I’d come across another cloth spread on the dock with parchment on display.A woman with a wobbly chin and dark paint around her eyes sat nearby, though she wasn’t watching her wares closely as her stones were being read by a boy with a torn cloak.
“Valla smiles upon you.You will have good luck this year,” the child said.“You will sell many things.”
My blood was rushing with urgency, and I was miserable to have to wait for the merchant’s attention to ask a quick question.Myvaneurigkstomach continued to torment me as well.The city seemed to close in on me.
In my irritation, I looked at the stones and sighed.“She will not.She will be swindled out of her wares.”
The two looked up at me in shock.
“Why do you say this?”the boy asked.
I knelt, my legs begging me to stay kneeling.How tired I was all the time.“You see here?”I pointed.“The luck is not hers, it isthisman’s.It is this man who takes her goods, but before this… they share a bed.”I looked up at the woman.“You enjoy it.And in your old age, you look back and think it was worth losing your wares over.The memory of him keeps you warm.He is handsome, I think.”
The shopkeeper laughed.“This sounds like something that would happen to me.”
My mind raced.“Would you accept a full reading in exchange for a page of parchment, and lending me a reed?”
She frowned.“Not with all my wares being taken from me soon.I take coin or beads.”Her eyes ran along my clothing, I think trying to decide whether I was someone who might have a lot of wealth.
“I could get what you seek,” the boy said, looking up at me.“If you read for me next.”
“Agreed,” I said, feeling a small portion of relief.I wanted to keep sitting.I wanted to be done with my letter as soon as possible.
We walked a little away from the woman selling parchment and sat in the shade of what seemed like a bleeding house judging by those entering.The boy laid out a deep blue cloth on the dock.“So no stones fall through the cracks,” he said, smiling.There was a gap where one of his child’s teeth had fallen out, and a larger tooth was pushing through the gums but hadn’t yet fully emerged.
I reached for the pouch of stones, but he pulled it away from me.
“I want to shake it first, for luck,” he said.
I let him shake and shake and shake the pouch before he handed it to me sheepishly.I scattered several stones onto the cloth, a whiff of something particularly nasty making me want to gag.
“What is your favourite thing to do?”I said, pointing to one stone.“This here is your favourite thing.
He looked up at me, eyes bright.“Casting and reading stones.”
I told the child he was to become great at casting stones, that the gods would use him to send word to people who had wandered too far from their path.I told him the skill would keep his stomach full.But I warned him that it wouldn’t be easy.The gods would only reward him if he practised.
He gobbled up my words with keen, trusting eyes.
All of it was a lie.When I looked at the stones, they sang a song of a child growing sick and then dying.
There was also a message for me in the stones.You must stop pretending you do not like us when it suits you, and then using us when it suits you.We don’t appreciate this.
I couldn’t tell the terrible story to the skinny boy with a torn cloak.Besides, perhaps it was as King Arik said.Maybe if the child believed me, it would come true.
The boy kept his word, and I got to write my letter.Though I was so sick and tired that I rushed in my writing.My penmanship was terrible.
I took the letter to the docks closer to the sea and waited in the exact spot where Geryn had said he worked.
After hours in the thick filth of the city centre, the fresh sea air was more than welcome.My stomach finally settled, and my nerves calmed a little.I would have waited for days, but I didn’t have to.I spotted Geryn in half of an hour.His black hair stood out among so much blond.
At first, he refused to carry my letter.“Who would I give it to?It is the Wide Way Fjord I moor in.I will be very far from the Arched Cliffs.”
I sighed.“A knight will take the quest of delivering it.”
“I think you have a false understanding of knights.”
“Just try.”
