“And me,” said the other. “I’m hungry as a clink, but the wife makes me wash before I step into the kitchen. Says the stink of the repellent puts her off her food.”
“Funny,” the first man said. “My wife says the same, but I can’t smell a thing myself.”
They walked off together. Rye sidled to the doorway, and slipped through it just before the door swung shut.
He found himself in a dimly lit room crowded with long tables at which scattered groups of men sat drinking and talking.
On the wall opposite the door, there was a bar, where a few more customers stood arguing in low voices as a small, plump woman filled their tankards with foaming ale. An old man hunched on a stool nearby, playing a melancholy tune on a small accordion.
No one had noticed Rye come in like a shadow with the closing of the door. He looked quickly around, searching for a place where he could hide himself away.
A battered piano stood across the corner of the room nearest the door. The table beside it was empty. Perhaps the two fishermen he had overheard had been sitting there, because two empty tankards sat abandoned in the center.
Rye dropped to the floor, crawled rapidly between the wall and the table, and squeezed behind the piano. The corner was cramped and dusty, but at least he was out of sight.
He settled himself as comfortably as he could, then lifted the cord from his neck and opened the little brown bag. The crystal lit up the moment he touched it and he jumped nervously, even though he had been expecting it. He pulled it out, shading it carefully with his jacket, and used its glow to examine the other objects in the bag one by one.
The red feather. The tiny key. The honey sweet wrapped in paper. The transparent disc. The snail shell. The small round nut.
Every one of these things was powerful in some way. Rye knew it. But no matter how long he held each of the objects in his hand, he could not even begin to tell what it was supposed to do.
The only one that gave him any feeling at all was the transparent disc, which again made him fearful and queasy.
Quickly he put it back into the bag. He felt sick enough without it. Even behind the piano, he could smell the rank odor that he now knew was the sea serpent repellent used by the Oltan fishermen. Combined with the other tavern smells of ale and stale fish, it was making his empty stomach churn and his head swim.
After a few more minutes, he began stuffing the other mysterious objects back into the bag, too. They were telling him nothing. He was wasting precious time staring at them. The only thing he had learned was that he had not missed anything when he had searched the bag before.
There was no ninth object. Either something had been lost or stolen from the bag before it came into his keeping, or one of the eight things he had found carried two powers instead of just one.
He had to find Dirk! Dirk would help him work out what the remaining powers were. And in the meantime, he had the ring and the crystal to help him.
Then he remembered that he could not even start his search for Dirk until he had something to cover his hair.
Gritting his teeth in frustration, he roughly snatched up the last of the six objects, the little brown nut. And as he did, it broke apart in his hand.
Appalled, Rye gaped down at the two cup-shaped pieces of shell, and the nut’s gray contents spilling out into his palm. In his stupid, angry carelessness, he had broken one of the powers!
The shell had split cleanly. Perhaps it could be mended. Gingerly he poked at the gray filling and was surprised to find that it was not firm or sticky, but silky — almost like very fine cloth.
Balancing the light crystal on his knee, he took a pinch of the silky stuff between his fingertips and pulled.
It was cloth — the finest cloth he had ever seen or imagined. And as he held it up, he saw that it had been sewn into a shape, as if it were some sort of very simple bag, or …
A hood!
With shaking fingers, Rye slipped the hood on. It was a little large for him, and probably looked rather strange, but what did that matter? Many people in the streets of Oltan looked strange.
The important thing was, it covered his treacherous red hair. And the strings that fastened under his chin would stop the hood being snatched off by a thieving polypan or blown back by the wind.
Perfect!
Did this mean — could it mean — that the little nutshell actually had the power to grant wishes?
His heart pounding with excitement, Rye fitted the halves of shell together and wished fiercely for something to eat. But when he pulled the halves apart again, there was nothing to be seen inside.
Disappointed, he was just about to try again when there was the sound of voices close by, and benches scraped on the floor. Someone — two men, by the sound of it — had sat down at the table beside the piano. Rye stayed still, hardly daring to breathe.
“That’s better!” a deep, angry voice rumbled. “If I’d stayed at the bar, I’d have ended up wiping the floor with one of them. Buffoons! Glad that the Gifters found two replacements so quickly! Jabbering on about the rebels being spies and traitors!”
“Ah well,” a lighter voice soothed. “They’re just —”
“Seven young ones are going to die out there tomorrow night, Shim!” the first man spat. “And it won’t be a clean, quick death, either.”
“Makes you sick,” Shim agreed. “If life was fair, there’d be another way. But there’s not another way, Hass, by all accounts. And Olt’s sorcery is our protection — our only protection — against invasion by the enemy. Olt has to live, for all our sakes.”
“Sometimes I wonder,” the man called Hass muttered.
“What?”
“Sometimes I wonder if any invader could be worse for us than Olt. And sometimes I wonder if the danger of invasion isn’t just a tale Olt uses to make us let him do what he wants.”
“Bite your tongue, Hass!” Shim hissed in what sounded to Rye like real panic. “Don’t go saying things like that!”
“I wouldn’t say them but to you and Nell,” Hass said grimly. “And neither of you is going to report me for treason, I hope. Shim, you don’t have any children, but I do. Seven years from now there’ll be another Gifting, and my boy will be fifteen!”
Shim mumbled in reply, his voice very low.
Straining his ears to hear, Rye bent forward. The light crystal rolled off his knee and fell onto the floor with a clunk. He scrabbled for it frantically and just managed to catch it before it rolled under the piano and out of his reach.
“What was that?” Shim exclaimed.
Rye froze, his head down, his body awkwardly twisted, one hand on the floor, the hand that held the crystal pressed against the back of the piano.
He was badly off balance, but he did not dare to move. Sweat broke out on his forehead.
“Mouse,” Hass grunted.
“Sounded too big for a mouse.”
“Rat, then. Clink, even. Who cares? As I was saying —”
“Hass, we all hate the Gifting, but you’ve got to face facts!” Shim broke in furiously. “You know there’s an enemy across the sea. You know who he is. You know he’s been waiting his chance to come back and take revenge on Dorne, for choosing Olt as Chieftain instead of him!”
Startled, Rye raised his head. And to his utter astonishment, he found himself staring straight through a round hole in the piano, at two men sitting glaring at each other across the table.
One of the men — Hass, Rye guessed — was powerfully built, and had an untidy shock of black hair. He was looking moodily around, his chin propped on his hand. The other, Shim, was wiry, sandy-haired, and freckled. As Rye watched, Shim tipped his tankard and drank thirstily.
Rye blinked, dumbfounded. The hole he was looking through was like a small, round window — but a window that worked only one way, it seemed, for if it had been visible, the men would surely have seen it.