by Sharon Shinn
But it had taken him years to guess his wife’s secret.
“Now I like this,” one of the women said, holding up a necklace from Dhonsho. “You’d never see Riana in something so wild!”
They were still debating what to purchase when three more customers came in, two women and a man. Before Leah had time to feel more than a surge of panic, Annova and Chandran were back downstairs, their arms full of packs and boxes. Leah met them in the middle of the room.
“You take over the counter. Annova and I will deal with customers, since we know everything in the shop,” Leah said to Chandran in a low voice. Just in case anyone was close enough to overhear, she switched to Malinquese. “Most of the high-born Welchins will speak Coziquela, but not until you address them that way. But they’ll like it. It will make them feel like they’re very sophisticated.”
Chandran transferred his bundles to her, his fingers lightly grazing her arm in the process. She suddenly wished she wasn’t wearing a long-sleeved tunic, then she wished the thought hadn’t crossed her mind. She kept her eyes down, trained on the items in her hands.
“Do they bargain?”
“Mostly not. They all have money.”
“Ah. The best customers.”
She laughed. “So I hope.”
There was a voice behind her. “You— Are you Leah? I have a question.”
She lifted her eyes to give Chandran one quick smile, then kept the smile as she turned to answer the customer. “I am! How can I help you?”
The next couple of hours flew by—still busy, but not as breathless as the day before. Chandran took advantage of a lunchtime lull to go out and forage for food.
“He knows his job, that’s certain,” Annova commented. “Everyone was comfortable with him, did you see that? Five or six people purchased scarves and stones because he made suggestions as they were ready to buy. That’s a skill.”
You were impressed by his salesmanship, but do you like him? Do you trust him? Leah didn’t ask. “He’s been selling luxury products for ten years. It would be pretty sad if he wasn’t good at it.”
“And before that?” Annova asked innocently. “What did he do?”
Leah wasn’t prepared with an answer so she was silent a little too long. When she looked up, Annova was watching her closely. Leah shrugged. “Living a different life,” she said lightly.
“How much do you know about that life?”
“Not as much as I thought I did.”
At that, Annova raised her eyebrows but made no direct comment. “How much does he know about yours?”
“As much as is worth telling.”
“You might try to make sure those two things balance out.”
“That has occurred to me. But I appreciate the advice.”
Annova smiled. “No one ever appreciates advice.”
They had time to gobble down the fruit and meat pies that Chandran distributed upon his return, but five minutes later another group of women came chattering through the door. As smoothly as if they had worked together for quintiles, the three of them took their stations. Within the hour, they had rung up sales for eight more customers.
They had hit another quiet spell when the next set of visitors stepped in—Virrie and Mally. Leah exclaimed in delight and met them at the door.
“Come in! You have to see everything we’ve added since you were here yesterday.”
“Considering how many people were here, I imagine half the shop must be new,” Virrie commented.
Mally instantly turned her attention to the reifarjin. “How’s your fish doing? Does he like having all the people here?”
Leah laid a hand casually on the girl’s back and shepherded her over to the tank. “I think so. He seems to like watching the activity. Do you want to feed him?”
Mally nodded, never taking her gaze away from the reifarjin’s gaudy frills. She bent a little to peer through the glass, and the fish stilled in its incessant circling to stare back at her with a single dark eye. “What’s his name?”
“He doesn’t have one. You can name him if you like.”
Mally nodded again, but did not offer a quick suggestion. This was a child who liked to think things through. “He needs things to play with.”
“He what?”
Mally laid her hand against the glass, keeping her fingers well away from the open top. “Things. In the water with him. Seashells or rocks. He could hide behind them if he didn’t want people looking at him.”
“Well, that makes sense,” Virrie said. “I’d want things to hide behind if people were always looking at me.”
Leah made a broad gesture. “You can pick anything you like to dress up his home. You can’t put it in because he has a nasty set of teeth. But I think that’s a lovely idea.”
Mally glanced up at her. “Can I pick expensive things?”
“No,” Virrie said, but Leah laughed out loud. She couldn’t help herself. She stooped down and dropped a light kiss on the little girl’s forehead.
“Yes,” she corrected. “Anything you like.”
“All right, then,” Virrie said, taking Mally’s hand. “Let’s look around.”
They moved through the shop, which had quickly grown crowded again during their brief conversation. Annova brushed up against Leah and murmured, “Where’s Chandran?”
Which was when Leah remembered that Chandran was working in the shop today. Which was when she had a sudden spasm of horror: Can I trust him around my daughter? Which was when she realized why he was suddenly nowhere to be found.
He’d seen Mally come in—instantly guessed who she must be—and understood that this was the one person in all of Chialto that Leah would not want to expose to the slightest chance of risk. So he’d left.
Or maybe he’d left so he wouldn’t have to see Leah’s face when she discovered that she was afraid to have him near her daughter.
