His body reeled with sensation just short of agony. True sleep was impossible, but the waking dreams he had instead rose from Paradise.
A dreary sunrise found Dace exhausted. His head throbbed explosively when he sat up and his tongue was raw where he’d abused it. Water helped, but only a little. He’d opened the door and was standing in the courtyard, letting rain spill over his head, when Chersey spotted him.
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing. I couldn’t sleep.”
He turned toward her and, by her expression, he must have looked a fright.
“What happened? Your mouth is all swollen.”
“Nightmare,” he improvised. “I bit my tongue.”
“I’ll make tea.”
Tea brewed with one of Pel Garwood’s powders was Chersey’s solution for every ailment. Obediently, Dace drank from the steaming mug and barely kept from fainting. By then the children, Bezul, and Gedozia (but not Perrez, who always slept late) were in the kitchen and clucking over him. He thought the situation couldn’t get much worse until Chersey said he should spend the day indoors.
“You’re pale and this rain is sure to give you a fever. We’ll make supper with what we’ve got on hand—”
“No!” Dace countered with an urgency that surprised him. “No—a rainy day like this, there’ll be bargains.”
Gedozia, a veteran of many rainy market days, gave a mighty snort, but Dace held his ground. As soon as breakfast was over, he headed out.
The market was quiet. Half the farmers hadn’t braved the weather, but the fishermen were accustomed to a little wet. Dace bargained for a sizable grouper and, as they neared agreement, mentioned that he had something of his own to sell.
“Like what?”
“Rags of opah, one shaboozh apiece.”
The grizzled man made the ward-sign against evil. “Go away!” he snarled and refused to part with his catch.
Dace was more cautious at the next monger’s. He didn’t mention his wares until after he’d slid a fish into his food sack; otherwise, the outcome was the same: fishermen, apparently, weren’t interested in opah. Neither was a woman selling eggs. The cobbler just laughed, while the old man hawking baskets said he was interested but didn’t have the cash. Dace struck gold—in the form of four soldats—when he made his pitch to a hard-eyed milkmaid.
Then the wind changed and the clouds let loose with vengeance. Mongers scrambled and Dace retreated to the old bazaar wall where an overhang tempered the worst of the rain. He hadn’t been there long when mum youths crowded beside him. In his life Dace had learned to be wary of loud, idle groups. He spotted an opening and tried to escape.
Tried. Failed.
A blue-shirted youth with Imperial hair flashed a knife. Another wearing a leather cap shoved a fist against Dace’s shoulder.
“Time to take a walk, Gimp.”
It was hardly the first time Dace had been ambushed.
The bravos herded him toward the city gate. A pair of guards stood duty there. Their swords could make short work of the bravos—
“Don’t even think about it,” Blue-shirt growled with another flash of his knife.
Let it be quick, Dace prayed to Thufir. Another thought crossed his mind. Let them not find my opah rags.
The club-footed god of pilgrims, travelers, and cripples of all kinds heard the first part of Dace’s prayer—they were scarcely out of sight of the guard post when Leathercap gave Dace a sideways shove into an alley. But the great god missed the second part. The bravos hadn’t singled Dace out because he was a gimp; they’d targeted him because he was a gimp selling—trying to sell—opah. Between the punches and kicks, they stripped him of his possessions until they found his purse. After they’d liberated his money and his rags, they battered Dace some more and left him in the mud.
Despite the crowded warrens, the changing house’s primary purpose was converting the coins of other realms into the padpols, soldats, and shaboozh that other Sanctuary merchants would accept. The man standing on the other side of the counter—a sailor by his dress and salty tang—had a small collection of foreign copper and silver that needed changing before he could buy a drink.
Chersey recognized the silver bits as soun, the common coin of Aurvesh. She didn’t know the proper name of the copper coins. They were probably Aurvestan, too—not that it mattered. There hadn’t been official exchange rates since Sanctuary ceased paying Imperial taxes some forty-five years ago. The changing house converted foreign coins by their weight in precious metals. For copper, the least-precious metal—though still rare enough in Sanctuary that its padpols no longer contained even a smattering of it—the process was a simple evaluation by balance pan. Silver coins were dipped in a jar of magically charged acid that reduced the coins to sinking silver and floating impurities.
Chersey had finished evaluating the sailor’s copper coins and was fishing the reduced soun out of their acid bath when Ammen approached the counter.
“The boy’s coming home, m’sera.” Ammen always gave her more honor than she deserved or needed.
Dace was late, and she had been wondering where he’d gotten to, but his habits had become so erratic they scarcely warranted an interruption while she was changing silver.
“Fine. Tell him to start the supper.”
“He’s limping, m’sera.”
“He always limps.”
“Your pardon, m’ser, but by the look of him, he’s lost a fight.”
“Sweet Shipri!”
Every instinct called Chersey away from the counter, but instinct didn’t keep the changing house in business. She told Ammen to see the boy into the kitchen before hunting down Bezul, then she went back to weighing the sailor’s silver.
Bezul emerged from the warrens cradling a large, dusty box in his arms. “What’s the matter?”
Trust Ammen to do what he was told and not a jot more. The man wasn’t dim-witted, but decades in the Imperial army had dulled his initiative.
“Dace is hurt … bleeding … in the kitchen. I need to see to him.”
“Of course.”
Bezul took the raw silver and the strongbox key. Chersey dashed through the kitchen door.
Dace wasn’t as badly damaged as she’d feared. The boy’s face was scarcely recognizable and his poor hand was swollen to sausages. She’d been prepared for gaping wounds and protruding bones. He was daubing at his face with a dishrag.
“I’m sorry, Chersey,” he said as soon as he heard her.
“It’s gone—it’s all gone. They took the money, even the fish I’d just bought … everything!”
“Nonsense!” She took the rag and began a more thorough examination of the wounds. “There’s nothing to be sorry about. Were you coming down the Processional?”
“No,” Dace insisted until she got squarely in front of him and gave him a silent scolding with her eyes. Then he confessed, “Yes, I stopped to watch a juggler. I wasn’t paying attention. I’m sorry.”
“Well, you’ve learned your lesson, haven’t you: The shortest way home’s the best way, isn’t it?”
“Yes, m’sera.”
Any mother could see that Dace’s conscience hurt worse than his bruises. Chersey washed him off with astringent tea. There was one gouge over his eye that would bear watching, but the tea should keep it clean. She didn’t like the way he winced when she ran her fingers over his left ankle—the one that kept him upright. If the swelling wasn’t down by morning, they’d be needing Pel Garwood. If Pel didn’t have the answers, they’d brave a visit to the Spellmaster, Strick at the Bottomless Well.