“Let me have it for what I have now, and tomorrow I will pay you two dollars after my trade.”
The audacious offer took Saban aback, the man scrutinizing the boy all the harder. “And if you cannot trade it?”
“Then I will return the ring and we’ll be through. You’ll have nothing but profit.”
The proposal was too good to be true, and Saban observed the idea from every angle as Luca stewed. But after his considerations he saw the offer to be marrow true, and the result of nothing more than a desperate boy. With nothing of risk, he kissed his fist then extended his hand. Luca mirrored the gesture, sealing the deal in the Dobra way before snatching his prize and hurrying away.
Arriving back at the campsite thronging with Dobra and gaji alike, Luca feared his mark had already departed. Then he spotted the man and was overjoyed to see him deeper into his cups as he passed by. Opening his coat so as to cover his Listener pin, Luca held the ring in his hand as he tripped. Spilling in front of the farmer, Luca made a great show of searching the earth. He had ensured the ring landed next to his mark’s boot, but seemed quite oblivious as he hunted. Eventually the farmer picked up the ring, examining it in the flickering firelight.
“Thank you, thank you, kind sir,” Luca gushed, eagerly grasping for the ring. “Mr. Price would be all kinds of cross if I lost him that.”
Upon hearing his competitor’s name, the farmer considered the ring all the closer. “Why’s Price so keen on this thing?”
“It… it wouldn’t be proper to say, sir. Mr. Price would… well, I wouldn’t want to upset him.”
“Upsetting that sack of sick be damned, it’s me you don’t want to disappoint. The ring, what makes it special, boy?”
Conspiratorially leaning in closer, Luca made sure to whisper loud enough to be clearly heard. “Well, the ring, it’s imbued you see. A charm to turn a woman’s affection the owner’s direction so long as she wears it.”
Luca did not need to Listen to know his mark greedily gobbled the lie down. Haggling over the price was simply a formality, the farmer departing with his ring and the knowledge he got one better over Price, and Luca leaving with seven shiny silver coins warm in his pocket. Such a haul was an unheard-of fortune that drove away all memory of shame at his father’s own failure.
Having completed his first trade with a gaji, Luca should have swiftly retired to his family’s wagon or paid off Saban, but the yogano called to him. After the nightly festivities finished, and outsiders drunkenly departed for their homes, the Dobra men who proved successful sat up all night by the fire, trading the remaining wine and tales of their victories. To sit around the fire, one had to have successfully traded that night, something Luca’s father could not claim, and Luca reveled at the opportunity to sit beside his equals. The men of the yagano eyed him with amusement upon his approach, but as soon as he told the tale of his trade, they clapped him on the back and called him one of their own. Luca already earned the admiration of the children of the wolari through his mastery of Onas’ fearsome dog, but this was the first time the men saw him as anything other than a boy. He was one of them now, now fully a member of the Ikus tribe.
Although he sipped the sour wine they passed around, it was their acceptance that tingled in his veins. His tale told, he settled into polite silence as the others grew raucous and spun their own stories. The boy only realized he basked in his new status as man for too long when the irate farmer barreled back into camp, swearing how he had been swindled.
Luca then discovered that his newfound status did not mean the other men would defend him. To enact an advantageous trade on an unsuspecting gaji was the Dobra way, while being caught an anathema to everything they held sacred. To be seized meant the trader was lax, and so he must be punished however the swindled gaji saw fit. Sure, the men of the campfire would intercede if the farmer tried to outright kill one of their own, but they certainly would not lift a finger if he wished to administer a beating to the boy. To do so would only be just and proper.
Luca finally careened into his vurd and banged upon its side hard as he could. His father was drinking hard last time Luca saw him, and Camlo Dolphus was notoriously difficult to rouse. All other means of escape eluding him, Luca availed himself of the last possible recourse by shamefully sliding under the wagon. The farmer, either too stout or too stupid to climb under himself, flailed an arm underneath to grab him until the door burst open and rebounded off the side of the wagon.
