The easy answer rose to the tip of Noll’s tongue like warm grease rising to the surface of a broth kettle.
It was fifty years of deeply ingrained habit. When a mark was terrified, you told him the weather would clear before noon; when a weaver’s cow was dry, you sold him a packet of dried meadow clover and swore on your mother’s grave that the milk would stand three inches thick in the pail by Sunday morning; and when an unformed entity sitting in a dark, sealed cellar asked if it was condemned to become a nightmare, you smiled, smoothed your lapels, and promised it that everything was under professional management.
Don’t worry, my lad, the old carnival voice wanted to say, rolling out that rich, honeyed stage baritone that had pacified angry mobs from New Gwent to the high passes of Orren. I have a plan. I will talk the magistrate out of his boots, I will turn the court around on a silver sixpence, and you will step through that stone looking like a prince in an embroidered velvet coat.
Noll closed his carved stone teeth together.
The granite jaw met with a sharp, dry clink that sounded like two paving flags colliding under an iron wheel. The urge to offer a soft, painless comfort throbbed through the copper nerve wires running down his neck, hot and sour as copper verdigris. For thirty years, comforting lies had been his bread and butter. They functioned exactly like cheap…