“I’m not sure,” Leah said. She wanted to manufacture a better lie—I sent him to make a deposit of today’s cash; I asked him to take a message to Darien; he’s meeting with a vendor who dropped by—but she had formed the impression that it did no good to prevaricate with Annova. She always seemed to know when Leah was lying. Which then led Annova to be more interested in why Leah was concealing something than in what she was trying to hide.
“Will he be coming back?”
“I think so. Later this afternoon.”
“Then I’ll work at the counter until then.”
Virrie and Mally amused themselves while Leah waited on customers and Annova rang up sales. It was near closing time before the place had emptied of buyers and Leah could check out the accoutrements Mally had assembled for the reifarjin. A pile of opaque blue stones (very cheap), a tiny gold box shaped like a treasure chest (rather more costly), and a red glass goblet (one of a set, but fairly inexpensive).
“You think he wants to sip out of the goblet?” Leah asked in amusement.
“No, it lies on its side so he can swim inside it and curl up.”
“Do you think he’ll actually do that?”
“Maybe,” Mally said. “We could find out.”
The trick with adding décor to the reifarjin’s tank, of course, was keeping yourself from being bitten when you reached into the water. Mally distracted the fish by tapping on one end of the tank, while Leah outfitted herself with a long pair of gloves to provide some protection for herself. Then she carefully poured in the loose stones before situating the box and the goblet at the bottom of the tank. The reifarjin only nipped at her fingers twice, but he watched all of her incursions with anxious excitement, frilling his fins and fixing her with his unwinking eyes. After she withdrew her hands for the last time and stripped off the gloves, he made one quick, agitated lap around the interior of the tank, then came to a halt in the middle. His whole body was quivering, and his mouth
opened and closed as if he was exhaling excess amounts of air.
“He doesn’t like any of it,” Mally said, disappointed.
Virrie patted her shoulder. “Give him a few minutes. He’s just getting used to his new furniture.”
“Feed him,” Annova said. “That always makes him happy.”
Mally trotted off to find some scraps. Virrie said, “She’ll be absorbed in watching him for a while, don’t you think? Could I leave her behind for about an hour while I run some errands?”
“Of course you can. Take as long as you like.”
As she walked Virrie to the door, Leah glanced outside to see a few stragglers still strolling down the boulevard, peering into shop windows. One or two more people might drop in before nightfall, she thought. Might as well keep the door unlocked.
“Do you want to count money or run up and down the stairs replenishing stock?” she asked Annova.
“Stairs for me. Most anything is more interesting than money.”
“Which is why you’re one of the happiest people I know.”
Annova laughed and disappeared through the back. Mally had returned to the fish tank, holding a handful of lunchtime leftovers—bread, scraps of fruit, even a couple of small chunks of chocolate.
“I’m not sure he eats sweets,” Leah said.
“I want to see.” She glanced at Leah. “If that’s all right.”
Leah spread her hands. “Only way to learn anything is to try it,” she said. “Let’s find out.”
The reifarjin liked chocolate. He liked grapes and strawberries and orange slices, and they already knew he liked bread. “I think he’ll eat anything,” Mally said.
“So far that does appear to be true.”
While Mally was occupied with the fish, Leah sat at the counter and began tallying the day’s sales. She’d barely gotten through half the receipts when the door opened again. She glanced up to do a quick assessment of the new customers, and felt a quick spike of adrenaline.
Four people were stepping across the threshold—the four people, arguably, for whom the shop existed in the first place. Two were Soechin men, tall and pale and somehow odd-looking; two were Karkans. One was a stranger, but one was Seka Mardis.
Time to start spying for Darien.
ELEVEN
Leah put down her ledger, came to her feet, and smiled at the newcomers. “You’re just in time,” she said warmly. “I was about to close.”
Seka Mardis was looking around with great interest, her intent gaze taking in the higher storage shelves as well as the more visible display tables. It seemed in character with her personality to be keenly aware of her surroundings. Today she was dressed a bit less ostentatiously than she had been when Leah first met her, though she still wore a closely fitting dress, a half dozen bracelets, and beads woven into her frosted hair. Her male companion also sported more accessories than Welchin men usually bothered with—several rings, a thick silver bracelet, a jeweled collar. If she’d had to guess, Leah would have said this was the man who had accompanied Seka Mardis on the visit to the palace, but not on the late-night excursion to the slums.
“We meant to come by yesterday, but events intervened,” Seka Mardis said. “That was the day you first opened, was it not? How has business been so far?”
“Almost too good!” Leah said with a laugh. “We’ve scarcely managed to keep up. But I hesitate to complain because I would much rather be too busy than not busy enough.”
Seka Mardis glanced around again. “‘We,’” she repeated. “So you are not attempting to run this place all by yourself?”
“No—I have helpers,” Leah began, then almost strangled on a surge of panic. One of those helpers is Chandran! What if he comes back? What if they see him? What if they recognize him? I must not accidentally speak his name.
“They seem to have abandoned you,” Seka Mardis observed.
Leah forced herself to smile. Chandran was too astute to be caught unaware by visiting Karkans. He had absented himself the moment he recognized Mally. He would recognize Seka Mardis and her friend even more quickly. “One is upstairs going through stock and will probably reappear shortly,” she said. “The other is running errands. I feel very well-attended.”