“What’s this then?” Camlo Dolphus bellowed. A thick club in hand, his red-rimmed eyes caught sight of the angry farmer, then his sheepish son emerging on the far side of the wagon.
“What have you done now?” his father asked in the Dobra tongue.
“Trade gone wrong,” Luca answered in the same language.
“None of that Dobra dreck!” the farmer shouted. “Speak true words or I’ll tear this entire campsite apart!”
“What’s the trouble then?” Luca’s father descended the steps, making sure the farmer caught sight of his club.
“Your runt swindled me out of seven hard dollars for a ring he said would bring me love. But all it bought me was a slap when I tried to claim a kiss.”
“It was a fair trade—”
Luca began in Acwealt before his father cut him off with a flair of his hand. Then he beckoned Luca over, the boy slinking beside his father. Looking into the doorway, he saw his mother Marieni with sisters Lela and Esme huddled behind her. The fact that all three cowered from the man in their own vurd raised Luca’s pique. They should be safe within their own homes wherever they roamed, and he looked forward to his father setting the gaji straight.
“If the ring didn’t work, then it wasn’t a fair trade,” his father said to Luca’s horror. “A return of both will make us square.”
“Pfft,” the farmer spat. “I hurled that junk away soon as I realized what it was.”
“Then how do you expect to exchange it?” Luca fired back. He would have said more, but his father cuffed his ear roughly enough to make Luca’s world spin. When his vision cleared, he saw the farmer unkindly grinning at him.
“Return the man his money with an apology,” his father ordered in a voice that brooked no argument.
Luca felt sick, not just from the blow, but from the injustice of it all. The loss of the money was bad enough, the fact he would still be on the hook to Saban for the lost ring compounding matters. But it was the thought of the apology that brought his bile up when he handed over the coins he had worked so hard for.
The boy sullenly stared up at the gloating farmer, taunting him to violence and forcing his father to use the club to defend his son. Instead, he received another cuff to the back of his head.
“You keep him waiting any longer, I’ll toss you into the fire, boy.”
Luca forced the hateful words through his clenched teeth. “I apologize.”
The man remained a moment before turning heel, but not before spitting on the wheel of their vurd. For a moment Luca wanted nothing more than to snatch his father’s cudgel and bash the farmer bloody, but turning towards his father and seeing his anger, Luca feared he might soon be acquainted with the club’s kiss.
“Stupid, stupid boy,” Camlo Dolphus began in the Dobra tongue before switching back to Acwealt. “Seven dollars? Seven whole dollars?! What were you thinking?”
“That it was more money than we’ve made in a month performing for them!”
Luca watched his father’s hands tighten around the cudgel and winced. Seeing this, his father relaxed. “Your trade was for too short a time, that was your first mistake. If he had bought the pearl thinking it would aid his crops, he might be happy when they came in. Or maybe angry when they did not. It would not matter to us either way since we would be long gone before his harvest. We would be safe, far away. That is the true gift of the Wanderer.
“And you forget the purpose of our trades with the gaji. For us, it is livelihood. For them, diversion. It’s a dance both sides go
into with open eyes, them knowing they will be spun about and come out a few coins lighter. For that they have a good story to tell their friends, a bright spark in their dirt lives. They understand that and do not begrudge us what we take so long as it’s a pittance. But seven dollars? You guarantee he will come back for that! You grasp for too much, boy.”
Through his Listening, Luca knew his father wanted him to cower, so he broke into his grin. This particular grin irked his father to no end, so his son wielded it as deftly as his father’s cudgel.
“You’re bad as the boy swallowed by the sea,” his father said before disappearing back into the wagon.
It was an old children’s tale his father invoked to inflict irritation in his son with the same relish the boy took in his grin. In it, a ship crashed upon the rocks near shore, spilling its treasures onto the seabed. So the children of the nearby town dove down, collecting coins and gems among the dead bodies. But one emerald stood out among the treasures, one as big as a man’s chest. All the children wrestled with it, all unable to pry it free and therefore departing to collect the easier treasures.
