3. 2
The facade of the Trunk & Trinket was tattered and worn, with the lettering renewed on the hanging sign but not across the painted wooden front, leaving only the ‘ru k & T ink’ legible.
Nevertheless, the hoard of disjointed treasures identified it as a likely pawn shop.
I’d never been in one before, but they were scattered all over Dytho, and I’d certainly heard stories from my former patrons of such shops.
I pushed the door with one hand to find it very stiff, and had to use both of my hands to shove my way in.
Once inside, I marvelled at the vast array of items, and the sheer volume of stuff.
Most of it was piled across open shelves, which, if I knew anything at all, had to signal it as fairly worthless.
There was war memorabilia from the Battle of Angoule well over a century ago, cast with the crest of the House of War.
A cluster of pearls claimed to be from Pleiidus’ sea shrine in the depths to the south of Astakos.
Little else alleged a godly provenance, but restraint didn’t indicate veracity.
I turned in the space, eyeing a display of old pocket watches under a glass cabinet at the front of the store. They had caught my eye from the outside, and now I looked again from the inside, trying to make out the engraving upon the top of one of the brass circles.
“Can I help you?”
I jumped at the gravelly voice, spinning around to find a man wearing spectacles and a deep frown leaning over another glass cabinet. He had three chins and a discerning eye.
I nodded, offering him the smile that always charmed the patrons of Ekris. “Yes, thank you. I have something to sell.”
He sniffed, and his expression did not change. The sparse whiskers on his first chin were speckled with grey. “Show me, then. I haven’t got all day.”
Odd, I mused. That wasn’t the way that men usually responded to me.
Even if they were disinterested in my body, they were usually kind and polite.
Then again, I realised foolishly, my hood was still up.
I pushed it back and righted my brown hair around my shoulders.
I probably looked quite wild walking around with my cloak up like that. No wonder he was suspicious.
I stepped over to the man, and offered him another one of my most respectful and demure smiles.
He only scowled.
Right, well, that was that. It was another day of novel experiences. I raised my hand and looked down at the jewellery.
I hesitated—I didn’t want to sell Robar’s gift, but he didn’t even remember giving it to me.
I pictured the dimpled smile on his face, his honeyed curls still dripping with the rain of a summer storm as he knelt and offered me the ring.
My stomach clenched and I forced myself to take a breath.
I longed to see him so keenly that it hurt.
For now, though, we were lost to one another. Unmoored. It would be better for me to sell it, and buy it back the day I won his love again. Robar wouldn’t have wanted me to starve because I had made a foolish mistake.
I pulled off the ring, and placed it flat on the glass top. “Here.”
The man picked it up fast, his thick fingers surprisingly dextrous and delicate as he turned it this way and then that.
He gave me another appraising look, from my hair down to the plain chiton I still wore (though I had cleaned it now, all thanks to Yona), and settled on my dusty boots.
Summer in Dytho was always dusty. I could usually avoid the worst of it with the Ekrissian carriages, but that was another aspect of my life long gone.
He looked back at the ring, pulling out a small instrument from a shelf behind him. It was some kind of magnifier, and he held it up to his bespeckled eyes, and made a disconcerting choking noise. “This is real.”
“Yes, of course it’s real,” I answered. “How much would you be willing to offer me for it? And could I have a loan?” I asked. “Could you hold it for one month for me, to buy back at the same cost?”
I had heard of such deals being done, and thought I had asked my question with a knowledgeable air.
The man stared at me, and glanced at the door behind me. I glanced back, too. No one else had entered.
The man leaned forwards. “Where did you get this?”
I thought of Robar, and almost answered. The pride of earning his love had me wanting to brag, like a fancy garment I might be able to show off. But it didn’t seem like a question he was owed an answer to. I gave one more attempt at a winning smile as I repeated my earlier ask. “How much for it?”
The man licked his lips and placed the instrument down, looking at the ring in his open palm. He had ignored my smile completely. “Where did you get it?”
I looked down at it in his hand. If he needed to know in order to purchase it, I supposed I could give him something. “It was a gift. An engagement ring.”
“Right.” The man looked at me in disbelief, and not the kind associated with awe. “From who?”
I narrowed my eyes. “Why all the questions?”
