlas’s pillow
– while Corlas’s head was on it, sleeping? You know, Corlas the camel-dealer.
Or’ve you heard tell of how our boy Hanse dumb up and stole the eagle off the
roof of Barracks Three for a lark?’
‘I wondered what had happened to that!’
She nodded wisely with a trembling of chin and a flashing wing of earrings whose
diameter was the same as his wine-cup – which was of silver. Her wine-cup, that