“The Mother bless you, child,” she said.
Crob, Marwen, and Maug walked on. The streets were full of beggars. For some, Crob had a kind word or a joke, for others a little money and for one small child, a pair of shoes.
Soon Marwen was not afraid of this peculiar man. The manner of his walk was steady and sure. His head was bent like a man of hard work and sober duty, but he trod the road lightly.
He led them through damp walled streets that were littered with eggshells, broken pots and soiled straw. When the market stalls dwindled away, the streets were quieter and more of the morningsun’s slanting rays warmed the cobblestone. Then the gray stone buildings ended. Mud brick cottages with thatched roofs like those she had known in Marmawell clustered on the rising slope of the city. Marwen felt the weight of the walls lifted from her and was surprised to feel the coolness of lostwind on her face. Now she could hear the crying and laughter of little children, the banging of spoons on pots, and she could smell wingwand manure and washday soap. Marwen and Maug followed Crob willingly into his cottage.
It was small and sparse, and cluttered with the tools of his trade: sheets of drying leather, scarred worktables, nails, molds and spools of thick thread. Scraps of leather, material and bent nails were piled up in a thrifty heap beside a dusty hourglass on the mantle. But the floor was well-swept and laid with small rugs for sitting.
Crob served them thick soup and a slab of seedbread. Marwen ate greedily. When she was almost done, she reluctantly saved a small piece of meat for Cudgham.
Through the east window, Marwen could see the sun, pale like a pink moon below a vast continent of cloud. It would rain today or tomorrow.
“So, I do not know your names,” the man said when they finished eating.
“Marwen is my name and this is Maug. We are from Marmawell, a village to the south.” She glanced at Maug who shook his head, and she knew she should not speak of the dragon. He had always been secretive, never telling anything that he didn’t have to, but now he was sullen, his silence thick with deceit. He pulled his knife and the black bone from his pocket and began whittling.
“Ah, Marmawell, from which comes most precious herbs and spices: lapluv, greencup and teas fit for the king. The fame of this village reaches even to other provinces.”
Marwen was pleased and thought to tell him that she and her mother had cast spells on the very kitchen gardens that had produced those spices.
“My mother grew a little shumple and browm,” she said instead, remembering the Tenets on modesty and humility. Perhaps, she thought, had she practiced them more in Marmawell, Maug would not be looking at her so with his hard gray mirror eyes.
Crob was silent for a time. Then he arose, drew from a bag a pair of shoes and, kneeling, placed them before Marwen. He did not look at her.
They were made of fine soft rupi leather, pale blue, the same blue as the round skystone she had found, so long ago it seemed, and the tiny buckles were made of some metal that gleamed like a bit of gray lake under a cloud-laden sky.
Marwen stared. The only shoes she had ever owned had been braided from strips of old greatrug, rough and long-wearing.
The man looked up and into her eyes.
“I do not buy magic. This is a gift. For magic, I give gratitude and much honor.”
Marwen did not smile. For the first time, she was getting what she had always thought a fitting price for her art: gratitude and honor. Now, however, it felt burdensome. She wondered what this gentleman could want from her, and a silent secret place inside her wondered if she had anything to give.
“I do not know what to do,” she said.
“What says your tapestry?” Crob asked glancing at her tapestry pouch.
Marwen blushed fiercely and looked at Maug defiantly. He smiled and continued whittling the bone into shavings. Crob made an impatient gesture with his hand. His voice was urgent.
“You know what it is to thirst,” he said to her. “I know of a lad, about your age, who thirsts unto death. If you will help me save him, there could be greater rewards for you than these shoes.”
Marwen did not hear the words of reward. She saw only the man wiping his nose on his sleeve.
“What is it you want of me?” she asked.
“Have you skill with locks?”
Marwen shook her head. “How so, when only the very rich have them? But I know the language of rock and metal.”
He nodded.
Marwen looked at this lump of a man who sat cross-legged before her. His dark hair was Verduman, she thought. All the tales she had ever heard of Verduma had been told her by Cud-gham, and all the tales were full of blood and venom.
“Are you Verduman?” she asked.
Crob looked at her for a moment. “Half Verduman,” he said, searching her face. “I was born on the divide, the son of a Venutian woman and a Verduman soldier.”
She had always listened to Cudgham, only half-believing, but now she tried to recall the stories and the descriptions of the Verdumans. They were a dark people, she remembered, long-nosed and broad-shouldered, a people who loved to fight and quarrel but who were famous for their bravery. Perhaps it was because for generations the Vean King had made his home in the province of Verduma, and from their mountain people, the Clouddwellers, the king chose his army. She thought of her father and her own Verduman blood.
“My mother was driven away by her people for love of my father,” said the Shoemaker, “and so when I was very young, I went to live in Verduma at his house. There I lived in the mountains. But there, also, I had no people, and I was not allowed to train in their army when I was grown. I ran away, back to Venutia and to Kebblewok, and found that in the cities the varied peoples of Ve manage to live in peace. Here I was lost among the throngs, my accent one of many, my dark hair nothing more than an oddity if I kept my opinions to myself. My hands have much cleverness, and I have made a living, but now it is time to make a life.”
Marwen looked at him in silence. He seemed to be filled with a heavy longing.
He continued. “I tell you this so that you will understand my partiality.
“Several days ago a lad came to Kebblewok, a well-bred lad, it seemed, by his clothing and his mount. He came to the market and stood in high places and warned of a dragon that is destroying many villages in this land.” Marwen made to speak, but Maug silenced her with a withering look and a shake of his head.
“For two cycles of winds, the people listened to him as they do a poet—with enjoyment but disbelief. He told them that the dragon sought the wizard and that his quest was also to seek the wizard and enlist his help in defeating the dragon.”
Marwen placed crossed fingers on her lips. She had never heard anyone speak of the wizard openly except Grondil in her own home. It was considered offensive nonsense. Few believed in the wizard anymore. But Marwen had learned of the wizard in the old Songs and the ancient prayers. Her hands and feet tingled.
“Did anyone know of the wizard?” she asked.
Crob looked at her strangely for a moment and then laughed, as if he finally understood the joke.
Marwen laughed, too, uncomfortably.
“Come,” he said. “Bathe feet and put on new shoes, and I show you ‘death-in-a-cage.’”
Marwen forgot her fatigue and the pain in her feet when she put on the soft slippers. Maug, too, was given some shoes for his blistered swollen feet, and he went with them back into the city. She watched her feet as she walked behind Crob Shoemaker.
The more she marveled at the beautiful shoes, the more she doubted her ability to earn them. Since she had turned Cudgham into an ip, she didn’t trust herself. Or perhaps it was that she did not trust the magic that seduced her and tormented her in turns, that seemed to abandon, afflict, or exalt her at will, and demanded submission to a law that was beyond her ability to live.