Seka Mardis gestured. “So show me your most special items. I might buy something.”
Leah glanced at Seka’s companions. The other Karkan stood by the door in a pose that betrayed indifference and boredom. The Soechins had paused in front of the hunti table and were running their hands with sensuous delight over a collection of boxes made from highly polished ebony. A simple act, hardly sinister, and yet there was something off-putting about the intensity with which they were stroking the smooth dark wood. “Should I call Annova down to help your friends?” Leah asked.
“Oh, they’re fine. If they need assistance, they’ll ask for it.”
Leah glanced at Mally, but she was still entranced by the fish. So Leah escorted Seka Mardis on a slow circuit of the shop, pointing out the most exotic pieces and explaining where they originated. The other woman wasn’t interested in anything from Cozique—“Their goods are littered across the Karkades”—but the merchandise from Dhonsho appealed to her. The more colorful, the better.
“I like this scarf,” Seka Mardis said, draping one of the bright shawls around her shoulders and nestling her chin in its folds. It was long enough, and she was short enough, that she probably could have wrapped herself in it twice over.
“I have a red shawl from Dhonsho that is one of the most beautiful things I own,” Leah told her.
“Isn’t it strange that something so lovely can come from a place so full of violence?” the other woman said, laying the scarf aside and moving to the next display. “Yet it is just that contradiction that I find so appealing.”
When they reached the food table at the back of the shop, Seka Mardis consented to try a cup of fresh keerza, though she didn’t like it much. “Bitter,” she commented.
“It took me three years to come to appreciate it,” Leah agreed.
Seka Mardis took another sip and grimaced. “That’s right—you mentioned that you lived in Malinqua for some time,” she said. “Five years, was it?”
Isn’t that interesting? Leah thought, savoring her own keerza. That she would remember such an unimportant fact let fall by an unimportant person during one very brief conversation? “Five years,” she confirmed. “It is where I developed my appreciation for all this.” She gestured broadly to indicate the sumptuous variety throughout the shop. “It is where I learned that much of the world is so very different from Welce.”
Seka Mardis leaned against the back wall and gamely tried another sip of keerza. By her expression, she still didn’t like it. “I have been shocked, from time to time, at how very different the world is from the Karkades,” she admitted. “It is odd to learn that something that seems very normal and natural to one person can be considered almost”—she searched for a word—“deviant to someone else.”
She has to be talking about sex, Leah thought. That’s always what people are talking about when they’re shocked by someone’s behavior. She nodded vigorously. “I know! In Malinqua, there was a scandal in the empress’s court because one of her nephews was what the Coziquela call sublime. A man who loves other men. Whereas in Welce, that is not something that matters at all.”
Seka Mardis looked intrigued. “Really? Such a thing is frowned upon in Malinqua? It seems like such a tame sort of sin.”
Leah smiled faintly. “Even to call it a sin would imply that it is not acceptable in the Karkades,” she pointed out.
Seka Mardis laughed lightly. “Oh, we Karkans take as our starting point the notion that all of us have desires and urges that are unhealthy. Unwise. Perhaps despicable. Even something so commonplace as eating a meal can be turned into an exercise in carnality, depending on what you’ve decided
to consume.”
Leah blinked at her. “That seems like a rather extreme way of looking at life,” she said.
“Does it? Perhaps so. More exciting than some other philosophies I have encountered.” She turned just enough to place the half-full cup of keerza on the table. “I have given up for the moment,” she said. “I cannot learn to like it in one afternoon, I’m afraid.”
“You don’t ever have to like it,” Leah said.
Seka Mardis laughed. “But now I want to. I like to overcome my—distaste—for things as an exercise in expanding my tolerances.”
“Some things probably should remain distasteful,” Leah said.
“Do you think so? I don’t agree. I think we broaden our minds and our experiences if we can learn to embrace things that at one point filled us with revulsion.”
Leah wanted to shudder, but instead she summoned a look of intrigue as she tilted her head and regarded her visitor. “Well, now you’ve stirred my curiosity,” she remarked. “What sorts of things have you come to appreciate after initially finding them disgusting?”
Seka Mardis’s laugh was airy and delighted. “Foodstuffs, mostly! In the Karkades, we have a delicacy called tchiltsly. It is made from the ugliest sea creature you ever saw. That alone was enough to make me never want to taste it, but the smell! As if dung and spoiled meat had been mixed together and left to rot in the sun for a nineday, then doused with rancid cooking oil. Repellent for so many reasons. And yet people rave about its taste, its texture, and its properties.” She gave Leah a coy sideways glance. “For enhancing behavior in the bedroom,” she clarified.
“So I surmised,” Leah said dryly. “And have you been able to choke down enough of this delicacy to develop a taste for it?”
“A passion for it,” Seka Mardis corrected. “I cannot get enough of it. If I am at a gathering where it is served, my hosts must forbid me the table or I will eat it all.”