Yet one ambitious boy would not be denied, ignoring all the other baubles to work at the giant gem each day. Soon the seabed was picked clean, only the giant gem and the boy remaining. And finally, after weeks of toil, the boy broke the emerald free. But the boy did not know that the emerald was actually the heart of the sea, the plug keeping all the water from draining away. And with the gem removed, the sea waters retreated down the dark hole and sucked the boy along with them. Only then was the emerald pulled back into place by the waters, the boy trapped on the other side, where he finally drowned.
The moral to the story was clear, at least to his sister Lela when their father told it years ago. The sensible Lela took the message to heart, but Luca was abuzz with questions: Why was the heart of the sea there and not in the center of the sea? How did the boy finally wrest it free? Did he have help? What if he used ropes to secure it and climbed back by them? Who was it that witnessed him sucked into the hole? Would they too not be sucked away?
Their father quickly grew cross and never uttered the story again until he discovered that Luca touched Onas’ dog rather than just the wagon. Hearing how his son risked life and limb to impress the other children, Camlo Dolphus demanded to know why Luca stupidly chanced everything for just a little bit more when he could have been content with quite a lot less.
“I didn’t want them to think me a grubber.”
“But we are grubbers,” his father corrected, dismissing the boy’s statement with a wave. “The whole Ikus clan are grubbers to the other Wanderers, but that doesn’t matter none. They’re grubbers to the Cousins, who are grubbers to the gaji. We’re all grubbers in someone’s eyes, us Dolphus the grubbiest among them, and that’s a good thing. When they look down on you, they don’t expect much. Remember, it’s the tallest blade of grass that loses the most come mowing season.”
Luca’s forehead contracted as he tasted the idea, his face finally souring. “But I’m not grass. And I’m not a grubber.”
Seeing his son’s sincerity, Camlo Dolphus could not help but snigger. “No, you’re as bad as the boy swallowed by the sea.”
Luca did not know if it was his father’s laughter or the definitive distinction of a grubber that spilled his traitorous tears, but he was well aware his father laughed all the harder upon seeing them.
“You’re just as bad as the boy swallowed by the sea,” quickly became his father’s favorite refrain. Not a month went by without Luca being lashed with it, and although Camlo Dolphus believed otherwise, his son sussed a moral from the story, one he kept close to his heart. Luca learned that, while other, lesser children might be content to only grasp for what they could carry, he had both more imagination and ambition. Contentedness was never the prize, rather a distraction from his true, better purpose. Luca knew in his bones he was meant for greater things, a grand destiny awaiting him so long as he was willing to reach for it. His path would undoubtedly be dangerous, but so long as he proved quick and clever, he knew he would never be sucked down to the depths below.
No, he would earn his destined prize, even if he had to drain the entire ocean to do it.
Chapter 3
Blotmonad 2, 567
Their host left much to be desired, but the food was good, at least. Conroy drew water from one of the barrels outside to make a stew of dried meat and fresh vegetables from an unseen garden. It was not particularly delicious, but after days of cold rations, the steaming stew was more welcome than gold. Conroy took his payment with long pulls from Marta’s whiskey before passing it around to Luca and Isabelle, who partook nearly as much as their host.
The most enjoyable diversion came in the form of the crow Conroy called Creature, a big black monstrosity with clipped wings. Conroy explained he found the bird as a chick and kept him “so I’s someone to talk to,” before inquiring why Marta did not remove her slouch hat indoors. The brand dead center of her forehead and shared by all members of the hated Traitors Brigade was as good as a death sentence, but Marta shrugged and claimed she was cold. Conroy shrugged in turn and that was the extent of their conversation until another quarter of the red-eye was consumed.
At first, Caddie stared at the crow as if beholding a nightmare come to life. Creature did not help the matter much, hopping from perch to perch toward the girl, each time landing with a squawk that seemed far too large for a bird even his size. Marta expected that Caddie would run, but soon the girl refused to step out of arm’s length from the bird. She even ignored the offer of Luca’s bix sticks.
