12. Twelve
Chapter 12
The woman behind the counter took his cup and the coins and left. I turned to the stranger beside me.
“Why would you do that?” I asked, as he leaned against the counter.
He tilted his head. “Are you this suspicious of everyone or ought I to be specially offended?”
“It’s been a day. A few days.” I lowered myself onto the bar stool again, hugging my bag.
“Do you want to talk about it?”
“Not in the least.”
“Good. I detest sad stories.”
I blinked at him, and he grinned, eyes dancing. The woman behind the counter set down his cup, now full again, and a handful of change.
“Wine or juice?” she asked me in a clipped voice that seemed to imply she would have preferred me to leave.
“Wine,” I told her without thinking, before turning back to the wealthy stranger. “I can’t pay you back. If you’re expecting something from me…”
“Mysteries, you’re acting like I’ve brought you a cart of treasure,” he muttered. “It was just a few argor. As for wanting something, I’m tired of eating by myself. Let me sit with you, and pretend I’m not here alone?”
Eating alone sounded perfect to me just then. But what was I supposed to say? Thank you for the food and the drink and the room, the prices of which are practically piracy, and without which I would have been sleeping on the street. Now please never speak to me again, human?
I nodded curtly. He swung smoothly into the seat beside me and dragged his cup closer with a contented sigh.
For a moment we sat in silence. He tapped the counter, staring straight ahead, and then the woman returned with a cup of wine in one hand and a steaming bowl in the other. Chunks of fish and colorful peppers bobbed in a dark, but clear broth.
“I’m Oraik,” he said abruptly, as I accepted a spoon from the woman.
“Meda,” I said. “Thank you, again. For the meal.” He waved off my gratitude and took a sip from his cup.
The broth was spicy and as thin as I liked it, the fish fresh and cooked to perfection. The ridiculous price seemed a little less offensive. Though perhaps I was just hungry.
“So, Meda, if you only had one night in Rovileis, what would you do? The sin-boats or the night market?” Oraik asked. He propped his face up with a fist, eyes searching mine. I frowned and spat out a fishbone.
“I don’t know. I’m not from here.”
“Yes, I guessed as much,” he drawled. “But which sounds more fun ? Because I read the market even has wares from traders beyond the Ward, but I don’t need anything. Though I suppose, when all is said and done, a souvenir wouldn’t be amiss.”
What wonders might make it here from the fae outlands? Even if I couldn’t buy the books, the merchants might let me peruse through the pages if I looked suitably like a customer. Might a book from the outlands mention the Ward?
“So go to the market,” I said, bending low over my bowl and ladling soup into my mouth with determined precision.
“That’s what I thought, at first. But I also read there’s no better kick than a night on the sin-boats. I can’t do both. Can I? Do you think I have time? It is still early.”
“What’s a sin-boat?”
Oraik blinked.
“Really?” he asked. I looked at him blankly and he sighed. “Did you see that long row of barges, just past the harbor lip? You must have, coming in.” I thought back to when I arrived and shrugged. I hadn’t paid much attention to the boats. “It’s where all the business goes that the Temple’s banned. You know. Brothels, and dreamfish, and gambling dens.”
It made a certain clever sense, I supposed. Put everything illegal on a boat and float it out on the water, and there wasn’t much even the Cachians could do about it. It was a fundamental truth that the sea was free from law, because the sea could not be owned.
“If that appeals to you, do it.” It seemed like the type of evening a man covered in gold might enjoy.
“You aren’t very helpful.” He frowned at me.
“I never claimed to be.”
He sighed. “So where are you from? Does anyone there ever smile, or are they all as cheerless as you?”
“Nis-Illous.”
“Nis-Illous,” he said slowly, turning the sound over in his mouth. Oraik frowned, then lit up. “That’s Nis’ westernmost isle. Isn’t it?”
He sounded terribly proud of himself, for having the equivalent achievement of pointing at the big glowing spot at night and going ‘that’s the moon. Isn’t it?’ But it at least had the effect of making me feel less sullen for not knowing about sin-boats or the night market, while simultaneously reminding me that the island where I’d spent my life was very small and unimportant compared to the Protectorate’s capital, former center of the world.
“Yes,” I agreed.
“Are you a potter? That’s what it’s known for, isn’t it, the pottery?”
“My parents are potters.” I’d forgotten how terrible conversation with normal people was. Why did any of this matter?
“But you didn’t want to be. Ah! That’s why you came to Rovileis, seeking your fortune!” He clapped his hands together, eyes lighting up. “It’s like that story, Taavi and the Ten Gems !”
Once again I didn’t have a clue what he was talking about. He must have been from the other side of the Protectorate.
“I’m just meeting someone,” I lied. If I mentioned magic, I might have to mention the tower, and what had happened there.
He drummed his fingers on the table and frowned.
“A lover?” he guessed after a moment. “No, you’re too sullen to be meeting a lover. Unless that’s just how your face looks. Or you’re planning to break his heart. Her heart? Their heart?”
The idea that I’d come for something so insignificantly human was too much just then. I burst out laughing, and Oraik grinned like he’d won a prize.
“No, not a lover,” I informed him, covering my mouth and wiping a tear from my eye. The grin vanished. He looked disappointed.
“Then what’s so funny?”
“I’ve never met anybody like you.”
“But I’m perfectly ordinary.” He scowled.
“Are you? You’re covered in gold.”
“So?” He dragged his hands off the counter and buried them where I couldn’t see all his rings.
“Where are you from? What are you doing here?” I pushed the bowl of food away and stared at the ridiculous man.
“ I am trying to decide what to do with my night,” he told me archly. “I don’t suppose you’d like to come with me? I’ll pay.”
“Me? You must be joking.”
“Oh, please. Don’t make me sightsee alone. I don’t even mind if you laugh at me.”
He clasped his gold-touched hands together in a beggar’s pose and stared at me wide-eyed. I wasn’t feeling so tired now that I’d eaten, and Oraik, though rich and ridiculous, didn’t seem much like a threat.
“I have no interest in the sin-boats,” I told him. “I might be willing to see the market.”
“Oh, you won’t regret it! It’s one of the five wonders of Rovileis. I’ll even buy you something. I’m sure there’s nothing like it on Nis-Illous. Don’t eat any more, they sell everything there. Have you ever had cheese-stuffed prawns? I couldn’t find a place that sold them around here.”
“How do you know there’s nothing like it on Nis-Illous? ”
“Well, because if there were , somebody would have written about it, and I would have read it.” He pushed his stool back and drained his drink, then looked at me out of the corner of his eye. “Unless it’s a secret, and nobody outside of your island knows?”
“If we’re doing this,” I told him, ignoring the ridiculous question, “you’re walking me back afterwards.”
“It’s a little far. I hadn’t meant to come back this way,” he plucked at his full bottom lip with a frown. “Are you staying here, or some such?”
“Of course I’m staying here. You bought me the room,” I said. “Did you already forget?”
“Really?” He laughed. “I thought it was just the food!”
“That much? For soup…?”
“Well, never mind. We can find a place to stay closer to the market, I’m sure. I’ll get you another room.”
Goods. Goods from the outlands. And a chance to find something that helped explain the Ward.
“Fine,” I agreed.
He grinned, then turned and walked straight towards the door without even asking for a refund on the room.
“Excuse me?” I leaned over the counter and caught the attention of the woman. “I won’t be needing the room. We’ll take the change, please.”
With a heavy sigh she fished nine argit out from a box behind the counter and dropped them into my waiting hand. I thanked her, drained my wine, and trotted after Oraik.