I expected to lose as I didn’t know any of the rules, and Jorn spoke maybe ten words of Islish, so he couldn’t explain them to me.I didn’t mind; people liked winning, and I liked when people liked me.
In actuality, I was drawing ideas and laying them out for Jorn so he could interpret them.
Te-he, came from one of the stones laid on the table.Which one, I couldn’t say.It wasn’t a sound I’d heard, more like a thought.
Loss.Loss.So much loss.
My back straightened.I wasn’t sure if the idea had been mine or the stones’, but as I stared at them, they did seem to be showing a girl losing thing after thing after thing.Not showing to my eyes but showing to my heart.I felt the feeling of losing, and the feeling was so real to me that I was certain it was truth, that something was being lost that very moment.
The gold!I stood, likely appearing deranged, and nodded hurriedly to Jorn before racing out of the room, past the sea dogs doing their strange moon chants.I was terrified of them, but more terrified of having left my charge unattended for so long.
When I reached the chamber I had been sleeping in, the guard who was usually outside the door was still there, only he was lying on the floor with his arm draped over his eyes, muttering to himself.
I hesitated for a moment before stepping around his limbs and entering the room, certain I would find it ransacked.
Everything was in its proper place.
I counted the gold to be sure.
And then I lay atop it, like a creature from a witch’s tale.I wondered if I were going mad, if living on the water made one’s mind watery.I wept a little and then, in the quiet, finally, I found sleep.
Did I dream?
Of course I did.
I am a wicked thing.You already knew this.
Sixteen
“Iheard you and Jorn spent time together during the shy moon?”King Arik was standing at his tall table again, enjoying raw eggs with a cheery smile.He gently cracked each shell against the lip of a copper bowl before breaking the egg open above his mouth.
It was our second day of morning questions together.
“Yes,” I said.
“He said you have similar tastes.He has asked for this for you.”King Arik pointed at a small plate, filled with mud-coloured squares.They were thin and appeared hard.“It comes from far, far away, Gentlewoman—very expensive.Shoka,he calls it.”
I stepped closer to the table to look at the offering, feeling I had to try some since it was requested specifically for me, but also feeling that I wouldn’t like it.Before reaching for the repast, I noticed the stone game Jorn and I had played the evening before and grew unsettled.The pieces were laid out just as they’d been laid when Jorn and I were playing in the small courtyard.He must have taken the game exactly as we’d left it to the king.I was used to being reported on.This was how my order functioned.All the same, I was set on edge because of the stones themselves, because of what I’d felt when I saw them last.
“Eat,” the king nodded at the squares.
I took one and bit into the corner, disliking it as I imagined I would for a heartbeat or two, but then, it began to melt and I found it utterly delightful.
“Ha!You are fond of it.I will tell him.”
My eyes drifted back to the stones.
“Yes,” the king said, setting another empty eggshell onto a plate filled with glossy, broken shells.“I would ask you about this.Jorn wanted to be here to have me translate your thoughts to him, but he has a soothing nature.I was curious about your thoughts without his temperance.”
“I don’t know the rules,” I said.
“Rules?”
“It is a game?”
“Ha!I suppose yes, it is.Do you remember the order they were placed in?”
I nodded.