The man’s lip curled. “I know a thief when I see one.”
I took a step back. He could not be serious. Me? A thief? And yet as soon as I moved he clenched his fist around the ring. I made an indignant huff. “Clearly, you don’t. Because I am no thief.”
He held his fist up. “This is House jewellery. It is tungsten.”
I jolted. House jewellery? Robar was not a devotee. He was a nobleman. The son of the Treasurer to King Sidus. A well-respected man, by all accounts. But not a man of Gods, not until he met me.
And tungsten? It hadn’t been forged in seventy years, not since the God of Fire fell down from the clouds and his forges lost their blue-flamed heat. No one could melt it anymore, and even before, the metal was rare. Robar wouldn’t have given me a tungsten ring, surely.
I shook my head. “What? But—”
“Don’t play dumb with me,” he interrupted. “I don’t know how you broke into the House of Wisdom, but I am not—”
“I didn’t!” His face reddened the moment I interrupted him back. I took a quick breath, trying to settle the situation. Rarely had a patron been angry, and never at me, but I had seen anger before. I ducked my head and touched my hand to his, lowering my voice. “I promise. It was a gift.”
He pulled his hand away like I had burned him. “I don’t buy stolen goods.”
This man wouldn’t buy the ring, then. What’s more, he had insulted my honour by calling me a thief. I would find some other way to sell it. I jutted my chin up. “Fine. Just give it back.”
He jutted his own chin, making the others wobble. “I don’t listen to the demands of thieves. I’m keeping the ring. If you leave now I won’t even call the sunners.”
The sunners? He was threatening to have me arrested for bringing him goods to sell? I wondered how he had any business at all. I folded my arms in front of my chest. “I didn’t do anything wrong. My betrothed gave me that ring. If it’s House jewellery, I’m not sure how he got it, but I promise you—”
“Leave, girl,” he said, holding the ring above his head and out of my range, even if I did scale the cabinet. His spectacles sat wonky on his face. “I’ll start yelling, and you don’t look like a fast runner. When they catch you, they’ll take a hand.”
This could not be happening. He had taken Robar’s ring from me.
My ring. And now he wouldn’t give it back?
I had hoped it would be enough to buy myself a nicer dress, to find Robar and try to make him fall for me once more.
To leave with less than nothing? If I could not be paid for it, I could not just lose it like this.
I was a fool. I should have kept it. I blinked fast as tears rushed into my eyes. “Please give it back.”
He moved around the cabinet, as if he was ready to chase me out himself. “Last warning.”
I stood there as he stalked towards me, his whiskers quivering and his hand still held aloft. I knew I should leave, but that was the last thing I had of Robar. I had hoped that when I won his love again, I would return here and we would buy it back together, and he might remember giving it to me.
The man approached, and I realised he might try to apprehend me himself, but I was frozen by the fear of losing everything again.
A low voice sounded from behind me. “Wrenton, give it back to her.”
I dared not turn, fearing a coming blow from the whiskered man. But at the sound of the voice, he stopped dead, the red of the anger paling to a white dread. “Master Da—”
The man must have signalled, for the whiskered man stopped speaking.
I glanced back, risking a look at my saviour. He was not who I expected.
The man was tall, with wide shoulders, and covered from head to toe in a black cloak and dusty black boots that still bore the hint of a morning’s shine before the streets had taken their toll.
His clothing was richly made and kept, signalling wealth, though he had not taken a carriage.
He had the distinctive look of an Aralaji: lush, thick hair that was nearly black, brown skin, and a trimmed shadow of facial hair.
A silver metal mask, the likes of which I had never seen on a patron of any House or fine nobility, covered close to half of his face, hooking over the bridge of his nose and his right ear.
His other eye was visible through the carved mask and his mouth was entirely exposed, as the mask cut across from his nose to the edge of his right cheek and covered most of his forehead.
It was clearly designed to imitate the natural planes of a face, but it was cold and unsettling.
Even beyond the mask, he was disarming. I hadn’t heard him come in, and he was as silent as a grave robber.
He felt like a terrible omen, and if he hadn’t been currently helping my case, I would have run in the other direction.
A black cat crossing your path was supposed to be lucky.
This darkly-clad man felt like the opposite of fortune.