The Guild of the Cowry Catchers, Book 1: Embers

by Abigail Hilton

  Chapter 13. Tea with Flag

  The grishnard written language is an ancient and cumbersome pictographic text. Each word is a little picture with no clues to pronunciation. It requires years to learn to read and write these characters with any skill, and they serve to perpetuate Wefrivain’s rigid class system. Shelts without the means to begin early training in the written word are hopelessly outmatched by shelts who’ve been trained from childhood. Oddly enough, phonetic characters have been known in the islands for ages. They can be taught in a day to a willing shelt and would greatly increase efficiency in almost every area of business and learning. However, the beauty-cult of the wyverns dismissed phonetic characters long ago as barbaric, crude, and ugly (the worst sin). The wyverns and their Priestess may, indeed, find the phonetic characters ugly, but I believe that they also find them dangerous. The class system is to their advantage. They do not want a reading public.

  —Gwain, The Truth About Wyverns

  The tent was a teahouse. Gerard could smell the tea as soon as he entered, but the interior was so dark that he could see nothing for a moment. He stood there, his head brushing the top of the low roof, fighting a sense of claustrophobia. Gerard took a step forward, and something dangled in his face, tickling his nose and making him sneeze. Gradually, he became accustomed to the gloom and saw that the tent had been constructed of raw pelts, fur-side inward. They made a crazy pattern of spots and stripes. A number of the pelts had feet or faces of animals still attached to them, and a couple of paws were dangling in Gerard’s face.

  In addition to the pelts, the owner of the teahouse had unaccountably sewn random bits of ribbon, bone, and feathers into the walls. The whole effect was a bewildering array of colors and textures. Gerard glanced over the tables. There were only four, each large enough for two or three shelts. A leather curtain partitioned the back of the room, which must be the kitchen. The place was lit by only two censers, which gave off a pleasant odor.

  A lone ocelon sat at one of the tables with a book and a cup of tea. He was wearing pants and boots and had a few facial stripes. His hair was light brown. Gerard wondered if he might be a sailor, as his pants appeared to be made from sailcloth.

  Gerard sat down across from him. The ocelon’s eyes lifted slowly from his book, hazel in the muddy light. Gerard was surprised. The ocelon was wearing little wire-framed lenses. Eye-lenses were rare on Wefrivain, though Gerard had seen them a couple of times before. They were expensive and difficult to make. Most of the shelts who could afford them didn’t need them (grishnards had legendarily good eyesight), and shelts who might need them couldn’t afford them.

  “Where did you get those?” he asked.

  Gerard had intended nothing but honest curiosity. However, the ocelon took off his lenses and slid them across the table. Gerard felt ashamed. Have these shelts been so trodden upon that they immediately roll over every time a grishnard points a finger at them?

  Gerard forced himself to pick up the lenses and examine them. The frames were only cheap wire, but the glass itself was good work. He set them back on the table in front of the ocelon. “I wasn’t accusing you of theft. I was only curious.”

  The ocelon quirked a smile. He put his lenses back on. “You must be Gerard Holovar. Welcome to Sern, Captain.”

  Gerard tried to cover his surprise. “Am I already so famous?”

  “You have something of a reputation, yes. And you’re hard to miss.”

  Gerard sat back. It was true that his height set him apart in a crowd, but usually only to shelts who’d met him before. “Do I know you from somewhere?”

  The ocelon shrugged. “I was on Holovarus once—just a ship’s clerk. I doubt you remember me.”

  Gerard didn’t, but he would not make the mistake again. “Can you read?” he asked with interest.

  For answer, the ocelon showed him the book in his hand. Not only read, thought Gerard with a jolt. Write. The book was a blank of vellum sheets produced for scribes who copied manuscripts. Gerard spied an inkwell and pen at the ocelon’s elbow. A moment later, his surprise turned to puzzlement. The characters on the page were not grishnard. They were the strange, spidery script of the ocelons.

  “It’s the phonetic,” said the ocelon as Gerard examined the book. “Bookkeeping for a merchant vessel.”

  The owner of the teahouse appeared at that moment and asked Gerard what he wanted. She spoke haltingly, with downcast eyes. Gerard was still looking at the book. “Whatever he’s having.”

  He stared at the dense lines of script. They didn’t look like any bookkeeping he had ever seen, but Gerard had no experience with the phonetic. He returned the book. “Do you read and write grishnard also?”

  “Not as well, but, yes, I can.”