The more alcohol Conroy imbibed, the less cagey he got. “The hills are mine. All of them. Had some kin though—cousins and the like. Lived down in the valleys. Farmers and foolish folk. Couldn’t hold on to their own crops. Taken first by the armies, then their fields destroyed by the wars. Don’t know where they wound up. Sinton most like.”
“They didn’t return?” Luca asked.
“Nah. Too afraid of the boors.”
From the corner of her eye, Marta caught Isabelle’s scowl. It was a cruel term, referring to the Ingios indifference to the Biba Sacara—the holy books both the Renders and Weavers adhered to. Without any Blessed or Tinkers of their own to harness the ley, Newfield citizens looked down upon the Ingios, yet the term “boor” was seldom said in polite society, which was why it seemed so natural when uttered here.
“They’ve been on the rampage of late,” Conroy continued. “Killing settlers what stray into their territories and sometimes striking at settlers outside them when the spirit takes them.”
Such an admission was certainly news to Marta. Stories of conflicts between the Ingios and settlers occasionally cropped up years past, but for the most part, the nomadic Ingios appeared content to simply move their herds of sheep and goats along deeper into the heart of the continent to escape the cities that sprang up over the years.
“Sure that’s just a tall tale,” Luca offered. “Like the Dobra stealing children.”
“Dobra,” Conroy huffed. “Went down to see them shirkers once. Took me for everything I had in my pockets. But Dobra been a way of life since before there was a Newfield, not like the boors.” Marta felt his eyes upon her brown hair before falling on Isabelle’s much darker tresses.
“Sisters?”
With Isabelle’s half-Ingios origins and more than a drop of darker Lacus blood flowing through her veins, she wondered if Conroy considered them both boors. At a loss for a polite reply, Luca’s easy conversational skills saved her.
“Cousins. May there, she’s my wife,” he lied, referring to the moniker Marta first introduced herself to them by. It belonged to a fellow member of the Traitors Brigade, a woman Marta cared little for, hence picking it. Why Luca chose to use it rather than her real name nearly went unnoticed after being called his wife, especially when he grasped her hand. She let it remain only a moment before pulling away and earning another wink for her troubles.
Conroy simply nodded, his eyes shifting from Luca’s dark locks to Caddie’s nearly white curls. The man said nothing, nearly daring them to lie that Caddie was their daughter. Luca’s grin widened. “An orphan we found on the road after a harrier attack. Hasn’t said a word, but we call her Caddie, after my sister. Poor kid. We’re looking for somewhere safe to drop her off. Hopefully somewhere where she has some kin.”
Marta could not tell if Conroy accepted Luca’s lie out of inebriation or indifference. “Try Sinton. It’s not far.”
The idea that Marta would ever step foot in Sinton, the city she was instrumental in seizing during the Grand War, was so ludicrous that she almost spit out her liquor. But it was Caddie who giggled from the other side of the room. The sound was slight, yet drew Marta’s gaze as if a musket shot.
Caddie ignored them all, her attention on Creature. With her pointer finger, she traced a half circle in the air over the bird’s head. The crow in turn tracked the woven ring on the girl’s thumb, the action again coaxing her laugh. Marta had not heard such an utterance from her charge before, the stoic girl’s few words not even enough to construct a complete sentence yet.
Conroy barely paid Caddie another look, but Marta and Luca snuck glances at the girl playing with the bird. Barely two weeks ago, she was incapable of walking on her own, and Marta found herself wondering how much more of the girl’s mind would unfold before they reached her father in Ceilminster.
***
Their meal consumed and the bottle down to the dregs, they turned in for the night. Conroy’s shack far too tight for the five of them, the four bunked down in his tannery. The smell could gag a hog, even with the flaps pulled down, but Marta happily accepted the shelter. She still insisted on setting watch, Isabelle sitting it first. Conroy provided blankets, great deer hides he warned them against soiling. Luca left his open a moment as if inviting Marta to join him. She did not even deign to answer with a withering glance as she rolled away under her own hide.
The Imbued Lockblade (Sol's Harvest Book 2) Page 4