Chapter 24
“Sebastian,” he says. “Bash.”
“That’s a fancy name for a fishmonger’s son,” I say.
“My parents had great expectations.”
“Have you risen to meet them?”
He shrugs. “I’d tell you to ask my parents, but they’re dead and gone nearly twenty years now.”
“I’m so sorry,” I say, my heart immediately aching for him.
“Don’t be. If they’d lived, I’d either have become a fishmonger myself—a miserable one—or I’d have run away to go to sea and left them onshore with their disappointed hopes and fish heads.”
“You needn’t make everything a joke,” I say, gently. To be honest, however, his insistence on using humor to distance himself from his feelings rattles me a bit. I never know when he’s going to take something seriously, and it always catches me by surprise.
“I’m not joking. They would have been unhappy with me, or I would have been unhappy with the life they wanted for me, and either way, it worked out.”
“So they died…and you were what, ten?” He can’t be more than thirty.
“About that. My mother’s brother came in to run the shop, and I joined the merchant marines as soon as I could manage it. He was glad to have one less mouth to feed, as far as I could tell.”
“Where?”
“Where what?”
“Did you live? Portside? Mydmouth?” Those are our two largest port cities.
He smiles, a little ruefully. “Crambrook.”
“Crambrook,” I repeat. “On the south coast?” It’s a tiny town, hardly accessible by land, being surrounded by steep hills on three sides and the sea on the fourth.
It’s well-known for its isolation and revolutionary politics.
It’s hard to imagine anyone with half this man’s raw charisma growing up in such a tiny place.
“I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised you’re familiar with it.”
“Only by reputation. Hardly even that. Just from books. I’ve never been.”
“Nor have I, not since I left,” he says.
“From what I’ve read—it would seem a bit small for you.”
“That’s about right.” He resumes cleaning his nails. I try again—and fail again—to imagine him, the fishmonger’s boy, in a tiny, isolated seaside town. Staying in Crambrook, becoming a fishmonger, marrying a lovely fishwife…For no reason at all, the thought makes my cheeks heat up.
“And the sea witch?” I try, in the hopes of distracting myself from whatever I was about to think.
“Not from Crambrook.”
I counsel myself in patience and try again. “How’d you go from the merchant marines to being a pirate? Also”—I pause, suddenly outraged—“the minimum age for the merchant marines is thirteen. You said you ran away when you were ten!”
He chuckles. “I disguised myself as a girl so they’d accept that I was smaller and had a high-pitched voice. Got away with it for a few years and then, alas, Nature dobbed me in.”
“You’re not going to tell me anything real about piracy or the curse, are you?”
He shrugs.
I put my head down on the desk. “What are you doing here?”
“Waiting to see what your miserable new prince does. If he ever deigns to show up.”
“He’ll show up. I’m sure he’s just…” Trying to find a strengthening line in one of his favorite poems; something about having to do one’s duty even in the unlikely event that one’s duty results in curse-breaking and some sort of dreadful automatic betrothal. “Just tired from the road.”
“Your other suitors are getting along quite well, you’ll be glad to know. They’ve set aside their differences, by and large, and spend a great deal of time declaiming at each other.”
I haven’t raised my head from the desk yet. “Delightful.”
“The Inn of the Two Princes is doing great business these days.”
“Bully for them,” I grumble to myself. Despite the work Sasha and I have put into the bookshop, the Lord Mayor’s patronage, and our sale tables, I still get very few customers inside the actual shop. I try not to feel too resentful about it, but I fail, regularly.
“Cheer up,” he says, almost gently. “You could be out of here as soon as your reluctant suitor appears and lays one on you.”
“It won’t work. You and I both know it won’t work.”
I’ve looked up again; his attention is, again, back on his nails.
“Life is short; let’s see what happens.”
What a philosophy. I stare down at what I’ve doodled, set it aside, and pull out my ledger.
My accounts are in perfect order; I work on the books after I close up in the evenings.
And, given how few customers I have outside of Sasha’s tables, there’s not much to order.
I set the book aside and start to make a list; we’ve sold both copies of The Thorn and Her Roses and I should see about getting more in.
If I can figure out how to do such a thing myself without leaving the bookstore.
I wonder what else I can do to attract customers, and eye the front windows speculatively; perhaps if I arranged some books by theme in the windows, and decorated the way bakers often do…
but of course, bakers can make artful shapes from their products to attract customers.
What artful shapes can I make from books? Perhaps a building…
I’m just starting to sketch a design when the chimes ring, and I look up. But it’s only Sasha, carrying her book bag and looking excited.
“There’s another prince in town!” she exclaims, then catches sight of the pirate. “Oh. If he’s here then you probably already know.”
“Yes, he showed up a few hours ago and persists in just…sitting there,” I say.
“Surely you can make him do something useful?”
I glance at the pirate, who’s smiling at me in an annoyingly self-satisfied fashion. “I can’t even get him to tell me about his curse,” I say.
Sasha rolls her eyes. “Boys,” she says, wearily, and I suppress my smile at her world-weariness.
“But I haven’t missed anything? With the new guy?” she says.
“He’s taking his time. Look, I had an idea…
” I gesture her over to the desk and show her my drawing.
I am determined to ignore the pirate—as well as I can—and in laying out my ideas about the windows to Sasha, I unintentionally wind up forgetting about the pirate and the forthcoming prince, which is a nice change—when the chimes ring, and we all look up again.
A figure is standing in the doorway, backlit against the golden afternoon sunlight, and looking decidedly… well, droopy.
I sigh, and stand. “Hi, Bel,” I say.
“Tanadelle,” he says, sounding weary. “We meet again.”