  “And other languages? Hunti? Mountain grishnard? Maijhan?”

  The ocelon smiled, his lenses flashing in the censer’s light. “I speak a little of everything.”

  Gerard drew a deep breath. As far as he knew, what he was about to suggest had never been done before. Still, the Priestess has a foxling leading her Watch. I don’t see why she should object to an ocelon in the Police. “Would you like a job?” he asked.

  The ocelon nearly choked on his tea. Gerard took a moment to realize he was laughing. “Forgive me,” he said after a moment. “I was only thinking of what my master would say. I have debts I cannot abandon, but thank you for your offer. I realize it’s a high compliment.”

  The mistress of the teahouse had brought Gerard’s drink. She passed it to the ocelon, who handed it to Gerard. “I could arrange for payment of your debts,” Gerard persisted. “I’m in need of a shelt who speaks Maijhan.”

  “I’m sure you are,” said the ocelon, gathering his supplies into a bag. “But I’m not the one to help you. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I must go.”

  “At least tell me your name and the name of your ship.”

  The ocelon hesitated in the doorway. “Flag,” he said, “and my ship is the Defiance. Good-bye, Captain.”

  Gerard frowned. Defiance was a strange name for a merchant ship. Something was tickling at the back of his brain. Almost, he got up and went after the ocelon, but he couldn’t think of a way to detain him except by force. He didn’t have a good reason, just a gut-level sense of wrongness. At that moment, he remembered Montpir’s list. Tea cups—tea leaves?

  Gerard glanced down at his cup. It was ordinary clay. He reached across the table and picked up Flag’s empty cup, but the sodden leaves told him nothing. He sniffed at them, then sniffed at his own cup. I thought I told her to give us the same kind of tea. He was fairly certain that the teas were not, in fact, identical, but he couldn’t be sure.

  Grishnards and griffins did not possess a keen sense of smell, a trait they shared with fauns. However, other panauns did have extraordinary noses, including foxlings. On an impulse, Gerard tipped out his tea onto the dirt floor, keeping the leaves. As he did so, he noticed something under the ocelon’s chair and picked it up—a scrap of downy, blue-gray feather. It could have come from anywhere, but… Gerard stood up all at once. He picked up both of the small cups and put one in each pocket. The owner was still nowhere in sight, so he deposited several cowries on the table—more than enough to pay for both his tea and the cups—and ducked out of the tent.

  He had not gone far when he ran into Silveo’s party returning from the warehouse. Gerard fell in with them. His eyes! he realized suddenly. I don’t think they were slitted. I was so busy looking at his lenses that I didn’t notice. Of course, the teahouse had been dim, and any shelt’s eyes would have been dilated. Even a slit-eyed shelt’s pupil might look round in that light, but Gerard thought he was right.

  He picked up his pace and reached the front of the group. “Silveo, are these teas different?”

  Silveo leapt back as though Gerard had tried to hand him a live snake. In his excitement, Gerard realized he’d been over-familiar. He was also asking Silveo to do in public something that set him apart as a non-grishnar
d. It might make him angry, but at the moment Gerard didn’t care. “Teacups,” he said impatiently, waving them in the air. “Different—yes or no? It’s important.”

  For a moment, Gerard thought Silveo would refuse, might even spit in his face. Then he took the teacups, moving with deliberate slowness. “Has anyone ever introduced you to the concept of verbal communication, Holovar? Sentences, perhaps?”

  Gerard was thinking again. The face spots could have been paint or kohl. And he was wearing boots. Normally, only panauns wore boots. They were unnecessary and uncomfortable for fauns, but a faun wishing to disguise himself as a panaun could construct padded and reinforced boots. Did he have a tail? Gerard didn’t remember seeing one. Of course, long-tailed shelts sometimes tucked their tails into their pants to keep them out of the way, and a tail could be amputated in an accident. Picturing the shelt standing up made Gerard think of something else. His height! Flag had been tall for an ocelon, but he was about the right height for a shavier faun.

  Silveo broke into his thoughts. “You could say they’re different, yes. Did you actually drink any of this, Holovar?” He was holding out Gerard’s cup.

  “No.”

  Silveo clicked his tongue. “A pity. It’s poisoned.”

  Gerard started to laugh.

  Silveo raised an eyebrow. “I had no idea you would find the idea so entertaining. This is really crude work; I can do much better. Priestess knows I’ve exercised self-restraint in the matter of your food.”

  Gerard hardly heard him. “I think I just met Gwain.”