Page 22 of The Sun He Buried

Her eyes move to Baldr and back. One is brown. The other is also brown, because she’s human and doesn’t have one of Baldr’s distracting eyes.

“I can try.”

“Good. How much?”

“Two copper.”

“You didn’t try.”

“I did, my lady. It didn’t take.”

Baldr makes a thoughtful noise behind me.

I turn around. “Go buy something.”

“What?”

“Anything. Preferably from very far away.”

“You asked me to take you through the market.”

“I didn’t know the market would surrender.”

His grin reaches his eyes. “I warned you the ribbon sellers had suffered.”

“At my hands. This is different.”

The lower market fills three stone terraces between the hall and the harbor road. Canvas awnings snap above the stalls. Fish, tar, wet wool, hot bread, and salt all get into the wind and fight for control of it. The sea wins. The sea always wins.

Three days since the dinner, and this is the first afternoon Baldr’s pried himself off the harbor long enough to walk me down to the market himself. The other two times were Asta and four guards, and we came back with three balls of yarn, a jar of buttons, and a carved spoon nobody remembers buying. Today it’s Baldr, one guard keeping far enough back to preserve the illusion of privacy, and a blue wool basket hooked over my elbow.

So far Baldr has carried the basket twice.

I’ve taken it back twice.

The handle is currently leaving a red groove in my arm, but this has become a matter of principle.

Two stalls down, a human man has taken off his shirt. It’s freezing.

This seems unwise.

He sits on a padded bench beneath a painted board showing one enormous arm curled around the words STRONGEST FEED ON THE LOWER TERRACE. The painting has given the arm six muscles I don’t think real arms possess.

The man comes close to matching it. His shoulders are wider than the bench, his chest is covered in dark hair, and every part of him looks built for moving ships without assistance. Both his eyes are brown. Human.

A second human sits behind a narrow counter with a coin box, two cups, and a sandglass. A Skorvær man stands between the donor’s knees. Both his eyes are gold.

Baldr huffs a laugh beside me.

“What?”

He nods toward the painted arm. “They’ve put the price up again.”

“Because he’s enormous?”

“Because humans think the more muscular they are, the better the feed.”

I look at the bare chest. “Isn’t it?”