Serena Fortuna’s beneficence lay warm on my back. “Well, as you’re late home already and risking your da’s heavy hand, what if I were to visit this seedsman and fetch hazel and nivat for us both? I’ll meet you here tomorrow eve, and we’ll have a song and share it out. I’ll divide my ginger with you, too. This merry meeting will infuse our bread with luck.” I brushed my fingers around her cheeks and down her neck to other fetching curves, feeling her desire swell to meet my own. It had always made sense to me that magic flowed through a sorcerer’s fingertips. “I’d need your coin, of course, as nivat comes so dear. But better to risk a few lunae with me than your da’s bruises on these pretty cheeks, don’t you think?”
Her sigh, as I bent over and kissed her on the lips to seal the bargain, came near subverting my wickedness. Willing women with even one attractive feature had the disconcerting habit of making me lose all sense. But the nivat was of first importance. I summoned up chilly thoughts of Gillarine and its confining comforts. As my rousing fever cooled again, I pulled away. Damnable necessity. I might as well be gelded.
Adrianne bade a mooning, ale-sodden farewell to our merry company, leaving me with a mug of ale, a promise of all the dancing I might desire on the following night, and three silver lunae in my pocket. A smith’s daughter…probably the wealthiest girl in Elanus…a more tempting winter’s companion than tidy Brother Sebastian. All sorts of schemes flourished in the flush of the moment. I wasn’t greedy.
But from the talk I heard from other customers as I finished my ale, the heavy-fisted smith had only enough work to pay his debts and keep Adrianne from Tigg the Procurer’s hand until the last of the bog iron was worked. An empty-pocketed son-in-law would do naught for his choler. I’d need to sell my book to make the scheme work, and in that case I could surely do better than Adrianne. Not that I was in the market for a wife. My feet were too restless for shackling.
A rattling from the corner, punctuated by challenges to manhood, prayers to Serena Fortuna, and a caller’s flat tones, tempted me to a dice game. Sadly, I had never been able to summon even a glimmer of my mother’s bent for divination when it came to gambling. Best not risk Adrianne’s offering. Nivat was easily available throughout Navronne, being an essential ingredient for those who observed the elder gods’ feasts at the change of seasons. But the native plants—a kind of pepper once grown in Morian—had failed decades ago, and as the only surviving ones were cultured by sorcery, it was always expensive. Even the mead would have to wait. I drained my mug, bade Holur and his jolly piper a mournful farewell, and stepped back into the night. Leaving a tavern for a street, no matter how busy, always put the damp on my spirits.
Chapter 10
“That should do for whatever purpose you have in mind,” said Gorb as he wrapped the nivat seeds in a scrap of cloth and tied the little bundle with a thread. He stretched his tight lips into a smile no wider than the flare of his nose and dragged his dark little eyes up and down my height. “Oh, yes. Saldon Night baking, you said. As night devours the sunlight and spits it out again, you shall be well blessed.”
A plaintive tale of my need for Danae help with my witch-cursed prick had induced the seedsman to unlock his door. Truly, the story itself hadn’t moved him, but only my invocation of Adrianne as the proposed beneficiary of my reinvigorated better parts.
A wizened little fellow as dry and sharp-edged as his merchandise, Gorb supplied a quantity of black nivat seeds no bigger than my thumb, enough to bake three Saldon loaves or service my unfortunate craving thrice over. And for that he returned only nine citrae out of the three silver coins worth forty each. Iero bless merry Adrianne and blunt her father’s fist.
I shook the copper coins in my palm. Spending one of them on hazelnuts might blunt the speculation in Gorb’s hard little face. Though I hated wasting the money, nivat was used only for holy offerings like feast bread or for spellworking, and of all the spells that could be worked with nivat, only the doulon required it. I wished no rumors of tall sorcerers with unsavory habits lingering in a town the monks might visit. Fate might lead me to Elanus again.
So…a story…and how could I help but think of the cursed Boreas, the very one who had caused the need for this journey?
I leaned my head across the table and spoke softly so that Gorb’s brisk fingers came to a halt. “I met a man in the wood yestereve, a rough, hairy man near tall as me and twice as broad. He was laid up with the sweats, sick and drooling, pissing himself he hurt so wicked. He showed me plate and jewels he’d stolen from a rich man’s house and said if I would bring him nivat seeds, he’d trade me a jeweled dagger that would keep me and Adrianne for ten years or more.”
Satisfaction blossomed on Gorb’s countenance, and greed sparked his seedlike eyes.
“Iero damns those that steal,” I went on as if I hadn’t noticed. “But this would not be stealing to my mind, as the guilt of the theft would rest on the one who first took the dagger from its rightful owner. If I made the bargain honorably and filled my part as I vowed, no fault would come to me. So I said I’d find him nivat and return tonight at midnight to make the trade.”
Nodding slowly, the seedsman dropped his eyes. He shoved the packet across the table and briskly brushed the table’s detritus from the flowing sleeves of his green robe. “Twist-minds are an affront to the Powers. You say this depraved fellow lies close by Elanus?”
I straightened up and grinned. “I’m no fool to tell you that, Seedsman Gorb. You’ve a bigger supply of nivat than I can afford. But once I have my dagger, I’ll tell the man where he can buy more, and Serena Fortuna bless you with whatever arrangement you can make with him.”
He dipped an iron scoop into his barrel of hazelnuts and slid a few of them into my palm atop the coins. “Good fortune shared always comes back,” he said. His sharp chin quivered as if he were on the verge of weeping. Or perhaps laughing.
I paused in the smoky deeps of Smelt Alley and divided my store of nivat. Half went into the green bag, which I restored beneath the false bottom of my rucksack. I tied Gorb’s cloth packet, containing the remainder of the nivat, to the waist string of my braies, and tucked eight coppers into my boot. I spun the last coin in the air and caught it, already tasting mead and humming a tune to accompany its sweet fire.
But as I stopped in at the still boisterous Blade, thoughts of perfidious Boreas choked me worse than the smelters’ smoke, souring my mood. That pain-racked, drooling wretch I had described would not be him deprived of nivat, of course, but me.
Holur’s mead cask was empty. But a tankard of his best ale and a bowl of porridge soothed my ill humor, and I bawled every song and galloped the length and breadth of the Blade with every maid and matron that stepped inside—none of whom were Adrianne, all thanks to Serena Fortuna. When I tossed my fifth citré on the barman’s counter, ready to buy another round of ale, the lamplight caught the polished copper and flared like a red sunburst…which brought to mind solicales…and Karish monks…and the life waiting for me with the coming dawn. Before Holur could clamp his sticky fingers on the coin, I snatched it back, stuffed it in my boot, and with sober regrets bade him and all the company a good night.
The crier called second hour of the night watch—one hour till midnight—as I headed out for Gillarine. Elanus showed no signs of sleep. No surprise to that. The smelters had to be kept burning through the night. As I strolled past Tigg’s alley on my way to the gate, the catamite raised his head and moved a step away from the wall, beckoning me into the alley. He was alone.